Archive for the 'Iraq' Category

Preliminary reading:

The Battle in Basra

Continued Chaos in Basra

In the midst of the chaos in Basra at the moment with the British forces sitting at the Basra airport, it is necessary to construct a narrative for what happened and why.  One problem is that not even all of the British commentators agree on that narrative.

Some Brits are saying that the current battle is just what we’ve been waiting for.  It’s good that it has finally come and that the Iraqis are carrying it out.

The British military always knew the test would come and it has arrived with the offensive that Iraqi forces have launched in Basra against the Shi’ite militias and criminal gangs who have run too much of the city for too long. British-trained Iraqi units have been in action, directed by Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, in what is clearly a crucial encounter for the future of Iraq.

The object of the British exercise since 2003 has been to train Iraqi forces and hand control to them as soon as possible. If the strategy is seen to work then whatever follows this battle of Basra might fairly be regarded as the responsibility of the Iraqis themselves and the British will have taken a big step towards final withdrawal.

Maliki is taking a stand on his ability to exert central government authority over the increasingly lawless second city of Iraq. If the British seemed to acquiesce too easily in the slide into lawlessness in the four years they controlled Basra, a victory for Iraqi forces now would demonstrate the wisdom of being patient and letting the Iraqis run the country in their own way.

It would also be a powerful rejoinder to American mutterings that the British delude themselves into thinking their approach is sophisticated when it is simply permissive. This battle of Basra, say British military spokesmen, is what we have been working for.

Yet there is another narrative that is directly contradictory.

Rather than being – as the anti-war brigade claimed – a humiliating retreat, the tactical withdrawal from Saddam’s old summer palace on the banks of the Shatt al-Arab was undertaken on the basis that the continuing presence of British troops was exacerbating, rather than helping, the local security situation. The fiercely nationalistic Iraqis did not want outsiders telling them how to run their affairs.

Formal control of the city was returned to the Iraqis in a short ceremony at the air base last December, but much of Basra has remained under the control of a combination of radical Islamic militias and criminal gangs, which has made it virtually impossible for the Iraqi government in Baghdad to exercise its authority over the city.

The contradiction takes a second reading to understand, but once found out, creates an awkward state of affairs for the British commentators who are aping the British officers.  In the first narrative, there was a fight waiting to happen, and it is best that the Iraqis are engaging it.  In the second narrative, the violence is not a necessary state of affairs, but rather, is a direct function of the British presence in Basra.  Therefore, the best policy is a “tactical withdrawal.”

It is difficult to imagine any respectable counterinsurgency strategy anywhere on earth and in any era where it is a positive or productive thing to allow an area to devolve into chaos over the course of four years.  But there are Brits who are able to put aside pride and false narratives.  Peter Oborne’s commentary is as hard hitting as any analysis we’ve seen.

British military history contains more than its fair share of glorious victories, but there have also been notable disasters. It has become horrifyingly clear that one of these is our involvement in southern Iraq, culminating in our soldiers’ exit from Basra Palace late last year.

At the time, the Government presented the withdrawal of British troops as a success. Gordon Brown assured us that they had done their job so well that it was safe to hand over to local forces.

It is difficult to tell whether the Prime Minister was deliberately lying, or whether – more likely – he was mistaken about what was going on. Either way, the truth was very different. Far from calmly handing over Basra to the new regime, we were driven out by Iranian-backed militias, leaving behind a state of murderous anarchy.

This became horrifically plain last week when widespread fighting broke out inside Basra. Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri Maliki, has ordered his army to try to regain control of the city. Meanwhile, Britain’s 4,000 troops, safely cocooned in Basra air base outside the town, are taking no part in what may well prove to be a crucial battle.

This is a humiliation. All this week, commentators used the state visit of the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, to mock his country’s shamefully inadequate military involvement in Afghanistan – keeping their troops well out of harm’s way while the burden of fighting has been carried out by others.

But that has been the wretched fate of our 4,000 troops sitting idle in Basra air base, listening helplessly – and positioned a safe distance away – as mortars pound and machine-gun fire rattles in battles that are deciding the long-term future of Iraq.

Twelve years ago we were rightly censorious after Dutch troops sat on their hands while 7,000 Muslims were massacred during the Balkan War at Srebrenica.

Of course, it would be utterly wrong to accuse our soldiers of the miserable cowardice displayed on that infamous occasion by the Dutch. But their current impotence in southern Iraq as fighting rages nearby sits most uneasily with the exemplary British fighting tradition.

It needs to be said at once that no blame attaches itself to our soldiers, 176 of whom have given their lives in this ghastly conflict.

However, the same cannot be said of our politicians. Last September, the Prime Minister made a snap visit to Basra during which he revealed the decision to withdraw British forces …

Shamefully for Britain, the White House is now considering sending its own forces to sort the mess that the British have left behind. Last week, one White House official acidly remarked: “American blood is going to have to buy off the British failure in Basra.”

Already at the Basra air base, I can reveal, the British subsidiary of U.S. construction giant KBR is building four huge dining facilities – known to the American army as DFACs. These are capable of feeding 4,000 men and suggest that the U.S. Army is contemplating a massive deployment to southern Iraq – including a major presence inside Basra itself.

Oborne correctly refuses to lay the blame at the feet of the British enlisted men, and also correctly points out that the drawdown was precipitous.  But he also fails to mention that the British commanders fabricated a ridiculous narrative while the politicians were playing political games.  There is enough blame to go around, but creating narratives that deny the failure prevents learning and adaptation of British counterinsurgency doctrine.

