The troops I covered in both Mosul, Fallujah, and other places in Iraq, including my own son in Taji, have returned home now. For many, the reunion was glorious and very long awaited. I was able to be present on one particular homecoming on December 8, 2007, at Biggs Army Airfield, in Ft. Bliss, Texas, near El Paso. Members of 2/7 Cav came home via commercial airliner and arrived to a multitude of family and friends all quite excited. It was a sight to see and a lasting image in my mind shall remain forever. I felt that it was the culmination to a long journey that had to be witnessed.
As many of you know, I’ve been home since October. I knew that the others would follow by early December. My wife and I made the trip from Albuquerque to El Paso one day in early Devcember and coordinated with the ones in charge to be present. It was good once again to be among the warriors who “have been there and done that” as the daily life routine of adjusting to the “normal” life presses on. And it will continue.
As I watched the plane taxi to its designated parking spot, I found myself once again with my camera awaiting the opportunity to snap the steps of warriors, this time returning home. In years past, I’ve been among parents who awaited their own sons and I surely knew the feelings inside. This time, I would be a comrade with a camera and feel just as close as any other family member. For these ones had taken care of me as I was able to record for history their journey and experiences in the war zone a half a world away. Now, we would all be on familiar ground together.
I would meet family members who knew of me but I did not know them. Many came up to me prior to the arrival of their warrior and embraced me as one of their own. Through the blog I had managed to touch and connect the soldier to the family from afar. It was all good.
To describe the entire scene and convey all the emotions is a challenge. But, everyone can imagine that it was just right and realize that words alone cannot completely explain it all. There were children awaiting their dads, wives awaiting their husbands, parents awaiting their sons and daughters, husbands awaiting their wives, grandparents awaiting their grandchildren and so on and so forth. In short, it was America awaiting their sons and daughters home from war. It was the heartbeat of America at full pulse, and it was good.
In the time since I’ve returned from Iraq, and the homecoming as well, I’ve pondered all that I’ve experienced in the past year or so. I can only say that I have been most blessed to be a part of the “mission”. It is true that adjusting to the life at home is full of challenges. The most complicated part of being home is trying to find ones way without a mission at hand. But in time, it comes to pass. But it is a challenge.
As I greeted each soldier that I recognized as they walked off the plane and stepped onto American soil, I saw smiles and excitement and the awareness of a familiar face to greet them. As each one was directed to the processing area, I followed them and was present as they waited to see their families. Each are taken to a warehouse type area where a brief process is done and a coordinating of the group takes place prior to the march into the waiting area where families are. I had the opportunity to see them one by one and speak briefly to many of them. Their trip had been long but everyone was wide awake. In a half hour or so, they would march into the area where the hundreds and hundreds of family and friends were waiting.
As the time came for the march to the waiting area, I made my way back to where the families were. The crowd was electric. The time had come. The automatic door was raised and the entire group marched in unison and perfect step. The crowd all cheered with screams and yells of joy that could drown out any sports stadium gathering. Then, the announcer said, “welcome home, dismissed…!” And the crowd all met the soldiers.
It was a beautiful and glorious sight.
Soon, the crowd would diminish and the flow of folks would disperse. I managed to snap some photos and observe families with tears of joy embracing one another with soldiers encompassed by loved ones. One by one they would leave for their homes. As I was leaving I found one family whose son I had covered. The father recognized me and came up to me and hugged me and simply said, “Thank you Jim”. He knew I had found his son in Mosul and relayed a story of his son’s courage and experiences. This one father had made the trip for me all the worth while. I could hardly speak but as fathers we both knew what the sons had done. We said good bye as the crowds were now almost gone.
Upon leaving the facility, we made our way down one hallway that I had seen earlier. It was here that I knew I had to pass through once more before I left. For in this particular hallway there are the photos of members of the unit that did not return home from Iraq alive. As I passed by the photos of the fallen, I stared intently at one in particular. His name was Captain McGovern, of Echo Company. I had done a mission with his men at one point in time and wrote about it on the blog. I recalled Capt. McGovern and thought of the last time I saw him. This face I had known. He was killed less than a month after I left Iraq. I followed the story over the Internet from my home in Albuquerque, NM. As I stared at his photograph, I realized that other families were suffering in the midst of others rejoicing.
Candi and I left Biggs Army Airfield at Ft. Bliss, Texas that night. We drove back the five hours late at night to Albuquerque.
I realize now more than ever that this journey never ends. I will go back to Iraq once again, soon, hopefully by March 1, 2008 and continue following the stories of more of America’s sons and daughters in harms way in what we call “The War in Iraq.”
To find out more how you can help and be a part of the next journey, contact me via email or phone at the address below.
Sgt. Moreno of the 27th BSB, from Ft. Bliss, TX is seen greeted by his daughter upon return from Iraq on 12/8/07. Photo by Jim Spiri
An unknown soldier is seen with his family after returning home from Mosul, Iraq, on 12/8/07 at Ft. Bliss, TX. Photo by Jim Spiri
Photos by Jim Spiri, 12/8/07, Ft. Bliss, TX. Family and friends of members of 2/7 Cav, await the homecoming of their soldiers at Biggs Army Airfield, Ft. Bliss, TX.
Photos by Jim Spiri, 12/8/07, Ft. Bliss, TX. Spc. Doyle, Sgt. Miller and Sgt. DeCarlo, of 2/7 Cav, are seen arriving home from Mosul, Iraq into Biggs Army Airfield at Ft. Bliss, TX on December 8, 2007.
A mother and father await the return of their son from Iraq.
Photos by Jim Spiri, 12/8/07. An unidentified soldier is seen holding his son for the first time upon his return from duty in Iraq.
Spc. Simon Valdez, of Albuquerque, NM is seen greeted by a relative upon his return from Mosul, Iraq. Valdez and I traveled extensively on combat patrols in the summer through the streets of Mosul.
With some time having elapsed since Bhutto’s assassination where we can consider the implications of Pakistani politics, it is good to rehearse where the U.S. stands in the global war on extremist militants. Regarding Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, I commented:
I have said before that ”counterinsurgencyin Pakistan begins in Afghanistan and along the Pakistan / Afghanistan border. Unless and until we devote the troops and effect the force projection to let the people in these AOs know that we are serious about the campaign, there will be no success.” I have advocated more troops in the Afghanistan campaign for the simple reason that not only must we win in Afghanistan, we have an unmitigated opportunity to kill Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan where we are not dealing with issues of sovereignty of Pakistan. In other words, we have the best of all possible worlds in the current campaign in Afghanistan (similar to the campaign in Iraq, although this is waning somewhat due to Iraqi sovereignty). We can fight international jihadists with the full approval of the administration and for the most part without the overhead of issues of national sovereignty.
This campaign, once shown to be successful, can then be expanded into Pakistan with the tacit approval of the Pakistani government (i.e., small incursions and concealed operations, expanded to larger operations if the need and approval were forthcoming). Here is where the administration of Pakistan is important. Musharraf is likely an American ally only to the extent that he believed Richard Armitage when it was said to him that the U.S. would enjoy his cooperation or Pakistan would be “bombed back to the stone age” (the words as reported by Musharraf himself). Bhutto, on the other hand, would have been a willing participant in the global war on religious militancy, and is said to have desired international assistance in the Pakistan counterinsurgency campaign: “If Bhutto returns to power this week, Gauhar predicts the U.S. will finally get what Musharraf has refused it: “She will allow NATO boots on the ground in our tribal areas and a chance to neuter our nuclear weapons.”
In the days following the assassination, many have weighed in on Bhutto’s financial indiscretions and other examples of malfeasance as Prime Minister. One of the most significant critiques has come from the always interesting Ralph Peters at the New York Post. He is even more frank and forthcoming on his feelings in a recent commentary for The Australian.
For the next several days you’re going to read and hear a great deal of pious nonsense in the wake of the assassination of Pakistan’s former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
Her country is better off without her. She may serve Pakistan better after her death than she did in life.
We don’t need to have sympathy with her Islamist assassin and the extremists behind him to recognise that Bhutto was corrupt, divisive, dishonest and utterly devoid of genuine concern for her country.
She was a splendid con, persuading otherwise cynical Western politicians and hard-headed journalists that she was not only a brave woman crusading in the Islamic wilderness but also a thoroughbred democrat.
In fact, Bhutto was a frivolously wealthy feudal landlord amid bleak poverty. The scion of a thieving political dynasty, she was always more concerned with power than with the wellbeing of the average Pakistani.
Her program remained one of old-school patronage, not increased productivity or social decency.
Educated in expensive Western schools, she permitted Pakistan’s feeble education system to rot, opening the door to Islamists and their religious schools.
During her years as prime minister, Pakistan went backwards, not forwards. Her husband looted shamelessly and ended up fleeing the country, pursued by the courts. The Islamist threat, which she artfully played both ways, spread like cancer.
Peters ends his scathing rebuke of Bhutto and those who lament her passing by observing that “A creature of insatiable ambition, Bhutto will become a martyr. In death, she may pay back some of the enormous debt she owes her country.”
Perhaps. But a careful reading of my analysis proves that it is entirely pragmatic. I have long said regarding the parliamentary system in Iraq that one serious flaw in the preliminary stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom was the naive belief in the healing powers of democracy. Democracy is itself produced by a society, and produces nothing. It is a deliverance of people and their value system, not vice versa. Said in another way, it cannot effect change. It is itself an affect or product. Given Iraqi history and culture, there might have been no good options, but democracy does not seem to have helped.
This same belief in the powers of democracy has caused the U.S. administration to support Bhutto, and Ralph Peters is correct in his diagnosis of her abilities to conjure up an image of peace and stability in Pakistan with the American elite. However, involvement in the politics of Pakistan should not cloud the analysis, and has not entered into mine. From the perspective of an American commentator and analyst, the primary concern should be the strategic interests of America, both short term and long term. Democracy should be supported in Pakistan only to the extent that it is a catalyst of peace and stability and thus in the strategic interests of the U.S. As to its benefits to long term stability, I have my doubts, but there is no short term advantage.
