Time. It seems funny to think that the time the surge was supposed to provide Iraqi politicians to make inroads with regards to healing national political divisions is mostly likely now going to allow them more room to politically exploit the time given them rather than focus on efforts of political reconciliation. As Robert Reid of the Associated Press recently pointed out…

“Washington threw more personnel and firepower into Iraq to give the Iraqi leadership more room to settle disputes and adopt U.S.-backed reforms.

But the signals this week of just modest troop withdrawals ahead — perhaps back to pre-surge levels of about 130,000 — mean the Shiite-led government feels little pressure to accelerate work toward true political reconciliation.

Instead, they are focusing their energy on shoring up their positions: outflanking political challengers, leaning on more-radical Shiite factions to behave and flirting with Sunni sheiks to build personal alliances.

Iraq’s national security adviser was asked Wednesday to explain why the government has been so slow to enact power-sharing agreements that Washington deems necessary for lasting peace. He had nothing new to offer.

“Of course we want to do it, but they are so complicated,” Mouwaffak al-Rubaie said.

In Iraq’s political reality today, Shiites who account for 60 percent of the population hold the country’s political power and have no intention of yielding it to Sunnis.

Neither side has given up on violence to achieve its goals.

“Many Sunnis continue to see their political pre-eminence as a birthright. And most Shiites believe that their numerical superiority and the oppression they suffered under Saddam Hussein give them the right to dominate the new Iraq,” one war critic, Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, noted this week.”

Such tensions and mistrust represent the historic reality of Iraq, one that has been in place since the three provinces that now constitute modern Iraq were thrust together by the British following the First World War. Prior to that, they were three separate provinces ruled by the Ottomans for centuries. But it was not until the country was created, and given over to a Sunni King of Saudi birth, that the sense of entitlement that the nation’s Sunni minority now feels first began.

As many of you are aware, the United States has, since the spring of this year, been engaged in funding and arming some Sunni militant groups to help them combat Salafi Jihadi groups in Anbar Province. Of course, the initiative involves risks, one of the most dangerous being that Sunni militias may use their new found power to transform themselves into legitimized vigilante groups and single out those elements within local law enforcement and the Iraqi army itself as legitimate targets given that they hold absolutely no regard for the Shia controlled government. Further, that at some point, a critical mass of hypocrisy will be reached where both sides, the government and Sunni militias, will realize that the US is not going to predominantly back one side against the other. While the administration may believe that it’s making inroads with regards to defusing tensions, it might be getting more than it bargained for. Ultimately, it might have inadvertently placed itself in a position of having to choose which group to support with regards to the formation of the next government. That itself is a ticking time bomb.

One of the President’s leading Sunni allies with regards to this new initiative, Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, was slain yesterday, along with two of his bodyguards, when his car was destroyed by either a roadside bomb or explosives placed in the car itself. From today’s Independent…

“The assassination comes at a particularly embarrassing juncture for President Bush, who was scheduled to address the American people on television last night to sell the claim made by General Petraeus that the military “surge” was proving successful in Iraq and citing the improved security situation in Anbar to prove it.

Abu Risha, 37, usually stayed inside a heavily fortified compound containing several houses where he lived with his extended family. A US tank guards the entrance to the compound, which is opposite the largest US base in Ramadi.

He spent yesterday morning meeting tribal sheikhs to discuss the future of Anbar. He also received long lines of petitioners as he drank small glasses of sweet tea and chain-smoked. He carried a pistol stuck in a holster strapped to his waist and dressed in dark flowing robes.

Surprisingly, he is said to have recently reduced the number of his bodyguards because of improved security situation in Anbar, although he ought to have known that as leader of the anti al-Qai’da Anbar Salvation Council he was bound to be a target for assassins.

Iraqi police in Ramadi suspect that the bomb that killed the sheikh was planted by one of the petitioners who came to see him. “The sheikh’s car was totally destroyed by the explosion. Abu Risha was killed,” said a Ramadi police officer, Ahmed Mahmoud al-Alwani. Giving a different account of the assassination, the Interior Ministry spokesman said that a roadside bomb killed Abu Risha. Soon afterwards a second car bomb blew up.”

Another point of extreme importance from the same article that should not be overlooked…

“Abu Risha’s death underlines the degree to which the White House and General Petraeus have cherry-picked evidence to prove that it is possible to turn the tide in Iraq. They have, for instance, given the impression that some Sunni tribal leaders turning against al-Qa’ida in Anbar and parts of Diyala and Baghdad is a turning point in the war.

In reality al-Qa’ida is only a small part of the insurgency, with its fighters numbering only 1,300 as against 103,000 in the other insurgent organisations according to one specialist on the insurgency. Al-Qa’ida has largely concentrated on horrific and cruel bomb attacks on Shia civilians and policemen and has targeted the US military only as secondary target.

The mass of the insurgents belong to groups that are nationalist and Islamic militants who have primarily fought the US occupation. They were never likely to sit back while the US declared victory in their main bastion in Anbar province.”

Politicking in such circumstances, especially as a third party that is occupying the country amidst a civil war, is never a sound idea. Then again, what has been a sound idea regarding Iraq over these last four and a half years?