British retreating from Basra in 2007, courtesy of the Daily Mail.

Following or coincident with our own article on the recent Basra violence (The Battle in Basra), there are numerous commentaries and articles on the same subject.  We will assess some of the more interesting ones below.  In addition to the chaos in Basra, there is chaos in the blogs and main stream media reports.

The Small Wars Journal blog has an interesting roundup of links (Debating Basra) with summary paragraphs for each.  As usual, the SWJ editors are on the spot with valuable information.

At Abu Muqawama, Charlie has a post up offering suggestions as to what exactly might have happened to the British in Basra (Abu’s blog is friendly to the Brits and soft COIN doctrine, so this is an interesting take).  Charlie blames it on the possibility that “the Brits adopted a “peacekeeping” mindset in Basra and never really engaged in a broader COIN or CT effort. That meant that all the myriad Shi’a groups were able to pursue their (relatively) non-violent political agenda and consolidate control over the political levers of city.”

Relatively non-violent agenda?  Charlie has been reading too many books and hasn’t kept up with the goings on in Basra, and later Spencer Ackerman weighs in: “Withdrawing without any political strategy, as the British did from Basra, leads to a vacuum like the one we’re seeing now. Sadr rushes in. The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq rushes in. The Fadhila party maneuvers between the two. Forces ostensibly loyal to the government, pinioned between all sides, find ways to accommodate the existing power on the streets. In other words: chaos.”

To read these two opinions, it’s as if the British had control of Basra and then for some inexplicable reason left without any political strategy (no military issues, just political machinations).  Such a view ignores the reality of the situation.  Let’s backtrack a bit and recap what we know (see Calamity in Basra and British Rules of Engagement).  In 2003, the British Army fished in the waters of the Shaat al Arab on their days off.  In early 2007, all troop movement in and out of the city were conducted at night by helicopter because it was deemed too dangerous to go on the road and it was too dangerous to fly choppers during the day,” said Richard Beeston, diplomatic editor of The Times of London.  Today, women in Basra are being beheaded by Islamist gangs by the hundreds.

In mid-2007 when the British retreated from Basra, they did so while telling the tall tale that since the very presence of the British themselves was causing the violence, it would be better if they just left.  In other words, no one would shoot at the British Army if the Army wasn’t there.  There wasn’t a rush of anyone or any faction into Basra.  They were already there and had control of the city.  The British never had control of Basra, and from the beginning it was left to Shi’a factions, criminal elements, Iranian proxy fighters (Badr, Quds), and the loss of Basra was a constant diminution of civilization up to the point that the British ended up behind barbed wire at the Basra airport, contributing nothing to the Iraq campaign.  We have already linked Nibras Kazimi who, in the update to his post, conveys the Iraqi sentiment concerning the British Army.  It isn’t flattering, and British Colonel Tim Collins knows and has said that the retreat from Basra has badly damaged the reputation of the British Army.

From my contacts in the Marines, they had always known that after securing the Anbar province, it was always a possibility that they would have to go in and clean up the mess left by the British in Southern Iraq.  There are now published reports that the Marines may get saddled with this chore.

Marc Lynch at Abu Aardvark has a very smart post in which he examines the idea that Iran is liquidating its no longer useful proxies, including Sadr.  This idea has some merit, since Moqtada al Sadr is currently in Iran, especially as seen against the backdrop of what Iran did with Hassan Nasrallah last year.  Nasrallah was demoted and the responsibility for military operations of Hezbollah were removed from him.

The Belmont Club questions the absurd narrative where Iran is trying to advance peace by restraining Sadr.  This theory follows closely in line with Amir Taheri’s silly New York Post article where he promulgated the idea that Tehran now worries about a premature Iraq exit, and wants stability in the region.  From the absurd to the sensible.

Reidar Visser has a sophisticated article entitled The Enigmatic Second Battle of Basra, in which he points out something that obviously troubled us when we wrote The Battle in Basra, writing “The Captain’s Journal is as concerned about the SIIC as it is the Sadrists, and maybe more so given how well they have been able to work into the political scene in Iraq.”  Visser writes:

… there is a discrepancy between the description of Basra as a city ruled by militias (in the plural) – which is doubtless correct – and the battlefield facts of the ongoing operations which seem to target only one of these militia groups, the Mahdi Army loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr. Surely, if the aim was to make Basra a safer place, it would have been logical to do something to also stem the influence of the other militias loyal to the local competitors of the Sadrists, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), as well as the armed groups allied to the Fadila party (which have dominated the oil protection services for a long time). But so far, only Sadrists have complained about attacks by government forces.

This is a powerful point, and undercuts Nibras Kazimi’s narrative of Maliki as in charge and powerful enough to retain control of Iraq and oust the Shi’a militias.

There are indications that the campaign in Basra may not be going as well as planned.

With the threat of a civil war looming in the south, Nouri al-Maliki’s police chief in Basra narrowly escaped assassination in the crucial port city, while in Baghdad, the spokesman for the Iraqi side of the US military surge was kidnapped by gunmen and his house burnt to the ground.

Saboteurs also blew up one of Iraq’s two main oil pipelines from Basra, cutting at least a third of the exports from the city which provides 80 per cent of government revenue, a clear sign that the militias — who siphon significant sums off the oil smuggling trade — would not stop at mere insurrection.

In Baghdad, thick black smoke hung over the city centre tonight and gunfire echoed across the city.

