The news out of Iraq has been getting less bleak in the last couple of months, much to my surprise. What do Orgahs think? Has the Surge worked? Are the factions more or less slaughter-weary? Did losing Rumsfeld the micro-manager make room for a good soldier like Petraeus to do his thing?
Two questions, really: (1) What is causing the slowdown in chaos and carnage, and (2) can/will this be turned into an enduring peace?
Good article in The Economist this week, but I fear it may be for subscribers only, so I'm re-printing it below the tag.
Can a lull be turned into a real peace?
Dec 13th 2007 | BAGHDAD, BASRA AND FALLUJA
From The Economist print edition
The surge of American troops has dramatically reduced violence. But Iraq's politicians may still squander an obvious chance for reconciliation
AFTER more than three years as an interpreter for American troops in the city of Falluja, Dave (not his real name) recently had his hair cut for the first time by a local barber. Since then, several American marines based inside the city of some 300,000 people have also had their crew-cut domes locally shaved to a gleam. Six months ago they would have had their throats slit—and so, almost certainly, would the barber.
But times have changed dramatically. Once widely considered the most dangerous and xenophobic city in Iraq and one of the country's most resilient havens of al-Qaeda, Falluja is now enjoying a new, if tentative, peace. So, no less strikingly, is the whole of Anbar province, in which Falluja lies, and most of the Euphrates river valley. The Americans say that if you go north and north-west through Hit and Haditha and up to the border with Syria near the town of Qaim, it is clear that al-Qaeda has been chased out—with the co-operation of the local Sunnis and the tribal leaders. In those areas, which embrace the vast majority of Iraq's Sunni Arabs outside Baghdad, attacks against the American-led coalition forces have dropped more than tenfold compared with a year ago.
The peace in Falluja is fragile, as it is in the Sunni parts elsewhere. There is no knowing what would happen if the Americans left in a hurry. It is unclear whether al-Qaeda in Iraq (known in Western military circles as AQI) has been truly defeated or is biding its time. Nor is it certain that the local Sunni tribal leaders who have struck security deals with the Americans across Anbar province would, if the Americans left, make war or peace with the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad.
But however temporary it may prove to be, it is an extraordinary change. In the precinct of Nazal—one of Falluja's nine, each with a joint American-cum-Iraqi police station—locals watch warily as a dozen helmeted young American marines, their guns pointed at the ground, tramp slowly past, avoiding puddles of sewage and piles of rubbish (much favoured by insurgents as a place for planting roadside bombs), and smiling at the knots of ragged children who shout “Chocola, meester” and are sometimes given pencils instead.
After every ten steps or so, the marines swivel round and walk backwards, giving themselves a maximum field of vision. A couple of local Iraqi volunteers, clad in blue jeans and without helmets, accompany the patrol. Locals politely exchange salaams; veiled women with babes in arms retreat hastily behind high metal doors. But the marines say the mood has been transformed. No marine has been killed in Falluja since the summer's surge. The patrol stops from time to time as its leader, a fresh-faced corporal from Chicago, engages passers-by, via Dave, the newly coiffed interpreter from Baghdad, in amiably stilted badinage. A boy is asked about football. A shopkeeper talks about his oranges, and how business is only slowly improving. The Shia-led government in Baghdad, it is plainly believed, is loth to give much help to the Fallujans, with their reputation for Sunni extremism.
After the Americans' ten-day attack on Falluja in November 2004, much of the city was a mess of rubble; despite a spate of building that started in the summer, also thanks to the surge, the marks of destruction are still visible everywhere. At least 1,500 Islamist militants, most of them members of AQI, many of them foreign, were said to have been killed in the siege, but until this spring the city remained a smouldering hub of insurgency.
The turning point, apparently, was the al-Qaeda suicide-bombing of a policeman's funeral in May, when at least 27 locals were killed. Suddenly, it seems, the people began to react against al-Qaeda's excesses—the enforcement of strict dress codes, the banning of music, even (it is said) the cutting off of smokers' fingers—and were ready to endorse the local sheikhs' deals with the American army, even though it had pulverised their city.
