Former Centcom Official Calls U.S. Goal in Middle East "Perpetual War"

The rebellion of Defense Intelligence Agency analysts at Central Command's MacDill Air Force base in Tampa is an important story because it validates views commonly found in the blogosphere but rarely allowed in the mainstream media. These views, or variants of them, hold that the U.S. is only nominally or cosmetically waging war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria; that in actuality the U.S. is working with allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel and others to arm and position foreign jihadis in the region in order to destabilize governments aligned with Iran.

To make the ruse effective it is necessary to create an impression that the fearsome U.S. military is grinding ISIS down. And this is what news consumers in the West have been served since last year, a steady diet of U.S. air power blowing up ISIS jihadis. In reality, all the while the jihadis have been making territorial gains. (The loss of Ramadi was explained away because of a sandstorm or some other nonsense.)

Finally the Centcom analysts cried foul and claimed that their research conclusions were being altered by top brass.

There is a great passage in a story this morning by Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo "Military Analyst Again Raises Red Flags on Progress in Iraq":

Although critics have suggested that the bombing campaign’s stalemate proves the need for more troops in Iraq, colleagues say Mr. Hooker’s team is not advocating that approach. “I don’t know anyone outside of a political commercial who thinks we need to send large numbers of troops into Iraq,” said one intelligence official who has worked closely with the Centcom analysts. 

Instead, analysts say the dispute centers on whether the military is being honest about the political and religious situation in Iraq and whether a bombing campaign can change it.

“What are the strategic objectives here? There are none. This is just perpetual war,” said David Faulkner, the former targeting director at Centcom who worked alongside the Iraq analysts. “People say: ‘Oh, you’re military. You like that.’ No, we don’t.”

Obama Switches Up the ISIS Narrative

An interesting item that emerged from the G7 summit in Krün was Obama's statement about the important role of foreign fighters in the offensive capabilities of Islamic State. According to Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael Shear, "Ukraine Crisis and Advance of ISIS Dominate Agenda for Group of 7":

At a news conference Monday after the close of the summit meeting, Mr. Obama acknowledged a need to accelerate the training of Iraqi military forces to counter the advance of Islamic State militants, and he said that he had asked the Pentagon for a plan to do that.

“We don’t have, yet, a complete strategy, because it requires commitments on the part of Iraqis as well,” Mr. Obama said. “The details are not worked out.” 

Mr. Obama said of the militants of the Islamic State, also known as ISIL and ISIS: “They’re nimble and they’re aggressive and they’re opportunistic.” 

He acknowledged that the training of Iraqi forces “has not been happening as fast as it needs to.” And he said the United States has “made some progress, but not enough” in stemming the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq and Syria. 

Mr. Obama said that “thousands” of new fighters were replenishing the ranks of the Islamic State faster than the coalition could remove them from the fight. 

“If we can cut off some of that foreign fighter flow, then we are able to isolate and wear out ISIL forces that are already there,” Mr. Obama said. “Because we are taking a lot of them off the battlefield, but if they’re being replenished, then it doesn’t solve the problem over the long term.”

The president also said that Turkey was not doing what was required to monitor its border with Syria and halt the stream of fighters. 

Earlier on Monday, Mr. Obama met with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi of Iraq, where he reaffirmed the world powers’ commitment to supporting Iraq in the fight against the Islamic State, which has made major gains in recent weeks. 

“Although it is going to take time, and there will be setbacks and lessons learned, we are going to be successful,” Mr. Obama said at the start of his meeting with Mr. Abadi. “ISIL is going to be driven out of Iraq, and ultimately, it is going to be defeated.”

This represents an about-face by the U.S. president. From the outset, ISIS has been defined by USG/Western media as an indigenous, Anbar-based response to the predatory overreach of Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki.