The most secure area of the capital, Karrada, was placed under curfew amid fears the Mahdi Army of Hojetoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr could launch an assault on the residence of Abdelaziz al-Hakim, the head of a powerful rival Shia governing party.

While the Mahdi Army has not officially renounced its six-month ceasefire, which has been a key component in the recent security gains, on the ground its fighters were chasing police and soldiers from their positions across Baghdad.

But Maliki says there will be no retreat.  “Iraq’s prime minister vowed Thursday to fight “until the end” against Shiite militias in Basra despite protests by tens of thousands of followers of a radical cleric in Baghdad and deadly clashes across the capital and the oil-rich south.”

Bill Roggio says that the current operation has been in the planning stages since the middle of 2007.  This Al Jazeera coverage (h/t Noah Shachtman) gives one the impression that the surge and strategy change had absolutely nothing to do with the the drop in violence across Iraq, but rather, the so-called ceasefire by Sadr is credited, this ceasefire being in danger of breaking down.

One of the many problems with this analysis is that it ignores the role that the British played, unwittingly, in the strengthening of the Sadrists.  Further, this analysis treats Basra as if it represents all of Iraq, and clearly it doesn’t.  At approximately 17:20 into this Charlie Rose interview of John Burns, you can see for yourself the role the British played in the release of Sadr who was actually in the custody of the 3/2 Marines in 2004.There are troubling aspects of the current campaign, but in the end, the SIIC is too deeply embedded into the political fabric to root out at the moment with military action, or so Maliki may think.  This is disconcerting, in that it continues Iran’s influence inside of Iraq.  But in the end, it may be too easy to see too many complexities in the campaign, thus missing the forest for the trees.

The British wore soft covers and went into Basra with the counterinsurgency doctrine learned from their experience in Northern Ireland.  As we said in COIN is Context-Driven, “whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, greater U.K. or English, the fact of the matter is that this was COIN among their own people.  They were the same, at least as compared to Iraq.  The religious, cultural, societal, and political framework was the same; the ethical morays were the same; the language was the same; and by and large the history is the same.  When the British landed in Basra, they may as well have been placed on a different planet.  Nothing was the same, and thus whatever the British learned in Northern Ireland instantly became irrelevant.”

Southern Iraq was not Northern Ireland, and the Shi’a gangs, criminals and Iranian proxy fighters were looking for the stronger tribe to rise to the top.  It did, and it wasn’t the British, due to no fault of their enlisted men, a failure that must be laid entirely at the feet of their command.  General Jack Keane recommends that the U.K. engage in a “surge” of its own in Basra.  But this misses the point.  There not only weren’t enough troops, the strategy was mistaken from the beginning and the British have spent their wallet on the campaign.  They no longer demand respect from the Iraqi people and thus have become merely baggage.

Today Basra is paying the price for their ill-conceived strategy.  The Basra problems are not, as so many main stream media reports have mistakenly said, proof of the failure of the surge, since U.S. troops are not now and have never been in Basra.  Nor is Sadr powerful enough to thwart the intentions of U.S. forces in Iraq.  It is frankly hard to imagine any more difficult a situation than Anbar a year or two ago.  One could have asserted the impossibility of pacification of Anbar because of the competing Sunni factions – al Qaeda, Saddam Fedayeen, Ansar al Sunna, holdover hard line Ba’athists, and all of the other groups – but the Marines prevailed.  They did so because they were the stronger horse (a notion that Osama Bin Laden has himself hailed as being important in this region of the world).  Until forces enter Basra who are seen as a stronger horse as compared to the Iranian-sponsored criminals, peace will not come to Iraq.

The Shi’ite militias are active, and not just in Basra.  Baghdad is under direct attack from the forces of Moqtada al Sadr.  “Terrorists launched 12 combined mortar and rocket attacks attacks into Multi-National Division – Baghdad’s operational environment beginning at approximately 6 a.m. March 25.  Among the multiple attacks were 107 mm rockets were fired toward Baghdad’s International Zone, 81 mm mortars were fired at Forward Operating Base Falcon, 107 mm rockets were fired at Forward Operating Base Rustamiyah, 60 mm mortars were fired at Joint Security Station Thawra 1, and 60 mm mortars were fired at Joint Security Station SUJ.”

But the bulk of the fighting has been to the South in Basra.  Nibras Kazimi calls this Operation Cavalry Charge, and his comments will be used as a launching pad for our own.

Here’s a prediction: the Iraqi Army’s military operation in Basra will be a spectacular win against disorder and Iranian influence.

Today, the Iraqi Army launched its first major military operation to fully control Basra, the second largest city in Iraq, without any—ANY—Coalition assistance. One source tells me that during the preparation phase of this campaign the Americans offered to position some U.S. Special Forces and air-cover near the Basra battle theater to act as back-up if needed but their Iraqi counterparts planning this operation politely turned down the offer.

This is Operation ‘Cavalry Charge’, which is the best translation I could come up with for صولة الفرسان.

Its chief objective is to flush out the organized crime cartels that control the port of Basra and the oil pipelines of the province. One major criminal force in the Basrawi scene are groups that affiliate themselves with the Sadrist movement and its Mahdi Army. Many of these criminal rings are also associated with certain factions of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard that operate in Basra both for intelligence/sabotage purposes as well as enriching themselves. By knocking out these egregious manifestations of lawlessness, Operation Cavalry Charge will have the accrued benefit of mashing up the more subtle patterns of Iran’s malignant influence in Iraqi Shiism’s foremost economic prize, the oil fields and port of Basra.

