Iraq

I recently posted on Counterinsurgency (see http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2012/03/counterinsurgency.html).  In that post I promised to have more to say on Iraq and Afghanistan.  This is the Iraq post.  I actually wrote an Iraq oriented document on counterinsurgency a few years ago but did not publish it.  The counterinsurgency post was based on that document.  I removed most of the Iraq specific content of that document while editing it to make the counterinsurgency post.  This document is an expanded version of the Iraq content I removed.

Iraq is not an old country.  It was created in the post World War I era.  Its construction was based on the British perspective on how the area should be organized with little consideration for and no input from the locals.  As a result the population of Iraq consists of three discordant segments:  The Shia, the Sunni, and the Kurds.  For most of Iraq's history no one much cared that these groups did not actually get along that well.  During Iraq's recent history Iraq was governed by Saddam Hussein.  Saddam ruled through the Baath party and was a Sunni.  He was able to suppress the political aspirations of the Kurds and the Shia.  He governed by using standard Secret Police tactics.  He was effective enough at governing to prosecute a long and painful war against Iran, a much larger and more powerful neighboring country.  He used the standard tactic of ginning up fear of an external enemy to maintain his power.  For a long time the external enemy was Iran but in his later years he shifted to using the West in general and the U.S. in particular as the bogeyman.

In 1990 in a miscalculation Saddam invaded Kuwait, a small weak country with a lot of oil.  This precipitated the first Gulf War.  Actual combat operations lasted 100 hours.  The U.S. led coalition had little trouble dealing with the extensive Iraqi military, which was organized along traditional lines.  The war, and particularly the "softening up" process that preceded actual combat operations severely damaged both Iraqi military and industrial capability.  Various post war strategies could have been employed.  But the one selected left Saddam enough maneuvering room to retain power.  The first component was to let Iraqi forces retreat from Kuwait as long as they abandoned all heavy equipment.  This left the Iraqi military intact from a personnel point of view but left it under equipped.  The second component was a "no fly" zone.  All fixed wing military craft were to stay on the ground.  Limited use of rotary (helicopter) craft was allowed.  The third component was to abandon indigenous opposition (Shia in the South, Kurds in the North) to their fate, even though these factions had been encouraged to revolt in the run up to combat operations.  Saddam was able to marshall enough military power to put down both of these revolts.  This allowed Saddam to retain the support of the military.  This was combined with long standing Secret Police activities that were unaffected by any of the wars (e.g. Iran, Kuwait).  The Secret Police had successfully weakened opposition enough to render them ineffective without large scale support from outside.  With this support lacking Saddam continued in power.

But Saddam was greatly weakened.  The economy was in poor shape.  The two wars had drained resources from the economy.  His military capacity was much reduced.  In short, his ability to actually do anything was modest.  But Saddam had maintained a reputation for fearsomeness for a long time.  He decided to continue this strategy.  But where in the past this reputation was backed with actual capability that was no longer possible.  But he gambled that he could run a giant bluff.  He would talk like could still deliver.  So he claimed that his military was resuscitated.  He claimed that he had revitalized nuclear and chemical capabilities he had once had.  He gambled that outside powers would not be able to gather enough reliable intelligence to contradict him.  His Secret Police operation was still as formidable as always.  They were generally successful in combating HUMINT (spies on the ground).  For whatever reason SIGINT (spy satellites, photo reconnaissance, etc.) were either unable to detect his lies or weren't believed.  One contributing factor was certainly that the George W. Bush administration really wanted to invade Iraq.

So based on "WMD" that didn't exist, a nuclear program that didn't exist, chemical/biological programs that didn't exist, HUMINT provided by Ahmed Chalabi's organization that turned out to be a pack of lies, and links to al-Qaeda that did not exist, the U.S. initiated a second Gulf War.  Again the Iraqi military was dispatched with little trouble.  This time the country was completely occupied.

