Now that General Patraeus and Ambassador Crocker have delivered their assessments of the Iraqi war situation, I feel compelled, in the face of the noisy and rancorous public discourse, to add to the din. My motivations are driven primarily by the difference that I see between my views and the cacophony of other commentators. I have not read or heard of any opinion similar to mine. And since the Belcher Blog is designed to capture the ideas and views of participants at the time of the events, without the benefits of hindsight and history, I will expose my thoughts and make predictions about the future.
Before I begin, I recognize the dangerous territory that I am about to enter. Using historical and current events to predict the future is precarious and, as Nassim Taleb warned in the Black Swan, should be avoided (see my August 9, 2007 post Posts from the Past). Furthermore, I recognize that I have a bias toward victory. There is no doubt that my research and forecasts suffer from confirmation bias. With that in mind, I will qualify my predictions; these are the course of events that I see occurring provided no black swan events occur.
I will start with a parallel in history.
I feel that we are witnessing a substantial military victory comparable to the breakout of Allied forces from the Normandy peninsula in operation Cobra. Though Hitler’s National Socialist Germany was vastly more dangerous than Bin Ladin’s Islamic revolution—evident in the dramatic differences in lives lost—the relative significance of the two events appear similar to me. In the case of Cobra, Allied forces had fought a series of critical battles and amassed enough forces to break out of the difficult terrain blocking the Normandy peninsula. Following Cobra, the German Army in France would be encircled, captured, and its remnants driven back to the Siegfried line. The surviving German forces were barely able to mount a desperate yet doomed counterattack in the Battle of the Bulge five months later.
At this time in Iraq, the American “Surge” forces have arrived, deployed into key neighborhoods in Baghdad, and launched a series of offensive operations in the suburbs and rural communities surrounding the capitol. Army tactics changed as they moved from traditional warfare to counterinsurgency (COIN) warfare practices. At the same time, the Marines have managed an unexpected and surprising victory in al Anbar province by convincing key tribal leaders to abandon support for al Qaeda and to support the national government instead. Iraqi national army forces and local police are fully engaged in the effort and providing important combat forces despite their unsteady performance earlier in the war.
General Patraeus substantiated his position that the Surge was a success with ample charts and graphs showing quantifiable evidence of improvement. Various commentators either supported or challenged his data, or pointed the weak progress on part of the central civilian government as proof that his assessment was wrong. My intent is not to go through the numbers, but to point to some general patterns in the events that give rise to evidence of an emerging victory.
First, my impression that victory is at hand is the “Tribal Awakening”. This massed switching of sides by Sunni irregular forces in al Anbar province, once the site of the fiercest battles in the war, is clearly a victory for the Coalition forces. This change of events was only possible because the Marines, despite gleeful reports by some in the mass media of atrocities, fought a well executed counterinsurgency war against Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). In the end, the tribal leaders recognized that they were better off supporting the national government and the Coalition forces than supporting AQI. This was only possible because the Marines clearly understood and properly executed effective counterinsurgency warfare tactics. At the same time it appears that AQI failed to follow some of Mao’s most fundamental practices and principles and alienated the population.
Defeat of the AQI in predominately Sunni regions will interrupt the cycle of violence that led many observers to believe a sectarian civil war was underway. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi initiated the cycle by attacking Shia religions targets, which, in turn, resulted in retaliation against Sunni targets by Shia militia. The number two leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, wrote a letter to al-Zarqawi in July 2005 warning him not to undertake attacks against fellow Muslims (the letter was intercepted by Coalition forces and an exerpt is at the end of this post). As AQI is forced out of their current sanctuaries by Coalition forces and the unfriendly Sunni population, they will become more vulnerable. The Shia regions will prove unsafe for AQI. Once AQI is defeated, then the cycle of violence will diminish and likelihood of a sectarian civil war abated.
Many observers of the War in Iraq do not understand the effectiveness of proper counterinsurgency warfare tactics. US military leaders worked desperately hard to bring these tactics to their regular forces. I listened to Lt. Col Nagl interviewed on Book Notes where he described the creation and deployment of the COIN manual to US forces, which arrived in 2006. Modern Western forces have successfully won COIN wars in recent history: in Malaysia in the 1950s and against the Viet Cong in the late 1960's. The patterns of operations are very similar.
