The surge: one year later

[CommunityEditor]

BAGHDAD — A year ago in Baghdad: Shiite militiamen and Sunni insurgents owned entire neighborhoods and key areas beyond. Iraq’s government was adrift, and U.S. commanders weighed the real possibility of being trapped in a full-scale civil war.

Washington’s response was “the surge,” launched Feb. 14, 2007, with the 82nd Airborne as the vanguard of an American troop buildup that would climb to 30,000 extra U.S. soldiers by summer.

A year later — through a mix of military might, new allies and some fortunate timing — Iraq looks very different.

The crackdown in Baghdad and surrounding areas was seen as a last ditch effort to salvage the American mission in Iraq and, in the words of President Bush, give Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki “breathing space.”

The concern now is how to build on the gains as the surge forces are pulled back, and some major challenges appear far from any clear answers: whether Iraq’s Shiite majority will further fray into rival factions and how much Iran will exert its considerable influence.

Al-Maliki’s government is still struggling to get firm footing, but has recently tried to push through some of the U.S.-demanded political reforms for reconciliation.

The U.S.-led forces have successfully tamped down violence, and the Pentagon has forged critical pacts with Sunni fighters against al-Qaida in Iraq, which is trying to regroup in northern parts of the country.

After a sharp initial spike in military and civilian casualties, the numbers make a strong case that the surge generally accomplished its main goal.

Before February 2007 was out, 1,801 Iraqis and 81 U.S. soldiers would die. By contrast, January 2008 saw figures of 609 and 39, respectively.

Anbar province, which stretches to the Saudi Arabian, Jordanian and Syrian borders west of Baghdad, fell virtually silent. It had been the heart of the Sunni insurgency and a bastion for al-Qaida in Iraq.

The Americans got lucky there. Sunni tribal leaders who had been fighting the Americans, began in late 2006 to turn on al-Qaida, fed up with the terrorist organization’s brutality and austere brand of Islam.

U.S. forces quickly exploited the shift and began sponsoring similar movements in Baghdad and regions to the north and south. An estimated 80,000 members of the so-called Awakening Councils or Concerned Local Citizens are now fighting with — not against — U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Many of the new allies are on the American payroll, taking home minimal salaries while the U.S. tries, with limited success, to persuade the al-Maliki government to bring them into the army, police and a civilian corps of workers to rebuild the shattered country.

Into that mix, radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr placed a freeze on his feared Mahdi army militia, causing a dramatic fall in death-squad killings in the capital and in attacks on American forces.

The first half of the surge year saw enough casualties to make 2007 the deadliest for American troops, with 126 killed in May alone, along with 2,155 Iraqis. In all, at least 831 Americans have died in 12 months of the surge.

The sharply lower figures for the second half of 2007 have only returned the pace of U.S. losses to what they were in late 2003 and early 2004. The Iraqi death toll is back down to where it was at the close of 2005.

What’s more, much of the key legislation designed to spur reconciliation among Iraq’s Sunni and Shiite Arabs and the Kurds still languishes, with the Shiite al-Maliki either too politically weak or disinclined to take major steps toward a greater Sunni role.

And then there is Iran.

As the U.S. begins reversing the expansion of troop strength — most of the additional 30,000 “surge” forces should be gone by summer — Iran has quietly placed itself in the control room of Iraq’s future. Tehran has major military and political tools available to it until U.S. forces eventually leave and has sunk deep roots inside the country’s fertile Shiite political power structure.

While the Americans say they have seen a decline in Iranian funding and arming of rogue members of al-Sadr’s Shiite militia, six key Shiite figures from across the political spectrum have told The Associated Press that Iran is pressing ahead in several directions.

Iran is gaming its future in Iraq on three fronts, the most public of which has been face-to-face meetings between U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Kazemi Qomi. Another session could be held in March.

While Crocker has insisted the talks have not veered from topics surrounding Iraqi security, the Iraqi officials, some of whom sat in on the meetings, say their scope has expanded.

The result, the officials said, was Iran’s pledge to stop backing the Mahdi army in return for the Bush administration lowering its rhetoric about Iran’s nuclear program. The Iraqis who spoke about the talks said they believed the release of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate in December was a quid pro quo to Tehran for it having turned its back on the Mahdi army.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

The NIE, in an about-face, said Iran had halted its secret attempts to build nuclear weapons in 2003, contrary to White House claims that Iran was using a civilian nuclear energy program as cover to build nuclear weapons.

