Analysis: Obama Talks with Iraq Prime Minister Al-Maliki

President Obama's meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki at US Camp Victory in Baghdad was a brief one, and the aftermath is more spin than substance.

The Obama camp initially put out the message that "Obama 'strongly encouraged' the Iraqi leader to take steps to unite political factions, including integrating Sunnis into the government and security forces". The President himself then put out the on-the-record statement, ""They have got to make political accommodations. They're going to have to decide that they want to resolve their differences through constitutional means and legal means."

As we have been noting, and as some of the US press are now realising, there is a serious tension between the local Sunni groups and Awakening Councils that the US military has been funding in the "surge" and the national Government.

A misleading follow-up in The New York Times today focuses on an audiotape by Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a former deputy of Saddam Hussein, who is the last high-ranking fugitive from the American forces, which calls Iraqis to overthrow the al-Maliki Government and restore the Baath Party to power. Al-Maliki in turn blamed "Baathists" for a series of car bombings in Baghdad.

The issue isn't "Baathists"; it's highly unlikely that the Iraqi people will welcome the political resurrection of Saddam's loyalists. The label instead deflects from the possibilities that 1) Al Qa'eda in Iraq is far from a spent force, a fear raised by Iraqi President Jalal Talebani on Tuesday, or, more seriously, 2) that an increasingly violent showdown between Sunni parties and the Iraqi Prime Minister.

It is unclear what Obama's private words or public pressure can do to deflect the second scenario, especially if al-Maliki is determined to face down those he sees as Sunni political rivals and militias. The Iraqi Prime Minister limited his comments after the meeting with Obama to the terse statement, ""Dialogue should be the only way to resolve any issue, whether it was among components of Iraqi society or in the region."

Iraq Update: US Awakening Ally Arrested for “Terrorism”, Siege Continues

On Sunday, we reported on the arrest of Adil al-Mashhadani, an Awakening Council leader in the Fadhil section of Baghdad, and the subsequent gunfight between Council militiamen and US-Iraq forces.

Well, the story is far from over.

Juan Cole passes on the news from the Arabic-language newspaper Al Zaman that Iraqi troops still have the Fadhil district under siege of the Sunni Fadl district. According to the paper, diseases are spreading amongst women and children with the blockade and curfew.

Beyond Fadhil, al-Mashhadani's arrest is threating a breakdown between the Councils and the Iraqi Government. The Awakening Council leader in Baquba in Diyala province has said that he will stop fighting "extremists". US military officers were calling Sunni contacts, promising that they will be defended against both a Government crackdown and will not be abandon to the mercy of Shi'a militias.

The Fadhil episode is graphic testimony to both the difficulties, swept away in the myth of the American "surge", of General David Petraeus' counter-insurgency strategy and the flawed logic of those who insist that US troops have to remain in Iraq to prevent instability.

Thomas Ricks, the Washington Post correspondent who wrote about the fiasco of the US invasion of Iraq but is now a firm proponent of stay-the-military course, wonderfully and ironically demonstrated this in a tangled blog on Tuesday.

Ricks quotes Colonel Pete Mansoor, who was Petraeus's executive officer:

The Status of Forces agreement [of December 2008] would put U.S. forces into a position where they could not intervene to stop the government of Iraq from attacking the SOI [the Awakening Councils or "Sons of Iraq"]. If the Iraqi Security Forces needed help once engaged against the SOI, U.S. forces could be drawn into the fight against the very people who helped us turn the war around.

I certainly hope this doesn't come to pass, but given what we've just seen happen in Baghdad, the possibility is disturbing.

Ricks might draw the obvious conclusion that to bolster its presence in Iraq, the US military struck political deals that are now running aground in the battles between local leaders and the national Government. Instead, he stands logic on its head: the US military needs to stay as more political deals are struck, quoting Joost Hilterman of the International Crisis Group:

Absent the glue that US troops have provided, Iraq's political actors are likely to fight, emboldened by a sense they can prevail, if necessary with outside help. Obama should make sure that the peace he leaves behind is sustainable, lest Bush's war of choice turn into his war of necessity.

And so the Alice-in-Wonderland rationale of occupation continues: if the US stays, it will be entangled in more violence --- but it must stay to prevent more violence.