For my previous analysis, democracy in Pakistan and malfeasance of previous administrations didn’t fit into the equation. Bhutto, it seems, would have allowed incursions of U.S. troops into Pakistan, and even further – NATO boots on the ground, formally and officially. It seems difficult to fake this, as it was a major plank in her platform. The situation in Pakistan is difficult and tenuous, and may devolve into chaos. But assuming the restoration of stability at some point, the U.S. administration should see this as a gracious and providential warning shot over the bow.
The campaign in Afghanistan remains the first front of the counterinsurgency campaign in Pakistan. Karachi, with a population of over 14 million people, and Lahore, with a population of over 10 million people, are larger than Fallujah by a factor 20 to 30. Counterinsurgency in these cities would cost the U.S. armed forces on the order of tens of thousands of dead and more than one hundred thousand wounded – prohibitive to say the least. But given that Pakistan is a nuclear state with assets that could fall into jihadist hands, the salient question is how to proceed short of such an awful campaign.
President Bush held an emergency meeting of his top foreign policy aides yesterday to discuss the deepening crisis in Pakistan, as administration officials and others explored whether Thursday’s assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto marks the beginning of a new Islamic extremist offensive that could spread beyond Pakistan and undermine the U.S. war effort in neighboring Afghanistan.
U.S. officials fear that a renewed campaign by Islamic militants aimed at the Pakistani government, and based along the border with Afghanistan, would complicate U.S. policy in the region by effectively merging the six-year-old war in Afghanistan with Pakistan’s growing turbulence.
“The fates of Afghanistan and Pakistan are inextricably tied,” said J. Alexander Thier, a former United Nations official in Afghanistan who is now at the U.S. Institute for Peace.
U.S. military officers and other defense experts do not anticipate an immediate impact on U.S. operations in Afghanistan. But they are concerned that continued instability eventually will spill over and intensify the fighting in Afghanistan, which has spiked in recent months as the Taliban has strengthened and expanded its operations.
Unrest in Pakistan and increasing fuel prices have already boosted the cost of food in Afghanistan, making it more likely that hungry Afghans will be lured by payments from the Taliban to participate in attacks, a U.S. Army officer in Afghanistan said.
In a secure videoconference yesterday linking officials in Washington, Islamabad and Crawford, Tex., Bush received briefings from CIA Director Michael V. Hayden and U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W. Patterson, said National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe. Bush then discussed Bhutto’s assassination and U.S. efforts to stabilize Pakistan with his top foreign policy advisers, including Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, as well as Adm. William J. Fallon of Central Command and Marine Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
U.S. intelligence and Defense Department sources said there is increasing evidence that the assassination of Bhutto, a former Pakistani prime minister, was carried out by al-Qaeda or its allies inside Pakistan. The intelligence officials said that in recent weeks their colleagues had passed along warnings to the Pakistani government that al-Qaeda-related groups were planning suicide attacks on Pakistani politicians.
The U.S. and Pakistani governments are focusing on Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Taliban Movement of Pakistan, as a possible suspect. A senior U.S. official said that the Bush administration is paying attention to a list provided by Pakistan’s interior ministry indicating that Mehsud’s targets include former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, former interior minister Aftab Khan Sherpao, and several other cabinet officials and moderate Islamist leaders. “I wouldn’t exactly call it a hit list, but we take it very seriously,” the official said. “All moderates [in Pakistan] are now under threat from this terrorism.”
Mehsud told the BBC earlier this month that the Pakistani government’s actions forced him to react with a “defensive jihad.”
After signing a condolence book for Bhutto at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, Rice said the United States is in contact with “all” of the parties in Pakistan and stressed that the Jan. 8 elections should not be postponed. “Obviously, it’s just very important that the democratic process go forward,” she told reporters.
The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan warned U.S. citizens Thursday to keep a low profile and avoid public gatherings. A Pentagon official said plans to evacuate Americans from the country are being reviewed.
“We’ve really got a new situation here in western Pakistan,” said Army Col. Thomas F. Lynch III, who has served in Afghanistan and with Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for Pakistan and the Middle East. He said the assassination marks a “critical new phase” in jihadist operations in Pakistan and predicted that the coming months would bring concentrated attacks on other prominent Pakistanis.
“The Taliban . . . are indeed a growing element of the domestic political stew” in Pakistan, said John Blackton, who served as a U.S. official in Afghanistan in the 1970s and again 20 years later. He noted that Pakistani military intelligence created the Taliban in Afghanistan.
How the United States responds will hinge largely on the actions of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, in whom U.S. officials have mixed confidence. If there is indeed a new challenge by Islamic militants emerging in Pakistan, then the United States will have to do whatever it can to support Musharraf, the U.S. Army officer in Afghanistan said.
“Pakistan must take drastic action against the Taliban in its midst or we will face the prospect of a nuclear weapon falling into the hands of al-Qaeda — a threat far more dangerous and real than Hussein’s arsenal ever was,” he said, referring to the deposed Saddam Hussein.
U.S. officials are concerned about the affect of Pakistan on the campaign in Afghanistan, but seeing things clearly requires looking in the opposite direction. Settling scores with al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan is much easier than it will be in Pakistan. The stakes are huge, and the notion of incorporating the Taliban into the government in Afghanistan (as the British advocate in order to create ‘peace’) seems so far removed from realistic regional needs that it is incredible that the idea was ever proffered. The British want to make peace with the jihadists, but when reality strikes an ugly chord with the assassination of an opponent of jihad in Pakistan, we are reminded of the specter of nuclear weapons in major American cities, and the smoke clears and the room of mirrors is broken – along with our illusions of peace with the jihadists.
“Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy. Next best is to disrupt his alliances. The next best is to attack his army.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War, III.4 – III.6
The role of Syria – at least tacitly – in the suicide bombings in Iraq and other foreign terrorist activities is well known. Yet only recently is the United States diplomatic corps said to have lost patience with Syria. Despite reports to the contrary, Iran continues to fund, arm, train and supply terrorists in Iraq in an effort to destabilize the country. The foreign origins of the violence in Iraq could have been (and could be) better addressed than it has been. The EFP (explosively formed projectile) factories in Iran should have been enemy targets as much as insurgent domiciles, and the Syrian Imams who recruited and supplied suicide bombers into Iraq should have been considered enemy fighters as much as those holding a weapon in Fallujah or Baghdad. While the U.S. has conducted robust kinetic operations against the foreign fighters in Iraq with huge success, the strategy could still have been completed with so-called black operations against rogue elements in Syria and more visible operations against EFP factories in Iran (or at least diplomatic pressure against Iran, something the State Department seems loath to do).
However, in the area of the indigenous insurgents, the U.S. strategy has been more lucid. The goal in counterinsurgency is to disrupt the allegiance of the people to the insurgents and then to ameliorate the conditions that led to the insurgency. Kinetic operations against foreign fighters were necessary because they fight mainly due to religious motivation. However, for the indigenous fighters, for months we have advocated both settling with the erstwhile insurgents and payment to the concerned citizens as both effective and anthropologically sound. It has become in vogue, especially among the political left, to level very specific criticisms at this approach. Kevin Drum gives us the template for this strategy bashing.
I’ve mentioned a few times before that our “bottoms up” strategy of supporting Sunni tribes in the provinces surrounding Baghdad carries a number of risks. The biggest risk, I suppose, is that once the tribes finally feel safe from the threat of al-Qaeda in Iraq, they’ll relaunch their insurgency and start shooting at American soldiers again. The second biggest risk is that the Shiite central government understands perfectly well that “competing armed interest groups” in the provinces are — well, competing armed interest groups.
That phrase comes from Australian Lt. Col. David Kilcullen (here), and a week ago I linked to a quote from a U.S. Army officer who was fairly candid about the effect that arming the tribes is likely to have on the balance of power in Iraq. “The grass-roots level will force change at the top,” he suggested, “because if they do not act on it, they will get overrun.”
Quite so. And does the Maliki government understand this threat? Via Cernig, AP reporter Diaa Hadid makes it clear that they do indeed:
Iraq’s Shiite-led government declared Saturday that after restive areas are calmed it will disband Sunni groups battling Islamic extremists because it does not want them to become a separate military force.
….The statement from Defense Minister Abdul-Qadir al-Obaidi was the government’s most explicit declaration yet of its intent to eventually dismantle the groups backed and funded by the United States as a vital tool for reducing violence.
“We completely, absolutely reject the [Sunni] Awakening becoming a third military organization,” al-Obaidi said at a news conference.
He added that the groups would also not be allowed to have any infrastructure, such as a headquarters building, that would give them long-term legitimacy. “We absolutely reject that,” al-Obaidi said.
The Maliki government has made similar noises in the past, but this is by far the most unequivocal they’ve ever been about it. And needless to say, the Sunni leaders are having none of it. There’s exactly zero chance that they will ever voluntarily disband their “Concerned Local Citizens” groups.
Who knows? Maybe this is posturing more than anything else. Maybe Petraeus and Crocker can work some magic that will defuse all this. But a year from now, if the Iraqi civil war is raging once again, this is where it will have started.
UPDATE: In the New York Times, Alissa Rubin and Damien Cave have a long overview piece on the current status of the Awakening. Money quote: “The Americans are haunted by the possibility that Iraq could go the way of Afghanistan, where Americans initially bought the loyalty of tribal leaders only to have some of them gravitate back to the Taliban when the money stopped.” The whole thing is worth a read.
Surely, with the Sunni leaders warning against sidelining the auxiliary police and concerned citizens, the Maliki administration should listen carefully. Furthermore, Major General Rick Lynch has been clear on U.S. expectations for the administration.
A top U.S. commander warned that Sunnis who fight al-Qaida in Iraq must be rewarded and recognized as legitimate members of Iraqi society – or else the hard-fought security gains of the past six months could be lost.
Lynch has credited these groups for much of the improvement in security in the region he commands, an area that stretches to the Iranian and Saudi Arabian borders …
The people say security is good now, but we need jobs. It’s all about jobs and we have to create them,» he told The Associated Press as he flew into patrol base Salie, just south of Baghdad – where U.S. troops fund about 150 members of the tribal groups. We are in a tenuous situation. We need to give jobs to the citizens (groups) or they will go back to fighting.