The Cracker Jacks version of the story goes something like this: Because al-Maliki refused to pay the Sunni Sons of Iraq, as was promised, Al Qaeda in Iraq rose from its ashes in Anbar, using the war next door in Syria as a proving ground, and reconstituted itself as Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

The United States spread this story last year as a way to successfully force out al-Maliki as prime minister. Now the story changes. It is really the flow of foreign fighters via the border with Turkey that makes Islamic State so lethal and not because it is an Anbar-based popular guerrilla movement.

This puts Obama more in line with the fact-based reporting of, say, a Patrick Cockburn writing for The Independent whose interviews with Sunnis who have fled Anbar establish convincingly that ISIS is foreign-led, i.e., Chechens, Saudis, Libyans, et al.

I haven't seen anything in the mainstream press drawing attention to this latest Obama somersault, though there has been a reaction to Obama's statement that "We don't have, yet, a complete strategy . . . ." For instance, Shreeya Sinha in "Obama’s Evolution on ISIS" has a helpful compendium of Obama's twists and turns, beginning with "ISIS is a J.V. squad of takfiris," or something along those lines, to the latest on June 8, "We don't have a complete strategy."

All the evasions, false starts and missteps can be attributed to the fact that Obama has to obscure the obvious -- ISIS is a creation of U.S. allies Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, the same allies the U.S. has been working with to funnel fighters into Syria. In the war against ISIS, the United States is battling an enemy that it worked to create. Naturally this kind of disingenuousness -- saying you are fighting the takfiris while aiding the takfiris -- is going to result in policy confusion.

The plan floated this morning (Michael Gordon, "U.S. Embracing a New Approach on Battling ISIS in Iraq") is that the U.S. is going to occupy Al Taqqadum, a base outside the Anbar town of Habbaniya, and use it as a training hub for the recapture of Ramadi:

To assemble a force to retake Ramadi, the number of Iraqi tribal fighters in Anbar who are trained and equipped is expected to increase to as many as 10,000 from about 5,500. 

More than 3,000 new Iraqi soldiers are to be recruited to fill the ranks of the Seventh Iraqi Army division in Anbar and the Eighth Iraqi Army division, which is in Habbaniyah, where the Iraqi military operations center for the province is also based. 

But to the frustration of critics like Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who say that the United States is losing the initiative to the Islamic State, the Obama administration has yet to approve the use of American spotters on the battlefield to call in airstrikes in and around Ramadi. Nor has it approved the use of Apache helicopter gunships to help Iraqi troops retake the city.

It was the U.S.-trained Iraqi Army that disintegrated in Mosul last year at this time. One wonders how this training mission will be any different. And where is any mention of the Shiite militias currently in Anbar, the Popular Mobilization Committees?

My sense is that this is all part of the U.S. shadow dance. The U.S. is putatively at war with ISIS, but it is really at war with its Sunni allies, who are at war with Iran; at the same time, the U.S. is also at war with Iran. Everything is topsy-turvy. To keep Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kuwait and Qatar from ratcheting up support for the takfiri fighters, the U.S. must re-station troops in the region.

That's what we're looking at here. The GCC wants the U.S. military footprint back on the ground. Absent that, more war.

The Battle for Ramadi: Iraq's War of Liberation, U.S. Double Game Exposed

The story this morning is that a convoy of Iraqi Army troops and Shiite militia on their way to take part in the counteroffensive to retake Ramadi was hit by Islamic State suicide bombers, killing 55. That is at least how the Qatar-based Al Jazeera puts it in "ISIL suicide attacks target Iraq military convoys":

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has reportedly carried out a series of suicide attacks on military convoys northeast and southeast of the city of Fallujah, killing at least 55 people, Al Jazeera has learnt.

Three blasts on Tuesday struck army convoys travelling in Anbar province to take part in a planned offensive aimed at retaking the provincial city of Ramadi from ISIL, Al Jazeera's Imran Khan, reporting from Baghdad, said.

He said that the attacks were a "very big blow" to the military.

