Remember This Story?

Ah yes, just 7 months ago Al Anbar was "lost."

Amidst my travels to neighborhood watch centers and police stations where local Sunni Muslims who have porn on their cell phones are playing hard ball against AQIZ types who would ban porn on cell phones I forgot all about this article in the WaPo last September.

Anbar is so "lost" now politically that there is a waiting list for anbaris to join the IA and IP.

It is so lost, that in the AO I hope to visit next the local Sheiks have declared war on AQIZ and the neighboring tribe supporting AQIZ.

It is so lost, the local neighborhood watch centers deliver captured IEDs to Marine Combat Outposts.

It is so wildly stinking lost that...wait, it is not lost.

In fact, the situation has flipped so much in 7 months that the heavy lifting in Al Anbar may be coming to a close--the heavy lifting being the political work of flipping the tribes to support the coalition and take charge of their own security.

When I was in Anbar in 2005 the momentum changed back and forth with the insurgents often dictating the OODA loop.

Now, in some areas like Khalidiyah, Habbaniyah and Husabayah Jawal, the coalition, police and army are clearly dictating the OODA loop.

All down the west bank of the Euphrates the tribes are taking charge of their own security, tribal levies are being sent to the police academies and army boot camp and the real sheiks--not the deputy under sheiks for mutton affairs--are working with the coalition.

Is it still violent? You bet.  Will AQIZ still be able to pull off some big bombs?  Yes.  Will they still be able to mount coordinated attacks in some AOs?  Yes.

But those are not the indicators.  Nieghborhood watch centers, women in the markets, growth in IP and pro-coalition tribes duking it out with the remaining AQIZ affiliated tribes are the indicators.

If the ability to light off a bomb was an indicator of anything, Israel would have been overrun by the Palestinians 20 years ago.

The Brits in Maylaya spent 3 years weeding out the last remnants of the communist insurgents.  And even then they never really caught or killed all the insurgents.

As the Sunnis who supported AQIZ now flip to supporting the coalition, and the tribes take control of security in their villages and transition from neighborhood watch to provisional forces to sworn police officers, AQIZ will have little recourse but to escalate and assert themselves.

I predict that the Summer of 2007 could be one of the most violent in the history of this Emergency.  As troops surge in and create gated communities in the cities, as battalions flood into combat outposts in the tribal areas on the River valley, AQIZ will have two choices, go to ground and give the coalition a hollow victory--which means a longer permanent garrison--or escalate the level of violence to show the surge is not working.

This Summer is when the rubber does meet the road in Iraq.  It is make or break for all sides.  But Anbar is far from lost.

The tactics being employed now across Al Anbar the correct ones.  In some case the hinderance to more success is bureacracy in Baghdad and high HQ that slows the entreprenural initiative of many commanders.

Yes, the predictions of Anbar's loss seemed to have been premature and, uh, wrong.

But as Caeser always commented, the fortunes of battle can turn on the least of events--events that even Caeser could not always forsee.

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