Since then, Washington’s pronouncements have softened significantly.

On the second front, Iran has shunned the Mahdi army but has continued sending arms, fighters and money into Iraq. The leaders of these groups of fighters take orders from Iran and are known as the Ettelaat, shorthand for Iranian intelligence.

The Iraqi officials who spoke to the AP said that after al-Sadr announced a freeze on his militia in August, the Iranians sent in seven Ettelaat commanders — Iraqis loyal to Iran who had been training and handling elite Mahdi army groups in Iran. These, at the time, had broken with the mainstream militia over the freeze.

The commanders were said to have slowly infiltrated with more than 1,000 men armed and trained by Iran, with orders to continue harassing the Americans with roadside bombings, mortar and rocket attacks — a one-year high of 12 on the Army’s 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division in January alone, the military said.

The Ettelaat force in Iraq is recruiting more fighters from among disaffected Mahdi army foot soldiers and commanders of the so-called “special groups,” not only to keep American forces off balance but also as a sleeper brigade that would open all-out warfare should the U.S. attack Iran, a real fear in Tehran, the Iraqi officials said.

Top U.S. commander Army Gen. David Petraeus said in a recent interview that he had not heard of an Iranian-sponsored group by that name, and noted that Iran’s senior leaders have pledged to their Iraqi counterparts to stop fostering violent groups in this country.

But he noted the Americans were always alert for new tactics from Tehran.

“What we’re trying to figure out is, has there been some change in behavior? It may have been,” he said.

Petraeus said the Iranians continue to use many avenues to infiltrate and are trying to “provide assistance to and gain influence in various organizations in Iraq — some political, some militia, some of these very closely related to the Quds Force and [Mahdi army] special groups.”

Politically, Iran has now cut ties with al-Sadr, having decided his usefulness as a tactical tool against American forces has run its course. Now, the officials said, Iran has thrown its full backing behind the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the country’s most powerful Shiite political insider.

Ironically, al-Hakim has been a cornerstone of U.S. efforts to build a moderate Shiite political structure in the country. He has been used by Washington as a counterbalance to more radical Shiite tendencies and is seen as more open to sharing some power with the country’s Sunni Muslim minority, which ran Iraq under Saddam Hussein.


Article: http://www.militarytimes.com/news/20...uccess_080214/

[CommunityEditor]

The military’s surge in Iraq “is clearly working,” but many hurdles remain on the path to the stability that was the strategy’s ultimate goal, while al-Qaida in Iraq “remains a potent force,” according to the senior Defense Department official responsible for Middle East policy.

“We are finishing up what I consider to be the first phase of the surge,” retired Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for near eastern and south Asian affairs, said at the National Defense Industrial Association’s special operations and low-intensity conflict symposium in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 12.

When President Bush announced that he was proceeding with the surge strategy Jan. 10, 2007, “it was a controversial decision … which many in the government — most notably, many in the military — did not support,” Kimmitt said. “But frankly it was becoming quite apparent that the current strategy wasn’t working, the conditions on the ground were deteriorating and the violence was growing on a … day-to-day basis.”

Thirteen months later, “although there’s much work to be done, the military surge is clearly working,” said Kimmitt, who previously was the senior military spokesman in Iraq. “It has succeeded to this point not simply because of the decision of the president but also because of the operational shift to a more counterinsurgency-type model rather than the one that we were working before, the one that some people call ‘transitional kinetics.’” The surge’s success also is due to “the great leadership that we have on the ground … leaders whose brilliance has been demonstrated and validated over the past year,” he added.

But, Kimmitt said, other factors behind the successes of the past year, such as the Sunni Awakening movement — in which Sunni tribesmen in Anbar province who had been part of the insurgency turned against al-Qaida — and the cease-fire called by firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army (known by its Arabic initials JAM) came as a surprise.

“The success of the surge was not preordained, nor has the surge succeeded according to plan,” he said. “No one last December [2006] had any ideas that we would see a Sunni Awakening movement, nobody knew that the JAM would declare a cease-fire, nobody could forecast the brilliant successes of our special operators against al-Qaida, but as everyone knows, fortune favors the bold and chance favors the prepared mind.”

