"Cease-fire deals have been negotiated between Iraqi insurgent groups and the United States," he said. "In creating a deal, the leader of an insurgent group agrees to field men to cover checkpoints and to patrol in a specified area."
The insurgents agreed not to leave the area or shoot Americans, Iraqi government officials or Iraqi civilians, according to Biddle. "The only people they can fire on are al-Qaida members and insurgents," he said.
Violence has decreased in Iraq during this period because the insurgents who sign the cease-fire deals were shooting at the U.S. military the week before signing, continued Biddle, who visited Iraq twice in 2007 and spoke with members of these new security forces.
“You quickly discover that these are not little old ladies from Topeka,” he said. “These are, in many cases, steely-eyed killers with remarkably impressive degrees of military discipline.”
In exchange, the U.S. agreed not to fire at these security groups and paid each member who abided by the terms -- $300 a month, according to Biddle. But the money is not the primary factor for these deals. "Iraqi insurgents have discovered that the strategic landscape is different in Iraq," he said.
“This is not primarily buying them off, it’s primarily responding to their changed sense of what their strategic possibilities are,” Biddle added.
U.S. Deal With Militias Resulted From 2006 Battle of Baghdad
This stems from the "Battle of Baghdad" in 2006 where Sunni Muslim militants and al-Qaida in Iraq tried to gain control of the Iraqi capital by driving the Americans and the city's majority Shiite Muslims out.
The bombing of the Shiite al-Askari Mosque by Sunni militants spurred Shiite militias to go on the offensive. “That gave the Sunnis the Technicolor view of just what an unconstrained, unlimited civil war against the Shiites would look like,” Biddle said, “and to their astonishment, the result was they got whipped -- badly. They decisively lost the Battle of Baghdad.”
The Sunnis also agreed to cease-fire deals because they no longer trusted al-Qaida in Iraq, Biddle said. In addition to taking money intended for sheiks, the Battle of Baghdad showed that al-Qaida in Iraq couldn’t support the Sunnis militarily, according to Biddle. "They began to turn on al-Qaida and side with the U.S. as a means of survival," he said.
Biddle argued that to withdraw U.S. troops now would disrupt the delicate balance of the cease-fire deals. "If the deals were able to spread, by next year, the U.S. mission in Iraq would transition to mostly peacekeeping," he said. “If somehow magically we were to get everybody out tomorrow, the result would be the country would collapse into a much more violent form of civil war than we saw before.”
U.S. Has 'Obligation' to Rebuild Iraq, Wilson Says
Iraq was a sophisticated country and has now lost its infrastructure and middle class, said Wilson, who added that he didn't approve of the invasion because it was not supported by the United Nations. "The political risks seemed greater than what could be gained," he said. "The worst-case scenarios have occurred in the country following the period of uncertainty after the invasion."
Occupation of a country is one of the most taxing burdens militarily, Wilson said. “You can’t place people in those situations of stress without expecting that bad things will happen. That is always the curse of occupation.”
Insurgents work to make situations where soldiers feel encouraged to kill civilians, added Biddle.
But Wilson insisted that reconstruction is a U.S. responsibility. “Apologies are not a helpful thing, I think acts, quietly done, will do it,” he said. “If we roll up our sleeves and did the infrastructure-buildng and if we could make sure that Iraq does not simply become a pawn or a military base of the United States.”
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