Al-Qaeda on the defensive
Falluja is still not back to normal. A curfew remains in force. Just five entry points, guarded by American soldiers alongside Iraqi police, oversee access into the city. Each precinct is like a gated community. Every car must have an identity badge to be let in. Even so, a bombmaker occasionally gets through. “They're waiting and watching,” says an American lieutenant.
Moreover, the rest of Iraq, like Falluja, is still far more dangerous for Americans and other foreigners than it was in the first few months after the invasion of 2003, before the insurgency got going. The entire nerve-centre of the American administration, staffed by some 10,000 people, remains walled off in Baghdad's so-called “green zone”. Few foreign diplomats get out and about. Western journalists use a web of Iraqi reporters, but their movements are still restricted. Several of Baghdad's best-known streets remain off-limits to traffic.
However, it is clear that the al-Qaeda part of the insurgency, which is manned almost entirely by Iraqis though its suicide-bombers and its strategists may still be foreign, has been hard hit. Although in November more than 20 civilians were killed on an average day, mainly by sectarian violence, that is far less than the toll a year ago, when the discovery of as many as 100 corpses at dawn was not unusual. An independent website, icasualties.org, while admitting that Iraqi civilian deaths are hard to count, puts the figure of Iraqi security forces and civilians killed in November at around 560, compared with more than 3,000 last February. American military deaths since October are less than a third of the figure a year ago.
All the indicators suggest that violence has subsided sharply nearly everywhere, not just in Anbar, but also in Baghdad. The border crossing to Syria near Qaim has opened after several years' closure. The oil pipeline from Kirkuk, which goes north into Turkey and should carry more than a fifth of Iraq's oil exports, has been flowing almost without a break for the first time in years; in 2006, it was open for barely 40 days. “We are close to a sustainable level of violence,” says the overall commander of the American-led forces, General David Petraeus. He means that fears of a murderous sectarian meltdown have receded, though he gives constant warning that things could slip back again.
Meanwhile, the Shia heartlands around Karbala and Najaf have been quiet since a bloody bout of intra-Shia sectarian violence in Karbala in August. Since September, when the British left the centre of Basra, Iraq's second city, which is 95% Shia, violence there too has dipped very sharply—and the British, now encamped at an airport outside the city, are being fired on some ten times less than before.
The Kurds are also at peace, despite the hiccup in October and November, when the Turkish army threatened to invade in force in order to clobber the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a group of Turkish-Kurdish guerrillas who use a remote and rugged strip of Iraqi Kurdistan's borderland as a haven. The exception is the disputed city of Kirkuk, where ethno-sectarian violence, mainly between Kurds and Sunni Arabs, shows no sign of abating.
But a bitter battle is still being fought upstream along the Tigris river valley and its tributaries, up to Mosul and beyond. The mixed-sect province of Diyala is probably today's bloodiest cockpit, where the Americans and their allies in the Iraqi security forces are fighting an array of Islamist and nationalist insurgents with al-Qaeda again to the fore.
The surge is by no means the sole reason for Iraq's improved security. A truce was called in August by the biggest and perhaps bravest of the Shia militias, the Mahdi Army, better known to the American-led coalition by its Arabic acronym JAM (from Jaish al-Mahdi), whose gunmen are known as JAMsters. This in turn may have helped turn Sunnis against al-Qaeda; facing fewer attacks from the Shia militias, they had less cause to embrace a ruthless Sunni protector.
The Sunni awakening
But the biggest reason is probably the agreements that the Americans have struck in Anbar province with Sunni tribal leaders who have formed a group known as al-Sahwa (the Awakening). The Americans have armed some 65,000 Sunnis, with another 12,000 or so keen to sign up, in tribal battalions known in coalition-speak as “Concerned Local Citizens” (CLCs). These groups have also set up militias in some suburbs of Baghdad, mainly in the capital's west, where the Sunnis had hosted al-Qaeda with varying degrees of reluctance in the face of a sectarian onslaught. Some 12,000 Shia are also said to be poised to join CLC groups to co-operate with the Americans elsewhere.
The Americans are also freeing thousands of the 25,000-odd detainees they hold on suspicion of being insurgents (quite separately from the thousands more in Iraqi government custody). In the past few months some 3,000 have been let out, and imams have been helping to persuade those about to be freed to disavow AQI.