ISIL has routinely used car bomb attacks to a "devastating effect" against Iraqi forces, he added.

"Car bombs have proven to be a very big problem for the Iraqi security forces," he said, noting that the tactic played a major part in the capture of Ramadi.

Brigadier General Saad Maan Ibrahim, the spokesman for the Joint Military Command, gave a lower death toll. He told The Associated Press that 17 troops were killed in the attacks.

The bombings came as Iraqi forces prepare for a massive bid to retake the capital of mainly Sunni Muslim province.

Thousands of troops and allied Shia militiamen have been deployed to the area to retake territory seized by ISIL since last year.

But if one consults the AP story where Brigadier General Saad Maan Inbrahim is quoted, "Multiple IS Suicide Attacks in Iraq's Anbar Kill 17 Troops," it is not even clear that the troops killed by the suicide bombers were on their way to Ramadi; rather, they were part of a back-and-forth effort to secure a vital section of canal outside Fallujah:

Islamic State extremists unleashed a wave of suicide attacks targeting the Iraqi army in western Anbar province, killing at least 17 troops in a major blow to government efforts to dislodge the militants from the sprawling Sunni heartland, an Iraqi military spokesman said Wednesday. 

The attacks came just hours after the Iraqi government on Tuesday announced the start of a wide-scale operation to recapture areas under the control of the IS group in Anbar. 

Brig. Gen Saad Maan Ibrahim, the spokesman for the Joint Military Command, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the attacks took place outside the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah late the previous night. 

The militants struck near a water control station and a lock system on a canal between Lake Tharthar and the Euphrates River where army forces have been deployed for the Anbar offensive, he said. 

Ibrahim added that the Islamic State extremists used a sandstorm that engulfed most of Iraq on Tuesday night to launch the deadly wave of bombings. He said it was not clear how many suicide attackers were involved in the bombings but they hit the military from multiple directions. 

Last month, the water station near Fallujah fell into the hands of IS militants — following attacks that also included multiple suicide bombings and that killed a general commanding the 1st Division and a dozen other officers and soldiers. 

Iraqi government forces recaptured the station a few days later. Fallujah lies to the east of the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi, which was captured by the IS militants nearly two weeks ago in what was a major, humiliating defeat for Iraqi troops at the hands of the extremists. 

The Iraqi operation to retake Anbar, which is said to be backed by Shiite militias and Sunni pro-government fighters, is deemed critical in regaining momentum in the fight against the Islamic State. 

The IS group captured Ramadi in Iraq and the Syrian ancient town of Palmyra earlier this month, showing that it is able to advance in both countries despite months of U.S.-led airstrikes.

I wonder where  Al Jazeera got its 55 fatalities. No source is quoted.

What we are witnessing is a U.S. "double game" in Iraq and Syria under increasing pressure of exposure. This double game is a classic Ring of Gyges scenario where the U.S. portrays itself as pure and just and resolute in doing battle with the "evil incarnate" caliphate of Islamic State while surreptitiously doing what it can to make sure that ISIS continues to gain and hold territory at the expense of Iraq and Syria.

Why is the U.S. doing this? Because Iraq and Syria are allies of Iran, an arch foe of Uncle Sam and his corrupt despotic allies in the Gulf.

I am not a great student of the history of military campaigns, but I can't think of another example of a great power waging a public war against an enemy at the same time it seeks to bolster it.

A principal means by which the U.S. is waging its "double game" in Iraq and Syria is through information war and thought control in the media. The meme repeated in almost every story about ISIS in Iraq for the last several months is that Iraqi Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces must not take a major role in the fighting for fear that they will spread sectarian war to the Sunni-majority areas of the country. This argument is dutifully repeated time after time as if it were ancient wisdom without once mentioning the obvious: Why banish proven fighters from the battlefield for the alleged crime of sectarian hatred when practitioners of a Sunni extremist sect continue to murder and plunder and add territory to their caliphate?