But is this how this story is being reported by the US and Arab media? Of course not!

The dominant false narrative du jour goes something like this: the Sadrists are angry over a number of things (arrests, political wrangling with the Hakim family and the Da’awa Party, etc.) so they decided to back away from Sadr’s seven-month ‘ceasefire’ (a term invented by the western media as a deliberately wrongful translation of تجميد وإعادة هيكلة جيش المهدي: “freezing and restructuring the Mahdi Army”) by staging ‘civil disobedience’ (…such as shutting down primary schools and shops by threatening teachers, students and the middle class) but things quickly deteriorated into the perpetual cycles violence that these journalists and pundits are mentally wedded to and have staked their thin expertise on predicting as Iraq’s inevitable fate …

If he wins—and I predict that he will—then he’s holding on to the prime minister’s seat from here until the 2010 elections …

Maliki has sent 50,000 Iraqi soldiers to deal with about a dozen criminal cartels. Militarily, this will be an easy fight. Those counseling caution and delay stressed that smashing Sadrist-related criminal cartels would spark a large-scale Sadrist reaction across Iraq at a time when the Bush administration wants to keep Iraq quiet especially with the ‘4000’ milestone that was being approached and got passed a couple of days ago. Another argument against action counseled that the Iranians are angling for a fire-fight to sully any talk of progress that Gen. Petraeus may give in a couple of weeks when he appears before Congress, and that the Democrats and their allies in the US media would take these images out of Basra and elsewhere and package the news as a “security meltdown” (…which they would and have done so, irrespective of reality).

Maliki decided that he doesn’t give a damn about US presidential elections and that the only timeline that concern him are Iraq’s own upcoming elections. Maliki also concluded, from intensive intelligence reporting, that the Sadrists are weak and that Iran doesn’t really have much punch to its supposed influence in Iraq. That’s why he decided to go for it.

Kazimi is a smart and well-connected Iraqi analyst.  We are always anxious to study his next commentary, although to our disappointment, there are fewer of them being issued.  The Captain’s Journal wants to maintain good relations with Talisman Gate, but one troubling aspect of Kazimi’s analysis emerges.  He is almost pathologically sanguine and optimistic, even to the point of arguing that “Iran doesn’t really have much punch to its supposed influence in Iraq.”

Kazimi continues by discussing the softening of the Sadrists, and then divides the ones shooting in Basra into two categories: “organized crime cartels and the Iranian-managed Special Groups.”  The Shi’a, says Kazimi, have risen above the infighting and see the need to reject and renounce Sadr and his forces.  As for the Iranian-sponsored thugs (presumably here he is discussing other factions such as Badr [SIIC], some Quds fighters, etc.), Kazimi again sees them as being unfruitful for Iran.  Sanguine, to say the least.  He sums up by saying this.

Remember the time when Maliki was bad-mouthed for being soft on the Sadrists and the dominant false narrative of the time had it that he owed his political power to them? I wonder what all the experts who parroted this claim would have to say about Operation Cavalry Charge and Maliki’s role in it?

The Captain’s Journal still doesn’t like Maliki.  This operation should have been conducted years ago, and one troubling aspect of Maliki’s involvement came to light in an ultimatum he issued to the fighters in Basra.  “Iraq’s prime minister on Wednesday gave gunmen in the southern oil port of Basra a three-day deadline to surrender their weapons and renounce violence …”

Kazimi has gotten it right.  The enemy is comprised of Iranian-sponsored thugs and killers, corrupt Sadrists, and criminals who are after oil money (not to mention the Islamist gangs who have beheaded hundreds of women over the last year).  Basra is currently run by a witch’s brew of the worst elements on earth.  To be fighting them is a good thing.  Far from Iraq slipping into chaos, it was always the case that until the Shi’a fighters were taken out like the Sunni insurgents were, there would be no peace in Iraq.

Yet Maliki has issued an ultimatum to these horrible elements to “renounce violence.”  These elements will never renounce violence, but the danger is that they will call Maliki’s bluff and make a show of standing down, only to watch the Iraqi troops redeploy elsewhere and stike up the violence later when they don’t face such trouble.  We have seen this scene play out for quite a while now, starting in 2004 with Sadr.  If this happens, Maliki will look like an inept stooge.

There can be no negotiations with the criminals and terrorists.  They must be captured or killed.  There should be no offer of amnesty, and Kazimi’s analysis of optimism suffers in light of the reality of Maliki’s offer of peace.  Kazimi later notes that the Iraqi Army was operating with the utmost restraint.  The Captain’s Journal responds that the utmost restraint is not called for.  To be sure, noncombatants should be secured and protected.  But the criminals need to see the Iraqi Army as the stronger horse, just like the Anbaris saw the Marines as the stronger horse.  The utmost restraint will not win the campaign.

Kazimi does offer another interesting note.  “The Iraqi Army holds the British Forces cowering behind barbed wire in Basra Airport in the lowest regard; the Iraqis hold the British responsible for dropping the ball in Basra and in Amara, allowing the crime cartels to expand and take root. Iraqi officers regularly dismiss the British military as “sissies” and “cowards”. The Americans have never had a military presence in Basra since the war began in 2003.”

The Captain’s Journal responds that the U.S. was not there because the British were.  As for the British being “sissies” and “cowards,” this seems like excessive language.  We have weighed in before concerning the British strategy, in Calamity in Basra and British Rules of Engagement, The Rise of the JAM, and other subsequent articles.  Also, as British Colonel Tim Collins has pointed out, “Britain’s withdrawal from a chaotic Basra has “badly damaged” its military reputation.”  Damaged indeed.  These Iraqi comments go directly to the Colonel’s point.