Creation of a national government: Without a national government, the citizens of the country will find it difficult to form an allegiance with groups other than the insurgent groups. It is important that the government is not seen as corrupt and unjust. The national government needs to provide a rallying point for the population. In Iraq the rallying point might be the idea of a unified, yet diverse, Arab country (surveys report that 75% of Iraqis wish Iraq to remain a single nation-state).
Leveraging of local sources of power. In Vietnam this was the village and in Malaysia it was the Chinese labor camps. In Iraq it is the tribe and the “Awaking of the Tribes” in al Anbar supports this concept.
Creation of national security forces. Civilians are more likely to support the national government if security is provided by trustworthy and friendly local forces. Besides, foriegn nations cannot provide enough troops to meet the citizen to security personnel needed to protect the population.
Focus on the safety of the civilian population. The key to successful COIN is to convince individuals that their situation is improved by allying with the national government rather than with the insurgents. Insurgents need to intimidate civilians to some degree if they wish to remain safely anonymous within the population. So the movement of Coalition forces from the large, well protected main bases into the streets provides the protection that convinces the population that the national government has their safety in mind.
Absorption of militias into regular security forces. This allows the national government to influence and contain militia action and to install new leadership into these groups. It also sets the flow of pay and money up from local sources to the national government.
Successful efforts to improve the well-being of civilian population. Projects funded by the national government that effectively improve the lives of the general population demonstrate that the central government is better able to meet their needs than the insurgents.
Slowly these patterns of military operations will swing the population against Al Qaeda and make it dangerous for them to operate in Iraq. I am not predicting the complete collapse of AQI, but I do expect their level of operations to diminish substantially. A change in AQI tactics or targets will provide evidence that current Coalition operations are effective and that AQI needs a new strategy to survive. The question is how long will it take the leadership of AQI to adapt and for the change to become evident. How adaptive is AQI? Al-Zarqawi’s decision to attack Shia civilian targets and create a sectarian civil war at first appeared successful until Coalition forces changed tactics with a switch to COIN operations and focused on the protection of the civilian population.
What could undermine this promising picture of victory? Widespread corruption that leads the majority of individuals to believe the ruling government is unjust could be detrimental. I believe that for the foreseeable future the citizens of Iraq will accept current levels of corruptions in exchange for security and a sense of peace. I suspect Saddam immunized the population to corruption to some degree. Exposure to Western style governmental practices and the US armed forces should help move the government toward a more transparent and just organization. Watchful waiting by the international community and provincial surveillance should keep sectarian injustices by the central governmental to a minimum.
What black swan incident could change the course of events. I don’t think an assassination of Nouri al-Maliki, Muqtada al-Sadr, or Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani would lead to collapse of the increasingly positive Coalition situation. I believe none of these leaders are particularly critical to the success of the new democratic government the way that, say, Ghandi or Tutu was to movements in their countries. I think just the opposite is possible, that a leader could emerge from the current situation who could play a uniting role in the country the way these other great men did. This tumultuous period in Iraqi modern history, overcoming the autocratic regime of Saddam, dealing with the Coalition occupation, fighting against al-Qaeda, and forming of a modern government, is no doubt, creating impressive leadership somewhere in the sinews of competing forces. Is it possible that there is an Iraqi tribal leader, mayor, or military commander who has demonstrated ability to unit and lead diverse groups? Could this individual eventually come to power in some way? Israel, post-war Germany, and Meiji-period Japan persevered because of the outstanding leadership of a few key people who recognized the direction the nation had to go to become great powers again.
A massacre could be a devastating black swan event. Imagine a security force brutally killing nearly everyone in a village or neighborhood. It could be an irregular but sanctioned security force, like the 1920 Brigade that Michael Yon writes about, or a regular military unit in the Iraqi National Army. Either way, it could act as a divisive occurrence that weakens citizen support for the government.
But if a black swan event does not derail the current course of the war, an amazing victory is unfolding in Iraq. I wonder why the major media and their legions of commentators—note that I avoided the word “experts”—have not recognized it. If my observations and conclusions are accurate, the United States is defeating Al Qaeda in an Arab nation directly in the center of the Middle East.
