America's new strategy in
Iraq By Michael Schwartz
Who
won in Najaf?
The short answer is Ali
al-Sistani, who re-established himself as the preeminent
Iraqi leader by resolving the crisis without the
destruction of the Imam Ali Shrine or the slaughter of
the Mehdi soldiers occupying it. But al-Sistani is
having trouble consolidating this preeminence, because
the United States has not delivered the reconstruction
aid it guaranteed; and Sistani cannot restore an orderly
existence without such outside help. Moreover, since
al-Sistani's strategy rests upon asking the Shi'ite to
forgo immediate demands in the expectation of achieving
political domination in the January election, the
sustained violence elsewhere is a threat to the
elections, and therefore to his credibility.
Did
Muqtada al-Sadr win or lose in Najaf? Before Sistani
intervened, the Sadrists were faced with a tough choice.
They could have fought to the death: this would have
been a great political victory that would rally support
inside and outside the country and make the Sadrists the
primary force within the Iraqi resistance, even while it
would mean sacrificing the lives of their most dedicated
and experienced activists. Or they could have withdrawn
from the shrine: this would have shattered their
credibility as revolutionaries, and left them disarmed
and discredited.
It looked as though they were
going to be martyrs, but Sistani snatched away their
victory while saving their lives. This preserved - and
perhaps even strengthened - their organization; but
their political primacy was preempted by Sistani.
Did the United States win or lose in Najaf? The
US lost in two ways. It further alienated the Iraqis, so
that neither the US nor its client administration has
any credibility on the street. It also lost the
opportunity for a smashing military victory that might
have won the November US election for President George W
Bush and intimidated Shi'ite militants enough to keep
them quiet while the US developed and implemented a new
program for the Shi'ite areas of the country.
But the US also won two things from Sistani's
intervention. First, it was relieved of a terrible
choice: either withdraw without dislodging Muqtada
al-Sadr, which would have been a monumental victory for
Muqtada and would have led to liberated areas throughout
the south of Iraq; or smash the shrine and create
Islamic-wide outrage that could have led to an immediate
insurrection throughout the country. So the Americans
lived to try another strategy, which they would not have
had the chance to do if al-Sistani had not intervened.
Second, Sistani's preemption provided a template
for the new strategy that the US adopted soon afterward.
His truce-making provided an orderly process by which
the Iraqi police (trained and controlled by the US) took
official control of old Najaf. Their authority is
guaranteed by the legitimacy of al-Sistani, and
therefore they have not had to face a challenge by
militant Sadrists or other insurgents - though the
police themselves may not remain loyal to the US, a
process we have seen elsewhere already. For the United
States, this created the vision of parallel developments
in other cities: an alliance with "moderates" that
legitimated the Iraqi police while effectively removing
the militants from the public life of the city.
The new US strategy The new US
strategy, then, is targeted at the cities where the
guerrillas and their clerical leadership dominate,
notably Fallujah, Samarra, Tal Afar and Sadr City,
though there are several others that have not been in
the news lately. The US method is to negotiate with the
clerics, offering extensive reconstruction aid in
exchange for calling off the insurgency and perhaps
delivering the guerrilla fighters over to the United
States. They call this negotiating with the moderates to
split with the militants.
If they can get an
agreement, then the US marches into town and arrests at
least some of the guerrillas, using informants to
determine whom to target. If the guerrillas resist
arrest, the US annihilates them and the areas in which
they take refuge. If they melt into the population, then
the Iraqi police and National Guard take up stations
within the city to enforce the rule of a re-established
local government. US troops outside the city maintain
the capacity to intervene against any effort to
challenge the police or National Guard.
To force
an agreement, the US threatens both economic and
military attacks on the city as a whole. Part of the
plan is to use brutal air power that can annihilate
buildings or whole city blocks in an effort to convince
residents and leaders that the cost of resistance is
simply too high. The underlying assumption is that the
"moderates" will eventually choose to negotiate rather
than see their city destroyed. As one marine officer in
Fallujah told Washington Post reporter Rajiv
Chadrasekaran, the goal is "to split the city, to get
the good people of the city on one side and the
terrorists on the other".
The new plan is
designed to achieve two goals. First, the US hopes to
reduce drastically the number of attacks on US convoys
and bases outside the cities. These attacks are planned
within the cities, the weapons used are stockpiled
there, and the guerrillas are protected from detection
by their civilian identities as members of local
communities. By demobilizing, arresting or killing the
guerillas, the new plan holds the potential to reduce
direct attacks on US forces drastically.