Lynch, who leads the 3rd Infantry Division, said he had 26,000 members of the groups in the area he controls and that they have given U.S. and Iraqi forces a key advantage in seeking to clear extremist-held pockets. They number about 70,000 countrywide, and are expected to grow by another 45,000 in coming months …
The U.S. military now funds the groups, known as Awakening Councils, Concerned Citizens and other names. But these Sunni groups expect to be rewarded for their efforts with jobs, either in the Iraqi security forces or elsewhere.
Having been militarily defeated by U.S. forces, we consider it to be unlikely that the Sunnis would take up the fight once again with the U.S. More likely, however, is an escalation in the low intensity civil war that was ongoing for much of the previous two years. This all makes it critical that political progress take root in the wake of the military successes. But Kevin Drum’s concluding comment is absurd: ” … a year from now, if the Iraqi civil war is raging once again, this is where it will have started.”
Rather than an observation of the necessity for political progress, this statement follows the template of criticism set out by the left, and it has been followed with religious fervor. Note carefully what Drum charges. Rather than the seeds of violence being one thousand years of religious bigotry between Shi’a and Sunni, or recent history under Saddam’s rule, or the temptations of oil revenue in a land that has not ever seen the largesse of its natural resources due to corruption, the cause is said to be the “concerned local citizens” groups, i.e., U.S. strategy.
This outlandish claim betrays the presuppositions behind it – specifically, that it would be somehow better to continue the fighting than to, as they charge, buy peace with money. But for the hundreds of thousands of disaffected Sunni workers who have no means to support their families, this criticism is impotent and offers no alternative to working for the insurgency to feed their children. It ignores basic daily needs, and thus is a barren and unworkable view when considering the human condition.
The strategy all along has been one of ground-up counterinsurgency. The statements by military leadership in Iraq, far from hiding the fact that political progress must follow on the heels of military progress, show not only a knowledge of this fact, but demonstrate that it is this way by design. The intent from the beginning has been one of providing the window of opportunity for political reconciliation, at least insofar as the provision of basic human needs is concerned. In this way, command in Iraq has attacked the enemy’s strategy, and has done so with remarkable success.
To the chattering class, success of the preparatory stages (the counterinsurgency proper), doesn’t provide a reason to hail the successes of the campaign. Rather, it provides a reason to level the a priori charge that we caused a civil war, if in fact one ensues. To the more sensible thinker, it should remind us of the fact that we are not finished, and more work needs to be done to complete the campaign.
In Musa Qala: The Argument for Force Projection, and Clarifying Expectations in Afghanistan, we discussed ongoing counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan in light of the battle for Musa Qala, Afghanistan’s “battle of Fallujah” that never occurred. We discussed the heavy bombing approach, the evacuation of families from the city, the lack of adequate force projection to take and hold Musa Qala, the British desire to negotiate with the Taliban, and disparate doctrines held by Australia (more forces are necessary) and the U.S. (advocating the small footprint COIN approach).
Continuing with this theme, we noted that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was prepared to talk tough to NATO in order to get more troops dedicated to the campaign in Afghanistan. While various main stream media reports and blog entries are hailing Musa Qala as a great victory, Gates has directly admitted that the campaign needs to undergo a transition. “Gates called for overhauling the alliance’s Afghan strategy over the next three to five years, shifting NATO’s focus from primarily one of rebuilding to one of waging “a classic counterinsurgency” against a resurgent Taliban and growing influx of al-Qaida fighters.”
So how did this summit of NATO leaders turn out? The British still want to pay enough money to split the Taliban, but intend to send no more troops into theater. The Australians, along with every other NATO member who has troops in theater, will draft a ‘plan’ to make the Afghanistan campaign more successful, but intend to send no more troops. Gates was reduced to platitudes like: ” … while the United States also ha[s] no plans to send more troops in the short-term, [we will be] trying more creative ways to encourage other NATO members to increase their presence in Afghanistan.”
While the Taliban would most surely like to have held Musa Qala, they determined that withdrawal and reversion to more clandestine tactics were strategically superior. “As Afghanistan has headed into its bitterly cold winter, the Taliban have retreated from direct combat operations and have resorted to roadside bombs to target coalition forces, says Major Michael Bassingthwaighte, a commander in Australia’s Reconstruction Task Force based in Tarin Kowt … With the coming of winter, many Taliban fighters had fled across the unpatrolled border into Pakistan or to distant homes for the Islamic holiday period of Eid. He expects the tempo of Taliban combat operations to increase after the poppy harvesting season finishes in April, a period when the Taliban find it hard to recruit fighters.”
The Afghanistan campaign suffers most particularly in the South. The south continues to move steadily in the wrong direction. Instability has spread to a number of previously benign provinces. Some countries, especially European ones that have contributed to NATO’s forces, are unenthusiastic about the shooting war they find themselves involved in. After a summer of repeatedly retaking the same two districts of Kandahar province, the Canadian commander, Brigadier-General Guy Laroche, commented: “Everything we have done in that regard is not a waste of time, but close to it”.
There are signs, too, that as the insurgency meshes itself tightly with the drugs trade, a sizeable proportion of the population may feel it has a vested interest in prolonged insecurity which allows narcotics production to flourish.
The winter is at least a moment to pause and reflect on strategy for next year. At Musa Qala, NATO and Afghan forces easily defeated the Taliban but as diplomats in Kabul, the capital, concede, a far greater challenge is then defending against reinfiltration. Securing territory means getting the support of local people. In Helmand, for example, this requires teams of anthropologists and political officers to deal with a mosaic of tribal interest groups, an approach used by American forces elsewhere in the country. That means a greater emphasis on reconciliation and negotiation with local Taliban leaders, as well as training Afghan forces so they are able to take the lead in military operations.
Politically the challenges are no easier. The Afghan public, particularly in the south, is gloomy about the future. Dismay over corruption and wrangling between different ethnic groups suggest that Afghan leaders, such as President Hamid Karzai, will need substantial support from outsiders for a long time yet. America is backing the idea of sending a “super envoy” to co-ordinate international efforts in Afghanistan. But the government remains unable even to reach out across areas of the south. Where it cannot reach there may need to be more controversial “tribal solutions”, such as village militias to provide local security and efforts to empower tribal elders and local systems of justice.
But it must be remembered that the tribal solution was implemented in Anbar from a position of strength. Far from being unable to reach areas of Anbar, Marines were deployed all over the province, engaged in kinetic and constabulary operations as well as public relations, reconstruction and engagement of the population in paying labor. We have also argued at The Captain’s Journal that the solution to the poppy problem is not to spray or use other means to kill the crops. This might be seen as out-terrorizing the terrorists. The solution to the insurgency problem is to target the insurgents, and the solution to the drug problem is interdiction and reconstitution of the agricultural industry in Afghanistan. But this requires force projection. It also requires largesse, civil affairs, diplomacy, and other arms of “soft power.” But soft power is founded on the pretext of hard power, not the other way around.
There is currently a policy review underway for the Afghanistan campaign. “Amid rising concerns about lagging progress in Afghanistan, the top U.S. commander in the region has launched a review of the American mission there with a major focus on counterterrorism efforts, a senior U.S. military official said Sunday. Adm. William Fallon, the head of U.S. Central Command, has ordered senior staff to conduct a thorough review of the six-year-old war against al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan, the senior official confirmed to CNN. The review has been under way for several weeks, and Fallon is not considering any new recommendations until its completion, the official said. The study, first reported by The New York Times, is focused on efforts by U.S. troops along Afghanistan’s rugged border with Pakistan.”
The first quarter of 2008 should reveal the results of this policy review. Unless the campaign in Afghanistan is taken as seriously as it has been in Iraq, the policy review will not have been successful. There are troops available for deployment in Afghanistan, but they are currently in Germany and South Korea. Will the Pentagon have the courage to engage in global strategic thinking, or will the deliverance of this study be more platitudes about being creative?
While it is a positive sign to win back Musa Qala, the operation required heavy air power, and the city was deserted of families after the battle. The battle for Musa Qala is a poster child for the Afghanistan campaign, with the British having entered into a gentleman’s agreement with tribal leaders to prevent the return of the Taliban (in agreement for British force departing the area), when the tribal leaders clearly lacking the means to enforce their end of the agreement. Adequate troops didn’t exist to perform reconstruction or constabulary operations for Musa Qala, and the question remains how either Afghanistan or NATO will now have the forces necessary to maintain order in Musa Qala when they did not before.
A telling indication of the U.S. expectations was given to us in preparation for a summit of NATO leaders concerning the Afghanistan campaign.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates sharply criticized NATO countries Tuesday for failing to supply urgently needed trainers, helicopters and infantry for Afghanistan as violence escalates there, vowing not to let the alliance “off the hook.”
Gates called for overhauling the alliance’s Afghan strategy over the next three to five years, shifting NATO’s focus from primarily one of rebuilding to one of waging “a classic counterinsurgency” against a resurgent Taliban and growing influx of al-Qaida fighters.
“I am not ready to let NATO off the hook in Afghanistan at this point,” Gates told the House Armed Services Committee. Ticking off a list of vital requirements — about 3,500 more military trainers, 20 helicopters, and three infantry battalions — Gates voiced “frustration” at “our allies not being able to step up to the plate.”
The defense secretary’s blunt public scolding of NATO, together with equally forceful testimony Tuesday by Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put on display the growing transatlantic rift over the future of the mission in Afghanistan. The Bush administration over the last year has increasingly bristled at what it sees as NATO’s overly passive response to the Taliban, but European leaders have repeatedly rebuffed entreaties by Gates and President Bush to do more.
In recent months, officials said, Bush and his advisers have grown more concerned about the situation in Afghanistan, where, in contrast to Iraq, violence is on the rise and the U.S.-led coalition is struggling to adjust to changing conditions on the ground. As the White House reviews its Afghanistan policy, officials have concluded that wide-ranging strategic goals set for 2007 have not been met despite tactical combat successes.
