Iraq and the consequences of failure

Abstract

The author contends that significant gains are being made against the insurgency in Iraq, especially in the political realm and in light of the recent ‘surge strategy’, and yet these advances are poorly reported in Western media. At the same time, domestic pressures are growing within the United States and Coalition partners for withdrawal timetables regardless of Iraqi stability and self-sufficiency. Consequently, the author argues, a precipitous withdrawal would create greater chaos and loss of life at a time when progress is building toward critical mass.

In April this year I spent a few weeks with General David Petraeus [Commander Multi-National Force – Iraq] in Iraq, meeting with some of his senior commanders and joining US troops on patrol. Almost immediately, I was struck by the change in mood in Anbar Province, once known as the most problematic region in the country and the obvious centre of Sunni resistance to the new order in Iraq. Anbar was also the centre of the deadly fight in which US soldiers and marines have been embroiled over the past four years and the scene of devastating casualties, most notoriously in Fallujah. Yet Anbar has become the success story of the last six months.

Anbar’s defining moment came in September last year when many of its tribal elders switched their allegiance from al-Qaeda to the Coalition forces and the fledgling Iraqi Government. The switch was partly due to the actions of al-Qaeda itself, which engaged once too often in a spate of indiscriminate killing and then ventured to interfere in the smuggling networks traditionally run by the Sheikhs. Only a year ago such a defection would have been unthinkable. A stunning visual symbol of this new cooperation is the massive influx of young men persuaded by the Sheikhs to sign up with the army and police force, effectively swamping the training depots. This is a major coup, given that, prior to the Sheikhs’ change of allegiance, no-one from the local region was willing to participate in military operations against al-Qaeda.

Such unprecedented cooperation has allowed the United States to conduct an offensive that has produced dramatic results in cities such as Al Qa’im, Hit and Ramadi. Over the course of the last six months Ramadi, formerly one of the most dangerous cities in Iraq, has become among the safest. Ramadi was targeted by US forces, which ran a classic counterinsurgency campaign between September 2006 and February/March this year. US soldiers moved through the city, clearing it block by block, despite heavy resistance. This was one of many clearing operations conducted by US forces in Iraq. In the past, however, once a city was cleared, the troops withdrew, allowing the insurgents to return.

US forces are learning from this bitter experience and they now commit not only to clearing an area, but to holding and to rebuilding it. The physical expression of this commitment has seen US forces moving out of their giant forward operating bases and, in cities such as Ramadi, working with the local people and the Iraqi Army and police to establish a series of joint security stations, combat outposts and police stations. They are effectively blanketing the city in an attempt to prevent the return of al-Qaeda. Despite the wonders of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and high-technology surveillance hardware, the Coalition success is the result of old-fashioned counterinsurgency that places soldiers on street corners and combat outposts in close range of one another. Al-Qaeda has responded to this strategy in typical fashion with suicide bomb attacks on the outskirts of the city. Tellingly, they have yet to penetrate those areas where the Coalition forces and Iraqi forces are holding their own.

Ramadi looks like Berlin in 1945. The streets are awash as the water mains have been destroyed and many buildings have been reduced to rubble. This has been a war zone for the last four years and, up until six months ago, the marines were struggling just to hold the government centre. Now their control extends throughout the entire city. With the clearing phase completed, US forces are turning their attention to what will be their biggest task—rebuilding the city. Ideally, USAID or some other outside agency will be persuaded to finance the rebuild, with assistance from the Government of Iraq. Ramadi now has a future.

Anbar Province represents the acid test for the willingness of Shiite politicians in Baghdad to reconcile with the Sunnis. There is much talk on the need to pass legislation on de-Ba’athification, the oil law and various other measures; however, in reconciliation terms, the crux lies in the reconstruction of vital infrastructure. Reconstruction is not dependent upon the passing of laws, but on persuading the politicians to spend. Loosing the purse strings is essential if the Iraqi Government is to convince the people of Anbar and other provinces that it is serious about reconciliation. Failure to do so may jeopardise the progress of US and Iraqi troops in their battle for stabilisation.

Inevitably, recent US successes in Anbar and Baghdad have driven many of the extremists—both Shiite and Sunni—out of some of the contested regions and into other areas. Many al-Qaeda activists have moved into the Baghdad belt and into Diyala Province where violence has escalated. Last year, with the situation seemingly under control, US forces began handing over to the Iraqi security forces. The recent deterioration has seen this process reversed as food and fuel deliveries are interrupted and US casualties soar.

