The United States Finds Few Non-Iraqis Among Insurgents
But those dynamics may prove harder to replicate in more diverse regions of Iraq. "Diyala ain't Al Anbar," says Sutherland, who commands a region that includes "25 major tribes and 100 subtribes. And of the major tribes, six are a Sunni-Shia mix."
The result, says Sutherland, is that "sometimes the violence that somebody may think is al Qaeda or sectarian may be tribe on tribe." The bottom line, he says, is that "not everything is al Qaeda. Not everything is sectarian, not everything is tribal. And some of it just might be criminal."
This also means that in Diyala, U.S. forces must be careful about being seen as favoring Sunni tribes in an effort to root out al Qaeda-linked elements. Sutherland says that U.S. forces do not arm Sunni tribes. "No, I'm not going to arm anybody. We provide weapons and assistance to Iraqi Security forces that have been designated as such," says Sutherland. "In Diyala, we do not arm locals. We don't because as groups they would be considered militias."
And while persuading tribes to help support U.S. forces against al Qaeda-linked extremists can be part of the solution, it can also be part of the problem as well, says Daniel Byman, a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
The problem in Iraq, Byman says, is not so much that it has an insurgency than that it is a failed state. "It's not just bad guys shooting the government, but in many parts you have no government authority whatsoever." This means that in addition to civil violence in regions, there is also crime. "To fight this, you need to build a strong state—police, courts." But often, he says, the enemy of this approach can be the same local groups that might be needed to fight against al Qaeda.
The bottom line, says Byman, is that "if you just focus on building the state, you don't have the Anbar awakening. But if you do the Anbar awakening again and again" by teaming up with local sheiks and their tribes, "you have too many armed groups."
It's the sort of dynamic U.S. commanders on the ground continue to grapple with in Iraq. In the meantime, the buildup of U.S. forces in Iraq, which was completed June 15, is yielding results in Diyala. In the past, Sutherland had requested more troops for his hotly contested region. Now he has them.
"I've been able to get more forces up here, which is very important. That's what matters to me," Sutherland says. Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and other top U.S. military leaders "recognize that what happens in Diyala will influence Baghdad, and what happens in Baghdad influences what happens in Diyala. "General Petraeus said recently that this is doable, and I couldn't agree more," Sutherland says. "This is doable."
But that assessment may matter less than the conclusions of Congress, which is set to receive Petraeus's report card on progress in Iraq in two months.
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