ANBAR WAKING UP?

In my latest Bloggingheads with Michael Goldfarb, I talked a bit about the geographic distribution of recent casualties in Iraq, and we both discussed recent bombings in Anbar province. I had assumed that April's casualty uptick was largely a consequence of up tempo operations against Shia militias. Brandon Friedman tells me that I was wrong:

When a yet-to-be-named U.S. soldier was killed while on patrol in Anbar on Tuesday, he became the ninth American to die there in the past three and a half weeks. This is neither random nor insignificant.

In fact, during the past 30 days, 23 percent of coalition combat fatalities have occurred in al-Anbar Province. Considering that only two U.S. troops had been killed in Anbar in the preceding six months--representing just over one percent of total coalition combat fatalities during that period--this is a huge uptick.

In comparison, combat fatalities have dropped significantly in Baghdad over the same 30-day period.

The implications are, to say the least, troubling. Success in reducing U.S. casualties in Iraq has primarily come about because of the Awakening strategy; if things are falling apart in Anbar (and we don't know if they are, yet), then that's bad, bad news. Of course, since the Awakening strategy did almost nothing to build Iraqi state capacity, it also wouldn't be that surprising if the local groups we've been paying and empowering decided to flex their muscle.

--Robert Farley