Redstate

By streiff Posted in User Blogs — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

When the dust settles from the Iraq elections on January 30 the field of contestants will be winnowed into two categories: losers and potential winners.

The losers can be predicted today: the Ba'ath holdovers and al Qaeda terrorist who make up the ongoing insurgency. Though they may still linger for some time to come, they and the Iraqi people will know they are losers by the close of polling places on January 30.These groups will lose for a variety of reasons. Neither the Ba'athists nor al Qaeda have any substantial constituency in Iraq nor have they succeeded in setting the predicate for a successful guerilla war. The internal security forces of the interim Iraqi government are becoming more numerous and skilful. Where the insurgents attempt to establish sanctuaries, as in Falluja and Samarra, they are decisively crushed. More importantly, the Iraqi people are tired of the status quo and want to move on. A recent poll of Iraqis found:

Do you support dialog with the deposed Baathists?

Yes - 15%

No - 84%

Do not know - 1%

Do you support postponing the election?

Yes - 18%

No - 80%

Do not know - 2%

We have to believe that al Qaeda knows it has lost. To date the al Qaeda strategy has closely followed the Zarqawi letter. His take on the elections, as seen from last February, was apocalyptic:

If we fight them {and we must fight them}, we will confront one of two things. Either:

1 - We fight them, and this is difficult because of the gap that will emerge between us and the people of the land. How can we fight their cousins and their sons and under what pretext after the Americans, who hold the reins of power from their rear bases, pull back? The real sons of this land will decide the matter through experience. Democracy is coming, and there will be no excuse thereafter.

2 - We pack our bags and search for another land, as is the sad, recurrent story in the arenas of jihad, because our enemy is growing stronger and his intelligence data are increasing day by day. By the Lord of the Ka`ba, [this] is suffocation and then wearing down the roads. People follow the religion of their kings.

Their primary goal of fomenting civil war has fallen flat and (as a shameless diary plug, more on that here. Though there were car bombings in Najaf and Karbala over the weekend, the genesis of these bombings is unclear, though if reports are reliable Zarqawi's group is a prime suspect in the attack. The undirected nature of the attack, beyond racking up a body count, however, could easily be attributed to Iranian intelligence, Ba'athists, or rival Shi'ite political groups.

Regardless, I believe we can expect that we will see the influence of Zarqawi and his affiliated gunmen diminish greatly in the next three months.

The Ba'ath insurgents are another consideration all together. Their motivation is clear, they wish to return to power. Their methodology is less understandable. As best as can be discerned they seem to be controlled from Syria -- the emphasis here is "from" and not "by" -- and are attempting to create sufficient chaos that the Iraqi people will recall them to power. Their ability to create chaos, however, is limited to portions of four provinces and 15% of the population. Indeed, in the current situation it would seem that the ongoing insurgency is working against the best interests of the Ba'athists.

Once elections are held, Syria is going to be forced to make a hard decision about its turning a blind eye to money and orders coming out of Damascus to conduct attacks in Iraq: a large neighbor that isn't going away. Smart money says they treat the Ba'athists the same way they treated the PKK when Turkey threatened to settle the problem militarily. They will sell out the Ba'athists to win favor with the new government in Baghdad against the day the US departs.

Syria is ruled by the Shi'a Alawite minority and has no interest in seeing a return of a Sunni strongman in Iraq.

We can probably predict that the two weeks leading up to the elections will be bloody. Clearly, the months after the election will continue to see some level of continued guerilla and terrorist activity. But the elections will move the two major forces of violence in Iraq to the margins of the political canvas and it will be only a matter of time until the new government eradicates them.

So the losers have been identified. The real battle that begins January 30 is to decide who is the winner