Iraq “Surge”

The US “surge” into Baghdad and western Iraq is complete, 28,500 additional troops are now in Iraq. An early Pentagon assessment concluded:

Three months into the new U.S. military strategy that has sent tens of thousands of additional troops into Iraq, overall levels of violence in the country have not decreased, as attacks have shifted away from Baghdad and Anbar, where American forces are concentrated, only to rise in most other provinces, according to a Pentagon report released yesterday.
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Iraq’s government, for its part, has proven “uneven” in delivering on its commitments under the strategy, the report said, stating that public pledges by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have in many cases produced no concrete results.

Iraqi leaders have made “little progress” on the overarching political goals that the stepped-up security operations are intended to help advance, the report said, calling reconciliation between Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni factions “a serious unfulfilled objective.” Indeed, “some analysts see a growing fragmentation of Iraq,” it said, noting that 36 percent of Iraqis believe “the Iraqi people would be better off if the country were divided into three or more separate countries.”

Unfortunately the Bush administration will not be able to claim the the “surge” is still surging and that the full “surge” is not present. That didn’t stop Press Secretary Tony Snow from using this excuse one last time in yesterdays press conference:

So what the President does is he looks at the 90-10, and you look at it in terms of what’s going on not merely throughout the nation, but keep in mind that the Baghdad security plan understands that the first thing you’ve got to do is secure the capital. There have been some encouraging signs, but, again, we will reiterate, the surge is not complete, forces are just now, this next couple of weeks flowing in so that you’ve have the full complement of forces, and it’s going to be another month or two before they’re completely up and running at full speed.

Next, I’m sure will be the line, they just got there and they are just now getting started. I expect this line to last till September. Hopefully Sept. will bring a marked improvement but I’m not optomistic and don’t believe the case will be made that the strategy is effective enough. Now is not the time for baby steps in Iraq. The time for that was in 2003-04.

Menwhile, 4^th generation warfare guru William Lind lambastes the tactics used in this urban guerrilla war as indicative of the failure of US foreign policy (check out a coming post on the Gaza situation for more claims of US FP failure). Particularity the use of US air power on Iraqi ground targets such as a railroad station. Lind writes:

It turns out the bombed railroad station was no fluke. According to other reports, U.S. aircraft have dropped more than 200 bombs or missiles on Iraqi ground targets this year in support of U.S. ground forces at a rate double that of last year.

Nothing could testify more powerfully to the failure of U.S. efforts on the ground in Iraq than a ramp-up in airstrikes. Calling in air is the last, desperate, and usually futile action of an army that is losing. If anyone still wonders whether the “surge” is working, the increase in air strikes offers a definitive answer: It isn’t.

Worse, the growing number of air strikes shows that, despite what the Marines have accomplished in Anbar province and Gen. David Petraeus’s best efforts, our high command remains as incapable as ever of grasping Fourth Generation war.

To put it bluntly, there is no surer or faster way to lose in 4GW than by calling in airstrikes. It is a disaster on every level. Physically, it inevitably kills far more civilians than enemies, enraging the population against us and driving them into the arms of our opponents. Mentally, it tells the insurgents we are cowards who only dare fight them from 20,000 feet in the air. Morally, it turns us into Goliath, a monster every real man has to fight. So negative are the results of air strikes in this kind of war that there is only one possible good number of them: zero, unless we are employing the “Hama model” of seeking total destruction, which we are not.

Saddam Hussein Executed

Perhaps the biggest story from the past few days was the hanging of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. It took place on Friday and during the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha (The Festival of Sacrifice), and therefore is full of symbolism for many Muslims. However, the execution quickly became controversial with respect to the handling of the event. A conclusive video was taken by an Iraqi official and leaked out into the media, the video captured actions that have offended some and made the new Iraqi government look foolish and un-unified. This leaked video incident is now under official Iraqi review by the Interior Ministry (so that will probably be the last we hear of it…)

Iraq’s Shiite-led government said Tuesday that it had ordered an investigation into the abusive behavior at the execution of Saddam Hussein, who was subjected to a battery of taunts by official Shiite witnesses and guards as he awaited his hanging.