But it isn’t the warriors Britain brought to the fight who are to be blamed.  They are as brave and disciplined as any in the world, and more so than most.  It is the British military leadership who couldn’t relinquish their soft counterinsurgency doctrine taken away from their experience in Northern Ireland.  Command is to blame, and the British enlisted men under U.S. leadership would probably have performed as well as the U.S. enlisted men.

On a final note, The Captain’s Journal is as concerned about the SIIC as it is the Sadrists, and maybe more so given how well they have been able to work into the political scene in Iraq.  Remember.  Some of the worst men in history began as politicians and retained their power through political influence.  Being involved in the political scene is not enough.  Iranian influence must be gone, and the SIIC is a major broker of Iranian influence peddling.

Editorial Note: This post has been updated and expanded in Continued Chaos in Basra.

The Telegraph gives us a glimpse into the state of Basra today.

Five years on from the invasion of Iraq, the apparent success of the American surge and growing stability in Basra are providing cautious grounds for optimism. There has been a palpable change in the atmosphere in Basra since Britain formally handed over control of the province to the Iraqis last December.

After the initial euphoria that greeted British troops when they participated in the campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, things quickly turned sour as they found themselves caught up in a vicious power struggle between militias.

By last summer, the last British battle group found itself under siege at Basra palace, and was obliged to make a tactical withdrawal to the air base on the city outskirts, where it remains.

But the main purpose of the British mission had always been to train the Iraqis to a level where they could take responsibility for their own security, and that is now slowly starting to happen, as I found when I visited Basra.

Now that British forces have withdrawn from the city centre, it is difficult to know precisely what is happening there, but local contacts and British intelligence sources report that the situation is far calmer than last year, with Shia religious parties assuming responsibility for security.

The intent should have been to eradicate the radical elements or subdue them.  Note the wording of this last statement: ” … with Shia religious parties assuming responsibility for security.”  The British didn’t turn over security to the radical Shia militia; nor do the Jaish al Mahdi or the SIIC  care about security.

The main purpose for the 4,000 British troops is to provide back-up for the Iraqi security forces when required.

The overall situation in Basra has been greatly helped by the recent six-month extension to the ceasefire agreed by Moqtada al Sadr’s militias, although one senior British diplomat said there had been “a number of moments when things have been very dodgy”.

And although the mood is calmer, the militias are still intimidating local people. Walls in the city bear graffiti warning: “If we catch women without the veil, we will cut off your head.”

Some security.  The deplorable British strategy in Basra and retreat in the face of radical Islamists has resulted in the targeting of women.

One hundred and thirty-three women were killed last year in Basra, Iraq’s second largest city, either by religious vigilantes or as a result of so-called “honour” killings, a report said on 31 December.

The report, released by Basra Security Committee at a conference on women’s rights in the city, said 79 of the victims were deemed by extremists to be “violating Islamic teachings”, 47 others died in “honour” killings and the remaining seven were targeted for their political affiliations.

“The women of Basra are being horrifically murdered and then dumped in the garbage with notes saying they were killed for violating Islamic teachings,” Bassem al-Moussawi, head of the committee and a member of Basra’s Provincial Council, told the conference.

“Sectarian groups are trying to force a strict interpretation of Islam… They send their vigilantes to roam the city, hunting down those who are deemed to be behaving against their [the extremists’] own interpretations,” al-Moussawi said.

Prior:

Calamity in Basra and British Rules of Engagement

The Rise of the JAM

Basra and Anbar Reverse Roles

Western Anbar Versus the Shi’a South: Pictures of Contrast

British Versus the Americans: War Over Strategy

In a thought-provoking opinion piece at Foxnews, Alireza Jafarzadeh argues that Iran is the de facto winner in Iraq.

Five years after the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, we are faced with the grim reality that despite gains in recent months in curtailing sectarian strife and improving security, Tehran has emerged as the de facto winner in Iraq. Without a major shift in the political and security status quo, that will not change. That’s the bad news. The good news is, there is still a window of opportunity to reverse the ayatollahs’ gains if the United States, with a sense of due urgency and creative realism, adjusts its policy.

Back in early 2003, as U.S. forces prepared to invade Iraq, the rulers of Iran moved to turn Iraq into the frontline in their confrontation with the United States. Their goal? To make Iraq their avenue to spread Islamic extremist rule in the Middle East. Although Iran’s nuclear weapons program is of great consequence, Iraq is the crucial battleground that will make or break the ayatollahs’ grand vision of establishing a global Islamic rule.

Tehran’s No. 1 foreign policy agenda is, and always has been, to export its extremist brand of Islamic rule to the rest of the Middle East and the world. Iraq, given its Shiite-majority population, important Shiite shrines, and extensive border with Iran, was the natural cornerstone of this grand agenda. These global ambitions are hard-coded into their constitution.

So it is no surprise that Ali Khamenei, the mullahs’ Supreme Leader who determines Tehran’s strategic and macro policies, saw the 2003 Iraqi invasion as a golden opportunity. In an April 2003 issue, Newsweek reported that “U.S. intelligence has tracked roughly a dozen Iranian agents directly from Tehran to Al Kut in the last month … what really unsettles U.S. officials is the dawning sense that the Iranians planned in advance to move in as soon as Saddam’s men were gone.”

