Analysis by Jim LobeWASHINGTON, Nov 20 (IPS) - While the vast majority of analysts here agree that sectarian violence in Iraq has declined sharply from pre-"surge" levels one year ago, a major debate has broken out as to whether the achievement of the Surge's strategic objective -- national reconciliation -- is closer or more distant than ever.
On one side, advocates of the surge -- the deployment beginning last February of some 30,000 additional troops to Iraq to help pacify Baghdad and al-Anbar province -- claim that the counter-insurgency strategy overseen by Gen. David Petraeus has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
On the other side, surge sceptics argue that the strategy's "ground-up" approach to pacification -- buying off local insurgent and tribal groups with money and other support -- may have set the stage for a much bigger and more violent civil war or partition, particularly as U.S. forces begin drawing down from their current high of about 175,000 beginning as early as next month.
One prominent analyst, George Washington University Prof. Marc Lynch, believes that Petraeus' strategy of reducing violence by making deals with dominant local powers is leading to the creation in Iraq of a "warlord state" with "power devolved to local militias, gangs, tribes, and power-brokers, with a purely nominal central state."
Even the surge's proponents admit that the outcome remains unclear. Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institute, a Clinton administration official who angered many of his former colleagues by supporting the surge when Pres. George W. Bush first announced it last January and loudly praising its results on the eve of a major Congressional debate in September, told the New York Times this week that "in military terms...the trends (in reducing violence) are stunning."
At the same time, he added, "nobody knows if the trends are durable in the absence of national reconciliation and in the face of major U.S. troop drawdowns in 2008."