Iraq Defence and Security Report Q2 2008

The security picture in the first months of 2008 was that Iraq remained one of the world's most bitterly war-torn societies, but that the overall levels of violence continued to trend down from the peaks reached in 2006 and early 2007. The consensus among Western defence analysts was that the US 'surge' policy - the build-up of troop levels and changed deployment tactics introduced in early 2007 - was a major factor in the improved situation. This view needed to be qualified in at least two important respects. First, the 'surge' was in fact being used as a kind of shorthand for a variety of separate factors that had come together, many of which had little to do with actual US troop numbers. And second, those factors, including a shift of key Sunni communities against Al Qaeda and the truce declared by the Shi'ite Mahdi Army, might be fairly easily reversible, indicating that the improvements achieved remained fragile.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki faces significant challenges if he is to take advantage of this window of opportunity and press ahead with political moves to build reconciliation between the country's different ethnic communities and political factions. Although some new laws have been passed, notably on the budget and on relations between the central and provincial authorities, prospects on this front remained mixed. Extensive disputes over Iraq's constitution amongst the Shi'a, Sunni and Kurdish population, especially concerning oil-revenue sharing arrangements, remained unsolved. Various draft laws on these issues were deadlocked and seemed unlikely to progress quickly. The authorities were, however, able to issue a call for provincial elections to be held on October 1 this year.

Despite the improvements, nobody expects to see an end to the violence any time soon. Similarly, not many people expect Iraqi security forces to take full responsibility for the whole country at any time soon, nor for the coalition forces to withdraw from the country on any large scale. Finally, with almost all military equipment entering the country through donations or at least at 'gifted' prices, any talk of establishing a functioning defence industry in Iraq will remain premature for the foreseeable future.