The next observation indicating an acceptance of a Western style democracy in Iraq is a change in the view that the media expresses toward the Coalition, or a switch in the Arab press toward the Iraqi government. The first evidence that I observed was the following article from Al Jazeera. The article describes the response by the citizenry to the AQI killing of Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, the tribal leader responsible of the “Tribal Awakening”.
Thousands of people gathered in Ramadi on Friday to attend Abu Risha's funeral.
"We blame al-Qaeda and we are going to continue our fight and avenge his death," Sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha, brother of Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, said on Friday.
Ahmed Abu Risha was elected the new leader of the Anbar Salvation Conference just hours after his brother's killing.
Pallbearers carried Abdul Sattar Abu Risha's body from Ramadi to the cemetery 10km outside the city, while the funeral procession shouted "revenge, revenge on al-Qaeda."
Others mourners chanted "there is no God but Allah and al-Qaeda is the enemy of Allah" and "Abdul Sattar is the pride of Ramadi".
Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, was represented by Muwaffaq al-Rubaie, his national security adviser, who condemned the killing.
"It is a national Iraqi disaster. What Abu Risha did for Iraq, no single man has done in the country's history," al-Rubaie told the mourners gathered in the sheikh's house.
"We will support Anbar much more than before. Abu Risha is a national hero."
The primary voices arguing against an American victory are those that point to the poor progress made on the political side of the war. Ambassador Crocker responded to these criticisms by pointing out the Iraqi government is struggling with difficult decisions, such as the strength of the national government versus the provincial and city governments. He pointed to our own historical difficulties with this question. Most critics claim that the war cannot be won without a political victory. I, on the other hand, feel that political progress is not needed for a victory. I do feel, though, that a military victory is needed for political progress. Once the competing groups in Iraq realize that they cannot achieve their goals through violent means, they will be more inclined to politically negotiate in good faith. I would not be surprised that the current group of Iraqi politicians might not be able to make decent progress before the next election. Considering our own political situation, that would put them in the same place as our Congress.
It is unfortunate that humanity seems to lurch forward through violent conflicts. Though Bin Laden might have gotten his wish when he hoped for a conflict in the Middle East with the US, I doubt he anticipated that his warriors would loose in that contest.
Below is the portion of the letter from Ayman al-Zawahiri (number two Al Qaeda) to al-Zarqawi (AQI leader) in July 2005 that describes al-Zawahiri’s concerns about provoking a sectarian civil war.
E) We must repeat what we mentioned previously, that the majority of Muslims don't comprehend this and possibly could not even imagine it. For that reason, many of your Muslim admirers amongst the common folk are wondering about your attacks on the Shia. The sharpness of this questioning increases when the attacks are on one of their mosques, and it increases more when the attacks are on the mausoleum of Imam Ali Bin Abi Talib, may God honor him. My opinion is that this matter won't be acceptable to the Muslim populace however much you have tried to explain it, and aversion to this will continue.
Indeed, questions will circulate among mujahedeen circles and their opinion makers about the correctness of this conflict with the Shia at this time. Is it something that is unavoidable? Or, is it something can be put off until the force of the mujahed movement in Iraq gets stronger? And if some of the operations were necessary for self-defense, were all of the operations necessary? Or, were there some operations that weren't called for? And is the opening of another front now in addition to the front against the Americans and the government a wise decision? Or, does this conflict with the Shia lift the burden from the Americans by diverting the mujahedeen to the Shia, while the Americans continue to control matters from afar? And if the attacks on Shia leaders were necessary to put a stop to their plans, then why were there attacks on ordinary Shia? Won't this lead to reinforcing false ideas in their minds, even as it is incumbent on us to preach the call of Islam to them and explain and communicate to guide them to the truth? And can the mujahedeen kill all of the Shia in Iraq? Has any Islamic state in history ever tried that? And why kill
ordinary Shia considering that they are forgiven because of their ignorance? And
what loss will befall us if we did not attack the Shia? And do the brothers forget that we have more than one hundred prisoners - many of whom are from the leadership who are wanted in their countries - in the custody of the Iranians? And even if we attack the Shia out of necessity, then why do you announce this matter and make it public, which compels the Iranians to take counter measures? And do the brothers forget that both we and the Iranians need to refrain from harming each other at this time in which the Americans are targeting us?
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