Yet another reason is what a senior British officer calls “a huge change in American behaviour” since the wily and thoughtful General Petraeus took up his post in January. Efforts to co-operate with local imams, to respect local culture, to hire more locals as interpreters and to increase the number of Arabic-speakers on American military and civilian staffs have borne fruit. It helps, too, that the American ambassador, Ryan Crocker, is an experienced Arabist who can also speak a bit of Farsi.
In Falluja, female officers are deployed to question and search women. American soldiers there almost never go into mosques. But befriending imams is now a priority. Earlier this week, one of Falluja's leading imams, Sheikh Nazar, who has been a critical ally against al-Qaeda, officiated at the opening of a revamped police station. “If we lose him, we lose the lot,” says a marine lieutenant.
It is plain that many of the CLC and tribal groups previously supported—indeed were part of—the national or “honourable” resistance to the occupation and have simply switched sides, seeing that, at any rate in the short run, the Americans could protect them against Shia militia depredations. But many insurgent groups apart from al-Qaeda are still fighting against the Americans and their allies. Some analysts have counted more than 75 of them. Certain prominent groups, such as the 1920 Revolutionary Brigades, named after an uprising soon after the British invented Iraq as a country, say they are simply waiting for the surge and the lull to end before erupting again. Others among these fractious bands are talking to the Americans, and may yet make peace.
A golden opportunity
What is clear, in any event, is that there is a gaping window of opportunity for economic, diplomatic and political progress. On the economic front, most development had been stymied by insecurity. Now projects are starting to go ahead. Electricity in Baghdad is on for up to 12 hours a day, against eight hours six months ago. Oil production, though still not at its pre-war level, has climbed from its trough of 1.75m barrels a day in January last year to more than 2.5m b/d today. Shops are reopening in many parts of Baghdad, and businessmen are hopeful, though foreign investors have yet to return.
On the diplomatic front there are hints of progress, too. American generals have cautiously noted an apparently greater readiness on the part of Syria to clamp down on al-Qaeda and the traffic of insurgents across its border. Iran, too, may be stanching the flow of weaponry to its Iraqi Shia militia friends. More broadly, there is a growing acceptance, both by Iraq's government and by the Americans, that political progress requires a regional framework in which Iraq's key neighbours—Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey and Iran—can play a part. The United Nations is back in greater numbers, with a high-class envoy, Staffan de Mistura, ready to help, especially with tricky issues such as provincial polls and the question of Kirkuk.
So Iraq's politicians at last have a chance to use the breathing space provided by the surge and by the Awakening to accommodate each other. Several issues are ripe for resolution. An oil law, to divide revenue equitably while giving regions (especially the Kurdish one) some freedom to grant exploration and management contracts locally, has been in the offing for more than a year. A revised deBaathification law, to bring back officials from the Saddam Hussein era into public service, is under scrutiny, along with a pensions law to give such officials a better deal.
Perhaps most important, a provincial-elections law is under discussion. This could lead the way to new elections in the spring, enabling the newly “awakened” Sunnis of western and northern Iraq to empower themselves, especially in budget matters; last time round, in January 2005, they boycotted the elections. If they had real power in their provinces, they might drop their fierce opposition to devolution, which they have hitherto seen as a Western device to fragment their country.
Alas, there has so far been no sign that the government of Nuri al-Maliki is poised to grab this opportunity. Indeed, as an adviser to General Petraeus glumly describes it, “The politics is going nowhere.” The government still acts like a collection of competing fiefs, not a body that speaks with a national voice. Even among Shias, a paralysing factionalism has, if anything, got worse. The two principal Shia parties, Mr Maliki's Dawa and the better-organised Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), both fear the mass appeal of Muqtada al-Sadr, who has stayed out of government but often calls the shots on the streets.
Worse, Mr Maliki is still failing to reach out effectively to the Sunnis. The main Sunni block in parliament, which had a clutch of ministries in the ruling coalition, continues to take no part in government. Relations worsened recently when a son of Adnan al-Dulaimi, a leader of the biggest Sunni block in parliament, was arrested with some 30 of his father's personal guards on suspicion of involvement in insurgent bombings. To cap it all, the Sunnis are sorely divided too—and not just over al-Qaeda. The main Sunni block in parliament is deeply wary of the Awakening in Anbar, which may displace it as the authentic voice of the Sunnis nationwide.
