‘The Reality Is Very Hard’

It's far too early to declare Gen. David Petraeus, 55, the general who tamed Baghdad. A dramatic drop in violence in the Iraqi capital is recent and tenuous, and Petraeus is the first to admit it owes much to decisions taken by Sunni insurgents and Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's militia to suspend attacks there. Still, the Ph.D.-toting general, who co-wrote the Army's counterinsurgency manual and has led the surge of U.S. troops, has presided over the most dramatic turnaround in Iraq since the invasion in 2003. As this election year begins, that has some partisans talking up his future political prospects. Petraeus met with NEWSWEEK's Babak Dehghanpisheh and Larry Kaplow at his office in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad last week. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: How did the Anbar Awakening movement [of Sunni sheiks allying with U.S. troops] start? How much of that was planned, and how much was luck?
PETRAEUS: I do think that we were willing to take risks and … take advantage of opportunities that presented themselves. Because of the accumulated experience that our leaders have, and because of changes in the way the Army and the Marine Corps prepare units for deployment … our leaders are really quite nuanced in their understanding of situations and, again, have the ability to recognize opportunities where perhaps we might not have recognized them in the past.

How much did you wrestle with the idea of talking to people who had attacked and maybe even killed Americans?
We did wrestle with it … There were many [conversations] as we all sort of tried to come to grips with this … I think [many Sunnis] just sort of woke up and said, "What were we thinking? Why in the world did we sheiks, who often go to Amman for the weekend, why did we end up in league with guys who have a Taliban-like ideology, kill our sheiks and take our daughters?" … By the way, take none of this to be optimistic or pessimistic. [We] should be realistic at this point, and the reality of Iraq is that it's very hard.

So you wouldn't say Al Qaeda's finished?
Oh, no, not at all. Al Qaeda is like a fighter that's taken some very serious shots to the head but shakes them off [and] can come back with a very lethal right hand.

Are you frustrated that the Iraqi government has been slow to absorb these Sunni fighters?
To me that's somewhat understandable … because some of these individuals were undoubtedly in the resistance. So there have to be safeguards, there have to be assurances. It does seem like the eye of a needle sometimes, trying to get these lists [of fighters to be integrated into the security services] through. But they do get through.

Are you having direct talks with Sadrists as well?
We certainly talk to members of what would most accurately be called the Sadr Trend, as you know—the political wing. We have certainly had conversations at local levels with numerous leaders of Jaish al-Mahdi [Sadr's militia] … It's waxed and waned. I guess you can classify it as mildly waxing right now.