This makes absolutely no sense. Nonetheless the argument is never challenged and always repeated. This is how the "big lie" works. Even a good reporter like Tim Arango, whose stories are usually reliable and illuminating, must repeat the U.S.-purveyed nonsense without question, as he does in his latest dispatch from Iraq, "Iraqi Army and Shiite Militias Begin Push to Take Ramadi From ISIS":

The United States has been training Iraqi Army recruits since December, though none of the soldiers trained so far have entered the battle. American officials have also pushed Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to increase aid to the Sunni tribes who were fighting the militants in Anbar and to avoid sending Shiite militiamen into that fight, fearing that it could intensify sectarian hostilities.

The U.S. wants the Iraqi parliament to rebuild the Sons of Iraq, the Sunni Awakening movement that is accepted to have played a role in beating back Al Qaeda in Iraq, the ISIS precursor, during the U.S. occupation. But parliament has been reticent to do so because of very legitimate fears that any money or weaponry will just end up in the hands of ISIS fighters. The war is now and you stick with forces who have been currently effective on the battlefield. And this is the Popular Mobilization Forces.

The stakes are high in the battle to retake Ramadi. The U.S. is going to do what it can to make sure the Iraqi Shiite militias aren't effective. I interpret SecDef Ashton Carter's bizarre public rebuke of the Iraqi forces for losing Ramadi as laying the foundation for an eventual U.S. ultimatum to Iraqi prime minister Abadi: either you let us manage the ground troops, or we withhold our air power. This would guarantee the kind of lengthy siege and stalemate that is a hallmark of the war in Syria.

The silver lining in recent U.S. maneuvers is that its double game has been broadly exposed. Abadi can longer be a player in the U.S.-led ruse to aid ISIS without being ousted by his Dawa Party. Even liberal outlets in the U.S. are beginning to point out how the Western media supports the caliphate.

Big Push to Take Out Syrian Government in the Next 30 Days

The pattern that appears to be developing, with high-profile military victories by Islamic State in Ramadi and Palmyra, is an effort to establish "facts on the ground" by the jihadi proxies of the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council prior to the June 30 deadline on the P5+1 negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program. Because after that date we will be residing in a new world. Either there will be a international agreement normalizing relations with the Shiite power or the talks will founder and the sanctions assiduously cobbled together by the U.S. over many years will disintegrate. So the Saudis and the other sheikhdoms are positioning themselves for the inevitable, and the United States is a willing accomplice.

For instance, check out Moon of Alabama's recent post, "Obama Administration Dilly-dallying On Islamic State Action":

The Islamic State took Ramadi with the help of armored bulldozers and some 10 suicide vehicles. That many of the nominal defenders of the city had no real will to fight also helped. But there is another important actor that allowed it to happen. In the critical 24 hours the U.S. coalition which had promised to defend Iraq and to defeat the Islamic State launched just seven air strikes and all only against minor IS targets around the city. That's like nothing. 

Now the paltry "dog ate my homework" excuse is a sandstorm no one but the U.S. air support group noticed. 

Yesterday the Islamic State held victory parades around Ramadi. A hundred vehicles with black flags parading on a wide open road with black flags on every streetlight pole.

The pictures show a bright and sunny blue sky. No U.S. air interdiction was seen. Remarks one knowledgeable tweep looking at those pictures: "The Islamic State in Ramādī yesterday. Quite amazing the coalition didn't take them out actually. Makes one wonder about the coalitions rules of engagement. Now it "looks" as if Ramādī was offered to them on a silver plate ... "

One wonders why the U.S., which has control of the skies, allows these long columns of jihadi fighters to proceed unmolested. A version of the same thing can be said about the air power of the Syrian military. If Assad is so ruthless as to regularly use barrel bombs of chlorine gas, as is often depicted in the Western media, how is it that Islamic State fighters can steadily advance on a desert city like Palmyra?