So where are we with respect to the thesis advanced in my counterinsurgency piece?  First, the history of Iraq gives ample reason for the indigenous population to view the central government as illegitimate.  But for many years there was no counterinsurgency.  Why?  Because Saddam deployed the first counterinsurgency strategy.  He created an extensive Secret Police operation.  And it was successful.  There were no successful insurgencies mounted from within Iraq.  From time to time the Kurds became a serious problem.  There he bolstered his Secret Police tactics with military tactics.  He bombed the Kurds with poison gas killing large numbers of them.  This cooled things down enough so that he could go back to standard Secret Police tactics.



If the second Gulf War had actually been over when President Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" then I would not be writing this piece.  But within months of the end of the standard military component of what is now in the U.S. called the Iraq War an insurgency began operating.  They mostly used the standard "blend in with the general population" strategy to make themselves hard to find.  The U.S. did make two significant contributions to making them effective, particularly in the early phases.  The U.S. disbanded the Iraqi army.  This created a large group of young males with no job prospects (the economy was in shambles) and military training.  We also did not secure the many Iraqi military ammo dumps.  The insurgents were able to carry off large amounts of small arms, explosives, and other equipment that could be very effectively used against us.

There has been a lot of debate as to what the Bush plan for the post war period was.  Nothing was published before the end of the war and whatever the plan was it was so badly implemented that it is hard to discern what was intended but bungled versus what happened that was unintended.   The only thing we know for sure is that the transition to an Iraqi run government we liked was supposed to be short.  Plans called for a total withdrawal for all U.S. troupes within a few months.  Also, the number of U.S. troupes used initially was enough to defeat the Iraqi military but not to occupy and run the country for an extended post war period.  My theory is that the U.S. government believed that Chalabi, who was close to the Bush Administration, would be warmly received by the Iraqi general public.  This would allow him to quickly form a government that was broadly supported by the Iraqi public and move on to governing with a minimum of fuss.  This, in turn, would allow the U.S. to make a quick exit.

This did not happen.  When Chalabi, an Iraqi expatriate who had been living abroad for many years, returned to Iraq the initial reaction by Iraqis was "who is this person?"  This was quickly followed by "whoever he is, we don't like him and we don't trust him".  Chalabi has never garnered substantial support within Iraq.  If I am right that that was "plan A" then the problem was that there was no "plan B" to fall back on once it became apparent that "plan A" was not working.  Not only was there no one to quickly hand over control of the government to, there was now an insurgency.

This caused the Bush people to make it up as they went.  They also consistently underestimated the difficulty and cost, both in terms of money and in terms of the number of troupes.  Iraq was consistently under resourced.  There was also another problem.  The Bush Administration strongly believed in outsourcing.  So large contracts were written to firms with close ties to the administration for key components of what strategy there was.  These companies' first priority was to make a lot of money, which they did.  The Bush people performed almost no oversight so there was lots of waste, fraud, and inefficiency.  What little there was of a strategy was poorly implemented and thus got poor results.

The early stages of the Iraq post war period was when I developed my "willing and able" test.  It proved itself, unfortunately.  In the early days I am convinced that there were many Iraqis who did see us as liberators who had released the country from the oppression of the Saddam regime.  So these people were more than willing to "drop a dime on" (e.g. rat out) the insurgents.  The problem they had was there was no one on the other end.  All of the power resided with the U.S., usually our military.  But the phones weren't working.  And if they worked there was no one on the other end who spoke the local language.  So it was literally impossible to drop a dime.  Later Iraqis became discouraged as the security situation deteriorated and became unwilling to drop a dime.  Whatever trust the Iraqis had that the U.S. would do the right thing, that they could tell the good guys from the bad guys, evaporated.  We now had both a "willing" and an "able" problem.  It is no surprise that things got worse.

