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Iraq Update: What a Difference a Year Makes
Guest Column | By Nicholas Guariglia | December 12, 2007
Rather, we are witnessing the birth of a new indispensable doctrine, as well as the ascension of brilliant field officers, who, soon to come off the hardest and unlikeliest of victories, will go on to lead this finest of institutions for a generation or more.
From mid-2003 throughout the end of 2006, no one was more disheartened over the course of U.S. involvement in Iraq than I. What was a clean, successful, three-week liberation somehow devolved into an unnecessary and counterproductive occupation. Iraq, we were told, was to be a quick, in-and-out, SWAT-like takedown.
Grenada on steroids.
The late General Wayne A. Downing and the retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor supposedly had Secretary Rumsfeld’s ear, advocating an unconventional incursion similar to the model executed in Afghanistan: go in light with SOF teams (and a regular battalion or two); race to the theater’s center of gravity (the capitol); move inside the enemy’s decision cycle; outpace one’s own supply lines; bypass hostile towns and avoidable skirmishes en route; and most importantly, work with friendly indigenous forces and help foster the political conditions where the natives could self-govern immediately following the downfall of the previous regime.
The Iraqi National Congress – an exiled umbrella group comprised of almost every anti-Hussein opposition movement in Iraqi society – was to be the “parliament-in-waiting.” Sovereignty was to be granted to these dissident Iraqi technocrats, not Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority. Local elections were to be held soon, not postponed. National elections were to come after an interim period of self-rule, not hastened and exploited by sectarian blocs. Iraqi security apparatuses were vital to maintaining stability; they were to be vetted of a few select war criminals, not dismantled in their entirety. The Ba’ath Party as an institution was to be outlawed, but downtrodden Sunnis who once classified themselves as “Ba’athist” (in order to feed their families) were not to be ostracized.
Violent and theocratic proxies of Tehran and Damascus were to be undermined, not welcomed into the Iraqi polity by State Department hacks. Iraqi oil was to be free of the Saudi royal family’s OPEC monopoly, not assimilated into its vicious quota-system. And U.S. troop-levels, at least according to General Tommy Frank’s own stated war plan, were to dwindle down to minuscule numbers by September 2003, five months after Saddam’s expulsion.
These policies, if implemented in April-May 2003, could have generated Iraqi self-dependency faster, which in turn could possibly have stunted the growth of an insurrection…or, at least, established all of the prerequisite institutions necessary to effectively deal with any insurrection early on. Whereas reluctant officers like Gen. Shinseki sought more “boots on the ground” for an adequate occupation, General Downing – as well as some of the war’s most ardent “neocon” supporters in the Pentagon – sought no occupation at all; the basis of what should have been an Iraqi-centric and unimposing hands-off role for the United States in the post-invasion period. This counsel was not followed, however. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Fast-forward to this time last year. Anbar, Iraq’s largest geographic province was its most dangerous; a hotbed of theocratic nihilism where Sunni insurgents collaborated with al Qaeda foreigners. Entire cities were still, three years into the war, deemed “no-go” zones for U.S. forces. Ramadi, Balad, Karmah, large parts of Fallujah, and the Tigris River Valley were controlled by al Qaeda. They also controlled Baqubah, the capital of Diyala province, and large portions of the country’s capital itself. Dora, Ameriyah, and Jabour were just a few of the dozen-plus Baghdad neighborhoods governed by death-squad Wahhabis who had declared their allegiance to bin Laden in 2004 and boasted Mesopotamia as the heart of their caliphate.
Conditions continued to deteriorate. In the aftermath of the al Qaeda-orchestrated Samarra mosque bombing in February 2006, sectarian violence had escalated to a breaking point. Civil war, we were told, was imminent, “on the brink.” Members of the Jaysh al Mahdi militia – with help from Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Quds Force killers – murdered Sunnis and disloyal Shi’ites with impunity. Clashes between U.S.-Iraqi patrols and Muqtada al Sadr’s followers were frequent. According to Central Command, some 80 to 90% of suicide bombings were conducted by Jihadists from Saudi Arabia and North Africa, who had infiltrated the porous Syrian-Iraqi border – from Damascus International Airport – and followed Iraq’s ancient river ratlines to the so-called “triangle of death.” ranians caught conducting sabotage in Iraq were released; the rules of engagement mandated they were off-limits.