The see-sawing strategic situation is, in many ways, a result of the reality that the United States simply does not have sufficient troops to pacify the entire country. This would require a troop density only possible with a commitment of over 500 000 troops. Even the projected US troop surge in September will produce an unimpressive total of 170000 US troops, 130000 Iraqi troops and fewer than 20000 allies in Iraq. This is a paltry sum in a country with a population of twenty-six million. US forces have been spread thin over the last four years and have yet to establish a critical mass of control. Any consideration of classic French counterinsurgency ‘oil spot’ doctrine—which holds that a force needs to pacify an area and then gradually expand its sphere of control outward—will demonstrate that the Coalition cannot hope to succeed under the circumstances. US forces have been trying to achieve critical mass in Baghdad with the addition of extra forces, accepting that there will be some losses on the periphery and that they will not be able to establish the degree of control around Baghdad that is considered ideal. US troops in towns such as Baqubah on the outskirts of Baghdad are feeling the effects of the lack of critical mass. They are conducting an economy of force mission characterised by insufficient troops in the face of a very determined enemy. Their mission is not pacification; their task is simply to disrupt the activities of insurgent forces to prevent them from using the Baghdad belt as a staging ground for an offensive into Baghdad itself.

The surge strategy, which began in February, will see five extra Brigade Combat Teams sent into Baghdad. Even at this early stage, the influx of additional troops has seen a substantial slowing in the process of sectarian violence and ethnic cleansing that had been lurching out of control. Over the course of the last year, the sphere of Shiite control within Baghdad has been expanding gradually southward. Traditionally, Shiite neighbourhoods lay on the east side of the river, but they have now begun to spread across the west side and further down so that many of those areas that previously comprised a mixed population have become overwhelmingly Shiite. Such a movement almost guaranteed the commensurate spread of violence in acts of ethnic cleansing as the Shiites pushed south into Al Monsoor and some of the other heavily Sunni neighbourhoods in central Baghdad. Yet that ethnic cleansing has been essentially stopped and sectarian murders also dramatically reduced.

Unfortunately, however, while the number of sectarian murders is down, the number of suicide bombings remains high. US forces are trying to ‘harden’ soft targets such as markets, setting up concrete barriers and staffing entry control checkpoints. Al-Qaeda has responded with increased attacks to demonstrate that the city is no safer despite the attempts of the US forces. Safety on the streets is difficult to convey given the incidence of spectacular suicide bombings that mask the changing realities on the ground. It is hard to convince the outside world that progress is being made as the casualty figures continue to soar.

Iraqi forces are now shouldering more of the burden of the war and their units are up to 90 per cent strength in Baghdad. Many of these units are performing well, particularly those dominated by the Kurds. Like the American forces, they have the advantage of being outsiders. They are not part of the struggle and appear as neutral arbiters of the Sunni-Shiite dispute—a role that is almost impossible for Iraqi or Sunni troops to assume.

Iraqi and American troops will continue to implement that classic counterinsurgency approach which has proven successful in those areas where the troop concentration has been sufficient and the time-frame realistic. The question remains, however, as to whether US politicians will allow the soldiers the time to fully implement their strategy. The current time line is set by politicians in Washington—both Democrats and Republicans—who are demanding results. US forces are dogged by the political threat that, if this campaign has not essentially been won by September, then they will be withdrawn. US commanders on the ground regard this as completely unrealistic, arguing that the process of pacification is necessarily lengthy. The overall campaign in Iraq will take years—indeed the initial effort simply to control Baghdad will take months. It is nonsensical to look for tangible and significant results before early next year. The unrealistic demands of the politicians also sow doubts as to whether the troops on the ground have the political support they need to see their mission through.

President Bush himself remains committed to the surge strategy. The Democrats will require significant Republican defections—which they have yet to receive—to achieve their aim of removing funding for the war. Republicans are unlikely to break with their President in a time of war; in fact, not a single major Republican presidential candidate is contesting the election on an anti-war platform.

Politics in Iraq will undoubtedly influence the American political situation as the US enters an election year. Much of the success or failure of the US Iraq strategy ultimately hinges on the actions of Iraqi political figures and whether they will attempt a national reconciliation. General Petraeus and some of his senior aides believe that Prime Minister Maliki is beginning to see himself more as a national Iraqi leader and less as a sectarian Shiite leader. Some of the specific milestones of progress that point to this include the fact that he has authorised military operations against Shiite extremists and approved oil revenue sharing legislation. However, the reality is that Maliki does not control his own cabinet, much less the Parliament. While his influence has increased since he took office, he is not one of the dominant figures of the Iraqi Parliament. Indeed it is difficult to gauge whether there is a single dominant figure because power is decentralised amongst a plethora of political and militia factions. Many questions surround whether or not the political class will be able to perform. While this is difficult to predict, the current surge strategy is certainly premised on the notion that any increase in security in Baghdad will create room for manoeuvre between the moderate sides of both the Sunni and Shiite factions. As long as there is complete disorder, violence and chaos on the streets, the extremists are essentially empowered and the likes of Moqtada al Sadr successfully posture as the defenders of their sectarian groups. Establishing a degree of order will create a climate of stability which will improve the prospect of some compromise involving more moderate leaders such as Ayatollah Sistani.