Iraq: al-Sistani and al-Sadr are inseparable

Less than a week ago the NY Times reported that some indications were given by a leading Shi’a figure in Iraq (and the greater MENA), Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, that he favored a new governing coalition in Iraq. In particular it hinted at a willingness to sideline radical Cleric Moktada al-Sadr and other extremist factions. This made a hopeful few days for those interested in the stability of Iraq. Unfortunately, the LA Times reveals that this report was “just a rumor.”

One of Iraq’s most influential Shiite clerics rejected a U.S.-backed proposal to isolate Shiite extremists in the national government, saying the country should govern itself with the help of anti-U.S. firebrand Muqtada Sadr, according to politicians who spoke with the cleric Saturday.

Shiite politicians met with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in this Shiite holy city, and then said they had thrown their support behind Sadr, who demands a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq rather than the temporary increase under consideration in Washington.

“The Sadr movement is part of Iraqi affairs,” said Haider Abadi, a leader of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s Islamic Dawa Party. “We won’t allow others to interfere to weaken any Iraqi political movement.”

Ali Adeeb, another member of the Dawa Party, said Shiite leaders, including the prime minister, would resist U.S. efforts to sideline Sadr and his Al Mahdi army.

Top Iraqi Cleric Favors A New Coalition for Iraq

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani reportedly has approved favors a new coalition that aims at isolating extremists and perhaps most importantly, Moktada al-Sadr. Al-Sistani had been relativly quite as of late and taken second stage to Sadr. However, he is perhaps the most important figure to millions of Iraqi Shi’a; not to mention the larger Shi’a Umma.

Juan Cole sums the coalition and ads his $0.02

The coalition that the Americans hope for would look like this:

Iraqi Accord Front (Sunni Fundamentalist): 44 seats
Kurdistan Alliance and allies: 58 seats
SCIRI [Shiite fundamentalist] and allies: 63 seats
National Iraqi List of Allawi: 25 seats

That would be 190, more than enough to form a government and appoint a prime minister. It would potentially leave the Sadrists (32 seats) and the Da`wa Party of Iyad Allawi in the opposition, along with Salih Mutlak of the secular Sunni National Dialogue Front (11 seats).

The problem is that not all of the Iraqi Accord Front may be willing to join the coalition, and perhaps not all of the National Iraqi list will come in. Moreover, the idea that the Iraqi Islamic Party, the Kurds, and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq are going to hold together as a united coalition very long strikes me as daft.
This plan of cutting the Sadrists out of parliamentary power and then launching a military attack on their paramilitary, the Mahdi Army, seems to me unlikely actually to reduce Muqtada’s power and influence.

It would also be possible for Muqtada and allies to put together a significant bloc:

Da`wa: 22
Sadrists: 32
Fadila: 15
Salih Mutlak’s list: 11
Mishaan Juburi list: 3
Part of the Iraqi Accord Front?: 10?

Sadr could find enough deputies to block the formation of a new government.

The real problem is that Parliament isn’t very powerful. Although the NYT blames Sadr’s boycott for the failure of parliament to reach a quorum the last couple of times it tried to meet, in fact it is because many of the parliamentarians virtually live abroad (they like London) and just aren’t around in Baghdad to take part in a vote.

The idea of the Bush administration is that you cut Sadr loose in parliament, so that the prime minister doesn’t depend on him, and then you have him call in the Iraqi Army against the Mahdi Army militiamen and defeat them. The Sunnis would thereby be reassured, the thinking goes, that the Sadrist death squads have been dealt with, and the Sunni Arabs would gradually become more willing to rein in their paramilitary. I don’t think it is plausible that the US military can defeat a widespread and entrenched social movement like the Sadrists at this late date, so we are in for a lot of trouble.

I tend to agree. Perhaps ‘too little, too late’ is an appropriate phrase here with emphasis on the too late part. However, a more stable government would have a minor ripple effect in Iraq. At this point in time we should happily accept that.