Costly battles in places like Tal Afar and Mosul were increasingly for naught. As the U.S. would withdraw to its outposts, al Qaeda would creep back in to begin the head-lopping all over again. Bombings across the country were unrelenting and often spectacular in scope. Eighty deaths here, 50 there, 90 here…the brutality was so commonplace, Iraqis and Americans alike had grown numb to the devastation. The elected Iraqi government was defunct, unable to impose order. We proved no more competent. In effect, the United States was on the verge of a being defeated by a motley crew of Iran-backed militiamen and Salafist enemies-to-the-end; a slow bleed retreat, a national humiliation the likes of which we had never experienced.
As always, our soldiers were doing everything their superiors were asking them to do – and effectively, too. On merely a tactical level, insurgents stood little to no chance against any U.S. unit deployed against them. For the military, however, the problem was not one of efficiency, but one of theory. In sum, the flawed Iraq strategy from 2003 until late 2006 was based on the premise that politics proceeded security.
General Ricardo Sanchez was unimpressive. His successor, Generak George Casey, while correct in acknowledging only the Iraqis themselves could quell the insurgency for good – which, like El Salvador and Algeria, could last “five, six, eight, ten, twelve years,” as Don Rumsfeld predicted – he never implemented the prudent actions required. CENTCOM Commander General Abizaid, who oversaw Iraq as well as 26 other countries, retired in stalemate.
The jig was up. President Bush seemed solemn, admitting errors and exuding rare humility. The faux brilliance of James Baker and the much anticipated Iraq Study Group came and went. Democrats opposed to the war gained control of the House and Senate, and debated whether or not to cut funding for the effort, to require an immediate withdrawal, or to force the administration to establish an announced timetable for extraction.
Articulate ground commanders like Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli made their own case and implored Mr. Bush to lick our wounds, cut our losses, and withdraw U.S. forces to big, isolated super-bases in the desert – plush with widescreen televisions and in-ground swimming pools – and away from patrolling dangerous urban areas. This was, after all, viewed as the inevitable course of action for three years; as the Iraqis “stood up,” we could “stand down,” even if that compelled Iraqi units – many of which were unready, understaffed, sectarian in nature, and lacking in logistics and leadership – to battle al Qaeda and its allies alone.
What a difference one year makes.
Things, to say the least, have changed. What seemed like probable defeat in December 2006 is today correctly seen as unprecedented, and perhaps irreversible, momentum. Widely considered one of our most brilliant commanders, General David Petraeus was nominated and overwhelmingly confirmed to salvage the war last January. Along with General James Mattis of the Marine Corps, he had already coauthored Field Manual 3-24, the military’s first innovative study on counterinsurgency in years (I encourage every diplomacy student to download Abode and take the time to read it online). Determined to implement this new doctrine in Iraq, Petraeus brought in an entirely new war-team staffed with some of our most intelligent counterinsurgency theorists: Lt. General Raymond Odierno, Colonel J.R. McMaster, Colonel Sean MacFarland, Colonel David Sutherland, Colonel Rick Gibbs, and others all espoused a new confidence and credo.
Their strategy was in many ways the antithesis to the Casey-Abizaid strategy of 2003-2006: politics does not precede security – protection precedes politics. Iraq’s slow but beautiful democratization of 2004-2006 was necessary, but not sufficient. Neither parliamentary elections, nor greater Sunni political participation, nor passed constitutional referendums changed the conditions on the ground. Violence continued unabated; in fact, it got worse. Petraeus offered an alternative to the politicos in Washington, who insisted the magic wand would come in the form of trifurcating the country, or an oil-sharing deal, or some other abstract “agreement.”
Rather, securing Iraqi territory was now to be done by abjectly securing territory. All of the other necessary but insufficient variables – reconciliation, nonsectarianism, liberalization, economic connectivity, reconstruction, etc. – were to now come after the necessary and irreplaceable responsibility of the U.S. to protect the Iraqi populace; to provide as a militia for those who had no militia. This required greater contact with the population, which meant getting out of our bases and spreading across those dangerous urban streets Lt. General Chiarelli warned Mr. Bush about. Any sustainable partnership with the Iraqi people necessitated a “surge” – hence its moniker, the surge – of an additional five Army combat brigades (or roughly 21,500 soldiers) to secure Baghdad. Anbar and the “wild west” provinces would see new Marine battalions (or upwards of 4,000 leathernecks).