Gates has made a stark admission; the campaign in Afghanistan has gone from one of rebuilding to one of classical counterinsurgency. More involvement is necessary by NATO forces. But Australia is prepared to talk tough as well.
Australia’s new Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon will deliver a blunt message to NATO countries meeting in Scotland on Friday, telling them that there will be no more Australian troops sent to Afghanistan until European countries increase their commitment.
Before the conference of defence ministers kicks off in Edinburgh this weekend, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been outlining his country’s future strategy in Afghanistan.
NATO is not winning, but they are not losing either.
Australian aid workers have told ABC Radio’s AM program that it is better to have the 40,000 allied troops in Afghanistan, but they are not enough to be the solution.
When Mr Fitzgibbon is in Edinburgh, his simple message will be that the new Labor Government could send more troops, but only if countries like Spain and Germany also send more troops to the south.
Also in preparation for the upcoming meeting, Mr Brown gave a speech in the British House of Commons.
“Let me make it clear at the outset, that as part of a coalition, we are winning the battle against the Taliban insurgency,” Mr Brown said.
“We are isolating and eliminating the leadership of the Taliban. We are not negotiating with them.”
But indeed Britain does support negotiations with the Taliban and sees a role for them to play in the new Afghanistan. “Britain will support deals with Taliban insurgents to give them places in Afghanistan’s new government and military, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced yesterday, distancing himself from the Canadian and U.S. strategy of refusing to sit down with the Taliban. In a speech to the House of Commons announcing a new Afghanistan strategy, Mr. Brown said that Britain will join Afghan President Hamid Karzai in making money and job offers to “former insurgents.”
Brown is referring to an effort underway by Hamid Karzai to obtain the loyalties of the lieutenants of Mullah Omar and thus split the organization. The price for this loyalty is a place at the table in the new Afghanistan. The U.S. brought the Anbaris into a peaceful solution to the insurgency from a position of strength rather than weakness, and the indigenous Anbaris were not, for the most part, fighting from a perspective of religious jihad. This fact and the stark difference it presents against the backdrop of the Taliban seems to be lost on NATO and the Brits. This circus-like atmosphere is made worse given the solution proferred by the NATO secretary general: increased involvement by Japan in the Afghanistan campaign!
Force projection is needed in Afghanistan, and this force projection will involve kinetic operations to capture and kill Taliban. Co-opting them into a new Afghanistan defeats the original purpose of the war, and deprecates the sacrifices of the men who have died in Afghanistan to make the U.S. safe. NATO will not be able to do the bidding of the U.S. This is our task, and the message over the last year of the campaign is that it will be done by us and not someone else.
Ever since the British pulled out of Musa Qala, Afghanistan, in October of 2007, the Taliban have committed atrocities against the population and subjugated them to Taliban rule, and with forces more powerful than the Afghan police in Musa Qala, the agreement between British forces and the tribal leaders to prevent the Taliban from entering Musa Qala was rendered powerless and irrelevant.
British forces have said that they wouldn’t take something they have no plan to hold, and at the moment NATO and Afghan forces, in anticipation of Taliban counterattacks, are digging in and fortifying their positions. But while U.S. forces battled some of the Taliban as the fled North, most fighters simply melted away into the terrain. These fighters will live to fight another day, under cover of darkness, in the shadows, planting roadside bombs, and shooting innocent Afghanis. Afghanistan’s “battle of Fallujah” didn’t occur, as the forces necessary to encircle the Taliban forces and chase them until captured or killed didn’t exist. While the Taliban lost some fighters and indeed some significant local leaders, they know better than to engage NATO forces in kinetic operations for any protracted period of time.
… NATO-backed International Security Assistance Force and its Afghan army allies are stretched too thinly in Oruzgan province, home to the 370-strong Australian Reconstruction Task Force, which is facing a growing threat from resurgent Taliban militants … “One of the fundamental principles of a counter-insurgency is you can always do with more forces,” said Colonel Roach, who is on the headquarters staff of the ISAF, serving as its senior liaison officer with the Afghan army and police in Regional Command South. “You can go into an area and leave and Taliban will come back and chop peoples heads off.”
At The Captain’s Journal, we agree with Colonel Roach’s axiom, but it should be noted that this is not a given in COIN doctrine. In fact, Military transition teams in Afghanistan are designed with exactly the opposite idea in mind.
MiTT training is a major part of the Pentagon’s new approach to counterinsurgency. A MiTT embeds with an Iraqi or Afghan unit. The team itself is small–10-15 soldiers, usually of more advanced rank, from staff sergeant to colonel–but designed to work with almost any size unit from battalion to division. Their goal is to make the local troops self-sustaining: tactically, operationally, and logistically. Aside from providing training and expertise, MiTTs also provide a huge morale boost to their foreign counterparts as they have the power to call in air support and reinforcements otherwise not at the disposal of the local police and military. The MiTT should encourage the locals to go on the offensive and gain the confidence needed to later fight on their own: a necessary component of our we-stand-down-as-they-stand-up exit strategy. Transition teams also leave a small footprint in hostile areas that might be stirred up by a larger U.S. presence. Such small groups remain in the shadows and emphasize the achievement of Iraqi and Afghan forces–something that greatly reduces the political fallout of U.S. operations.
But this may be more pedantic than wise. The Anbar Province in Iraq has also seen its share of tribal leaders and concerned citizens stepping up to be counted, but in order for this to obtain, a tank had to be parked outside the home of Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, the most powerful figure in Anbar, to protect him from al Qaeda attacks. There is no replacement for force projection. The British reaction to the Taliban re-entry into Masu Qala is befuddling given the nature of power in this region. Agreements come and go, but without the means to enforce the agreements, it seems odd that the British would have relied on this “gentleman’s understanding” with the tribes in the area.
The British want other NATO forces to shoulder more of the burden in Afghanistan, the Canadians are there only because the U.S. says they have to be there (according to a recent poll), and there are roads through Afghanistan that, in a less dangerous situation, might force competition against the poppy trade. Yet this road is too dangerous because of bombs, shootings and Taliban influence to be relied upon for commerce.
The ruined Afghan police truck smoldered on the highway in the village bazaar, flames rising from its cargo bed. The village was silent. Its residents had hidden themselves ahead of a U.S. patrol.
The remains of a second truck, a tanker, sat on its wheel rims 100 yards to the north. To the south, another patrol was removing two other freshly burned tankers from the highway, clearing the lanes so traffic might pass.
The Americans examined the police truck. Holes marked where bullets had passed through. The front passenger door was gone; a rocket-propelled grenade had struck and exploded there.
This vehicle graveyard on Highway 1, roughly 50 miles south of Kabul, the Afghan capital, symbolizes both the ambitions and frustrations in Afghanistan six years after the Taliban were chased from power.
Highway 1 is the country’s main road, the route between Kabul and Kandahar, the country’s second largest city. It lies atop an ancient trade route that, in theory, could connect Central Asia and Afghanistan with ports in Pakistan, restoring Afghanistan’s place as a transit hub for something besides heroin.
The highway, which has been rebuilt with $250 million from the United States and other nations, accommodates a daily flow of automobiles, buses and ornately decorated cargo carriers, which the soldiers call “jingle trucks.”
The Afghan and U.S. governments say the road’s restored condition is a tangible step toward a self-sufficient Afghanistan.
But Highway 1 remains bedeviled by danger, extortion and treachery. Police corruption and insurgent attacks sow fear and make traveling many sections of the road a lottery. The risks limit its contribution to the economy and underscore the government’s weakness beyond Kabul.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has ordered Marines to stay in the Anbar Province (rather than deploy to Afghanistan) where they will likely be conducting public relations missions and handing out food bags to the Anbaris, but force projection is needed in Afghanistan. Yet as long as the small footprint counterinsurgency advocates hold sway, the campaign appears to be proceeding apace in Afghanistan. Doctrine can indeed color the lenses through which we see the world.
Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, as inadvertently divulged in the recent statement by Omar al Baghdadi (or Abu Ayyub al-Masri), has become a flat organization. Baghdadi has in large measure lost command and control of the lowest ranks of his organization.
Background
Omar al Baghdadi is the name given to the leader of al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. In February of 2007, Nibras Kazimi constructed a time line and description of the emergence of Baghdadi at the New York Sun, and followed this up in March of 2007 at his own blog, Talisman Gate, with further description of his identify and lineage. In July of 2007, the Multinational Force captured a terrorist named Khaled Abdul-Fattah Dawoud Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, also known as Abu Shahid. This man divulged a number of significant details about the al Qaeda organization, including the fact that al Baghdadi was a fictitious character and Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian jihadist, was still the commander of al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
Mashhadani was a leader in the Ansar al-Sunna terrorist group before joining al Qaeda in Iraq two and a half years ago. He served as the al Qaeda media emir for Baghdad and then was appointed the media emir for all of Iraq, and served as an intermediary between AQI leader al-Masri, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. In fact, communication between senior al Qaeda leadership and al-Masri frequently went through Mashhadani. Along with al-Masri, Mashhadani co-founded a virtual organization in cyberspace called the Islamic State of Iraq, in 2006, as a new Iraqi pseudonym for AQI. The Islamic State of Iraq is the latest effort by al Qaeda to market itself and its goal of imposing a Taliban-like state on the Iraqi people. This is what we have learned or confirmed from Mashhadani’s capture. In his words, “The Islamic State of Iraq is a front organization that masks the foreign influence and leadership within al Qaeda in Iraq in an attempt to put an Iraqi face on the leadership of al Qaeda in Iraq.” To further this myth, al-Masri created a fictional political head of the Islamic State of Iraq known as Omar al-Baghdadi. Al-Baghdadi, who has never been seen, is actually an actor named Abu Abdullah al- Naima. Al-Masri maintains exclusive control over al-Naima as he acts the part of the fictitious al-Baghdadi character. To make al-Baghdadi appear credible, al-Masri swore allegiance to al-Baghdadi and pledged to obey him, which was essentially swearing allegiance to himself since he knew that Baghdadi was fictitious and a creation of his own. Al-Zawahiri has repeatedly referred to al-Baghdadi in video and Internet statements, further deceiving Iraqi followers and perpetuating the myth of al-Baghdadi. Mashhadani confirms that al-Masri and the foreign leaders with whom he surrounds himself, not Iraqis, make the operational decisions for al Qaeda in Iraq, and to be clear, al Qaeda in Iraq is run by foreigners, not Iraqis. According to Mashhadani, in fact, al-Masri increasingly relies only on foreigners, who make up the majority of the leadership of AQI. He does not seek nor trust the advice of Iraqis in the organization. This highlights the significance of the operation our forces conducted a few weeks back to kill Khalil, Khaled and Khatab al-Turki, three foreign al Qaeda leaders who had been sent into Iraq to help al- Masri shore up the organization in northern Iraq. And finally, according to Mashhadani, al Qaeda in Iraq leader al- Masri has increasingly become more isolated and paranoid, especially of the Iraqis within al Qaeda in Iraq, as operations have killed or captured additional AQI leaders. Mashhadani, in his own words, says, “The idea of al-Baghdadi is very weak now because other insurgent groups have realized that the concept of al-Baghdadi is controlled by the al Qaeda foreign fighters in Iraq.” Al-Masri started — he also says: Al-Masri started overpowering us and acted on his own accord by controlling the distribution of funding. Al-Masri also controlled the content of these publications attributed to al-Baghdadi. The capture of Mashhadani and his statements give us a more complete picture of al Qaeda in Iraq. And although the rank and file are largely Iraqi, the senior leadership of al Qaeda in Iraq, as we have previously stated, is mostly foreign.