Mr Maliki himself sounds particularly hostile to the notion of the CLCs—the mainly Sunni tribal militias—being inducted into the security forces or civil service as part of the price of peace. The new Shia establishment hates the arming of the Sunni militias because it thinks they may one day turn their guns against the Shias.
The current edgy lull is due in large measure to a series of local deals cut between the American army (and the British army in Basra) and groups close to the insurgents, with the centrally run state thereby diminished. Indeed, it can be argued that such deals are eroding the state and its fragile institutions still more. But it may be the only way to go.
A tendency to disagree
The fundamental flaw in Iraqi politics persists. The new Shia order remains loth, after centuries of oppression, to give the Sunnis a decent slice of power; and the minority Sunnis seem unable to accept second place in a devolved state. Last week a deputy prime minister, a Sunni, denied that Shias outnumber Sunni Arabs.
In his memoir of service as a British diplomat, among other places in Baghdad in the 1960s, Sir Donald Hawley characterises the Iraqis thus:
[They] are a very talented, intellectual people and have no lack of experts on many subjects. They have a tendency, however, not to agree with one another and are no strangers to violence. Late at night after several strong whiskies, they could be very frank on many subjects, including themselves, and would sometimes grow quite maudlin. We are a very bad people and very difficult to govern. Did we not kill Ali [the Prophet Muhammad's son-in-law, whom the Shias revere]? Did we not kill Hussain [his son]? Very few have successfully dominated us...Nuri Said [the pro-British prime minister, assassinated in 1958] too knew how to govern Iraq,” they would say. It is an Iraqi trait to admire strength and to respect it for the stability it can give.
Mr Maliki has a last chance to change things for the better. Iraq's battered people are yearning for their politicians to make up. But some things do not change.
The following snippet hints at one answer to the first of your questions:
Originally Posted by Lemur
(1) What is causing the slowdown in chaos and carnage
Originally Posted by article
"At some point, people simply had enough," Subhi says. The men in the town wanted a future for their families and decided the path to that future involved working with, rather than against, the Americans. Whereas before, people had been paralyzed with fear, they began informing US troops about insurgents' activities. Others would speak up if they saw suspicious-looking characters on the streets of Rawah.
People seem to realize that many of the insurgents in Iraq are not fighting for the people of Iraq but for their own cause. And not only seem people to realize that - they also start to act on this realization.
At the risk of speaking too soon, I'd say it's largely to do with Petraeus being a genius. He quite literally wrote the book on counter-insurgencies.
Originally Posted by Ser Clegane
People seem to realize that many of the insurgents in Iraq are not fighting for the people of Iraq but for their own cause. And not only seem people to realize that - they also start to act on this realization.
That's a good start, but without the ability to capitalize on these sentiments, they wouldn't get us far. Originally, I was skeptical of a surge since it seemed just to be throwing more troops at the problem and only making more targets. However, as I read more of the specifics (as they were released to the public) about what was actually being done, I became more optimistic. So far, the results have been tough to argue with.
The only shame is that it took us this long to get to this point. I think if we had the right people in charge over there sooner, we'd be years ahead of the game.
Last edited by Xiahou; 12-17-2007 at 21:20.
"Don't believe everything you read online."
-Abraham Lincoln
Petraeus for president! Rumsfeld was the right guy for the wrong time but I did love his press conferences. Without Iraq he was the man, with Iraq Powell is.
I don't know if the surge is having any direct effect but the symbolism may be more important. Once the local tribal leaders knew that this isn't another Somalia they began to support us. We're the lesser of two evils and want to leave as soon as possible. Al-Queda and their ilk want to stay and assert their dominance. The locals may just be giving us what we want so we'll leave and they can resume their traditional roles. I can live with that as long as congress doesn't do to them what they did to South Vietnam in '75.
I want victory (as defined by long-term peace and prosperity) but I agree with your assessment of "less bleak".
Reinvent the British and you get a global finance center, edible food and better service. Reinvent the French and you may just get more Germans.