Anne Barnard reports this morning in "ISIS Strengthens Its Grip on Ancient Syrian City of Palmyra":

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Islamic State militants on Thursday solidified their rout of Syrian government forces in the historic desert city of Palmyra, moving to the outskirts to seize its airport and the notorious Tadmur Prison, according to residents and statements from the group. 

It was the first time that the ISIS militants seized an entire city from Syrian government forces; it won control of its first major city, Raqqa, from Syrian insurgents and the Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front after the two became rivals. 

The rout on Wednesday in Palmyra, whose spectacular ancient ruins are a symbol of the country’s heritage embraced by Mr. Assad’s supporters and opponents alike, came just five days after the militants seized the much larger city of Ramadi in Iraq.

The Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, declared on Thursday that it was in control of the town after soldiers “ran away” and “left behind hundreds of dead and injured,” according to a statement released through ISIS social media channels.

Antigovernment activists who also oppose the Islamic State circulated grisly images of dead and decapitated bodies of young men lying on what looked like a street in the center of Palmyra, saying they were members of the Shueitat tribe, hundreds of whom were massacred last year for resisting the group. 

The defeat is likely to increase pressure on President Bashar al-Assad, whose forces have suffered setbacks in the northern province of Idlib in recent months and have increasingly struggled to fill their ranks after four years of war against an insurgency that began with political protest and morphed into a war with several fronts.

It seems that the Syrian government relinquished Palmyra without a pitched battle:

There were no updates from the government on the situation in Palmyra. State television had broadcast patriotic music and nature scenes the night before as residents reported that soldiers and pro-government militiamen were fleeing the town, leaving many civilians unable to evacuate. 

State media, by contrast, reported that “popular defense groups” had withdrawn “after securing the evacuation of most of the families.”

Palmyra gives ISIS control of a large prison, Tadmur, from which it can recruit or dragoon fighters, and there are gas fields near the city, as well as the antiquities to plunder and destroy for sensational publicity. But where the Syrian government is vulnerable is in Idlib where the Nusra-led (and Turkish- and Saudi-backed) Islamic coalition continues its advance. As Barnard outlined in a report on Tuesday, "Insurgents Continue Advance in Syria, Keeping Pressure on Government Forces," the jihadi goal here is control of the remaining piece of government turf in Idlib that acts as a gateway to the coastal pro-Assad Alawite region of Syria:

The advance was carried out by the same coalition of Islamist groups, including the Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, that seized the provincial capital, the city of Idlib. Other, more nationalist rebel groups, including some that have received weapons through a covert American program, also took part.

The rebel forces moved one village deeper into the remaining finger of territory that the government controls, a strip south of the city that links to the government’s coastal strongholds. 

Insurgents swept into the village of Mastoumeh and a military camp there in a two-day offensive this week, according to antigovernment activists and videos that showed fighters celebrating amid burning military vehicles. 

Syrian pro-government television channels appeared to acknowledge the advance, reporting that the air force was bombing areas in Mastoumeh that had fallen to rebels and that military units from there had retreated to the town of Ariha farther south.

***

The shrinking contested strip also divides the battles in Idlib from the coastal provinces, whose population has been swollen to more than double their prewar size by people displaced from other parts of Syria. There are fears that insurgents could take revenge on loyalists there. 

The coastal provinces have the country’s greatest concentration of Alawites, the sect to which Mr. Assad belongs and that contributes disproportionately to the military. And some fear that in the bloody struggle between government forces and a mostly Sunni insurgency, they will face retribution as a group. Some factions, like Nusra, have openly called for revenge on Alawites. 

Antigovernment activists have reported stepped-up bombing campaigns over towns and villages in Idlib Province, in the northeast corner of the country, as they are taken by insurgents.

This all has the look of an orchestrated campaign. The bogeymen of ISIS used as a cat's-paw to distract and elicit cosmetic airstrikes from the military behemoth, while the real work is carried out by the Islamic coalition funded by Turkey, the GCC and armed by the U.S. At this point it's a safe bet that the CIA is broadly coordinating the activity from its nerve center in southern Turkey. I mean, come on. What else is it doing there, caring for refugees?

