Counter-productive
counter-insurgency By David
Isenberg
Even bland news releases can speak
volumes. Consider the Pentagon's April 7 release No
273-04. "The Department of Defense announced today the
death of eight soldiers supporting Operation Iraqi
Freedom. They died on April 4, in Baghdad, Iraq, when
their units were attacked with rocket-propelled grenades
and small arms fire."
The war, not the
resistance, has ascended to a higher level. Iraqis, both
Shi'ite and Sunni, have, to paraphrase President George
W Bush's remarks from last year, "brought it on", and
coalition forces and Iraqi civilians are paying a
Where before the current outbreak of fighting
critics chose between the Q and V words (quagmire and
Vietnam) to characterize Iraq, they are now using T, as
in the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam, for their Iraqi
metaphor. While Tet was a military failure for the North
Vietnamese, it succeeded in changing public opinion back
in the United States regarding the viability of the war.
However, a better metaphor may be the second
intifada of Iraq - the first being last August in
Fallujah when US soldiers killed about 15 Iraqis and
Fallujah plunged into revolt.
Since commencing
Operation Vigilant Resolve in Fallujah, in the aftermath
of the killing and mutilation of four Blackwater
contractor employees on March 31, and the fiery words of
Muqtada al-Sadr, the young radical Shi'ite cleric, a few
days later that prompted violent uprisings in four
cities, things have gone from bad to worse for US
military forces. And the situation is unlikely to get
better any time soon.
A new surge of Iraqi
resistance is sweeping up thousands of people, Shi'ite
and Sunni, in a loose coalition united by overwhelming
anti-Americanism. Interviews with Sunnis and Shi'ites
alike show a new corps of men, and a few women, who have
resolved to join the resistance, increasing their ranks
by thousands.
For example, a battalion of the
new Iraqi army, the 620-man 2nd Battalion of the Iraqi
Armed Forces, refused to go to Fallujah to support US
Marines battling for control of the city. It was the
first time US commanders had sought to involve the
postwar Iraqi army in major combat operations, and the
battalion's refusal came as large parts of Iraqi
security forces have stopped carrying out their duties.
It turns out that April, not March, is the
cruelest month. As of April 20, it had seen more US
military deaths from combat in Iraq than any other month
since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. According to
reports, the number of coalition soldiers killed in
April to date is 91, making this the third deadliest
month in the war so far for the coalition and the second
deadliest for the Americans. And it's not yet over.
Eighty-nine of the dead were Americans, all killed in
action. In contrast, the number of coalition soldiers
(65 Americans and 27 Britons) killed in March 2003 was
92.
Early on in the recent fighting, Sunni
Muslim insurgents killed about a dozen US Marines in
heavy fighting in the western city of Ramadi. In
addition to the Marines killed, about 20 were wounded
and an M1-A1 Abrams tank and a Bradley fighting vehicle
were hit and damaged.
Nation-building, at least
for the moment, has taken a back seat, to
counter-insurgency. And for the moment,
counter-insurgency is not going well. According to
recent analysis circulated by Anthony Cordesman of the
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in
Washington, DC, it is clear that the Coalition
Provisional Authority "did not have a clear picture of
the level of resistance they would encounter in Ramadi
and Fallujah, and underestimated the forces needed, and
acted against Muqtada Sadr without a clear picture of
his probable reaction and strength".
Cordesman
is a highly influential analyst who has worked both at
the Pentagon and in Congress. He holds the Arleigh Burke
Chair in Strategy at CSIS, is a military analyst for ABC
television, and has written numerous authoritative
military balances and net assessments over the years.
When he speaks and writes, policymakers and congressmen
tend to listen.
Cordesman quotes Major General
David Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division
in Iraq, that the US and its allies must achieve two
major objectives during their operations in Iraq. First,
they must give as many Iraqis as possible a stake in the
nation-building process. Second, they must conduct
military operations in ways that take more bad guys off
of the street than they create. But, according to
Cordesman "the current fighting presents a high risk
that coalition operations will have just the opposite
effect. The 'backlash effect' may not only create more
active enemies, but also it may more broadly alienate
significant additional numbers of Iraqis politically."
One example is the 25-member Iraqi Governing
Council (IGC), expected to serve as the basis of a new
government once sovereignty is handed over on June 30.
One council member, angered by the heavy fighting in
Fallujah and the prospect of a US move against the
militia of an anti-American Shi'ite cleric in Najaf,
suspended his membership. Four others said they are
ready to follow suit. Even council member Adnan
Pachachi, a former diplomat who was present at the
president's State of the Union address, harshly
criticized US actions as "illegal and totally
unacceptable".
The actions of the IGC are
significant in that in the past it has largely acceded
to US wishes, bolstering popular perception that it is a
US puppet. For example, it stood aside when the Sadr
City demonstration against the closure of al-Hawza
newspaper run by Muqtada was machine-gunned from
helicopters - 32 people were killed and hundreds
injured.
While the situation is fluid and
changing daily, the changes, thus far, have been mostly
bad for coalition forces. In the cities of Najaf and
Kufa Muqtada's Mahdi Army was, for a time, completely in
control. About 2,500 US soldiers still surround Najaf
and 3,500 Marines remain in a standoff around Fallujah.
