The latest UN quarterly report on Afghanistan concluded that the Afghan army and police are ahead of their interim training goals. US and NATO officials routinely cite those figures as evidence that they're making progress in Afghanistan.
But a new report from the US special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR) concludes that NATO has overestimated the capabilities of those units.
No blogging yesterday while I worked on a couple of reported projects -- so I'll spare you any day-after thoughts on President Obama's choice to replace Gen. Stanley McChrystal with Gen. David Petraeus. You've read enough of those already, I'm sure.
Instead, let's pivot back to what's actually happening in Afghanistan. As I said in my Al-Jazeera piece about McChrystal's departure, the change of command isn't likely to mean a major change in strategy: McChrystal was hardly the only counterinsurgency believer in the military, and many elements of his "new strategy" actually began under his predecessor, Gen. David McKiernan.
Security officials in Diyala province have withdrawn permits allowing some 10,000 Sunni Awakening members to carry weapons (عربي).
A spokesman for the Iraqi military said the Awakening members are civilians, "so it is not reasonable to authorize around 10,000 personnel to carry weapons in this province." Awakening leaders responded by threatening to withdraw their men from checkpoints in Diyala.
I had to laugh this morning when I read Saudi prince Turki al-Faisal's criticism of Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki.
"Adding to the brutal mayhem taking place there, we are watching a deliberate effort on the part of the incumbent prime minister, Mr al Maliki, to hijack the results of the election and deny the Iraqi people their legitimately elected government," he said.
The substance of his criticism is actually fair: Maliki and his allies spent weeks complaining about fraud and questioning the validity of the election, but the recently-concluded Baghdad recount found virtually zero evidence of tampering.
But... a member of the Saudi royal family criticizing anyone for being insufficiently democratic? Seriously?
The Washington Post does a little concern-trolling today about the Iraq withdrawal deadline, noting that the Obama administration still plans to withdraw on schedule despite "political uncertainties in Iraq."
A series of coordinated attacks across Baghdad today -- 23 separate incidents, in Baghdad and seven other cities -- killed close to 100 people.
There's little to say about the violence, honestly. We've assembled a list of the attacks, and the casualty counts, after the jump. The scope is stunning: A dozen attacks on police and army checkpoints in Baghdad; coordinated car and suicide bombings in Hilla, Suweira and Fallujah; and other brazen attacks against security and political officials.
Iraq's political class -- distracted by the government formation process -- hasn't said much about the violence. Prime minister Nouri al-Maliki hasn't released an official statement on the violence, and I haven't seen him (or any other Iraqi officials) quoted in the Iraqi/Arabic press.
Ali al-Dabbagh, Maliki's spokesman, did say tonight (عربي) that the attacks "have the hallmarks" of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
More than 60 people have been killed in a series of bombings across Baghdad and Anbar province.
The bombings in Baghdad targeted civilian areas in several different neighborhoods. Two car bombs reportedly went off in Sadr City, killing nearly 40 people. One bomb struck a market; the other went off near Moqtada al-Sadr's headquarters (عربي).
A series of explosions across Baghdad this morning killed at least 34 people and left scores more wounded. Baghdad police counted a total of seven bombs (عربي) in residential areas; the bombers targeted both Sunni and Shi'ite areas.
I don't want to speculate too much about the motives behind two brutal insurgent attacks in and around Baghdad this weekend. One seems to be a revenge attack; the other, I'm not so sure.
The first attacks happened yesterday: A group of gunmen raided three homes in Hawr Rajab, a village on the highway running south from Baghdad to Mahmoudiya. 19 men and five women were handcuffed and killed; many were tortured, according to Iraqi police, who reported finding victims with broken bones.
Polls closed in Iraq a few minutes ago after 10 hours of voting. The ballot was marred by a few dozen insurgent attacks around the country -- but casualties are remarkably low, and voter turnout (anecdotally at least) seems to be fairly high.
We'll update this thread throughout the day with new developments. Today's news will largely come from non-Iraqi sources: Many Iraqi newspapers suspended publication for the day to allow their staffs time to vote. Here's Al-Rafidayn's statement on the suspension (عربي), for example; As-Sabaah has a banner across its homepage (عربي). So most of today's news comes from Western and pan-Arab news sources.
After a final campaign push today, Iraq's parliamentary campaign season is drawing to a halt, and the Iraqi electoral commission is getting ready for the ballot on March 7.