Over the next month we need to pay attention to the Assad strongholds along the Mediterranean. If the Syrian Arab Army cannot protect this territory, the government's days are truly numbered. The Saudi-backed proxies are going to make a big push in the next 30 days to knock out Assad. In the meantime, expect the U.S. to maintain its confusing, contradictory dilly-dallying.

Proof that the P5+1 negotiations are on rocky ground comes in today's story by Thomas Erdbrink and David Sanger, "Iran’s Supreme Leader Rules Out Broad Nuclear Inspections." Ayatollah Khamenei has categorically denied that Iran will capitulate to "anytime, anywhere" inspections demanded by the U.S.:

TEHRAN — Iran’s supreme leader on Wednesday ruled out allowing international inspectors to interview Iranian nuclear scientists as part of any potential deal on its nuclear program, and reiterated that the country would not allow the inspection of military sites.

In a graduation speech at the Imam Hussein Military University in Tehran, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, widely believed to have the final say on whether Iran accepts a deal if one is reached next month, denounced what he said were escalating demands by the United States and five other world powers as they accelerate the pace of the negotiations with Iran. 

“They say new things in the negotiations,” Ayatollah Khamenei told the military graduates. “Regarding inspections, we have said that we will not let foreigners inspect any military center.” 

Like last summer, when he vowed that Iran would ultimately build an industrial-scale uranium enrichment capability — with 190,000 centrifuges, or 10 times the number now installed — the ayatollah’s comments are bound to cause deep complications for Iran’s negotiators, led by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. 

Skeptics about the preliminary deals described by Secretary of State John Kerry have focused on the absence of “anywhere, anytime” inspections and a lack of clarity about whether and when Tehran would have to answer 12 outstanding questions from the International Atomic Energy Agency about what the inspectors call “possible military dimensions” of the program. 

Central to that is the ability to interview nuclear scientists, starting with Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the man considered by Western intelligence officials to be the closest thing Iran has to J. Robert Oppenheimer, who guided the Manhattan Project to develop the world’s first nuclear weapon. The scientists and engineers Mr. Fakhrizadeh has assembled over the past 15 years are best suited to explain, or rebut, documents suggesting that Iran has extensively researched warheads, nuclear ignition systems and related technologies. Mr. Fakhrizadeh has never been made available to inspectors for interviews, and his network of laboratories, some on university campuses, have not been part of inspections.

In April, Mr. Kerry told Judy Woodruff on “PBS NewsHour” that Iran could not avoid answering the questions about its past actions. “They have to do it. It will be done,” he said. “If there’s going to be a deal, it will be done. 

But it is not clear how that would be enforced, and it seems likely that oil and financial sanctions would be lifted early in the process, before the explanations to inspectors could be finished. 

After the last round of talks ended on Friday in Vienna, a barrage of complaints erupted in the Iranian state news media over reported demands by the United States for broad mandates for nuclear inspectors working for the United Nations nuclear watchdog.

The comments by Ayatollah Khamenei seemed to cement the Iranian position that requiring inspections of sites not designated by the country as part of its nuclear energy program is a nonstarter. While not new, the statement could make it harder for Mr. Zarif to seal a comprehensive deal before the self-imposed June 30 deadline.

Interviews with nuclear scientists have long been a contentious issue with Iran. Five scientists were killed in separate attacks from 2010 to 2012, attacks that the United States and other countries believe were initiated by Israeli intelligence. Iran has accused the International Atomic Energy Agency of leaking personal information about the scientists to Israel. Israel has never commented on the accusations. 

“They say the right to interview nuclear scientists must be given,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, according to his website. “This means interrogation. I will not let foreigners come and talk to scientists and dear children of the nation who have developed this science up to this level.”