-‘Abu Omar al-Baghdadi’, the ‘Prince of the Faithful’ in Al-Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq, is not a fictitious character as he’s been repeatedly characterized by US officials and military officers.
-‘Abu Omar al-Baghdadi’ is the pseudonym used by Khalid Khalil Ibrahim al-Mashhadani, who should not to be confused with Khalid Abdel-Fattah Daoud al-Mashhadani, who allegedly told American interrogators that ‘Al-Baghdadi’ is a fictitious character after he was arrested on July 4.
-Khalid Abdel-Fattah Daoud al-Mashhadani, ‘Abu Shehed’, is not as senior in the hierarchy of the Islamic State of Iraq as claimed by US officials. He should not be confused with ‘Abu Muhammad al-Mashhadani’ who is the ‘Minister of Information’ for the Islamic State of Iraq. Abu Shehed’s first cousin, Adel al-Mashhadani, is more senior, for he leads Al-Qaeda’s battalions in the Fadel neighborhood.
Recent Statement / Press Release by al Qaeda
On behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq (a.k.a. al Qaeda), Omar al Baghdadi recently issued a message entitled “As for the Scum – It Disappears like Froth (Koran 13:17).” Al-Baghdadi announces the launch of a new raid against the Awakening, the U.S.-backed tribal movement aimed at expelling Al-Qaeda from Iraq.
In the first part of his message, Al-Baghdadi criticizes the mujahideen of the Awakening movement for taking a nationalist approach, which entails embracing “unbelievers” who are Iraqi citizens (e.g., Shi’ites) and rejecting pious Muslims who are not Iraqi citizens (i.e. the non-Iraqi mujahideen affiliated with the ISI). Elaborating on this point, he rebukes the Awakening movement for adopting a political platform in which rapprochement among Iraqis takes priority over defensive jihad, which, he says, is the personal obligation of every Muslim in Iraq today.
Al-Baghdadi then announces the formation of a force called the Al-Sadiq Brigades, which specializes in “killing every apostate and unbeliever,” and has already killed some “apostates” who were involved with the Awakening movement, such as tribal leader Abu Al-Rishawi of the Al-Anbar province. He also announces the launch of a new raid on the Awakening movement, which he says will continue until the end of the 20th of the month of Muharram (about two months from now).
Al-Baghdadi states that the raid, named after Al-Qaeda explosives expert Abu ‘Omar Al-Kurdi (reportedly killed in 2006), will target anyone involved with the Awakening movement:
“…I call upon every mujahid in Iraq who yearns for Allah and for the world to come… especially the mujahideen of the ISI, to attack [the Awakening movement] using three [methods involving] explosives… with hand grenades, with IEDs… and [by carrying out] martyrdom operations.
“Those who have [already] decided… to undertake a martyrdom operation should do so during the days [of the raid]. If anyone is still hesitating… we urge him… to hurry up [and carry out] a martyrdom operation, which is most harmful to our enemies and has the greatest impact [on them]. Thus you shall tear out [their] hearts… and put an end to their greed. As they have already [admitted], they are unable to stop [a fighter] who wishes to die for the sake of Allah. Their [military] apparatuses and authorities… are unable to deal with this [threat]. He who cannot carry out an attack by means of explosives… should at least kill three apostates during the raid in [some other] manner of his choice…”
Analysis & Observations
There have been heavy political ramifications surrounding the issue of how the insurgency is constituted. The point must be made, it has been believed, that we are fighting al Qaeda in order to prevent the waning of support for the campaign in Iraq. But as we have discussed before, the term “al Qaeda” had been used as a surrogate for the broader insurgency. The insurgency was originally constituted by foreign (al Qaeda) leadership, and supplemented mainly by Iraqis (Bill Ardolino also weighed in with respect to the idea of local versus foreign fighters). Just today, MEMRI carried an account by two Saudi jihadists who were surprised to be combined with so many Iraqis upon arrival in Baghdad, Iraqis who didn’t trust them and took their participation to be meddling in their affairs.
But true to their professionalism, U.S. forces in Iraq have not gotten caught up in political debates, and have waged a smart campaign to take advantage of information and intelligence concerning the makeup of the insurgency. Operation Alljah in Fallujah involved heavy kinetic operations to kill or capture many insurgents, among them Africans, Chechens and men of Far Eastern descent. There was no shortage of foreign fighters allied with al Qaeda in the recent operations of the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, but there were also indigenous fighters, and separating the two groups was pivotal to campaign.
Payment for concerned citizens, a tactic we have strongly advocated, was successfully used in Fallujah to bring work to heads of household. This, combined with robust security (gated communities and biometrics), caused some indigenous fighters to begin to return home from Fallujah to al-Qaim where they could be carefully reintegrated into society.
The reason it is important to know the makeup of the enemy is that the strategy for defeating them is a function of how they are constituted. Fortunately, U.S. forces have been wise in their choices, and the combination of tribal negotiations, payments, kinetic operations and reconstruction have caused the support for the insurgency to dissipate at the lowest levels – the fighters. The indigenous Iraqis have gone home in large part, and while the Strategy Page recently discussed al Qaeda fighters moving back to Afghanistan, we were discussing this more than a month ago in Regional Flux and the Long War. The foreigners have been killed or captured, have left Iraq, or have headed North to Mosul and Kirkuk, as we discussed in Operations in Northern Iraq: Hard Times for the Terrorists.
Al Qaeda is increasingly left with fewer fighters to do the work. But what is more interesting than what was intended to be communicated in this most recent statement was what was not intended to be, but slipped out anyway. Al Baghdadi, or al Masri, has divulged al Qaeda operational security, of course, without this intention. Carefully note what has been said: “Those who have [already] decided… to undertake a martyrdom operation should do so during the days [of the raid]. If anyone is still hesitating… we urge him… to hurry up [and carry out] a martyrdom operation, which is most harmful to our enemies and has the greatest impact [on them] … He who cannot carry out an attack by means of explosives… should at least kill three apostates during the raid in [some other] manner of his choice…”
We have known for some time now that due to actionable intelligence the Multinational Force has increasingly targeted senior and mid-level al Qaeda leadership, and many have been captured or killed. But al Baghdadi’s statement is the most stark admission to date that the organization has gone flat. Note what happened. The most senior al Qaeda in Iraq leader used a press release to issue tactical level orders to the lowest level ground troops. The statement is not a rehearsal of what he has told his emirs, but rather, is spoken in the present tense imperative. He is issuing orders. The formation of the so-called Al-Sidiq Brigades is a media ploy, as this group includes whatever foreign fighters he has left in his organization. He isn’t bifurcating his forces, he is temporarily renaming them for purposes of morale.
Whether al Qaeda in Iraq has an Iraqi face and Omar al Baghdadi actually exists, or al-Masri is still playing a shell game with a fictitious character, is quite irrelevant. U.S. forces are fully engaged in knowledge of the insurgency and are using the appropriate tactics to address each part of it. Whoever is in charge of al Qaeda has no command and control. He has lost his officers. The only analogue for us would be to ponder the idea of a Battalion of Marines being sent to Iraq, told to find their way there, split up, their NCOs taken away from them, and orders issued by their commanding officer to go find some enemy and kill them, with each individual Marine working alone and having a quota.
As good as the U.S. Marines are, this experiment is not likely to turn out very well, and yet this is the state of al Qaeda in Iraq. Petraeus has said that no one should be ready to do end zone dances yet, and we have discussed the existence of some hard line Ba’athists and Fedayeen Saddam in Mosul that must be dealt with. Yet when the most dangerous enemy lacks command and control, the situation is very favorable and the advancements undeniable.
” … the evidence indicates that the Iraqi Security Forces will not be able to secure Iraqi borders against conventional military threats in the near term … the ISF will be unable to fulfil their essential security responsibilities independently over the next 12-18 months,” Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq [1].
“Restoring Iraq to military self-sufficiency will require at least a decade. For that alone, Iraq will remain an American protectorate well into the next decade …” John Pike, Globalsecurity.org [2].
If only the issues with the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) could be summed up by saying that they needed to learn to do calisthenics better or target with their rifles, training the ISF would take several months. Undoubtedly, this is what the uninitiated think when the administration talks of “standing down when the Iraqis stand up.” How long can it take to train a soldier? Even if one includes consideration beyond individual training to unit level tactics such as satellite patrols, squads rushes, flanking maneuvers, room clearing, and so forth, this would add months – maybe a year at the most.