The pendulum began to swing the moment the Iraqi population communally decided who they felt should win. Counterinsurgencies, after all, are won by the indigenous. The British never would have succeeded in Malaysia or Oman without support from the natives. The U.S. never would have quelled the 1902-1913 Filipino insurrection without the help of the Philippine Constabulary. But in Iraq, it was not possible to rally the masses against foreign intrusion – and by “foreign,” I mean Salafist and Khomeinist, not Western – until the Iraqi citizenry, Sunni and Shi’a, felt secure enough to stick their collective necks out for our common behalf.
The surge was not designed to simply throw more numbers at the problem or to “rearrange chairs on the deck of the Titanic,” as one commentator phrased it. The fundamental rules of engagement were in flux. Unlike the whack-a-mole practice of yesteryear, the newly arrived infantry reinforcements now allowed the U.S. to first clear territory of insurgents, and then hold it for perpetuity. Once urban security had been established, rebuilding infrastructure, generating economic opportunity, and fostering grass-roots compromise and reconciliation – all impossible under the yoke of Islamist intimidation – were capable of moving forward.
Domestically, the idea had its fair share of critics. Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) condemned the plan, concluding “We have overestimated what (our) military can achieve.” Governor Bill Richardson (D-NM) concurred, stating “Our troops today are an impediment… towards reaching a political solution in Iraq.” Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) proclaimed “the president’s plan for more troops will make matters worse in Iraq.” Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Senator Joe Biden (D-DE), and Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) all co-sponsored a non-binding resolution saying it is “not in the national interest of the United States to deepen its military involvement in Iraq.”
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell agreed, admitting he was not “persuaded that another surge of troops into Baghdad for the purposes of suppressing (the) communitarian violence, (the) civil war, will work.” Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) declared “this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything,” three months before the troop-reinforcements were actually deployed. Representative Pete Stark (D-CA) had a more cynical interpretation, suggesting the surge was solely about deploying “enough kids” to get their “heads blown off for the president’s amusement.” Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) felt that “the strategy that is being put forth… inspires skepticism for good reason.”
Skepticism is a healthy characteristic in any circumstance, but reverse-propagandizing oneself at the moment of a seemingly improbable battlefield turnaround is a strange phenomenon. But it is sadly not uncommon. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) would go on to worry that positive developments in Iraq, and an upbeat war report to Congress by General Petraeus, would constitute “a real big problem for us” – the “us” being the politicians who opposed it all along.
From the get-go, Petraeus preached patience, warning it could take anywhere between 12 to 18 months to see even a modicum of positive change on the ground. Yet no such time was needed. The very idea of a war-weary, tired coalition upping the ante, escalating force-levels, and promising to beef up its omnipresence in Jihadist sanctuary cities served as a wonderful psychological blow to the broader insurgent movement across the theater. Could it be that after years of unyielding misery and death, the United States and enlisted Iraqi tribesmen and servicemen were beginning to out-persevere al Qaeda in its war of attrition?
It has only been a few months since the surge has been in full effect, and thus far, the results are empirical and speak for themselves. Terrorist attacks in and around Baghdad have dropped some 60%, and attacks are down 80% countrywide. Car bomb fatalities are down by over 80%, whereas overall casualties from insurgent assaults are down by about 77%. Iraqi civilians, specifically, have seen an 88% decrease in fatalities per month since a peak during last year’s sectarian spats. U.S. casualties have been on a steep decline for months.
The vast and hostile province of Anbar, which the Marine Corps uncharacteristically declared “lost” to al Qaeda in 2006, is now almost entirely pacified. Ramadi has been cleared of all al Qaeda, and Fallujah and Karmah are free of terrorist thuggery as well. Baqubah has been cleared of Jihadists and violence has gone down remarkably. After high tea with Colonel Sean MacFarland, some 28 out of Anbar’s 31 tribes – the so-called “Anbar Awakening” – decided to flip against al Qaeda and side with the United States and Iraqi government. Tens of thousands of Anbar tribesmen – most former insurgents – are now embedded with Marine battalions. Over 12,000 new Anbaris have joined the Iraqi security forces, and over 60,000 Iraqi civilians have established “concerned citizen” patrols across the country – many of which are joint Sunni-Shi’ite initiatives.