We know from Scott Ritter's experience as a weapons inspector in Iraq that there is substance to Iranian claims. Inspectors feed information to foreign intelligence services who then use it for a variety purposes, such as "public diplomacy," a.k.a. information warfare.

This bold red line by Khamenei is one that is going to be very difficult to erase. If the Obama administration relents on inspections, it will be difficult to win approval for any P5+1 agreement in Congress. The next month should be a momentous one.

Victory in Ramadi Bad News for ISIS and U.S. Now Genie of Popular Mobilization Forces Can't be Corked

Sitting in the airport yesterday waiting to catch a flight home, I watched a CNN interview with retired Delta Force Commander James Reese. He seemed to relish the fact that Iraqi prime minister Abadi was calling the Popular Mobilization Forces, the Shiite militias, back to Anbar Province to attempt to reclaim Ramadi. Strange since it was pressure from the U.S. that prevented the Popular Mobilization Forces from deploying in Anbar following their defeat of Islamic State in Tikrit. Abadi pulled back the Shiite militias in favor of the U.S. policy of trying to recreate the Sons of Iraq, the Sunni Awakening in Anbar. All this went unmentioned in the interview with the Delta Force analyst.

Not so in the stories filed by the Gray Lady's Tim Arango. In yesterday's "Key Iraqi City Falls to ISIS as Last of Security Forces Flee" and today's "Fall of Ramadi to ISIS Weakens Rule of Iraqi Premier," Arango clearly outlines the U.S. role in Abadi's decision both to rein in the Popular Mobilization Forces and now to unleash them. From yesterday's report Arango notes:

With defeat looming in Ramadi on Sunday afternoon, the Anbar Provincial Council met in Baghdad and voted to ask Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to send Shiite fighters to rescue Anbar, a largely Sunni province. In response, Mr. Abadi issued a statement calling for the militias, known as the Popular Mobilization Forces and including several powerful Shiite forces supported by Iran, to be ready to fight. Some of the Shiite irregular units, which were formed last summer after Shiite clerics put out a call to arms, are more firmly under the command of the government, while others answer to Iran.

The involvement of the militias in Anbar had been opposed by the United States, which leads an international coalition that has been carrying out airstrikes in support of Iraqi forces. American officials had worried that the militias could inflame sectarian tensions in the province and ultimately make it harder to pacify.

As they considered asking for the militias’ assistance, Anbar officials met over the weekend with the American ambassador to Iraq, Stuart E. Jones, to ascertain the United States’ position on the issue. According to officials, Mr. Jones told the Anbar delegation that the United States would continue its air campaign, provided that the militias were under the command of Mr. Abadi, and not Iranian advisers, and that the militias were properly organized to avoid American bombing runs.

The U.S. position in Iraq is thoroughly schizophrenic. The enemy is the super-sectarian ISIS. Yet the main reason for keeping the Shiite militias on a leash, choosing instead to let the woeful Iraqi Army lead the fight in Anbar, is to prevent sectarianism. In the meantime, Islamic State gains ground, captures new weapons recently supplied by both the U.S. and Russia, and spreads its ruthless sectarianism. Then the U.S. green-lights the Popular Mobilization Forces, cheering on the Shiite militias to take back what U.S. policy lost. It is as if the true American goal is make sure that no clear victory is achieved but that war rages on.

The limit to this U.S. schizophrenia or ruse is that it relies on Abadi to implement it -- to tether the militias at the same time maintaining the fiction that the Awakening can be reanimated. But, as Arango makes clear in his story today, Abadi is losing credibility rapidly. Iraqis overwhelmingly support the Popular Mobilization Forces, and Abadi's efforts to sideline them is increasingly perceived as an abject capitulation to foreign-backed designs to partition the country:

Some of the newer units, formed last year after Shiite clerics called on young men to take up arms and fight the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL, do answer to the prime minister. Some of the most powerful groups, though, such as the Badr Organization, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Kataib Hezbollah, may answer to Mr. Abadi in individual cases — they did not advance on Anbar until the prime minister gave orders, for example. But those militias were trained and supported directly by Iran, and the militias’ leaders have grown immensely in popularity with the Iraqi public as they have won significant battles against the Islamic State.

