The Anbar Experience: A New Solution or Just Another Problem?

While the decision of many Sunni militias (including former Baathists and religious extremists) to join with the Coalition forces in combating Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM) in places like Anbar province has been hailed as an aspect of success for the surge of U.S. troops and military actions in the Iraq, a recent article in the NY Times presents a more in-depth look at the implications of this new "Sunni Awakening" for Iraq at large, specifically as concerns the country's biggest obstacle: Sunni-Shia violence:

Though the Americans obtain biometric data on every Awakening group member to try to screen out known insurgents, the government and many Shiite citizens say they fear that the movement has spread so quickly that it is impossible to keep track of who has signed up for it. And while government officials are somewhat willing to accept the tribal character of the Awakening groups in Anbar Province, they are leery of the new ones in and around Baghdad, which have more Baathists from the era of Saddam Hussein in their leadership and are active in more mixed neighborhoods.

“Many people believe this will end with tens of thousands of armed people, primarily Sunnis, and this will excite the Shiite militias to grow and in the end it will grow into a civil war,” said Safa Hussein, the deputy national security adviser and a point man on the Awakening program for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

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While Mr. Mashadani is ready to look past his former enmity to work with the Americans, he draws the line at any partnership with the central government. He characterizes Shiite officials as pawns of Iran and Shiite death squads, a common view among Sunni Arabs in both Baghdad and Anbar.

“We want to work for the Americans, not the government,” he said. “It is as clear as the sun: the Iranians have dominated the ministries, the whole government. These guys are a bunch of conspirators who belong to Iran.”

So the Sunni-Shia rift in Iraq still seems no closer to being resolved, and not one presidential candidate seems to have put enough thought into facilitating any type of viable peace or balance of power between these two groups. All we hear is either Republicans talking about defeating the omnipresent, ill-defined "terrorists" or Democrats talking about withdrawal, without mentioning what effect this process would have, positively or negatively (because arguments have been made either way), in regards to Shia-Sunni violence.