Let's point out the obvious about Iraq--violence has been reduced (such as it is, which isn't that great) for three main reasons.

First--as coalition forces pull out of an area direct attacks against the coalition die down. Pull them all out, and no attacks.

Second--ethnic cleansing has gotten to such a stage that many communities are now solely of one group, and as that occurs the amount of violence declines because there are less people to kill for factional reasons.

Third--the US has hired its enemies and armed them and set them loose to control various areas. This is especially true in Anbar. Ex-insurgency warlords are happy to do this, because the ultimate fight for the Sunnis isn't against the US, it is against the Shia and the Kurds. Being armed and paid to gain control over their own areas, prior either to a civil war when the US pulls out, or to give them a better bargaining position at the negotiating table is acceptable. And it's not as if the entire insurgency has halted, indeed it continues and most likely will go on, because there are enough people in Iraq who really want the US out that just hiring some warlords isn't going to be enough. (One notes the irony that the only people ever able to defeat al-Qaeda were insurgency forces, something this page has long held would be the case.)

All of this seems good, and it is a limited form of good news but the problem as with many occassions of arming ones enemies to point them at another enemy risks blowback. The majority of Iraq is controlled by various militias. Some are Sunni, some Shia, some are Kurdish (though the Peshmerga might qualify as an actual army). These militias have either little loyalty to the central "government" or none. They have no love for America or Americans. And what America is doing is arming forces that are not loyal to the Baghdad government.

If I were a commander on the ground, I probably would have done the same thing. But one should recognize that these people are neither America's friends, nor the friends of the "government". They will point their guns in the right direction for exactly as long as they get paid and it is also in their best interest to do so. Now, semi-stable colonial regimes can be created by this sort of bribery of strong men and playing off of factions against each. For a time. But it's very hard to move beyond semi-stable to stable.

Instead what will occur is continued pressure against the US to leave, combined with bulking up for what happens afterwards. While this is currently an "improving" situation, I don't expect it to improve to the point where an American can walk down the street anywhere outside of the Green Zone and be safe, or to where neighbourhoods start to re-integrate, or, more importantly, to the point where the militias start to disarm.

So at the end, the current strategy seems to be to be buying some time, and some peace, by arming people who are fundamentally America's enemies. In the 1980s America did this in Afghanistan and Israel did it with Hamas, to undercut the PLO.

Hopefully it'll work out better this time, or at least take as long for blowback to occur.