And the increased fighting has begun to threaten
the long-term viability of US forces in Iraq. Recently,
military transport networks have begun shutting down due
to repeated attacks. Certain supplies, such as
ammunition, food and fuel, have begun to become scarce
in the Green Zone in Baghdad where the US nerve center
is housed, and some troops have returned to eating MREs
(meals ready to eat). This past weekend, the US military
abruptly closed parts of two major highways running
north and south from Baghdad.
The closings took
place on parts of Highway 1 - from Baghdad to a point
about 45 miles northwest, near the town of Balad - and
on Highway 8 south from Baghdad to a town identified as
Rakkab al-Muktif.
For a military that is already
overtaxed, it now has the additional task of keeping
crucial sections of highway open for the passage of
critically needed convoys reaching the Iraqi heartland
from Turkey, Jordan and Kuwait.
And US military
tactics often backfire. Testifying Tuesday before the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Dr Juan Cole,
professor of modern Middle Eastern history at the
University of Michigan, said: "The tactics used at
Fallujah have been seen by most Iraqis, and indeed by
many coalition partners and Iraqi Governing Council
members as an outrage and a direct flouting of the
Geneva Conventions governing military occupations. Even
the ordinary search and find missions conducted in
al-Anbar province and elsewhere have often involved male
troops invading the private homes of Iraqis, going into
the women's quarters, and visiting humiliation on
tribesmen for whom protecting their women is the basis
of their honor. Unless these operations are yielding
consistently excellent intelligence and results, they
should be curtailed."
Washington has said it
would arrest Muqtada in connection with the murder last
year of a rival Shi'ite cleric, Abdul Maid al-Khaki. But
Muqtada has taken shelter in his office near a complex
surrounding one of the holiest Shi'ite shrines - the
Imam Ali mosque in Najaf. The mosque is the burial place
of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, who is a
central figure in Shi'ism. It is unlikely that US forces
will risk further inflaming Shi'ite sentiment by
attempting to go in and seize him.
In Sadr City,
the Shi'ite slum section of Baghdad, soldiers of the 1st
Cavalry Division are regularly clashing with Muqtada's
militia.
Insofar as the overall coalition is
concerned, coalition forces in south-central Iraq have
sustained few casualties in comparison to those
sustained by US forces in the Iraqi capital and
surrounding areas, but it is likely that those deaths
will affect public opinion in their home countries. On
April 4, one Salvadoran soldier was killed when
militants attacked a coalition camp in Najaf. Twelve of
his compatriots were wounded in the same incident.
Japanese Self-Defense Forces have holed
themselves up at their camp in Samawah in an effort to
avoid being caught up in the violence. Japan committed
troops to Iraq to carry out humanitarian operations and
has gone to great lengths - even placing television ads
on Arab satellite channels to inform Iraqis that the
Japanese contingent is not in Iraq to police the
country.
Spain, Honduras and the Dominican
Republic have already announced that they will pull out
their troops, and El Salvador's human rights ombudsman
asked the government on Wednesday to withdraw its troops
from Iraq.
The worst may be yet to come. A true
sustained explosion of violence has yet to be
coordinated by the myriad resistance teams, but as the
independent or semi-centralized resistance groups form,
choose leadership and communicate at Internet cafes, one
can be sure the second wave of violence is going to come
and will be equally, if not more, dramatic. And instead
of using uniformed militia forces, they will shift to
urban terrorism carried out by small, highly armed teams
of friends.
Meanwhile, the US State Department
has dismissed as "highly speculative" the idea that
increased fighting in Iraq might force a delay in a
planned transfer of power to Iraqis by June 30. But in
light of the insurrection, senior Bush administration
officials said the US is relying increasingly on the
United Nations to put an international stamp on efforts
to resolve differences among Iraqis on the makeup of an
interim government. However, exactly what the UN can do
is left unexplained.
As Senator Carl Levin noted
in a Tuesday hearing of the Senate Armed Services
Committee: "After keeping the United Nations at arm's
length throughout the occupation of Iraq, the president
finally recognized the central role of the UN in finding
a way to an interim government which will be accepted by
the people of Iraq. When asked last week about the Iraqi
entity to which sovereignty will be restored on June 30,
the president said, "That's going to be decided by
[United Nations Special Representative Lakhdar]
Brahimi', quite a reversal of the prior posture of the
administration towards the UN and long overdue."
Bottom line: the war is still up for grabs. As
Cordesman wrote: "If coalition operations against
Muqtada Sadr alienate large numbers of young Shi'ites,
push the other Shi'ites clearly into backing Sadr or
attacking the coalition politically, or lay the ground
for a working alliance between Shi'ite and Sunni
extremists and insurgents, the US and coalition task is
going to become far, far harder, if not impossible. In
simple terms, if the US loses the Shi'ites, the US loses
the peace, and with it the war."
David
Isenberg, a senior analyst with the Washington-based
British American Security Information Council (BASIC),
has a wide background in arms control and national
security issues. The views expressed are his own.
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