I am stunned by the irresponsibility of those within US domestic politics who insist that once US troops are withdrawn, the Iraqis will successfully resolve the internecine violence that continues to tear the country apart, as if the reason they have yet to do so is because US forces are preventing them. I have not met a single person who has spent time in Iraq who believes this. I do not know a single Iraqi who believes this—most Iraqis, in fact, do not want the United States to leave. While public opinion polls indicate that up to 80 per cent of Iraqis want US troops out, the polls also indicate that they do not want that withdrawal to occur soon. Once security conditions are stabilised, the Iraqis want the US troops withdrawn—but they are fully cognisant of what will happen if the United States pulls out precipitously. The result would be an extraordinarily ugly conflict, possibly reaching genocidal proportions, with dire consequences not only for the people of Iraq, who would suffer a humanitarian disaster, but also for Western interests in the region.

There is, however, a degree of recognition that a US withdrawal in the immediate future is likely to lead to greater instability, an increase in terrorism and a host of other problems. There are many strategies currently being debated in Washington, particularly the so-called ‘Plan B’ strategies, for managing those consequences. Such strategies include deploying US forces to the borders to try to contain this conflict; partitioning Iraq into three states; and withdrawing US combat troops while retaining a major advisory presence within the Iraqi Army. Given the magnitude of the potential conflict, these strategies have a very low probability of success. Yet, if the current counterinsurgency strategy does not show visible signs of progress by this time next year, there may be a complete collapse of political support in the United States and one of the ‘Plan B’ options could be implemented. The consequences of this may well be devastating.

Ken Pollack and Dan Byman of the Brookings Institution recently analysed the effects of civil wars over the past few decades and found that such conflicts are rarely contained within the borders of the original state. These conflicts inevitably spill over with catastrophic consequences for the region including outflows of refugees, the spread of extremist ideologies, and economic and political destabilisation. Neighbouring states may then try to intervene directly or indirectly to control those consequences or to expand their sphere of influence, as occurred in such places as the Congo and Lebanon.

Iraq contains all the ingredients, not only for a civil war, but for a far bigger conflict, as Iraq is a more valuable prize than countries such as Chechnya or Afghanistan that have been the scenes of such bloody conflicts. Iraq is a country with some of the world’s biggest oil reserves, making it attractive to other countries in the region as well as the major groups within Iraq that would try to wrest control of these resources.

Genocide in Iraq would lead to huge refugee outflows and would constitute a major blow to American prestige on the world stage. This would embolden enemies of the United States in the way that defeat in Vietnam emboldened the Communists and the Soviets. Yet there is a view within American political circles that the United States should withdraw from Iraq so as to concentrate on the real War on Terrorism which is being waged in Afghanistan. If the United States leaves Iraq, however, it is more than likely that al-Qaeda would move its focus to Afghanistan with a concomitant rise in violence.

Another consequence of an early US withdrawal from Iraq may be the movement of millions of disaffected Sunnis from Iraq into the neighbouring states. Countries such as Jordan are already finding it difficult to absorb almost a million Iraqi refugees. What will happen when the flow increases to two million or three million? What will happen if the neighbouring states are swamped by refugees who are intent on winning back their homes and subscribe to radical ideology in the pursuit of that objective? There is a body of opinion that sees a US withdrawal as leading to a bloody civil war that the Shiites will win and which, despite the regrettable toll of casualties, will ultimately produce an acceptable outcome. Yet it is highly unlikely that the neighbouring Sunni states will watch idly as the Shiites go on a rampage against their Sunni brethren. These neighbouring states will support those Sunnis by providing arms and there may be an influx of terrorists and an increase in suicide operations. The result may be a very bloody civil war which will be potentially quite prolonged and draw in a number of the neighbouring states.

Iraq’s old enemy Iran has wielded a significance influence over the ongoing conflict. Iran is a prime example of a neighbouring state interfering in order to try to preserve its interests or to expand its sphere of influence. As a minimum, Iran is trying to keep the United States engaged in Iraq by practising proxy warfare of the kind that it also practises against Israel by supporting Hezbollah. Iran’s intention is to involve the United States in a protracted engagement to prevent its attention wandering to Iraq’s more recalcitrant neighbours. Iran supports both the Shiites and the Sunni groups in an attempt to prevent the emergence of a strong, unified Iraq that might challenge Iranian power as it has in the past. In the current climate where chaos predominates, insurgent groups eagerly accept Iranian funding and munitions to fight their enemies, both internal and Coalition.