Second,
by replacing guerrillas with police as the source of law
and order in the city, the US hopes to obtain control
over local public life, including establishing
pro-American political leadership, instead of the
current clerical leadership hostile to the US presence.
This will permit US control of the electoral process in
January and guarantee a legislature compliant with US
policy.
There is considerable urgency in this
venture because the current US strategy in Iraq centers
around the elections that are scheduled for January.
Sistani has made clear that he will not wait beyond
January for elections - he has already agreed to wait
six months beyond his own original deadline, and any
further delay might provoke him into much more forceful
protest than he has embraced so far. But elections that
exclude the areas currently under insurgent control will
produce yet another government with no legitimacy,
including a possible boycott by Sistani himself. Nor can
the United States let these cities be part of the
election without reconquering them, since they would
then send revolutionary representatives to demand that
the legislature call for US withdrawal, a demand that
would be supported by upwards of 90% of the population.
Recent polls conducted by the occupation report less
than 10% support for a continuing US presence.
Thus the US must quickly (within four months)
re-establish its control of these liberated areas, and
this control must be peaceful enough to allow for the
semblance of fair elections. This is why the moderates
are central to the new US strategy. Occupation by
American troops is counterproductive - it generates
stronger and more determined resistance among the
population. Permanently pacifying even a single city
against this sort of resistance requires tens of
thousands of US troops patrolling all the neighborhoods
- far beyond the numerical capability of US forces. The
Iraqi police and National Guard are notorious for
surrendering or defecting to guerrillas, but the US
hopes they will be able to maintain order if respected
local leadership silences the guerrillas and validates
their presence, as Sistani has done in Najaf.
Is the new US plan working? There has
been enough coverage of four cities to get a sense of
what is happening and what the prognosis might be for
the new US strategy.
Fallujah. The US met with the clerical
leadership in Fallujah (the first official acceptance of
their civic leadership), offering many millions of
dollars in reconstruction money to repair the
infrastructure that had been virtually demolished in the
April attacks - on the condition that (1) the guerrillas
were disowned and disarmed, (2) the US was allowed to
mount patrols within the city, and (3) the clerics
pledged loyalty to the central government. There were no
negotiations to speak of, because the clerics rejected
all three conditions.
Immediately after the
collapse of the non-negotiations, the US initiated
almost daily bombing of various neighborhoods in
Fallujah. The cover story has been that they are bombing
"safe houses" used by terrorists associated with Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi and that no other people are present
during the attacks. But hospitals report daily that the
vast majority of the casualties are civilians. It is
clear to everyone but the US public that the attacks are
designed to persuade the people of Fallujah to abandon
their support of the rebellion. To add a further element
of threat to the equation, the US has repeatedly
announced that it would soon reinvade the city, and
during the second week of September even announced on
loudspeakers that the residents of certain areas should
evacuate because of a pending attack. This was a bluff.
US military officials admitted to American reporters
that they are waiting until after the November elections
in the United States.
We can expect that the
bombing will continue until November, followed by a
full-scale assault on the city, one that might be far
more brutal than the previous attacks on Fallujah and
Najaf - unless, of course, the strategy changes again.
In the meantime, there are ongoing overtures for new
negotiations, but without either side changing its
position.
Sadr City. The administration of Prime
Minister Iyad Allawi and clerics from Sadr City, all of
whom were aligned with Muqtada al-Sadr, negotiated a
tentative agreement that would have banned US troops
from mounting patrols inside the huge Shi'ite slum in
the northeast corner of Baghdad, while the Sadrists
would not mount attacks on US bases or convoys outside
Sadr City. This was a considerable concession by the
Sadrists, since their strategy for expelling the
Americans from Iraq depends on mounting constant attacks
on US bases and convoys to strain US resources. In
addition, the Allawi administration promised to begin a
variety of reconstruction projects inside Sadr City,
marking the first time that any serious effort would be
made to repair the damage of 18 months of war.
The US command vetoed the agreement. While it
would have achieved one of the Americans' goals -
reducing guerrilla attacks on US bases and convoys - the
command correctly saw that it would frustrate its second
goal, because it would leave unhindered the political
control of Sadr City by the Mehdi Army and its clerical
allies. The US military explained the rejection by
saying the deal would allow the Mehdi militia to
reconstitute itself after its "devastating defeat" in
Najaf, but all the evidence indicates that the Najaf
battle did not weaken the Sadrists in Baghdad at all.
