Brian M. Downing
In recent months the administration has been touting successes in Iraq, and polling data show a modest increase in public support for the war. Various reports on the war will be released in the next week or so, the interpretations of which will be contested widely, bitterly, and probably inconclusively. Official reports, especially that of General Petraeus, will almost certainly be upbeat. That is in keeping with the “can do” ideology of the military, which is admirable in junior officers but often damaging in senior ones, and with the ascension up numerous bureaucratic echelons, each level of which magnifies positive aspects and minimizes negative ones. The future of the war in Iraq and of the US position in the Middle East hinges on these reports and their reception.
Baghdad
The US has sent approximately 30,000 additional troops to Iraq in order to put into operation a counter-insurgency program that Petraeus and others have assembled from the lessons of past guerrilla wars, mainly in Malaya, Algeria, and Vietnam. The Surge seeks 1) to use American troops to drive out insurgent and al Qaeda fighters from neighborhoods of Baghdad, 2) to deploy Iraqi troops in these cleared areas to hold them, 3) to bring in Iraqi governmental officials to reestablish services and rapport with the populace, and 4) to repeat the procedure in outlying areas in manner likened to the spread of an oil spot. Even several media and think tank critics of the war have noted successes in the Surge. Guerrillas are largely gone and many marketplaces have reopened, though often only after receiving douceurs from US officials to do so.
The initial success has been undeniable, but only in the first phase of Petraeus’s plan. Thus far, the Iraqi military has been unable to follow through with its part of the program. Despite several years of training a new army after the unceremonious disbanding of the old one, there are not enough reliable formations. The Iraqi army is deeply torn by sectarian hatreds and tribal loyalties and heavily infiltrated by local militias. Further, it is largely Shi’a and as such unsuited to performing anything but intimidation and slaughter in Sunni areas. Without reliable Iraqi units, the Surge can only continue if additional US troops are brought in or if troops already in country are spread out from Baghdad without adequately consolidating areas previously cleared, at considerable cost. Each presents serious problems and dangers, and is unlikely.
Nor is the Iraqi government equal to the task of coming into cleared areas and establishing rapport with the populace. Like the military, the national government is largely Shi’a; Sunni representation in the government is slim and increasingly so as Sunnis quit Maliki’s coalition. Nothing is likely to change here. Shi’as now stand at well over the 60% of the population they composed at the outset of the war and look upon the Sunni Arabs as a shrinking minority that once lorded over the country and brutally oppressed them. They have been content to look on as the US military, through its previous operations against the Sunni insurgency, which often relied on the hard hand and massive firepower, subjugates, rounds up and imprisons, kills, or drives into exile large numbers of Sunnis, thereby decreasing the Sunni percentage of the population from 18% to perhaps as low as 13%.
The prospects of US personnel, civilian or military, winning over the Sunni populace after years of occupation and sharp battles is highly unlikely, and attempts to do so will only underscore the position of the Shi’a government, which remains largely aloof from the efforts. The Maliki government may collapse soon; and as we shall see the Surge and recent threats from Washington are helping to bring that about.
There has been no decisive battle or series of sharp skirmishes that have inflicted heavy and perhaps irreplaceable casualties on insurgent forces. They opted to forego a Fallujah-like battle in Baghdad and, apparently, to disperse to relatively safe outlying towns and cities to continue the war from. Nor is there evidence that the insurgency’s leadership has suffered serious losses. Inasmuch as it is highly heterogeneous, drawn from former Ba’ath Party members, ousted army officers, and tribal and religious figures, it is unlikely that such losses can be inflicted. Accordingly, the prospects of an insurgent counter to recent US efforts are real. Recently several US commanders have expressed concern that a counter-offensive may coincide with Petraeus’s report in Washington, though the disparate nature of the insurgency makes this more difficult than, say, in Vietnam in 1968, where Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces took orders from the same central office.
Anbar
Anbar Province, which funnels out from Baghdad to the Syrian and Jordanian borders, was once a hotbed of insurgent and al Qaeda activity. This was so for several reasons. The Dulayim tribal confederation of that province and its main cities of Fallujah and Ramadi is among the most militarized of the tribes in the region. Its men were well represented in Saddam’s army and security forces. The province is also known for its Salafist schools, which proffer a harshly anti-Western and even anti-modern form of Islam and which spread their beliefs into the army after the defeat in Gulf War One. Smuggling networks between Baghdad and porous borders with Syria and Jordan converted to or assisted guerrilla networks. Numerous wealthy families that had benefited from contracts with Saddam’s government reside there and finance the insurgency. Above all, the Dulayim, probably even more so than other tribes, despise outside interference. They attempted a coup against Saddam in 1992 and rebelled against him three years later.