I would say it's the change of strategy, along with battle-weariness, has made all the difference. That, and the change of goals that has come with the other changes. Finally some people with better knowledge have taken the control away from Bush and Rumsfeld.
It's too early to say if this will bring about a lasting improvement however. All that can be said for sure, is that it has increased the chances of establishing at least temporary peace, i.e. increased the chance of war victory, but that doesn't necessarily mean victory in the long-term struggle - whatever that is. With the change of goals in the war (to the better) it isn't entirely clear any more what the goal of the long-term struggle is. Hopefully it will have improved in a similar direction as the war strategy changed.
Under construction...
"In countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Norway, there is no separation of church and state." - HoreTore
I would say it's the change of strategy, along with battle-weariness, has made all the difference. That, and the change of goals that has come with the other changes. Finally some people with better knowledge have taken the control away from Bush and Rumsfeld.
This is why I don't trust people when they speak against the war:
Battle weariness: Do you mean from our "broken" Army? Who is more weary, our soldiers on multiple deployments far from home or local belligerents? (that's not the correct use of the word but a good catch-all)
Change of goals: What was our original goal? What was it changed to?
People with "better knowledge": The president is still the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. General Petraeus serves at the pleasure of the president as do all commissioned officers. How do you think he received his command?
Nothing against you personally but I'm curious as to what you meant by that. This is the alcohol and rage filled Backroom after all.
Reinvent the British and you get a global finance center, edible food and better service. Reinvent the French and you may just get more Germans.
In fairness to Rodion, our President did say that if his party had not been clobbered in the '06 elections, he would not have asked Rumsfeld to resign. So in a sort of extremely indirect way, the course of the war was influenced more by the voters than ... oh, nevermind. It's not even worth trying to torture logic that far.
Let's just agree that Rumsfeld was not the man for the job, and it looks as though Petraeus is.
In fairness to Rodion, our President did say that if his party had not been clobbered in the '06 elections, he would not have asked Rumsfeld to resign. So in a sort of extremely indirect way, the course of the war was influenced more by the voters than ... oh, nevermind. It's not even worth trying to torture logic that far.
Let's just agree that Rumsfeld was not the man for the job, and it looks as though Petraeus is.
Holy metal floor Batman! I agree.
But the twisting logic part comes in again because the two have completely different jobs. Who was the guy before? I can't spell his name.
Reinvent the British and you get a global finance center, edible food and better service. Reinvent the French and you may just get more Germans.
Battle weariness: Do you mean from our "broken" Army? Who is more weary, our soldiers on multiple deployments far from home or local belligerents? (that's not the correct use of the word but a good catch-all)
The opponents you're fighting are more wearied because of high casualties, little achievements, long period of suffering for their own civilians who therefore despise them more than anyone offering to truly help the civilians (Petraeus' changes have been directed towards achieving this), and a number of other things.
Originally Posted by Vladimir
Change of goals: What was our original goal? What was it changed to?
For starters, the fact that Bush's cowboy rhetorics have now been replaced by an attitude more directed at trying to understand the region in which the conflict is being fought. Commanders more directed at blindly occupying all regions without a plan for trying to win the battle rather than directed at gaining the strongest sympathy among the regular civilians, have now been replaced by more capable commanders with reverse priorities in that aspect - a dramatic change in goals.
The new commanders are commanders try to identify friends and neutrals, and are directed at getting an end to the fighting. The previous commanders seemed more directed at trying to get as many frags as possible among people who hold guns, regardless of whether this would be achieved through the strategy of trying to make as many unarmed as possible take up weapons. The new commanders are commanders who trust that if the civilians in Iraq are offered safety and guarantees, most of them will like it. Commanders who realize that the Iraqis are humans, and that cooperating with the majority of them is better than trying to get enemies with as many as possible, or to destabilize the region. The old strategy, the strategy of Rumsfeld, seemed to rather have the goal of trying a naive divide et impera by getting the smaller factions to fight each others as much as possible, and destabilize the region as much as possible. This change in attitude from sabotage to cooperation is dramatic. Let's hope that this is indeed a change of goals and not just a temporary change in strategy, and that Rumsfeld's sabotage and destruction attitude won't come back.
