The War Is Over!

I'm sure you've heard the headlines trumpeting the drop in casualties in Iraq. Indeed, there was a drop last month. Juan Cole gives us the details (I simply refuse to listen to or believe the mainstream media on the subject) .... and like him, I hope it's a trend:

Sep-07 842
Aug-07 1,674
Jul-07 1,690
Jun-07 1,345
May-07 1,980
Apr-07 1,821
Mar-07 2,977
Feb-07 3,014
Jan-07 1,802
Dec-06 1,752
Nov-06 1,864
Oct-06 1,539
Sep-06 3,539
Aug-06 2,966
Jul-06 1,280
Jun-06 870
May-06 1,119

It is true that the September '07 numbers are lower than at any time since June of 2006. But it is also true that June of 2006 was a fluke, followed by an alarmingly rising death toll in August and September. Deaths also fell in 2006 during Ramadan (which started 11 days later being as it is on a lunar calendar) compared to the previous period. Despite the widespread conviction that Ramadan is an especially violent month, in fact it is a time of fasting, prayer and family get togethers and not at all propitious for sneaking off to blow things up.

The other thing to observe is that the September death count for Iraqi civilians and security forces is 842! This is a number at the upper limits of averages for months during the year 2005. If you go back and look at the headlines and commentary in 2005, nobody thought that level of violence acceptable. That is, so far the numbers have fallen back down to merely horrible from having been, in much of 2006 and 2007, truly monstrous.

As many have pointed out, there are now many fewer mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad, so that faction-fighting and death squad activity at that level has declined, because it was aimed at ethnically cleansing the neighborhoods. Baghdad was about half Sunni and half Shiite in 2003. By January of 2007, it was 65 percent Shiite. It is now 75 percent Shiite. A lot of the violence in the figures above was committed in the subterranean War for Baghdad, which the Sunni Arabs decisively lost in the past eight months. The American troop escalation does not appear to have interfered with the displacement of tens of thousands of Sunni Arabs. In fact, my guess is that it unwittingly abetted it, since the Americans disarmed or chased away the Sunni Arab militiamen who defended their neighborhoods from the Shiite onslaught. When the Americans weren't looking, the Shiites took advantage of this weakening of their foe to push Sunni Arab families out of mixed neighborhoods.

If the trend toward less violence holds, and I hope it does, the question remains of whether it can be maintained when the temporary US troop escalation ends, beginning approximately 8 months from now. Some 30,000 extra US troops should make a difference, especially in Baghdad, but their sacrifices will only have been rewarded if Iraqi security forces can effectively continue their work. Likewise, without genuine progress on the front of political reconciliation, the improved security situation will risk deteriorating again.

Unfortunately the trend in Afghanistan is definitely going in the other direction:

WASHINGTON — Afghanistan is currently suffering its most violent year since the 2001 U.S.-led intervention, according to an internal United Nations report that sharply contrasts with recent upbeat appraisals by President Bush and his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai.

"The security situation in Afghanistan is assessed by most analysts as having deteriorated at a constant rate through 2007," said the report compiled by the Kabul office of the U.N. Department of Safety and Security.

There were 525 security incidents — attacks by the Taliban and other violent groups, bombings, terrorism of other kinds, and abductions — on average every month during the first half of this year, up from an average of 425 incidents per month in 2006.

Last year was the most violent since the U.S. post-September 11 offensive that ousted the hard-line Taliban Islamic militia from power and drove Osama bin Laden and his al Qaida terrorists into neighboring Pakistan.