[jyl]

I am struck by how little enthusiasm the Iraq government is showing for the Administration's plan to commit 20,000 additional US troops to an intense effort to control Baghdad (the "surge").

Prime Minister Maliki appears to have opposed increasing US troops, escalating the US presence in central Baghdad, and US command over operations in the city. He had requested that US troops concentrate on patrolling the periphery of Baghdad, leaving the city proper to Iraqi Army troops. The Bush plan, which goes exactly against Maliki's wishes, is being forced on him, and while Bush says he has Maliki's personal committment to contribute the promised Iraqi forces and to take action against both Shiite and Sunni militia, we're seeing Maliki keep a pretty low profile on the whole idea.

Maliki's survival depends on the political support of Shiite militias (particularly the Sadr militia), and the Council is dominated by Shiites. Much of the violence in Baghdad is being caused by Shiite miitias and death squads. Maliki's government and the US have repeatedly clashed over whether US and Iraqi troops can go after Shiite militias. Maliki obviously wants to protect his Shiite supporters. Yet his survival also depends on US political support. And US patience is surely near the breaking point. Bush has said he'd stay in Iraq even if it were just his wife and his dog by his side, but if the "surge" fails, Bush won't get another chance to be "the decider" and Maliki's US support will disappear.

Poor Maliki! He doesn't seem to want the job anymore (he told the Wall Street Journal in Dec that he wished he could resign and serve the Iraqi people form outside the government) but he must fear that he wouldn't live a month outside the Green Zone.

So what will Maliki do, or try to do?

1. He could obstruct US plans, failing to send most of the promised Iraqi batallions and blocking US forces from key Shiite neighborhoods. (This is essentially what happened in the last US attempt to control Baghdad. That was the ill-fated "clear, hold, rebuild" plan which stalled because the Iraqis failed to "hold" neighborhoods that the US had "cleared".)

2. He could support and cooperate with the US, sending large numbers of Iraqi troops to aggressively hunt down Shiite militias in Shiite neighborhoods including Sadr City, and then keep the militias from re-emerging.

3. He could evade the US, and help his Shiite supporters do so, by convincing the key Shiite militias to keep a low profile for the next few months, hide their weapons and wait out the US "surge" while giving the US plenty of time to shoot it out in at Sunni neighborhoods. The result would look like option 2, except that there would be surprisingly little fighting between US/Iraqi troops and Shiite militias, but also few militia or weapons captured. Success would appear to have been easy, in Shiite neighborhoods. Then the militias, death squads, etc would re-emerge as US troops depart.

4. He could resign, and hope that he can keep an apartment in the Green Zone and therefore his life.

5. He could do something else (the other choice).

Your bet?