Garner’s replacement, Ambassador Paul Bremer, arrived soon thereafter to make sure that The Plan was quickly implemented. In only his second directive after arriving, “Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Order Number 2, Dissolution of Entities,” Bremer fired all the police, all the military and practically all ministries. [4] The Ministry of Oil was left intact.
This directive alone drove Iraqi unemployment through the roof. Even if the CPA allowed most of these people to go home with their weapons, it still sent the rate to over 70%. At this point, Iraqis were facing a total raping of their museums, cultural centers, ministry offices and other government buildings which had been left completely open and abandoned by these ex-government officials and unguarded by US troops. Almost instantly, Iraq went from a conquered nation with most of its government still intact, to a lawless, jobless, mob-ruled country more reminiscent of the American Wild West than an orderly modern society.
Months, then years went by with almost no relief for these former state employees, no job in sight and very few options available to improve their lot and the lot of their family. The only two known and steady resources of employed were joining the newly forming police academies, or becoming an insurgent. Unfortunately, either choice meant risking one’s life on almost a daily basis.
In the beginning, most Iraqis who joined the police force hid their faces and refused any and all contact with inquisitive reporters. The penalty for showing ones face or giving ones actual name to reporters meant the kiss of death for the cadet and his family. On the other hand, becoming an insurgent and taking up arms against the occupying army had its obvious deadly detractions as well.
After years of wallowing in the middle of a hot festering wound, and on the heels of a Democrat Party resurgence in the 2006 elections, the Bush Administration departed from their standard fare of, “stay the course,” and decided to take a completely radical and different approach to pacifying those areas of Iraq that remained the hotbed of insurgent activity. Giant concrete cinder blocks soon walled off entire sections of Baghdad forcing citizens to crawl in single file between them just to get from one side of the street to the other, or else endure a tremendous walk to the end of the barriers and then walking all the way back on the other side. As expected, Baghdad violence decreased substantially, even if the end result practically paralyzed the entire capital.
Another main component of the surge was to create a truce between former insurgents, mainly Sunnis, and the US military. Taking a page out of its own playbook, the military decided to bribe their way to peace in the deadly Sunni triangle area. By offering millions of dollars to the leaders and fighters of these small Sunni tribes, known as the Awakening Councils, the military could bask in the glory of its new found bribed and walled surge strategy. The US military was willing to let bygones be bygones and hire these groups who, up to that point, were responsible for hundreds or thousands of US soldiers’ deaths. The Surgified Iraq was finally emerging and the level of violence was definitely on its way down.
To the world, it appeared that Bush had finally got something right in his pet war, and the light of the tunnel showing the end to this morass was at hand. But they would be proven wrong yet again. To the American military, these tribes were making life a lot easier for the boots on the ground in Iraq, but to many Iraqis, especially the Shiites and Kurds, these same tribes had switched sides and were now part and parcel of the US-led coalition. They had become, basically, the Benedict Arnolds of Iraq.
As long as the US military presence was strong in Iraq, they had little to worry about. But as the US draws down its troop strength, the foreseeable backlash from the Iraqi government and other groups rises in intensity and frequency. A New York Times article on March 23, 2009, reports, “’The Iraqi Army considers us members of Al Qaeda, not Awakening Council leaders,’ said Sheik Awad al-Harbousi, who lost a son, a father and four other close relatives to Al Qaeda, and who still leads the council in Taji, just north of Baghdad. ‘We sacrificed to kick out Al Qaeda, and this is their thank-you?’
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