Did the Iraq Surge finger Sunni insurgents for Maliki and his allies?
Almost every day, it seems, Aswat al-Iraq carries news stories about former members of the Sahwa movement (the Sunni insurgents who were put on the American payroll but not disarmed during the Surge of 2007-08) getting whacked: Interior Ministry sources reported the killing of ex-pro-government Sahwa (Awakening) member by unknown gunmen in Abu Ghraib area, ...
Almost every day, it seems, Aswat al-Iraq carries news stories about former members of the Sahwa movement (the Sunni insurgents who were put on the American payroll but not disarmed during the Surge of 2007-08) getting whacked:
Interior Ministry sources reported the killing of ex-pro-government Sahwa (Awakening) member by unknown gunmen in Abu Ghraib area, west Baghdad.
Almost every day, it seems, Aswat al-Iraq carries news stories about former members of the Sahwa movement (the Sunni insurgents who were put on the American payroll but not disarmed during the Surge of 2007-08) getting whacked:
Interior Ministry sources reported the killing of ex-pro-government Sahwa (Awakening) member by unknown gunmen in Abu Ghraib area, west Baghdad.
The source told Aswat al-Iraq that the gunmen stormed into the deceased house and killed him with his family.
The family comprised of two women and two children.
Tom again: This pattern of killings makes me wonder if the Surge effectively surfaced and identified the local leadership network of Sunni insurgents, and whether that knowledge is now being used by Prime Minister Maliki and his allies in the low-grade civil war that has resumed in central Iraq.
If so, did the Americans "let a hundred flowers bloom" — and so create the conditions for the harvesting of those Sunni flowers? By so doing, did we enable a quiet Iranian offensive inside Iraq? If so, I suspect that we did not, in Maoist terms, correctly "handle the contradictions among the people."
On Saturday, the Iraqi army shelled Fallujah. It looks like it and Ramadi are going back into the hands of al Qaeda.
More from Foreign Policy

Xi’s Great Leap Backward
Beijing is running out of recipes for its looming jobs crisis—and reviving Mao-era policies.

Companies Are Fleeing China for Friendlier Shores
“Friendshoring” is the new trend as geopolitics bites.

Why Superpower Crises Are a Good Thing
A new era of tensions will focus minds and break logjams, as Cold War history shows.

The Mediterranean as We Know It Is Vanishing
From Saint-Tropez to Amalfi, the region’s most attractive tourist destinations are also its most vulnerable.