Al Qaeda fighters infiltrated into Anbar and helped to turn it into the most dangerous province for American troops. About one-third of US casualties have been suffered there. The al Qaeda presence and its arrogance displayed for local customs and usages, not the least of which regarded women, led to occasional skirmishes over the years and, beginning last Spring, to sustained fighting. Local US commanders were quick to see the potential there and forge ties with the tribal leaders eager to rid their province of al Qaeda’s foreign fighters. The former enemies now share intelligence and perform joint patrols and raids. Similar dynamics are playing out in Diyala Province to the northeast of Baghdad, where much of al Qaeda has moved after the Dulayim turned on them in Anbar.
The Dulayim’s exceptionally strong hostility to outside interference has long been noted and lies at the center of its recent cooperation with the US. It also calls into question how long lasting their cooperation with a Western power will be. Put another way, will a militarized, xenophobic people, steeped in Salafist thought, forge a lasting partnership with forces far more foreign than al Qaeda fighters, or will they turn on them once the intermediary goal of ridding their province of al Qaeda interlopers has been achieved? Confidence in a lasting partnership might require an observer to have been deeply influenced by colonial-era narratives of natives realizing the advantages of westernization and to be blissfully unaware of the law of unintended consequences – a law that has been ratified by many foreign ventures into the Middle East.
Political Developments
Whatever military progress can be pointed to in and around Baghdad, unless accompanied by progress in forming a national government comprising and adequately representing Sunni and Shi’a groups, it is meaningless. As US generals have repeatedly declared, there is no military solution in Iraq. There are few if any signs of political progress. Indeed US programs in Baghdad and surrounding Sunni provinces have posed dangers to the Shi’a coalition and threaten to drive it closer to Iran – serious errors that augur poorly for political development as well as for international dynamics in the region.
Recent efforts have forged working ties between the US and local power holders in Baghdad, Anbar, and Diyala. Some are venerable tribal elders; others are warlords who have simply seized control of a neighborhood or a functioning power plant. There is no dialog or exchange between them and the national government. Nor are there meaningful ties among the various local power holders. US policy, then, is effectively bringing about a number of fiefs in the shrinking Sunni Triangle, which in the absence of substantive sources of revenue will be dependent vassals of American (and Saudi) foreign policy, further and possibly needlessly miring the US in Central Iraq for the indeterminate future.
These dynamics are not going unseen by the Shi’a leadership, which sees the US as ominously, perhaps even treacherously, siding with the Sunnis – and against them. President Bush’s recent visit to Anbar insultingly underscored this.
A number of Sunni fiefs around Baghdad (the capital itself is increasingly Sunni-free) might not seem to pose a threat to Shi’a interests. But the Shi’as will ever fear that they will someday – with the assistance of Saudi Arabia and other Sunni powers and with the presently undeveloped oil resources in Anbar – coalesce into a strong revanchist state. Having endured eighty years of Sunni brutality, the Shi’as will take no chances of that happening. They want the Sunni Arabs rendered into an impotent and diminishing minority or, better, driven out of Iraq altogether – a process the US was ably though unwittingly aiding in, until recently.
There are also international ramifications. By siding with the dwindling Sunni minority, which has no loyalty or long-term utility to the US, American policy is pushing the Shi’as closer to Iran. Despite centuries-old enmities between Arabs and Persians, which animated eight long years of war in the 1980s, the Iraqi Shi’a and Iran have developed ties over the years. Many Shi’a political and military organizations developed in Iran or with Iranian assistance during Saddam Hussein’s years in power, and several of the principal Shi’a clerics are Iranian or have cordial relations with Persian counterparts. In recent years, international trade has flourished and Iranian money and tutelage have come in and helped to maintain a semblance of unity between antagonistic Shi’a tribes and militias.
Though the Shi’as would prefer to play off Washington and Tehran, the US’s collaboration with the Sunnis and increasing bellicosity toward Iran will almost certainly strengthen Shi’a-Iranian ties and weaken the US’s ability to influence the Shi’a and the new Iraq they will inevitably dominate. The US is positioning itself to become, willy nilly, the guarantor of indefensible, strategically-worthless Sunni territories opposing a hostile Shi’a Iraq and its coreligionist ally to the east.
The positive and negative developments will almost certainly be presented in tendentious manners by the administration and its critics – that’s politics, as we know it. The public must assess those proportions in a most circumspect manner than either the administration or its critics is likely to show – that’s good citizenship, as we rarely see it. But as the reports of General Petraeus and a slew of others near, it seems likely that disparate positions and interpretations will eddy through political life and confuse enough Americans for the status quo de bellum to continue and its likely consequences to unfold.
Brian M. Downing is the author of several works of political and military history, including The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.
Copyright 2007 Brian M Downing