But the almost insurmountable problems with the ISF present themselves under three rubrics. The first has to do with the nation-state of Iraq, and the degree to which it can function without the sectarian divides that have hindered the progress of the government thus far. After all, the military is not immune from society’s ills any more than other institutions.
Early this year, a 700-strong Kurdish Iraqi army battalion, originally from the northern city of Sulaymaniyah, deployed to Balad, 50 miles northwest of Baghdad, to bolster a single Shi’ite battalion mustered from local residents.
The large Sunni minority living around Balad protested the Kurdish unit’s presence, according to U.S. Army Lt. Col. David Coffey, a member of an ad-hoc Military Transition Team that was helping train the Kurdish battalion. Residents including some Iraqi military personnel fired at patrolling Kurdish troops, and on at least one occasion, the Kurds fired back — one of the few recorded incidents of fighting within Iraqi Army ranks.
Yet by the summer of 2007 this had all been turned on this head. Kurdish fighters were seen as savior for at least one Sunni family.
Bristling with weapons, the men arrived on the back of three pick-up trucks, then surrounded the modest house in the once “mixed” suburb of al-Amel, in western Baghdad. A black-clad gunman jumped down and hammered on the thin metal gate. There were “bad people” on the loose, he shouted to the residents cowering inside. They should pack up and go and live “among your own people—for your own protection”. He and his men would helpfully put their belongings on the back of the trucks. For safety’s sake, the family should go immediately. As this ultimatum was being given to the terrified Sunni Arab family by the Shia gunmen, a group of Iraqi policemen, also Shias, leant on a police car and idly puffed away on their cigarettes, just 50 yards up the street, indifferent to the crime of sectarian cleansing being perpetrated under their noses.
That scene has become all too common in al-Amel—and in many other mixed districts. Since the bombing of the Shias’ shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad, in February last year, many mixed and middle-class areas have become either mostly Shia or mostly Sunni, depending on which side of the main road you live.
Yet on the occasion described above the Sunni family managed to sit tight, in the house they had built some 30 years ago in what was then a palm grove. They were saved by the arrival, in the nick of time, of a contingent of about 100 Kurdish soldiers, some of the 3,000-odd former Peshmerga fighters (literally, “those who face death”) who have joined Iraq’s national army and have been controversially deployed in Baghdad as part of the “surge” of troops, mainly American ones, to beef up security in the bloody capital.
As they neared the besieged house, the Kurdish soldiers shot over the heads of the Shia gunmen, identified by locals as members of the Mahdi militia loyal to a Shia firebrand, Muqtada al-Sadr, and told them to leave the area. They swiftly complied. There was no American soldier in sight.
The Shi’a within the ISF have increasingly caused problems with the Sunni population, failing to engender trust. The surge also allowed U.S. troops to provide adequate coverage when this had been missing from earlier in the campaign. U.S. troops are now also seen as protectors against Shi’a ISF members in areas in which they previously didn’t have the manpower to patrol.
As the Americans patrol the Sunni Arab neighborhood of Azamiyah, people keep turning to them for help. One man asks them to bring in a fuel truck stopped by Iraqi troops. Another complains that Iraqi soldiers just beat up his brother.
The Americans used to be loathed in Azamiyah, a longtime stronghold of insurgents and the last place where Saddam Hussein appeared in public. Now the animosity has given way to a grudging acceptance, because the people of this northern neighborhood want American protection from a foe they hate and fear even more: the mainly Shiite Iraqi army.
“We feel safe when the Americans are around,” says a computer engineer who gave his name only as Abu Fahd. He stopped going to work because of his fear of militiamen at the Shiite-dominated Health Ministry and now makes a living selling clothes.
“When we see the Iraqi army, we just stay home or close our shops.”
The altercations and lack of trust doesn’t just affect the population. In Western Iraq – Sunni territory between Baghdad and Fallujah, the ISF have had altercations with not only the Sunni “awakening” (e.g., 1920s Brigade), but U.S. forces as well. Lt. Col. Kurt Pinkerton, a 41-year-old California native who has spent the previous months cultivating his relationship with Abu Azzam (an “awakening” leader), managed to de-escalate just such an encounter in June of 2007 between his friend the Sunni leader and an ISF Brigade.
… the Iraqi brigade, which is predominantly Shiite, was assigned a new area and instructed to stay away from Nasr Wa Salam, Colonel Pinkerton said. But he said he believed that the Iraqi soldiers remain intent on preventing Sunni Arabs, a majority here, from controlling the area. He cites a pattern of aggression by Iraqi troops toward Abu Azzam’s men and other Sunnis, who he believes are often detained for no reason.
Recently, and without warning, Colonel Pinkerton said, 80 Iraqi soldiers in armored vehicles charged out of their sector toward Nasr Wa Salam but were blocked by an American platoon. The Iraqis refused to say where they were going and threatened to drive right through the American soldiers, whom they greatly outnumbered.
Eventually, with Apache helicopter gunships circling overhead and American gunners aiming their weapons at them, the Iraqi soldiers retreated. “It hasn’t come to firing bullets yet,” Colonel Pinkerton said … Pinkerton’s experiences here, he said, have inverted the usual American instincts born of years of hard fighting against Sunni insurgents.
“I could stand among 1,800 Sunnis in Abu Ghraib,” he said, “and feel more comfortable than standing in a formation of Iraqi soldiers.”
The second problematic area has to do with broad, general corruption across the entire ISF. Earlier in the 2007, “American units that patrolled with Iraqi forces in west and east Baghdad found that Iraqi officers sold new uniforms meant for their troops, and that their soldiers wore plastic shower sandals while manning checkpoints, abused prisoners and solicited bribes to free suspects they’d captured.”
Interviews with U.S. soldiers, and reporting from accompanying them on patrols, made it clear that there are profound problems with the Iraqi troops, ranging from worries that they’re operating on behalf of Shiite death squads to aggravation with their refusal to carry out basic tasks such as wearing flak vests.
In a west Baghdad neighborhood where bodies often turn up beside the road, facedown on the pavement with bullets in their heads, U.S. Army 1st Lt. Brendan Griswold looked on last week as Iraqi soldiers patted down three men at a checkpoint and thumbed through their documents. The Iraqi soldiers found a fake Iraqi passport on one of the men, whom they suspected was Jordanian and possibly an insurgent.
Griswold didn’t stir, determined to let the Iraqis conduct the search on their own.
“I like going out with some of them. But some of the others are hard to control; they run away when things happen,” said the 24-year-old 1st Cavalry Division platoon commander from Leavenworth, Kan.
An Iraqi soldier approached him. “Where do we put them?” he asked.
Griswold pointed to the Iraqi army Humvees in front of him. Iraqi soldiers grabbed the three men, opened the back trunks of their Humvees and started to stuff them inside.
“No, not in there,” Griswold yelled, as he cussed under his breath and walked over to supervise.
After he made sure the detainees were seated in the Humvees, the convoy drove to an Iraqi army intelligence office. The Iraqi troops led the three men into what looked like a darkened closet. Griswold asked the Iraqis not to abuse the detainees, then shook hands and said goodbye. As he left the intelligence building, he asked his interpreter what the Iraqi troops would do to the detainees.
“They were asking them how much they would pay to be released,” the interpreter replied with a grin.
The third problematic area has to do with Middle Eastern culture and what it brings (and doesn’t bring) to its armed forces. Norvell B. De Atkine has written an analysis entitled “Why Arabs Lose Wars” that should be required reading for every field grade officer who deploys to Iraq, and perhaps Non-commissioned officers as well [3]. The problems are numerous, but De Atkine focuses in on officers and the cultural tendency for over-centralization, discouraging initiative, lack of flexibility, manipulation of information, and the discouragement of leadership at the junior officer level. Stepping down in the chain of command, De Atkine then focuses in on one major difference that separates Western armed forces from the rest of the world.
The social and professional gap between officers and enlisted men is present in all armies, but in the United States and other Western forces, the non-commissioned officer (NCO) corps bridges it. Indeed, a professional NCO corps has been critical for the American military to work at its best; as the primary trainers in a professional army, NCOs are critical to training programs and to the enlisted men’s sense of unit esprit. Most of the Arab world either has no NCO corps or it is non-functional, severely handicapping the military’s effectiveness. With some exceptions, NCOs are considered in the same low category as enlisted men and so do not serve as a bridge between enlisted men and officers. Officers instruct but the wide social gap between enlisted man and officer tends to make the learning process perfunctory, formalized, and ineffective.
De Atkine summarizes the perceptive analysis with this sobering comment.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the cultural gulf separating American and Arab military cultures. In every significant area, American military advisors find students who enthusiastically take in their lessons and then resolutely fail to apply them. The culture they return to — the culture of their own armies in their own countries — defeats the intentions with which they took leave of their American instructors. Arab officers are not concerned about the welfare and safety of their men. The Arab military mind does not encourage initiative on the part of junior officers, or any officers for that matter. Responsibility is avoided and deflected, not sought and assumed. Political paranoia and operational hermeticism, rather than openness and team effort, are the rules of advancement (and survival) in the Arab military establishments. These are not issues of genetics, of course, but matters of historical and political culture.
An interesting and more personal account of the nature of the society and how it impacts the ISF is given to us by David J. Danelo [4].
When jundis sign up to serve in the Iraqi Army, they do not enlist for any length of time. There’s no such thing as a one-, two- or four-year commitment, because it would be both impractical and unenforceable, given the current state of Iraq … An accurate count of Iraqi soldiers is almost impossible. “When they go home on leave, we have no idea how many are going to come back,” says one U.S. military adviser to the Iraqi Army. “Some are kidnapped or killed. Some just run away” … Lieutenant Muhammad: “I Haven’t Been Paid In 10 Months” … Warrant Officer Omar: “No One in My Family Knows I’m in the Army” …
And so the story goes, from corruption, to desertion, to lack of family support for ISF members, to poor or no pay, to sectarian differences, to poor training, to the lack of an NCO corps. The story is about cultural differences and sectarian divides rather than the ability to perform with a firearm. The project in which the United States is engaged with respect to the ISF is no less than one of cultural transition – a change of paradigm.