It is remarkable that there is a “dawning sense that the Iranians planned in advance to move in as soon as Saddam’s men were gone.”  As Michael Ledeen has pointed out to me many times before, the insurgency didn’t begin in Fallujah.  It began in Tehran and Damascus.  The Iranian Time Bomb (The Mullah Zealots’ Quest for Destruction) remains required reading if you wish to fathom the depths of evil embodied in the Iranian regime today, and is one of the most comprehensive works on the radical Iranian mind to date.  My cherished copy is signed “From a fellow-suffering Dad to another, Michael.”  In April of 2004, Michael Rubin also pointed out the depths of the problem and pointed to personal experiences as confirmation of his own similar analysis.  It is lengthy, but absolutely necessary reading, if you wish to understand the state of Iraq today.

I arrived in Baghdad in July 2003. With temperatures soaring to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, most CPA staff remained inside air-conditioned headquarters, located in a former Saddam palace. Junior American diplomats tended to stay at their desks, while ambassadors traveled in armored cars among well-armed personal security details. What was good for security, however, was bad for political intelligence. After 35 years of dictatorship, Iraqis avoided talking to armed men, and the CPA staffers, penned up in their palace complex and out of touch with average Iraqis, missed evidence of increasing Iranian influence.

My first night in Baghdad, several Iraqis intercepted me in the Rashid Hotel lobby. Three years before, I had taught for a year in Iraqi Kurdistan; friends had planned a reunion. We talked, ate, and drank until shortly before the 10 p.m. curfew; throughout the evening, Arabs and Kurds alike warned that Iranian intelligence was taking advantage of the U.S. failure to secure Iraq’s borders. Later that month, several Iraqis warned me that over 10,000 Iranians had entered Iraq. Coalition officials I spoke to seemed unconcerned, suggesting that the influx was simply Iraqi refugees returning home. But these American diplomats seemed unable to differentiate between returnees speaking Iraqi Arabic and people proficient in Persian, who spoke little or no Arabic; many of the Iranians coming into the country fell into the latter category.

Over subsequent months, I frequently visited the Iranian frontier. Traveling back roads along a smugglers’ route in Iraqi Kurdistan, I encountered no U.S. patrols within 100 miles of the border, though American officials had vowed to police the frontiers. And, when I returned to Baghdad, I saw the results of open borders. I often visited Sadr City, a sprawling Shia slum named for Moqtada Al Sadr’s slain father. Among posters of Moqtada Al Sadr, Khomeini, and other religious figures, hawkers sold everything from U.S. Agency for International Development rations to stolen cars to forged documents, such as passports and manifests. Safe-passage documents for traveling from Iran to Iraq cost only $50.

Sadr himself has become a recipient of Iranian cash. Iran’s charge d’affaires in Baghdad, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, maintains close relations with Sadr. According to the April 6 edition of the Arabic newspaper al-Hayat, Qomi is not actually a diplomat but rather a member of the Revolutionary Guards, the elite Iranian terrorist network dedicated to the export of jihad; Qomi previously served as a liaison to Hezbollah. Meanwhile, Italian intelligence reports show that many Revolutionary Guards have moved to southern Iraq in recent months to organize and train Sadr’s armed wing. This Iranian operation reportedly hides its true intentions under the guise of religious charities in Karbala, Najaf, and Kufa, while financial support is channeled to Sadr through Ayatollah Kazem Al Haeri, a Qom-based cleric and close confidant of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. (The Office of the Supreme Leader retains a budget for which Khamenei is not accountable to Iran’s president or parliament.) Italian intelligence has identified one of Haeri’s students as Khamenei’s personal representative to Sadr.

Sadr is not the only Islamist Shia leader receiving aid from Tehran. When I visited Nasiriya, a dusty town in southern Iraq, local clerics complained bitterly about Iranian intelligence officials swarming into town, creating a network of informers and funneling money to anti-U.S. forces. At a town-hall meeting in Nasiriya last October, tribal leaders repeatedly condemned the United States for failing to confront the “hidden hand”–Iranians coming into the city.

By January, the anti-U.S. Badr Corps, trained and financed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, had established a large office on Nasiriya’s riverfront promenade. Below murals of Khomeini and the late Ayatollah Mohammad Bakr Al Hakim hung banners declaring, no to America, no to Israel, no to occupation. Two blocks away in the central market, vendors sold posters not of moderate Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, but of Supreme Leader Khomeini. By January 2004, Zainab Al Suwaij, the granddaughter of Basra’s leading religious figure, was reporting that Hezbollah, which has close ties to the Revolutionary Guards, was operating openly in southern towns like Nasiriya and Basra, helping to stir up violence. The next day, at his daily press briefing, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, “No, I don’t know anything about Hamas and Hezbollah in Iraq. … We’ll stop them if we can get them.” Coincidentally, I visited Basra on January 14 without informing the local CPA coordinator. One block from the main market, Sciri and Hezbollah had established a joint office. A large Lebanese Hezbollah flag fluttered in the wind.

The Iranian government has not limited its support to a single faction or party. Rather, Tehran’s strategy appears to be to support both the radicals seeking immediate confrontation with the U.S. occupation and Islamist political parties like Sciri and Ibrahim Jafari’s Dawah Party, which are willing to sit on the U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council and engage with Washington, at least in the short term. The Iranian journalist Nurizadeh wrote in April 2003, “[President Mohammed] Khatami [and other Iranian political leaders] … were surprised by the decision issued above their heads to send into Iraq more than 2,000 fighters, clerics, and students [to] the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and al-Dawah Party.” My own experience backed up his claims. This February, I spoke with a local governor from southern Iraq who wanted to meet me after he learned that I lived and worked outside CPA headquarters. The governor complained that the CPA was doing little to stop the influx of Iranian money to district councilmen and prominent tribal and religious officials. The money, he said, was distributed through Dawah offices established after a meeting between Jafari and Iranian security officials.

