Two birds, two stones

The situation in the predominantly Sunni Anbar province of Iraq deteriorated sharply yesterday, with Al Qaeda-affiliated militants taking over at least parts of Ramadi and Fallujah:

According to @Hayder_alKhoei of Chatham House, that is one of their convoys in Anbar.

This is a serious challenge to Baghdad’s authority.  No doubt Prime Minister Maliki will see it that way and use the military force he had withdrawn from Anbar population centers as a peace gesture to reassert the state’s monopoly on the legitimate means of violence.

But that is not the only problem Baghdad has in Sunni-majority areas of the country.  Demonstrations ongoing for months have been protesting discrimination, neglect and mismanagement.  Forty-four Sunni members of parliament have offered their resignations.  Moqtada al Sadr, the Shia firebrand, has openly expressed sympathy with the demonstrators and called for early elections.

Maliki has two problems, not one:

1. the resurgence of Al Qaeda, due in part to the civil war in Syria, whose border with Iraq is porous;
2. an alienated and disappointed population.

Military force may be appropriate in dealing with the first, but it will do nothing to resolve the second.

Maliki is a clever and resourceful politician.  He has governed Iraq with an increasingly strong hand since 2006, accumulating power by appointing loyal commanders in the security forces, infringing on the independence of the judiciary, and exploiting oil revenue to distribute patronage.  His authoritarian inclinations are clear, but he has also managed to maintain a working majority in parliament with agile shifts:  when he is in a tussle with Sunnis, he manages to gain Kurdish support; when he faces Kurdish challenges, he finds Sunni support.  He has fragmented his mostly Sunni Iraqiyya opposition and managed to maintain or even enlarge his own “state of law” coalition, even as his Shia competitors appear to have gained ground in last year’s provincial elections.

The current crisis will be an important test of Maliki’s ability to wield the Iraqi state’s military instrument to meet the Al Qaeda challenge even as he uses political means to meet the grievances of the population.  If he conflates the two problems and puts too much emphasis on military means, he is likely to face a spiraling security threat.  There is little risk that he will put too much emphasis on political means.  That is just not his natural inclination.  But he needs to meet the political challenge with serious responses to the demonstrators’ complaints, or at least something that looks as if it points in that direction.  Prisoner releases and economic investment seem the best bets to generate quick, begrudgingly positive responses.

The key to the military contest lies, as it did for the Americans in 2006-8, with Sunni tribesmen in Anbar.  If Maliki is able to keep them on the government’s side in cracking down on Al Qaeda affiliates, he has a good chance of winning the fight.  But many of them are demoralized and alienated, having been neglected and ill-treated for years.  If their younger militants see Al Qaeda as the better bet, Maliki and the Iraqi state are in trouble.