The day after this rejection, the US renewed
patrols and battles inside Sadr City, attempting to
create enough havoc and destruction to drive the
moderates back to the bargaining table. They soon
discovered, however, that these patrols were taking
heavy casualties without driving a wedge between the
clerical leadership and the guerrillas.
In
Najaf, the long siege generated real anger at the
Sadrists, who were not residents of the city; many
residents saw them as interlopers who brought the US
onslaught upon them. In Sadr City, the guerrillas are
family members and respected neighbors who had been
keeping crime down and the Americans out for months.
Hence US attacks tended to consolidate support for the
Mehdi, who were seen as preventing the Americans from
taking control and generally oppressing the community by
forcibly entering houses, terrorizing residents and
indiscriminately detaining men, women and even children.
After two weeks of battles and bombings, the US
temporarily withdrew to its bases, leaving control of
Sadr City to the guerrillas and their clerical
leadership. Currently, it appears that they have opted
for a bombing campaign like the one in Fallujah, though
so far the bombings have been occasional rather than
consistent. The fact that American reporters can access
Sadr City and report the carnage might be one deterrent.
Samarra. Soon after the end of the battle of
Najaf, US troops closed a key bridge into Samarra,
thereby instituting an economic blockade that in effect
cut off all normal commerce. This led to instant
hardship around the city and had the hoped-for impact: a
group of clerics negotiated a deal in which the bridge
was reopened in exchange for a guarantee that US troops
could enter the city without being attacked. This was
the first success of the new strategy, and a US patrol
entered the town unmolested on September 2. At City Hall
they stopped to announce and introduce a new
US-sponsored city government.
The next day, the
guerrillas denounced the agreement, and a section of the
local clerical leadership allied with the guerrillas
announced the formation of a new insurgent government
modeled after, and formally allied with, the Fallujah
government. This is a new threat to the US, because
coordination across liberated areas has been absent and
would be a huge tool against the occupation.
With two competing governments, the situation is
unsettled. US troops have been guarding City Hall
(apparently they do not trust Iraqi police to perform
this work with guerrillas still active), and they have
been fired upon at least once. So far, however, there
have been no reports of a major battle initiated by
either side. The resolution of this standoff could well
determine tactics that both sides use in other cities.
Tal Afar. The US chose this city as a
location for confronting the guerrillas, despite its
atypicality. Its residents are largely Turkmen and
mostly Shi'ite, and it lies on the border with Syria,
which makes it a hub for trade and for smuggling goods
and insurgents. Before the US attack in early September,
it been a "no go" location for American troops for only
about a month, and so the nature and support of the
insurgency is hard to discern. Most significant, while
it is clear that many Shi'ite Turkmen support the
guerrillas, the US Army insists, and some independent
observers agree, that many if not all the insurgents are
Sunni Arabs. If this is true, it would constitute an
unprecedented alliance between ethnicities within Iraq,
one that presages a more resourceful and unified
insurgency in the coming months.
There were some
brief negotiations with the Turkmen leadership in the
city, but no formal deals were offered. The US then
initiated a massive bombing campaign much more ferocious
than in any other locality - except perhaps Najaf at the
height of the siege. Though even public-health and
hospital officials denounced the bombing and reported
hundreds of civilian casualties, the US military claimed
that all dead and wounded were insurgents, including a
large number of women and children. One reporter quoted
an informant telling American soldiers that everyone in
a particular community was an insurgent, so this could
be the technical cover for their absurd claims. The
blanket bombing, combined with a US warning to evacuate,
led to upwards of 50,000 mainly Turkmen refugees fleeing
the city of 350,000 (some unconfirmed accounts reported
250,000 refugees).
After the bombing, the US
sent as many as 2,000 troops into the city, encountered
strong resistance and fought a battle for five days
before the guerrillas melted away. The US troops and
their Iraqi allies moved unhindered around the city for
several days, while outside protests against the
invasion mounted.
The key protest emanated from
the Turkish government, which denounced the US, saying
that virtually all the casualties were innocent Turkmen
civilians, and that no attacks on US troops had ever
been mounted by the Turkmens, who were the targets of
most of the violence. President Ahmet Necdet Sezar of
Turkey threatened to withdraw from the "coalition of the
willing" if the invading force did not leave Tal Afar
and restore the refugees to their homes.
