Awakening Problems

For a while now, we've been basing our strategy in Iraq on independently arming tens of thousands of Sunnis, many of them previously involved in the insurgency. This policy always struck as a mark of how desperate the situation had become, so I'm not surprised that we're now hearing stuff like this:

In the past two months, [Awakening leader Rafah Kassim] said, 20 of his fighters have quit. Many felt their monthly salary was no longer worth the risk of fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq. His men also have not received their salaries in two months, he said. "We'll all be patient for another two months. If nothing changes, then we'll suspend and quit," Kassim said. "Then we'll go back to fighting the Americans."

It doesn't look like there's a way to square this circle, either. The US military just isn't able to effectively supervise these Sunni units forever, and the Shiite-dominated government won't integrate them into security forces. I fear that in the end, all the US will have managed to do is the make sure both sides in this simmering civil war are more heavily armed and less willing to compromise than ever.