Certainly, if the United States pulls out, the Iranian sphere of influence will expand, at least in the short term when Iran would support a major push by the Shiite forces to try to consolidate and extend their control. This would be opposed by the Sunnis with the backing of the Saudis, Egyptians, and some of the other Gulf Arabs. A very difficult proxy war would result, characterised by the incursion of armed forces from some neighbouring states.

Thus far, the United States has failed to curb interference. For more than four years President Bush has branded this interference as unacceptable. In 2001 he stated that he would make no distinction between nations that harbour terrorists and nations that practise terrorism. At a minimum the United States should have been exercising its right of hot pursuit to deny terrorists a safe haven in Syria, destroying the safe houses and route lines on the Syrian side of the border. Yet the enemy is allowed sanctuary outside the borders of Iraq to make war on the United States and its allies without consequence—for which the United States is paying the price.

Within Iraq itself, it will take a mammoth effort to separate the primary adversaries. It will take some time for the Shiites to be convinced that they have won and the Sunnis to be convinced that they have lost. Within the larger Sunni community there are many who refuse to countenance defeat, convinced that they will still prevail in a final desperate struggle for power. This delusion will continue to feed Sunni recalcitrance for the foreseeable future. This is a damaging perception which can only be changed with the increased success of Coalition and Iraqi forces on the ground. In current terms, the United States is attempting to negotiate an end to the fighting while the fighting is still going on and before either side perceives it has lost. Clearly it is difficult to negotiate a peace treaty until one side has won and the other has lost or until both sides are convinced they cannot win by force of arms. The current imperative must be to make progress on the ground to convince both sides that they are not going to achieve their objectives by military force. Yet this message is being undermined by the political message coming from Washington threatening a possible withdrawal in six months’ time despite the enormous gains made by the soldiers at the front. The current political climate may be the all-important factor that finally swings perceptions towards an end to this conflict—one way or the other.

Support for the war remains strong among the troops on the front line who are most at risk, many of whom are volunteers. Some soldiers are on their second, third, fourth, even fifth tours and they want to continue the fight, driven by a strong belief in the mission and a clear understanding of the consequences of an early withdrawal. There is far less understanding of this in US civilian society, perhaps because so few people have served in the military and do not understand the military mindset, the ethos of combat. This may give rise to a similar sentiment to that of the post-Vietnam era where a sense of betrayal predominated in troops who were fighting and were withdrawn without the satisfaction of accomplishing their mission.

Among the marines in Anbar morale is high because they believe in the crucial nature of their mission. If there is an early withdrawal, however, and they have to accept the reality of defeat, there may be a massive exodus of experienced non-commissioned officers and junior to mid-grade officers from the military. Those who remain may be dealing with the consequences as they were in the 1970s. The United States may already be moving towards a hollow Army and this may be accelerated by defeat, should this eventuate.

The insurgency war currently raging in Iraq is likely to typify the future form of warfare because it is clearly a strategy that works. The unconventional strategy, the asymmetric strategy, is obviously the way to fight a modern Western military. Terrorists now operate globally and have greater destructive potential than ever before. Any comparison of the two major attacks on American soil in the twentieth century makes this demonstrably clear. On 11 September 2001, nineteen men armed with box cutters killed far more Americans than the Imperial Japanese Navy did on 7 December 1941. This is a microcosm of the trend that places more destructive power in the hands of fewer individuals. Dealing with guerrilla and terrorist warfare is no longer optional for Western militaries. It is becoming an existential threat that must be faced. The United States has to craft its own response to this—a difficult task for a military that is large, highly technicalised and traditionally prepared for conventional adversaries. The challenge will lie in re-orienting the force to fight the kind of low-intensity conflict confronting the United States in Iraq. It is increasingly obvious that expensive technological equipment is useless against the kind of adversaries that wage guerrilla warfare.

The US Army and Marine Corps have to become more comfortable with these challenges because they will be the dominant challenges of the future. These are not traditional military challenges but they are roles into which the military is going to be thrust, willingly or otherwise. Clearly this demands a process of transformation so that the military and, in fact, the entire government can be better equipped to deal with what is, in reality, a new world disorder. As I patrolled with the marines in Anbar, watching as they adapted seamlessly to the demands of the current counterinsurgent strategy, my confidence grew. This is a challenge that General Petraeus and his troops are determined to meet—should their political masters provide the final assent.