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2 SPEAKING
FREELY An uphill battle on Baghdad's mean
streets By Brian M Downing
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
The United States'
war in Iraq, as is more apparent with each passing
year, is going badly. The administration of
President George W Bush has recently admitted as
much and announced a new strategy - or at least a
new word. "Counterinsurgency" glitters in studies
of guerrilla war, darkles in news reports, but is
not
generally understood. Accordingly, the term either
enjoys a talismanic quality, offering hope of
reversing failing fortunes, or it is dismissed as
a new buzzword, replacing others that have lost
luster and utility.
Counterinsurgency
doctrine was developed by innovative British and
French officers as they fought anti-colonial
movements during the post-World War II period in
Malaya, Indochina and Algeria. In these conflicts,
Western armies, which were accustomed to fighting
other conventional armies (that is, each other),
sought to learn to fight indigenous forces, which
fought guerrilla-style and enjoyed support from
the local population.
In essence,
counterinsurgency doctrine presents ways of
defeating insurgent guerrillas by separating them,
physically and politically, from the local
populace. A critical start is moving people away
from areas of substantial guerrilla activity and
relocating them to areas under government control.
(The Strategic Hamlet Program of the Vietnam War
is a case in point.) Alternatively, military force
is used to drive insurgents out of an area,
leaving the people in place.
Second,
government forces, both military and civilian,
maintain a presence in the cleared area or
relocation camp. They live and work among the
people, protect them from attack, and eventually
develop their trust. Government forces operate
much like cops on their beats (an
often-encountered simile in the texts, this),
building confidence, trading favors and developing
intelligence networks.
In time, the
government provides basic services, jobs and
education - things guerrillas promise but can
rarely deliver amid war. Having established a
secure locus, government control expands by
repeating the process in adjacent areas, spreading
across the country like an oil spot on water
(another often-encountered simile), until the
guerrillas are pushed into geographically and
politically marginal areas, and the insurgency
founders.
The record of counterinsurgency
programs is mixed, successful here and there, but
often only in specific regions of an embattled
country (Algiers in the Algerian War) and for
reasons peculiar to those regions (ethnic mistrust
in Malaya).
It might be useful at the
outset of efforts in Iraq to ask whether the US
military is capable of developing and putting into
place an effective counterinsurgency program.
Though the hard experience of Vietnam and the
intervening 35 years afforded the motivation and
time to develop counterinsurgency training, the
military remained focused on fighting the Warsaw
Pact in Central Europe and, later, conventional
armies in the Middle East.
Furthermore, US
generals resisted emphasis on counterinsurgency,
in no small part to reduce the likelihood of being
sent to fight another guerrilla war - something
that after Vietnam they all but vowed to avoid.
The marines might be prepared to fare
better. They developed a measure of expertise in
Central America during the 1920s and 1930s and
later used it limitedly though moderately
successfully in Vietnam. Civilian leadership over
the past 10 years or so has mandated greater
emphasis on "civil operations" - a cousin of
counterinsurgency - but both the US Army and
Marine Corps have learned much of their
counterinsurgency skill in the unforgiving
classrooms of Iraq.
General David
Petraeus, the new US commander in Iraq, a gifted
officer who has studied long and hard there, will
institute the new curriculum. Many of his students
are tired, however, and perhaps not amenable to
putting aside long-standing outlooks and methods.
The beginning of the new counterinsurgency
program has been well publicized. In Baghdad,
Sunni Arab sections of the city will be cleared of
insurgents and whatever al-Qaeda fighters are also
there. This will be the most intense combat of the
war - the battle of Baghdad. The announcement of
Baghdad as the beginning point, though unavoidable
and obvious, is problematic.
As attuned as
anyone to recent announcements, insurgent leaders,
who have thus far demonstrated formidable tactical
skills and increased cooperation among factions,
know precisely where and roughly when the new
phase will start. Preparations have almost
certainly begun. Arms caches, observation
positions, fields of fire and tiers of explosive
devices are probably being set up for a defense in
depth throughout Sunni Baghdad.
Insurgent
leaders probably know they cannot defeat the US
and Iraqi troops in the battle of Baghdad, at
least not in the usual sense. They will seek to
inflict high casualties on US and Iraqi
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