Perhaps
this protest had some effect, because the US troops did
withdraw, and announcements were made inviting the
refugees to return. But this could also represent a
planned strategy, since the newly pacified city was
placed under the control of the Iraqi police and
National Guard.
There have been credible reports
that this campaign represents a new form of ethnic
cleansing, in which US troops evacuated Tal Afar to
facilitate the resettlement and domination of the city
by the Kurds. These reports claim that the police the US
left in charge are pesh merga, Kurdish militiamen
committed to Kurdish domination of the northwestern area
of the country. Tal Afar, as a border town sitting on
major commercial routes, would be a major asset if it
became a part of the Kurdish autonomous region within
the country or an independent Kurdish republic.
It is premature to conclude that the Tal Afar
campaign represents the most successful application of
the new US strategy, without waiting for the ultimate
reaction of the Turkmen minority in the city. Certainly
their experience with the attack dissipated whatever
sympathy they might have had for the Americans, and it
thus laid the foundation for an even more determined
rebellion as soon as they regain their equilibrium; but
they might also have been beaten into submission, a
result that appears to be the main US goal.
What is the prognosis? The campaign in
Tal Afar would appear to be the poster child for the new
strategy, but Tal Afar is atypical in Iraq, and even if
the Turkmens acquiesce to the new regime, their
capitulation would not signal that a similar result
could be expected in other localities.
More
promising for the US strategy is Samarra, a typical
Sunni city with a strong insurgency. The initial
willingness of some clerics to negotiate when pressured
by economic sanctions suggests that the US could
possibly identify and work with a compliant local
leadership in other cities controlled by insurgents. The
outcome is, of course, undetermined, and if the
resistance succeeds in isolating or eliminating the
newly appointed leadership and/or making a continued US
presence untenable, then this US strategy will fall into
the long list of failed efforts to pacify the
resistance. At present, however, this represents the
best prospect for the occupation to reassert its
authority somewhere.
Fallujah and Sadr City are
both more typical than Samarra and less promising for
the Americans. The initial effort to identify and work
with some local leaders has failed, leading the
Americans to terror tactics against the local
population. These have not worked in the past in either
location, and there is no sign of this latest iteration
working. It seems apparent that the Americans will wait
until after the US elections to activate a more
aggressive and more destructive second phase, aimed at
terrorizing the population into submission.
Perhaps the greatest success of the new strategy
thus far is a negative one. The havoc and destruction
wreaked by the terror bombing and invasion of Tal Afar
generated a strong reaction from Turkey, a ripple of
outrage in Iraq and the Middle East, and no protest at
all in Europe or the United States. The less severe, but
still brutal, attacks in Sadr City and Fallujah have
generated almost no complaints or declarations of
solidarity. This is a stark contrast to the April battle
in Fallujah, which generated worldwide denunciations,
and the siege of Najaf, which threatened to mobilize the
international Shi'ite community.
What the US may
have gained, therefore, is the apathy of the world to
escalating violence against Iraqi civilians. This, more
than the success or failure of these individual
campaigns, may lay a foundation for the massive
offensives that the US military appears to be preparing
for in the period just after the US elections in
November. The world is fully aware of the ability of the
US Air Force to level even a very large city, using
2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bombs delivered in great
numbers by carrier-based aircraft. The calibrated
increases in the destructiveness of US air attacks over
the past few months appears to have numbed local and
international outrage, a condition that allows for
further escalation and many more casualties.
The
actions of the Iraqi people - both insurgents and
civilians - may constrain this strategy before it
reaches the point of blanket bombing and wholesale
destruction. But even the most ferocious Iraqi
resistance may not be sufficient to deter the coming
November offensive. The Iraqis need and deserve the
support of the international community; the best (and
least destructive) deterrent against this impending
onslaught would be the threat of uncontrollable
worldwide protest should the US attempt to level either
Fallujah or Sadr City.
Michael
Schwartz, professor of sociology at the State
University of New York at Stony Brook, has written
extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and on US
business and government dynamics. His work on Iraq has
appeared on ZNet and TomDispatch, and in Z Magazine. His
books include Radical Politics and Social Structure,
The Power Structure of American Business (with Beth
Mintz), and Social Policy and the Conservative
Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo). He can be reached
atmschwartz25@aol.com.