Coalition forces under the leadership (or lack thereof) of Paul Bremer continued to empower Iran through her proxy Moqtada al Sadr.  As I reported in Rise of the JAM, Sadr was actually in the custody of the 3/2 Marines in 2004 and the Marines were forced to release him.  For a stunning account of the sad and sorry role of the British in convincing the authorities to release him, see the Charlie Rose interview of John Burns (approximately 17:20 into the interview).

In addition to the Jaish al Mahdi, the SIIC is also Iran-backed, but has also learned more quickly to play the political game in Iraq and is thoroughly embedded within the political scene.  Returning to the seminal opinion piece for this article, Alireza Jafarzadeh argues that the good news is that there is a window of opportunity to change the scene in Iraq.  The U.S. must take strong action against Iran, including her proxy forces inside Iraq.

We have argued for the fomenting of regime change in Iran by whatever means are necessary, including a full blown insurgency within Iran.  Others have argued for less draconian measures such as the fostering of democracy.  This later option isn’t likely to work due to the recalcitrance of the State Department and their general opposition to the global war on terror.

Whatever option is chosen by the administration, the time is short and the window of opportunity finite.

Prior: Iranian Hegemony in Iraq

In Terror Tactics, we observed that the difficulty in emplacing IEDs had caused a more discrete tactic, that of suicide bombers.  We also observed that this had caused an inversion of the kill ratio in the Iraq campaign.

… in both Iraq and Afghanistan, direct kinetic engagements are being avoided.  The kill ratio which has been maintained throughout both Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom is approximately 10:1.  This has caused huge losses for al Qaeda (and the Taliban in Afghanistan), and they have largely transitioned to a tactic which is much more surreptitious and difficult to stop: the suicide bomb

The Taliban haven’t completely turned off the faucet of kinetic operations against NATO forces, but when they engage they usually lose.

Seven Taliban militants have been killed in Afghanistan at the weekend after two separate attacks on police posts in the south and east, officials said Sunday.

In eastern Nangarhar province, four militants were killed in an exchange of fire early Sunday after attacking a police post near the border with Pakistan, provincial spokesman Noor Agha Zwak told AFP

Three others were killed on Saturday in the former Taliban stronghold of Musa Qala in restive Helmand province, police said.

“They attacked our police post. Our guys returned fire and three Taliban were killed,” provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal told AFP.

Taliban rebels stormed and captured Musa Qala early last year, making it their biggest military base from where they directed attacks on Afghan and foreign troops across the war-ravaged country.

Afghan and NATO forces recaptured the remote town in a large-scale operation involving thousands of troops in December. Two NATO soldiers were killed in the fighting.

Elsewhere, the US-led coalition, which has thousands of troops fighting here alongside a 40,000-strong NATO-led force, said it had killed “several” militants on Friday in an operation in eastern Khost province.

“A number of armed militants were killed when they posed a credible threat to coalition forces,” the military said in a statement. Five other militants were captured, it added.

Yet about the same time in Afghanistan, the kill ratio was reversed with terror tactics.

A suicide car bomber killed two Danish and one Czech NATO soldiers, an interpreter and three civilians in southern Afghanistan on Monday, officials said.

The Taliban have threatened to step up their campaign of suicide attacks this year to wear down Afghan and Western public support for the presence of foreign troops in the country.

The bomber attacked a convoy from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) near the village of Girishk in the southern province of Helmand, an ISAF spokesman said.

“Three ISAF soldiers, one ISAF interpreter and three Afghan civilians were killed by the blast,” said spokesman Captain Mark Gough. “Four ISAF soldiers and approximately six Afghan civilians were wounded.”

Suicide vests are now the weapon of choice in Iraq.  Coalition forces can no more stop suicide tactics when the weapon (human plus ordnance) gets into theater than they can stop the Taliban from targeting the cell phone towers.  The tenth cell phone tower has been attacked since the start of the campaign against them, and some cell phone networks have begun to turn off service at night in compliance with Taliban orders.

The solution lies in aggressive offensive operations against the insurgents.  The combination of humans and ordnance must be stopped where they are born, and no later than at the borders (Pakistan, Syria), and if they do make it into theater, the enablers and save havens must be targeted.  No amount of force protection can succeed when offensive operations are strategically necessary.

The following is a list of suicide attacks in Pakistan this year.