This has presented serious challenges to Mr. Abadi’s authority. For instance, in March, at the beginning of an operation to retake the city of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, the plans were drawn up by militia leaders, and then Mr. Abadi was told it would happen. Once those fighters failed to retake Tikrit decisively, Mr. Abadi asked them to withdraw and called for help from American airstrikes, reasserting his authority for the moment.

Now that the militias have been called upon to fight in Anbar, Mr. Abadi’s authority seems to be waning again, and the militias’ cachet has only grown. One of the most popular pictures circulating on social media in Iraq on Monday showed Hadi al-Ameri, the powerful head of the Badr militia, examining a map and seemingly plotting out a new campaign in Anbar.

Fanar Haddad, an Iraqi analyst, recently wrote in an online column that the militias have “provided a potent rallying point for a reinvigorated sense of Iraqi nationalism, albeit one with distinctly Shiite overtones.” 

In an interview, Mr. Haddad said Mr. Abadi was limited in his ability to constrain the Popular Mobilization Forces — or Hashid in Arabic, as the militias are known here. “If you want to be part of Iraq’s evolving political game, you can’t go against the Hashid,” he said. “It’s just too popular.” 

The militias’ growing popularity has coincided with an even more powerful approval of Iran’s role in Iraq, at least among Shiite Iraqis. 

Once, even many Iraqi Shiites looked at Iran with some suspicion, partly because of the legacy of the long and bloody war that Iraq fought with Iran in the 1980s. A frequent gripe of the past was about low-quality Iranian goods, such as cheese and yogurt, clogging the shelves of grocery stories. 

Now, though, in the words of Ali Kareem Salman, a 31-year-old government worker in the south, “Shiites think that Iran is the protector of the Shiite sect.”

Hanan Fatlawi, a Shiite lawmaker who is one of Mr. Abadi’s most vocal critics, said: “Previously, you could divide the Shia into two sides: those who hate Iran and those who love them. But after the entrance of ISIS, and with the situation we are in, many people are grateful to Iran. Their opinion changed." 

Of the militias, she said, “Without them, there would be no Baghdad.” 

There is an essential paradox to Mr. Abadi’s leadership thus far. In nearly every way he has proved to be the inclusive leader mandated by the United States, reaching out to Sunnis and Kurds and seeking consensus. But within Iraq, he is increasingly viewed as weak and unable to effectively shift Iraq’s tragic trajectory. 

“This term ‘inclusive personality,’ I only hear from foreigners,” Ms. Fatlawi said. “He was weak from the start.”

All of which powerfully underlines the deep flaw in the U.S. strategy. The U.S. got the man it wanted to replace Maliki. But if Abadi keeps toeing the U.S. line, his days are numbered. Iraqis know that without the militias there would be no Baghdad. And if Abadi goes, Washington will be confronted with having to abandon the battlefield with Islamic State, leaving it to Iran to help defend Iraq, or having to suck it up and attempt to bribe or cajole Abadi's replacement. Either option argues for a greater role for the Popular Mobilization Forces, which means more losses for ISIS and more victories for a renascent, popular Shiite-based Iraqi nationalism -- something that the U.S. and its allies in Israel and the Gulf monarchies cannot countenance.

So the U.S. will stick with Abadi and make sure he grants the concessions necessary to remain in power; and from this perch atop the Iraqi state, the U.S. will try to dampen the flowering of Iraqi nationalism. But the one thing that the U.S. has done reliably since it toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003 -- not intentionally but as a result of the blowback from its bellicosity -- is to amplify Shiite credibility and power in the region. This is not something that is going to change.