Originally Posted by Vladimir
People with "better knowledge": The president is still the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. General Petraeus serves at the pleasure of the president as do all commissioned officers. How do you think he received his command?
Bush has apparently felt pressured to hand over command from the previous commanders, who fought in a way corresponding to Bush's cowboy rhetorics, to people who know their stuff. People that hold the same opinions as most people who criticised Bush's behavior in the war up till around 1 year ago. This probably means there has been a weakening of Bush's internal circle of advisors, or - even better - that Bush has realized his shortcomings and failures and tried to correct them. Regardless of which, it's a great victory for the majority of the American people who have criticised the senseless madness that the war was before Petraeus' command begun. It is also a great victory for the liberals that as soon as the strategy they proposed was put into use, the war went through a massive turning point.
Last edited by Rodion Romanovich; 12-18-2007 at 18:40.
Under construction...
"In countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Norway, there is no separation of church and state." - HoreTore
Again you have proven you have little understanding of the conflict. Your second point can't be defended and is actually the British method of stability operations.
The commanders in Iraq are the same commanders you criticize. What you mean to say is that a new strategy is being executed by them.
The "liberals" offered no strategic insight. "Stop the war" is their rallying cry. "Bush lied, people died" was a common one as well.
When writing something pay careful attention to the repetition of certain words. The use of words like "I" as well as someone's name used repetitively reveal a certain detachment from one's surroundings.
Last edited by Vladimir; 12-18-2007 at 21:07.
Reinvent the British and you get a global finance center, edible food and better service. Reinvent the French and you may just get more Germans.
Petraeus for president! Rumsfeld was the right guy for the wrong time but I did love his press conferences. Without Iraq he was the man, with Iraq Powell is.
Ya, poor guy is going to be judged harshly. He was brought in to modernize the Cold War military complex, which he had some success at. I did love his press conferences...
He kind of reminds me of David Schwimmer in Band of Brothers..
"He kind of reminds me of David Schwimmer in Band of Brothers.." Because he didn't know to read a map, or because he fall in all ambushes?
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. Voltaire.
"I've been in few famous last stands, lad, and they're butcher shops. That's what Blouse's leading you into, mark my words. What'll you lot do then? We've had a few scuffles, but that's not war. Think you'll be man enough to stand, when the metal meets the meat?"
"You did, sarge", said Polly." You said you were in few last stands."
"Yeah, lad. But I was holding the metal"
Sergeant Major Jackrum 10th Light Foot Infantery Regiment "Inns-and-Out"
Petraeus for president! Rumsfeld was the right guy for the wrong time but I did love his press conferences. Without Iraq he was the man, with Iraq Powell is.
Powell would have fought another Desert Storm 1, i.e. a slow methodical bombardment designed to grind down defences, followed by a (relatively) slow advance using conventional ground warfare.
How is this better than using a lightning blitz to cause the immediate collapse of all organised resistance?
Rumsfelds war was brilliant, his 'peace' was the disaster.
BOT: I am delighted with what is this positive trend in iraq news, i read the derspiegal article a day or two back.
Back in Jan 2003 i guessed that:
> the war would be over in at most a month.
> iraq would be chaotic for five years
> iraq would be 'normal' in 10 - 15 years.
I may not have been too far off the mark.
The news out of Iraq has been getting less bleak in the last couple of months, much to my surprise. What do Orgahs think? Has the Surge worked? Are the factions more or less slaughter-weary? Did losing Rumsfeld the micro-manager make room for a good soldier like Petraeus to do his thing?
Yes to all the questions asked. Xiahou is right, patraeus is a smart guy. The question now becomes can the calming effect last with draw downs of troops? Thats the 64 million dollar questions as just under the radar you have the Brits leaving Basra and there is rumblings of inter shia power struggles going on.
I think the surge has worked, but like classic Bush admin policy on Iraq how is it that we get to the next level? Yet again it all seems to be predicated on progress from the iraqi's politically and thats a mistake.
There are few things more annoying than some idiot who has never done anything trying to say definitively how something should be done.
Improvement in Iraq
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Re: Improvement in Iraq
Originally Posted by Lemur
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