Ed Kilgore has an interesting post on his Democratic Strategist blog about a possible storm brewing in Iraq.  This comes into line with a piece I heard on NPR's Morning Edition earlier this week  on the hunting of the predominantly Sunni Awakening or "Sons of Iraq" militias by the predominantly Shi'ia government security forces loyal to al-Maliki.

For those who may not remember, back before the surge a number of the Sunni population of central Iraq had about come to the end of their rope with al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (after all, it's a little hard to gain support of people whom you are busy terrorizing) and some of the Sunni militia groups started to actively fight against the al-Qaeda backed groups. It also didn't hurt that the Bush administration figured that if the militia members were picking up a paycheck provided by the US, they might be a bit less likely to shoot at GIs.

There are a couple of flies in the ointment, the major one being that it required the Maliki government to roll theses militia groups into the new Iraqi security forces, something he has been very reluctant to do, or at least tolerate their existence, which he has equal difficulty doing. On the second count, I can understand his reluctance to tolerate an armed for in his country that is not under control of the government. The first problem is part and parcel with why I think violence in Iraq is subsiding, i.e. not that the competing groups have ceased hating each other, but that the security forces, like many neighborhoods, have had their ethnic cleansing completed.

I wonder how long the Sunni militias will accept what they perceive as mistreatment from the Maliki government and what will happen when they've had enough. I suspect it will be a resumption of the civil war  of a couple of years ago after what will have turned out only to have been a breather.