This year will be crucial, according to Kimmitt.

“Will this be the year when the gains in security are met by gains in stability, or will the tremendous tactical gains achieved by our troops be withered away because of a lack of political consensus and the lack of political reconciliation?” he asked rhetorically.

“The surge will be a success if those gains in security can be translated into gains in stability,” Kimmitt said. “It’s certain that the next phase will be far more difficult as it depends more on the Iraqis themselves to show progress on key legislation, show progress in their economy and to show progress in reconciliation.”

The fact that this had not happened in 2007 “is a bit of a disappointment” and “a bit disheartening for our troops,” he said, “because the plan had always suggested that the military progress would be accompanied side by side with the political progress.”

Kimmitt advised his audience to keep track of the following nine “leading indicators” in Iraq over the next year:

• “Will the Iraqis be able to pass the key initiatives on de-Ba’athification, provincial powers [and] hydrocarbon sharing? Short of sectarian violence, nothing will be more important than ratifying and inscribing into law these key reconciliation initiatives.”

• “Will the [Nouri al-] Maliki government embrace or reject or slow roll the Concerned Local Citizens program, [now called] the Sons of Iraq program? Will the Shia government consider these movements to be an American-armed coup force in waiting, threatening the gains made by the Shia since the fall of Saddam, or will the government recognize that the best way to end the insurgency is by bringing the insurgents into the fold?

• “Will these Concerned Local Citizens and the former insurgents begin to turn their allegiance to the central government of Iraq? Right now the CLCs, the Sons of Iraq, are on our side, they’re supporting the Americans, but eventually, for this to really resonate, they’re going to have to start believing in supporting their own central government.”

• With the U.S. and Iraqi governments conducting “strategic framework negotiations” intended to produce rules to govern the U.S. military’s role in Iraq after the United Nations mandate expires at the end of 2008, “is there going to be room for accommodation and continuation of military operations in 2009 and beyond?”

• “I’d advise people to watch Basra,” Kimmitt said, referring to the southern Iraqi city where British forces have chosen to operate with what he described as a “very, very light hand.” “The Basra experiment will be important in 2008,” he said. “It’s going to be interesting to see who wins out in the end in Basra: the free-market entrepreneurs who want Basra to look like Dubai, Iranians who want Basra to look like Herat [in western Afghanistan], or local militias who want Basra to look like Mogadishu?”

• The actions of Iraq’s neighbors will also play a critical role, Kimmitt said. “See if they make the rough decisions and recognize that a stable and secure Iraq is in their best interests,” he advised his audience, listing several related issues: Will those neighbors “relieve the country of the burden of the Saddam debt? Will they take the risk and send ambassadors to Baghdad? ... Particularly the Sunni governments, will they vocally support the Baghdad government even though it’s primarily a Shia government?”

• “Will the Iraqi security forces continue their surge, a surge which has resulted in more Iraqi forces being brought into the fight, and, frankly, the Iraqis continuing to take more than three times the casualties that the American forces are taking? Frankly, the Iraqi security forces were the unsung heroes of 2007 and they will need to take the front stage in 2008.”

• “Keep an eye on Moqtada [al-Sadr]. Will he be able to rein in his special groups? Will he be able to regain and maintain control over the Jaysh al-Mahdi? Will he continue his cease-fire in 2008, or is his organization going to splinter and now become another problem on the battlefield for our troops?”

• “I’d also tell you to watch al-Qaida. Despite the tremendous successes of [Lt. Gen.] Stan McChrystal and JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command, which has the primary responsibility for attacking al-Qaida in Iraq], al-Qaida remains a potent force, capable of another series of Samarra-like attacks,” Kimmitt said, referring to the 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra that precipitated Iraq’s descent into open sectarian conflict.

“Will they carry out such operations in 2008? Is Stan going to be able to stay on top of them and keep them on the run? Are they going to be able to turn around and conduct more and more attacks like we saw last week where they strapped suicide belts onto young retarded women? The fact that al-Qaida is doing that ought to speak for itself and it also is a very, very strong sign of how successful General McChrystal and his forces have been.”


Article: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/0...surge_080225w/