A study of satellite imagery, finding vacant houses by the absence of lights noted that ethnic cleansing was essentially complete by the time that the surge began, and is in fact a major reason for the reduction of ethnic violence. (see here and here)

“Our findings suggest that the surge has had no observable effect, except insofar as it has helped to provide a seal of approval for a process of ethno-sectarian neighborhood homogenization that is now largely achieved,” Agnew’s team wrote in their report.

(emphasis mine)

Heck of a surge, Davie.

Female suicide bomber kills 20.

It’s likely to get worse as the Maliki government continues its assassination campaign against the Awakening councils

Imam Fouad Ali Hussein al-Douri, a leader in the so called “Awakening Councils”, was assassinated today, there is now a string of assassinations of Sunni leaders, and call me a cynic, but just as the ethnic cleansing of Sunnis pointed back to al Maliki, I’d guess that his folks are behind this too.

It looks like the Iraqi Army and Kurdish peshmerga are on the verge of facing off in Kurdistan too.

Heck of a job, Davey.

While both the John Sidney McCain III and Bush and His Evil Minions^&trade will cast this development as a success, it’s clear that Nouri al Maliki will be using this as an opportunity to crack down on the Sunnis and centralize his power, which will reverse much of the progress.

The Iraqi government is now claiming that a “rogue unit” is to blame for raids on Sunni politicians and the “Awakenening” movement.

This is despite the fact that they normally answer directly to prime minister Nouri al Maliki.

One of the reasons that violence and US troop deaths have dropped in Iraq is because of the “Sunni Awakening”, where people in Sunni dominant areas stopped supporting the insurgency, either because of US salaries, or because they were sick and tired of al Qaeda in Iraq, and started patrolling as part of the “Awakening Councils”.

Well, it now appears that Iraqi prime minister Nouri al Maliki has decided to send his own bully boys after the leaders of the Sunni citizen patrols, and refusing to integrate them into the state security forces.

It appears that Maliki is going after Sadr too, which is not surprising, as the Sadrists are more popular in many areas than either the Iranian backed ISCI and Maliki’s Dawa party.