Going forward, it is in the interest of the United States to have an “enduring strategic partnership … one of the follow-up items that both the Iraqis and the Americans need to work on to make sure that we can have a presence there that helps continue to support the region and helps the burgeoning democracy in the heart of the Middle East,” as stated in the White House press release. But the Iraqi government is prepared to allow the US a long-term troop presence in the country and preferential treatment for American investments in return for a guarantee of security including defence against internal coups. Due in no small part to the state of the ISF, a strategic relationship is in the interests of the Iraqi people as well.
While the campaign in Iraq continues and the Afghanistan campaign continues to suffer from a lack of adequate force projection, Pakistan remains fertile soil for making jihadists. Concerning the going-forward U.S. strategy for addressing the problem, the New York Times is the recipient of leaked preliminary strategy plans for counterinsurgency in Pakistan.
A new and classified American military proposal outlines an intensified effort to enlist tribal leaders in the frontier areas of Pakistan in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as part of a broader effort to bolster Pakistani forces against an expanding militancy, American military officials said.
If adopted, the proposal would join elements of a shift in strategy that would also be likely to expand the presence of American military trainers in Pakistan, directly finance a separate tribal paramilitary force that until now has proved largely ineffective and pay militias that agreed to fight Al Qaeda and foreign extremists, officials said. The United States now has only about 50 troops in Pakistan, a Pentagon spokesman said, a force that could grow by dozens under the new approach.
The proposal is modeled in part on a similar effort by American forces in Anbar Province in Iraq that has been hailed as a great success in fighting foreign insurgents there. But it raises the question of whether such partnerships, to be forged in this case by Pakistani troops backed by the United States, can be made without a significant American military presence in Pakistan. And it is unclear whether enough support can be found among the tribes, some of which are working with Pakistan’s intelligence agency.
Altogether, the broader strategic move toward more local support is being accelerated because of concern about instability in Pakistan and the weakness of the Pakistani government, as well as fears that extremists with havens in the tribal areas could escalate their attacks on allied troops in Afghanistan. Just in recent weeks, Islamic militants sympathetic to Al Qaeda and the Taliban have already extended their reach beyond the frontier areas into more settled areas, most notably the mountainous region of Swat …
The tribal proposal, a strategy paper prepared by staff members of the United States Special Operations Command, has been circulated to counterterrorism experts but has not yet been formally approved by the commandand headquarters in Tampa, Fla. Some other elements of the campaign have been approved in principle by the Americans and Pakistanis and await financing, like $350 million over several years to help train and equip the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force that has about 85,000 members and is recruited from border tribes … Historically, American Special Forces have gone into foreign countries to work with local militaries to improve the security of those countries in ways that help American interests. Under this new approach, the number of advisers would increase, officials said.
There are several analyses of this approach, the two most significant being from John Robb at Global Guerrillas, and Bill Roggio writing for Weekly Standard. First, of the proposed strategy in Pakistan, John Robb customarily notes three problems facing the proposal (without giving any solutions), but then observes:
The use of a plethora of militias to fight a global open source insurgency from Nigeria to Mexico to Iraq to Pakistan is effective within a grand strategy of delay (it holds disorder at bay while allowing globalization to work). Most beneficially, it eliminates the need for nation-building, massive conventional troop deployments, and other forms of excess. Some questions remain: can the US manage something this complex or this messy? Will the rest of the US military/contractors sit idle (and as a result fall victim to budget cuts) while light weight special operations forces (and their allied private military corporations) take center stage?
Note here that Robb points to ‘globalization’ being allowed to work as a solution to the global open source insurgency, while earlier he has pointed to globalization as a catalyst for insurgencies: “9-11 is a great example of how the underlying dynamics of globalization make a radical acceleration in conflict possible. Small groups can now produce results from actions that far exceed anything in history. However, this isn’t restricted to Islamic terrorists. Warfare is evolving is across the board at a rapid rate. I see it everywhere from Brazil to Columbia to Nigeria and Iraq.”
How globalization can be both the catalyst and solution for insurgencies Robb doesn’t say, but his prose gives the impression of well-studied ethereal thoughts full of sound and fury but without concrete application. A review of Robb’s literature leaves the feeling that no solution to any problem in any counterinsurgency campaign can ever be solved and all solutions lead inevitably to failure, or worse, making the insurgency more potent. More telling in his rebuttal to the Pakistan plan is what he doesn’t give as a reason for his opposition to it, i.e., that the Anbar experience was a failure. It wasn’t too long ago that one could find talk of defeat, retreat and redeployment out of Iraq from Robb. It seems that even Robb has now taken note of the successes in Anbar.
Next, Bill Roggio is clearer concerning his opposition to the proposed Pakistan strategy.
The conflicts in Iraq’s Anbar province and Pakistan’s tribal areas are fundamentally different, and while both provinces are dominated by a strong tribal culture, al Qaeda’s draws support in each for different reasons. In Anbar, the tribes and insurgent groups aligned themselves with al Qaeda in Iraq largely because they viewed al Qaeda as an ally in the fight against American occupation. However, they turned on the terror group once it became clear that al Qaeda threatened their very existence. In Pakistan, the Pashtun tribes have by and large openly supported the Taliban and al Qaeda since the groups first formed. The Taliban, with the help of the Pakistan Inter Services Intelligence agency, was born in the Pashtun tribal belts, and al Qaeda fighters and its senior commanders are welcomed among the Taliban supporting tribes there … Also, the counterinsurgency campaign proposed for Pakistan is not at all similar to that executed in Anbar province. In Anbar, the tribes organized to fight al Qaeda only after they realized the error they had made in aligning with them. And the tribes openly fought al Qaeda of their own accord before seeking help from the U.S. Marine and Army units in Ramadi. Only later would U.S. troops play a significant role by nurturing the tribal movement, known as the Anbar Awakening, which ultimately formed the core of local resistance to al Qaeda. The U.S. military provided funding, helped organize local tribal security forces, encouraged the Iraqi government and military to allow Sunni tribesmen to join the army and police, and had the tribal security forces integrated into the military by reorganizing the units into Provincial Security Forces.
Roggio concludes with his prescription for success in Pakistan, and a warning concerning failure based on what it took for the Anbar “awakening” to succeed.
The Awakening was only able to survive the al Qaeda onslaught with the direct support of the U.S. Marines and soldiers based in Anbar. U.S. forces provided protection for the group’s leaders, as well as air support, financing, and communications and other equipment to bolster its efforts … arming anti-al Qaeda and anti-Taliban tribes and bolstering the Frontier Corps without solid support from both the Pakistani and the American military would be a death sentence for any tribe foolish enough to join the fight.
We hold to a slight to moderately different narrative of the Anbar campaign than Roggio does. It is tempting to see the Anbar awakening outside of the context of the U.S. kinetic operations that caused and encouraged it, but this approach is incomplete. Much has been made, for instance, of Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Reesha and his leadership of the coalition of tribes, but it is lesser known and publicized that before this significant tribal leader was turned against al Qaeda and towards the U.S., a unit was specifically designated to conduct kinetic operations to shut down his smuggling lines into Syria, that unit having operated with significant success. Another good example of the pretext for the awakening being U.S. force projection and kinetic operations comes from Marine Staff Sgt. John Costa.
When Marine Staff Sgt. John Costa arrived in Ramadi, Iraq, in August 2006, U.S. troops walked the city streets in daylight at their peril. “The place was one of the worst cities in Iraq, if not the worst. You could not conduct foot-borne operations during the day,” said Costa, who served as a chief scout with the Scout Sniper Platoon, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines. “It would be a like a group of insurgents trying to walk down the main street in Camp Lejeune at 8 in the morning,” he said, referring to the Marine Corps base in North Carolina. “They’re not going to get far” …
“There were multiple buildings that are like five-, six-, seven-, eight-story apartment buildings — huge, and totally empty,” he said. You’d walk into a house and everything’s there: There’s food in the fridge; there’s clothes in the dresser. The people just moved.”
The staff sergeant soon realized why residents had abandoned their homes. Insurgents in Ramadi, a majority Sunni Muslim city, were violently attacking local citizens. In the midst of intense fighting, they extorted shop owners’ profits. They hiked prices at gas stations and skimmed sales revenues …
Costa also dedicated a portion of his time to cracking the insurgents’ methods of communication.
“Generally there was a guy putting up gang signs, which could either send a rocket-propelled grenade through your window or some other attack your way,” said Costa, who began to realize the significance of unarmed people on Ramadi’s streets providing information via visual cues.
You’re watching something on the street like that happening, and you’re like, “What the hell is that guy doing,” he recalled. “And then the next thing you know, insurgents start coming out of the woodwork.”
“Signalers — the eyes and ears of insurgent leaders — informed the insurgent strategists who commanded armed fighters by using hand and arm gestures.” You could see the signaler commanding troops,” Costa recalled. “He just doesn’t have a weapon.”
To curb insurgents’ ability to communicate, Costa decided on a revolutionary move: He and his unit would dismantle the enemy’s communication lines by neutralizing the threat from signalers. Sparing no time, he set a tone in Ramadi that signalers would be dealt with no differently from their weapon-wielding insurgent comrades.
“We called it in that we heard guys were signaling, and the battalion would advise from there,” he said, recalling the first day of the new strategy. “We locked that road down pretty well that day.”
In ensuing weeks, coalition forces coordinated efforts to dismember the insurgent signal patterns entrenched in Ramadi. This helped tamp down violence and create political breathing room, which in turn allowed the forging of key alliances between local tribal sheiks and coalition operators. The subsequent progress was later dubbed the “Anbar Awakening,” a societal purging of extremism by Anbaris that ushered in a level of stability unprecedented since U.S. operations in Iraq began.