Voting started today for the disabled, and for soldiers and medical personnel, most of whom will be on duty during the general voting on Sunday. Iraqi newspapers say sandstorms throughout the country didn't disrupt the balloting (عربي).
Government offices and schools have shut down so election officials can prepare polling places. And checkpoints are going up across the country; more than 200,000 police and soldiers will be on duty in Baghdad alone.
Nir Rosen reports from Iraq in The National's weekly Review, and it's worth a read, as is most of Rosen's work. In many ways, today's piece is similar to his April 2009 Review piece: Rosen argues that the Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian war is over, because the Iraqi state is too strong.
There are still militias active in Iraq, and the level of deadly violence would be unacceptable almost anywhere else on Earth. But the fears frequently voiced by foreign analysts and reporters - that the civil war is merely in abeyance, and that sectarian fury could break out again at any moment after a series of deadly attacks, or an unfavourable election result - are overblown.
But you nonetheless see some ominous signs for the future throughout Rosen's piece.
The other big Iraq story this morning, aside from the Moqtada al-Sadr warrant, is a spate of suicide bombings in Diyala province which killed about 30 people.
Two car bombs went off simultaneously this morning, around 9:30 local time, at the provincial government's main building in Baquba (the capital of Diyala) and in a nearby intersection. A third bomber, reportedly wearing a police uniform with the rank of lieutenant, blew himself up at Baquba's main hospital -- as casualties from the first two bombings began arriving for treatment.
It's the middle of the night in Baghdad, so we'll have to wait a few hours for Iraqi reaction, but Nouri al-Maliki unexpectedly decided to reinstate 20,000 former Iraqi officers who got the boot when the U.S. disbanded Iraq's army in 2003.
Maliki did this ten days before the election, so I think it's safe to say he's pandering for votes, particularly Sunni ones. A spokesman for the Iraqiyya coalition seems to share that analysis.
I promised to stop writing about calls for delayed withdrawal in Iraq, so I'll keep this short. But Tom Ricks has a new CNAS policy paper repeating his call for a delayed withdrawal. It's basically a longer version of yesterday's op-ed, with a couple of photos and a graph about coalition troop strength (which contributes nothing to the reader's understanding of current events in Iraq).
I've long believed that folks in Washington who want the U.S. to delay its withdrawal from Iraq are really advocating a long-term U.S. military presence in the country. Their basic argument -- Iraq still has problems, so the U.S. can't leave yet -- creates a slippery slope towards lengthy occupation. Tom Ricks is at least honest about this point in his New York Times op-ed today.
The Washington Post has 600 words of hand-wringing conventional wisdom on its editorial page this morning: Syria is bad, Syria will always be bad, and engagement with Damascus is pointless.
I don't agree with the overall conclusion -- I agree with Andrew Tabler that engagement could bring a meaningful change in U.S.-Syrian relations (though I take issue with many other points in his essay) -- and the editorial also plays loose with the facts. Here's the most egregious example, referring to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
He has promised to check suicide bombers bound for Iraq but has never done so.
I guess Fred Hiatt and the gang over at WaPo don't have access to Lexis-Nexis? Or Google?
A suicide bomber at the provincial government headquarters in Ramadi killed at least 12 people this morning and wounded two dozen more.
The bomber blew himself up at a checkpoint outside the compound; many of the victims were soldiers and police, according to witnesses. A young girl was also among those killed.
The Sunni Awakening program might be officially over -- the Iraqi government is supposed to fold the Awakening militias into the Iraqi government -- but tribes in Anbar province continue to exact vigilante justice on suspected former members of the insurgency.
Many Iraqis released by U.S. forces after being detained for suspected links to Sunni insurgents have been killed by tribes seeking revenge or are being driven back into the arms of al-Qaeda.
Maj. Gen. Tareq Yusuf, a former police chief in Anbar, told Reuters tribes have killed at least 50 former detainees since 2007. The police largely turn a blind eye to the practice.
Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq, has threatened more attacks in Iraq in the run-up to parliamentary elections on March 7.
Baghdadi made his threat in a 34-minute audiotape released last night. It's on the forums, which I try to avoid linking to (send me an e-mail if you want a link). The tape is titled "the crime of illegitimate elections in Iraq," and it describes the upcoming election as a Shi'ite plot against the Sunnis.