Sunni and Shi’a elders in Baghdad recently signed an agreement to end sectarian violence and cease all attacks on U.S. forces. Sheikhs from Anbar are meeting with sheikhs from Karbala province to discuss joint-security operations. Diyala tribal goodwill is a case study on conflict-resolution if there ever was one. The opaque cities of Kirkuk and Samarra no longer act as safe havens for al Qaedists; they too have been pacified. Whereas in the past we would stay in our forward operating bases, since Petraeus took over, the U.S. has been able to chase fleeing insurgents from village to village. Dora, Ameriyah, and other once no-go Baghdad neighborhoods are now patrolled by newly arrived U.S. Army units.Over five dozen Joint Security Stations (JSS) have been established by U.S. and Iraqi units (another 60 or so more are to follow). The abundance of JSS posts augments the amount of “tips” the populace gives us, and as a result anti-IED and anti-EFP sweeps are now being conducted massively and unlike ever before.
Iraqi refugees are going home in droves. Economic connectivity and reconstruction are reaching parts of Iraq for the first time. Some semblance of city nightlife is returning. Our enemies in Iraq, diverse all, are feeling the heat. Muqtada al Sadr – either rebel punk or Khomeini incarnate, still to be determined – is quickly losing control of his top brass, as well as his populist support. At the beginning of the year, he fled to Tehran for months without warning, only to return looking weak and feebly declaring a ceasefire with the United States.
But it is his Shi’a brethren who have grown tired of his antics. Iraqi security forces in Diwaniyah recently launched Operation Lion’s Leap to tackle the gangsterism of his Mahdi militia. The 5th Brigade of the Iraqi military, recently graduated from Besmaya, teamed up with the Iraqis’ 8th Division, 1st Brigade, and a brigade from the 9th Division and have, to date, captured 74 members of the Sadrist army (including Shakir Katkoun, Sadr’s top henchmen), along the way killing dozens of Mahdi guerrillas and finding large caches of Iran-manufactured weapons.
An Iraqi court in Diwaniyah has sentenced 17 members of the militia to death for killing Iraqi soldiers. The groundswell opposition to Mahdi murderers is extending throughout the country, as well. A businessman in the Shi’ite Baghdad neighborhood of Ur has been quoted stating “Everything is changing...Now in our area for the first time everyone (will) say, ‘To hell with the Mahdi Army.’”
The fat, perspiring Muqtada is not the only Iranian puppet with his back against the wall. Since January 2007, when the administration finally (after almost four years) expanded the rules of engagement to allow countering Iranians in Iraq, the U.S. and Iraqis have accumulated mounting evidence to discover just precisely how much the mullahs have been involved in the insurgency. Testimony and forensic evidence has been plentiful. Ali Mussa Dakdouk, Ali al Khazaali, Qais al Kazaali, and many others – senior members of Lebanese Hezbollah, mind you – had infiltrated Iraq (on the orders of Tehran); they were “training between 20 and 60 Iraqis at a time,” with the assistance of the Quds Force (which answers directly to Ayatollah Khamenei); they had worked with Sadr and others; and they had inflicted death and devastating carnage on Americans in places like Karbala. Now, for the first time, Central Command had the go-ahead to capture and actually detain these individuals. Shahriar Ahy, an Iranian entrepreneur who helped Iraq build its new broadcasting networks in the post-Saddam era, says in Tehran, “they are now referring to the United States as the Mar-rouve Domesh Vastadeh – the Cobra on his tail.”
The Sunni insurrection, financed by windfall Saudi petrodollars, is also largely dissipated. After battling the strongest military in the world for more than three years, and thereby restoring the perceived lost honor of the Ba’ath’s three-week trounce, the clansmen of Iraq decided they did not, alas, want their daughters marrying the al Qaeda guests they so begrudgingly hosted. Somehow, someway, we proved we would both out-last the native insurgents, and, unlike the al Qaeda outsiders, leave when the time came. Documents recently recovered from senior al Qaeda leader Abu Usama al Tunisi depict an organization on the run, rapidly running out of places to operate and hide. Brigadier General Joseph Anderson quoted al Tunisi, who whined that “he is surrounded, communications have been cut, and he is desperate for help.”
Nothing is permanent – especially in such a volatile region – but it seems were are in fact on the cusp of handing both al Qaeda and the Islamic Republic of Iran substantial battlefield humiliations. Certainly it should be recognized that this counts for at least something. Judging from where we were just twelve months ago, this is as astounding as it was unanticipated. But this wartime uncertainty is not uncommon in American history. It is a mistruth to believe most conflicts are easy to predict early on, that they are either quickly identified as fruitless (like Vietnam), or a sure success (like Bosnia).