This account from Ramadi should be coupled with the recent example of Operation Alljah from Fallujah. The insurgency and foreign fighters (Chechens, Africans, Western Chinese and others) had congregated in Fallujah in the spring of 2007. They were not only in complete control of Fallujah, but were using it to launch terrorist operations into Baghdad. The previous command had declared Fallujah “unwinnable.” Into this debacle came 2nd, Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, initiating heavy kinetic operations from the outset to find and capture or kill the insurgents. Later, gated communities, biometrics, and concerned citizens neighborhood watch programs were implemented to restrict the access of the insurgents to the population. Governance was accomplished via a return to a concept implemented during the Saddam era: the Muktars, or area leaders/representatives. Tribal sheikhs were all but irrelevant in the most recent Fallujah operations. The Anbar narrative is complex and varied, and includes much more than a tribal leader “flipping.”
Nibras Kazimi, no insignificant observer and analyst of Iraqi culture and politics, has commented of the tribal awakening in Anbar that “tribes are a barometer of power; they swarm around whoever has the upper hand.” It is a hard lesson to learn for the military complex and the public alike regarding the U.S. special forces: they cannot win her wars. They are specialized, have received training in specialty billets, and can be tasked do things that other troops cannot (such as communicate with indigenous peoples with their language training). But in operations in the Anbar province involving Marine snipers, most snipers have been escorted to and from their post by squad-sized and sometimes platoon-sized infantry patrols. Nothing lays metal down range like Marine infantry, and no amount of specialized training can accommodate for the lack of this force projection.
Roggio’s analysis of the differences in tribal beliefs and life in Anbar versus Pakistan serves as a warning against relying too heavily on the tribes as help against a global militancy that has its origins high in the rugged mountains of Pakistan. The tribes in Pakistan are much more fundamentalist than in Anbar. In Anbar, it is not uncommon to find the internet, television, games in the streets and children and adults alike watching soccer. In Pakistan these things are banned in many places. Sheikh Sattar, widely regarded as father of the awakening in Anbar as we discussed earlier, was a chain smoker and would likely have his hands cut off in Pakistan in order to stop his smoking. In Iraq, use of strong Turkish tobacco is the order of the day.
But the problem goes deeper than this. If the Pakistani tribes are convinced that the U.S. is the stronger horse in the region, they might be persuaded to assist the U.S. or even declare themselves allies. But Rumsfeld’s bold new paradigm involved war by special forces and proxy fighters. Airmen guiding JDAMs to target using satellite uplinks, money paid to previously unknown tribal elders, and special forces operators chasing high value targets – these were the elements of the initial phases of the Afghanistan campaign. Yet al Qaeda command escaped, NATO remains involved in counterinsurgency years after toppling the Taliban regime, and the British are proposing negotiations with “moderate” Taliban and withdrawal from some areas.
There is little reason to believe that tribes who are otherwise at least moderately sympathetic to al Qaeda would be persuaded to evict them from the region when the U.S. has shown no will thus far to complete even the Afghanistan campaign, much less enter into one in Pakistan. If nothing else has been learned from Operation Iraqi Freedom Phases II and III, the small footprint model is a losing strategy in this region of the world and fighting this sort of counterinsurgency. Force projection is not merely a catch-phrase. It is the cornerstone upon which counterinsurgency of this kind is built. Along with the Commandant, we have recommended that the United States Marines be deployed to Afghanistan. Regardless of the disposition of this proposal, dispatching “dozens” of special forces operators to Pakistan to court the tribes means the deaths of dozens of special forces operators. It will accomplish nothing, and means the delay of the inevitable showdown with al Qaeda and the Taliban in which force projection will win the day.
We have pointed out that U.S. interests are not served by the continued deployment of troops in Germany, but Gates has called a halt to the reduction of troops in Europe. Hard decisions must be made, and both the strategy and force size in Afghanistan must be revisited. Afghanistan is the starting line for the race to address problems in Pakistan. It is time for the Rumsfeld model to come to an end.
In Anthropologists in Iraq – and Those in America Who Attack Them, I addressed in summary fashion the issue of the petition before the AAA (American Anthropological Association) for the association to denounce professional anthropologists who participate in the Human Terrain System (HTS), or at least, denounce the HTS program, with those who participate then being forced to “violate” the standards of their professional organization if they choose to participate.
As it turns out, the AAA has indeed denounced the HTS program initiated by the Department of Defense: ” … the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association concludes (i) that the HTS program creates conditions which are likely to place anthropologists in positions in which their work will be in violation of the AAA Code of Ethics and (ii) that its use of anthropologists poses a danger to both other anthropologists and persons other anthropologists study. Thus the Executive Board expresses its disapproval of the HTS program.”
Ann Marlowe at Weekly Standard has a article also denouncing the HTS program for reasons that seem scattered and inconsistent, so I won’t address her objections since they make little or no sense to me. Dave Dilegge at the Small Wars Journal Blog has done a good job of explaining why her objections make no sense and need to be reformulated before a meaningful retort can be crafted. But I would like to take a different approach to this alleged problem by interacting with friend of The Captain’s Journal, Dr. Marcus B. Griffin who is currently performing anthropological research in Iraq and who blogs at From an Anthropological Perspective.
I have exchanged mail with Dr. Griffin and find him to be a researcher of the highest character who performs research with the highest ethical boundaries. Concerning the AAA position statement, Dr. Griffin responds concerning ethical concern #2:
Obligations to one’s employer, in this case the US Army, is assumed to conflict with being an advocate of the subject population, or if not being an advocate then at least not harming the people being studied. The root of this concern hinges on the purpose of research conducted. If I am studying reciprocity and the cultural construct of obligation and indebtedness, how might this harm the subject population? Of course, if I was studying the social network of Al Qaeda leaders or Jayish Al Mahdi leaders in order to discern kingpins, there would be an ethical problem. But I’m not studying that or anything like it. What is more, no one is asking me to. This ethical concern grows out of an ignorance of military operations and staff specialization.
While I don’t wish to presume upon Dr. Griffin and question his professional obligations, here I take issue with Dr. Griffin’s response to the AAA because I believe that it fundamentally ignores the unstated presuppositions in the AAA statement. Let’s say it a different way. I believe in such a thing as Good Wars (1). The degree to which Operation Iraqi Freedom comports with the requirements for Dr. Darrell Cole of William and Mary to declare it a “good war” is quite irrelevant to our point. The AAA objects not only to Dr. Griffin’s participation in OIF, but to any anthropological participation in war: “… the Executive Board affirms, that anthropology can legitimately and effectively help guide U.S. policy to serve the humane causes of global peace and social justice.”
And therein lies the crux of the issue. The nexus of the AAA objection and the constraints they place on their fellows has to do with the conduct of war itself (or counterinsurgency), not how anthropology might be used in said war (or COIN). In that anthropology pertains to the study of man, his social systems, obligations and expectations, morays, family structures, religious institutions, and public behavior, every man, woman and child engages in the practice of anthropology almost every day. Professional anthropologists generally do so with more rigor, system, discipline, and research, but they are not the only ones who practice their profession. Anthropology is like the culinary arts. Some people grill hot dogs and others grill steak and asparagus and make Bearnaise sauce. But everyone eats to live (and some live to eat).
From the Lance Corporal to the Lt. Colonel, societal customs and expectations are part of not only the conduct of day to day operations but also the understanding of the enemy and his ways and means. The debate isn’t really about anthropology and its entry to the battle space. It’s there anyway, and has been since mankind first engaged in battle. The AAA presumes to speak for all humankind when they declare anthropology off limits for consideration in the battle space. Man can no more bifurcate his knowledge of humans and combat tactics and maneuvers when conducting battle than he can his own emotions and feelings. The AAA has presented an impossible and preposterous obligation to its members and the armed forces (and it is this later implication that they have failed to see).
One example of this stands out to me as one of the most important nuggets of knowledge concerning Arabic armies that I have ever run across. It was sent to me by an Army Colonel who has befriended me and who is a thinking man of extraordinary proportions (and who will remain unnamed since he is active duty) (2). It should be studied by every field grade officer in every branch of the armed forces. De Atkine assesses numerous failures of Arab armies, including the tendency to hoard information, over-centralize control and inhibit and discourage innovation, and then lands on an interesting point that in truth separates the U.S. armed forces from the rest of the world.
The social and professional gap between officers and enlisted men is present in all armies, but in the United States and other Western forces, the non-commissioned officer (NCO) corps bridges it. Indeed, a professional NCO corps has been critical for the American military to work at its best; as the primary trainers in a professional army, NCOs are critical to training programs and to the enlisted men’s sense of unit esprit. Most of the Arab world either has no NCO corps or it is non-functional, severely handicapping the military’s effectiveness. With some exceptions, NCOs are considered in the same low category as enlisted men and so do not serve as a bridge between enlisted men and officers. Officers instruct but the wide social gap between enlisted man and officer tends to make the learning process perfunctory, formalized, and ineffective.
This observation is entirely an anthropological one, and the prescription for amelioration is the same. If ever the U.S. hopes to create a viable army in Iraq, it will require an understanding of the society and its people to make a viable NCO corps. This can no more be removed from the task than can small arms with which to fire rounds at the enemy.
And thus I believe that Dr. Griffin’s objection, while heartfelt and professional, misses the point. Studying al Qaeda and JAM leaders would be an entirely legitimate use of anthropology. Lance Corporals and Lt. Colonels do it every day, from questioning the population and ensuring their security to concerning themselves with the support of families by the distribution of payment to concerned citizens and community watch programs (3) so that heads of families can support their children.
The AAA’s real objection is that they don’t want their members to have the latitude to make their own moral judgments concerning the application and use of their work. Doctors, engineers and nurses make moral decisions every day. The architect who designed the world trade center, and who later committed suicide, felt the weight of the human condition as much as Dr. Griffin in Iraq. Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines are concerned with the taking of human life (and the preserving of it) in the superlative degree, but it is an extension of the same concern for the human condition that they will employ throughout the balance of their lives. There are tens of thousands of anthropologists at war every day. Anthropology can no more be divorced from war than it can be from life.
1. Good Wars, First Things, Professor Darrell Cole.
17 years ago