After the U.S. 2004 election a general review was undertaken by several groups.  The general conclusion of pretty much all of them was that there was no reason to put good money in after bad.  Instead we should wind things up and leave.  This did not sound like "victory" to George W. Bush.  So he searched far and wide for someone who put forth a strategy that led to something that could be called "victory".  This led him to General Petraeus.  Petraeus had become an expert in counterinsurgency.  He literally wrote the book on the subject for the U.S. military.  His "Counterinsurgency Field Manual" is available on line.  It is Army publication "FM 3-24" and USMC publication "MCWP 3-33.5".  I found it recently on the web at http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/coin/repository/FM_3-24.pdf.  It is an excellent document.  Its only weakness is that it is written from the perspective of and for the use of military personnel.  As such, it assumes that there is a large civilian oriented nation building effort going on into which the military will be slotted.  So it focuses on military issues in that context and does not take the broader view of everything that needs to be done.  But if you read between the lines you can get a good idea of what the overall process needs to accomplish.

And the U.S. took a military-centric approach to the problem with a much smaller civilian component.  Without admitting that we were now in the business of nation building we started trying to nation build in Iraq.  Most of the effort was undertaken by the military.  It should have failed dramatically but it did not.  The reason was that Petraeus's timing turned out to be perfect.  Concurrent with the shift in policy by the U.S. was a shift in thinking by the Sunni Iraqis.  We had the "Sunni Awakening".  A large group of important Sunnis decided they were better off working with the U.S. rather than opposing us.  As the Sunnis formed the backbone of the insurgency this immediately reduced it in size and effectiveness.  The shift to the Petraeus approach was critical because it positioned the U.S. to be a willing partner when these Iraqis approached us.  After than things started going much better for the U.S.

Then another good thing happened.  Nouri al-Maliki turned out to be more competent that most people, including myself, expected.  In March 2008 he started "the battle of Basra", an all-Iraqi effort.  Although not a complete victory it convinced everyone that the al-Maliki government was for real.  Al-Maliki continued to gain more control and separate himself from the U.S.  At the end of 2008 he was able to negotiate a timeline for the removal of all U.S. forces.  The deadline in that plan (the end of 2011) was ultimately met.  So Iraq gradually transitioned from a country effectively run by the U.S. to an independent country run more or less effectively by the Iraqis.  In short, the transition to a legitimate government in Iraq was successfully completed.

In my opinion the most critical reason for this transition was the Sunni Awakening.  This took most of the steam out of the insurgency as local support dried up to a great extent.  But the shift to the Petraeus strategy and al-Maliki becoming an effective leader of an Iraqi based government were also critical.

So critical elements of my analysis are vindicated.  The key factor in defeating an insurgency is to create a functioning government that can deliver services, particularly security services to the populace.  The al-Maliki government's ability to fill that role, successfully in the eyes of Iraqis, was critical.  That government also successfully repositioned itself as a "local" government, not a puppet of the U.S.

Is the insurgency in Iraq completely dead?  No!  And many see rough sailing for Iraq.  The tension between the Sunnis, the Shia, and the Kurds continues.  Sectarian violence continues.  But I see most of the violence in Iraq stemming from Sunni/Shiite/Kurd tension.  I think Iraqis see it the same way.  So the violence stems primarily from sectarian tensions and not from an insurgency.  So I see this violence as manageable.  I am optimistic about the future of Iraq.  Will it be a peaceful and stable country like your typical European country?  Not any time soon.  But I think the Iraqis will manage to muddle their way to an accommodation somehow.

This will be helped by oil.  Iraq has vast reserves and terrible infrastructure.  There is a lot of money to be made, particularly at current oil prices of over $100/barrel, if Iraq's oil fields can be properly developed.  It is important to reach a revenue sharing deal among the factions.  I think that is possible.  Once that is done then it is a simple matter of investing in improved infrastructure.  This can easily be funded out of oil revenue so cost is not an impediment.  And if a deal can be done then there will be a lot of money to share around.  I think that money can be used effectively to smooth out the rough spots between the factions.  It will not be pretty but it will work.