To the contrary, most wars – particularly those of attrition – exhibit an uneasy back-and-forth pendulum, which alters the domestic political scene with the pulse of the battlefield. The White House was torched in August 1814, yet four months later the Red Coats were overpowered in New Orleans. Lincoln was a lame duck loser in the summer of 1864, certain for defeat in war and at the ballot box; before, of course, General Sherman took Atlanta and saved the Union. The once-revered Douglas MacArthur oversaw the largest retreat in U.S. history and left the peninsula in shame; his replacement, Ridgeway, pushed the Chinese back to the 38th parallel and ensured over a half-century of South Korean autonomy.
“There is no military solution in Iraq” had become our ad usum proprium, a pathetic refrain most “regional experts” resorted to when explaining away the consequences of their unwise propositions. In war, there is only a military solution; that is, if one views war through the Clausewitzian prism as an extension of politics by other means. It is disingenuous to cast aside the large tactical attainments the military is making against the Jihadists in Iraq simply because the Iraqis have not crafted a top-bottom “political solution.” Those who shrugged off the constitutional progress of 2004-2006 were spry to remind us all that such democratization did not temper the insurrection.
But now, with a sustainable peace seeming more probable, many are redefining victory as the Iraqis agreeing to pass a particular piece legislature. That is all well and good –– and can only help the cause of an Iraqi peace in the long run –– but an oil deal or an agreement on federalism alone is not going to “win the war.” This premise views the conflict through the wrong context, as a civil and ethnic problem requiring trifurcation –– not as the vortex of a regional conflagration which will endure well beyond the final outcome in Iraq.
So here we stand, in the once highly unlikely position of creating our own realities in the tragedy that has been this Iraq war. What has been born of this? The perception-is-reality mantra has become a truism. Had the United States left Iraq without first visibly quelling the insurgency, the Arab street and Pentagon war-gamers alike would have walked away from this conflict with two increasingly similar impressions: the United States could never again permit itself to enter the domain of sustained asymmetrical intrastate combat. We would be forever granting our opponents veto power over our deployments, based upon something as banal as four years of persistent petty small arms fire. Au contraire to the snarls and snipes of cave-hopping men in robes, a degeneration of U.S. national will, and a lack of domestic confidence in military proficiency, would have been exceedingly detrimental to international stability.
Rather, we are witnessing the birth of a new indispensable doctrine, as well as the ascension of brilliant field officers, who, soon to come off the hardest and unlikeliest of victories, will go on to lead this finest of institutions for a generation or more. Occasionally some still gripe that Iraq served as a cause célèbre for the bin Ladenists. Rather, we are more likely to view Iraq as Salafism’s first own personal Middle Eastern cemetery; they chose to fight us there, and in doing so, and in losing, they sewed the seeds of their own discrediting. Al Qaida ended up somehow managing to come across as looking both cruel and weak. And in the Arab world, that’s suicide (no pun intended).
The Sunni “awakening” in Anbar represents yet another birth, the creation of a new Sunni body politic aside from ex-Ba’athists and Tariq Hashemi’s Islamist bloc. In all of Iraq’s demographic inquiries, this war has taught the West something Arabs already knew perfectly well: it is ultimately the tribes, not the clerics, which hold final sway in Iraqi polity. Thirty years of dictatorship, war, and sanctions destroyed Iraqi political infrastructure, persuading Iraqis of all sects to turn to their most basic attachments of locality. This interpretation of identity is non-ideological, and by default less prone to exploitation by sectarians and xenophobes running for office. The next Iraqi elections will be far different, and the fact that there will be “next” elections, and that this is no longer seen as implausible but rather commonplace, still amazes me.
The argument is no longer “can we win” but rather if victory will be worth the aggregate costs, and as James Clyburn stated, this poses as a “problem” for some. This is all very tangible. How can one explain away actuality? The narrative has changed for the better and those who challenged the wisdom of an eleventh hour escalation are slowly inserting their collective feet in their collective mouths. You can almost feel the triangulation occurring by the hour, as politicians of all stripes posture themselves into an expedient façade. Those who opposed ending the Hussein crime family’s grasp on Iraqi society, for whatever reasons they held and still may hold, should still take delight in this turn of events. We must study this moment and understand why it happened. Investing one’s own personal vindication in an unsuccessful outcome is reactionary and shortsighted. The only chance for a peaceful Iraq is for these current trends to continue. Let’s hope they do.
The original article can be found at http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Nicholas Guariglia is a polemic and essayist who writes on Islam and Middle Eastern geopolitics. He is a student at the John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, where he is studying U.S. foreign policy. He also contributes to http://www.globalpolitician.com and http://www.worldthreats.com He can be reached at
Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.
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