– March 11: Separate bombers shatter seven-story police headquarters and house in Lahore. At least 27 people killed, more than 200 wounded.
– March 4: Two bombers blow themselves up at navy training college in Lahore, killing four college employees.
– March 2: Bomber attacks tribesmen discussing resistance to al-Qaida and Taliban in Darra Adam Khel. At least 40 dead.
– March 1: Bomber on foot attacks vehicle carrying security officers in Bajur tribal area, killing one person, wounding 19.
– Feb. 29: Bomber strikes police officer’s funeral in Mingora in Swat Valley. More than 40 people killed, at least 60 wounded.
– Feb. 25: Bomber attacks car carrying Pakistani army’s surgeon general along busy road south of Islamabad, killing at least seven others.
– Feb. 16: Car bomber hits election rally in Parachinar. Some 40 people killed.
– Feb. 16: Attacker kills two civilians and wounds eight security personnel in Swat Valley.
– Feb. 11: Attacker kills seven people at election campaign rally in North Waziristan.
– Feb. 9: Bomber attacks election rally near Charsadda, killing 27 people, wounding 45.
– Feb. 2: Bomber rides explosives-laden motorbike into minibus carrying security personnel in Rawalpindi, killing at least seven people.
– Feb. 1: Car bomber rams into military checkpoint in North Waziristan, killing five soldiers, injuring five.
– Jan. 17: Attacker kills 11 people, wounds 20 at Shiite mosque in Peshawar.
– Jan. 15: Car bomber blows himself up trying to attack troops at checkpoint in Mohmand.
– Jan. 10: Bomber blasts crowd of police guarding courthouse in Lahore, killing 24, wounding dozens in first major attack since Dec. 27 assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
– Jan. 7: Bomber in pickup truck strikes in Swat, wounding eight soldiers and two civilians.

The Asia Times is reporting on an interesting jihadi recruitment pool for al Qaeda that may both give context to the recent list of bombings and give concern for future counterinsurgency efforts in the NWFP and FATA areas of Pakistan.

At the root of al-Qaeda’s strategy is the belief in the powerful ideology of Takfir, which deems all non-practicing Muslims infidels. This, al-Qaeda believes, fuels anti-Western forces in Muslim societies.

From Pakistan’s perspective, the tribal insurgencies in North-West Frontier Province are a thorn in the side of coalition troops in Afghanistan as the area is used as a staging ground for Taliban attacks into that country. But Islamabad believes these can at least be controlled, even if not tamed.

The real concern is the radicalization of Punjab, the largest Pakistani province and comprising more than half the country’s population, through banned militant organizations.

Thousands of activists are known to be affiliated with banned militant organizations in Punjab. Many were initially trained by Pakistani security agencies to fuel the insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir.

However, after September 11, 2001, Pakistan, as a new partner in the “war on terror”, was forced by the Americans to shelve its support of the Kashmiri insurgency. As a result, militant training camps were shut down and militants left their parent organizations in the thousands.

These young jihadis are obviously committed fighters and have been kicking their heels for several years now. The fear is that if they fall into the hands of al-Qaeda, they could significantly escalate unrest in Pakistan, Afghanistan and even Iraq. Segments of these Punjab-based militant organizations have already been cultivated by the Takfiris, resulting in a new source of suicide bombers.

Frank Hoffman has remarked to us that The Captain’s Journal is “rather famous” for our disagreements with Dave Kilcullen, counterinsurgency advisor to General David Petraeus.  Actually, at the Small Wars Journal, Kilcullen never interacted with us – the balance of the council weighed in against our notions of religious motivation in Islamic insurgency.  How nice, to be so alone all of the time.

But in the end our theories are reasonable and have been proven correct.  At the heart of our system was that there were indigenous insurgents who would be amenable to efforts enveloped by nonkinetic operations, but also those who fight for religious reasons (mostly foreign, some small amount indigenous), this later group being impervious to efforts at winning hearts and minds since they don’t engage in the struggle for any reason that can be ameliorated by our actions.  It pays to understand the difference between the two groups, because our strategy is a function of the target group.

This lesson was learned in Anbar, and regardless of any counterinsurgency advice to the contrary, U.S. forces have also implemented efforts to identify the two categories – with remarkable success.  Concerning the Pakistan suicide bombings, the U.S. is taking unilateral action to target Taliban sanctuaries.

WANA, Pakistan, March 16 (Reuters) – A U.S. aircraft fired missiles on Sunday at a house in a Pakistani region known as a haven for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, killing at least 9 militants and wounding nine, an intelligence official said.

A U.S. Central Command spokesman said the missiles were not fired by any military aircraft. This leaves open the possibility it could have been a pilotless drone aircraft which the CIA has used in Pakistan.

The intelligence official said four missiles were fired at the house in Shahnawaz Kheil Dhoog, a village near the town of Wana in the South Waziristan region on the Afghan border, just after 3 p.m. (1000 GMT).

“It was apparently an American plane that fired precision guided missiles at the house,” the official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.

Three foreigners, an Arab and two Turkmen, were among those killed, according to the intelligence official.

These actions are necessary since the new Parliamentary coalition is less amenable to warring with the Taliban and al Qaeda and more amenable to talking.

“We will discuss the issue of terrorism in parliament and the parliamentary committees, which will also be open to the public through live telecast, and in those meetings the PPP will lay down all the dimensions of the problems and plans to tackle it,” the PPP spokesperson disclosed.

In this context, it is learnt that Benazir Bhutto had “several thoughts” which also pertained to the issue of the dual control over the intelligence apparatus. While it is not clear yet what shape the anti-terror policy of the new government will take, indications are that the strategy and approach pursued will be a departure from the existing one. That it will be more inclusive and non-violent. More importantly, the commitment to deal with the issue will further strengthen.

In fact, the ANP has already made peace overtures to the Taliban.  It is of the utmost importance that the motivations of the enemy are understood, because if our theories are correct, talking with the Taliban will succeed in nothing but further extending amnesty and allowing time for the enemy to regroup, retrain and recruit.

Back In Iraq, lest it be thought that al Qaeda were the only religiously-motivated insurgents, Moqtada al Sadr has recently told us precisely what he was working towards over these last three years.  “So far I did not succeed either to liberate Iraq or make it an Islamic society — whether because of my own inability or the inability of society, only God knows. The continued presence of the occupiers, on the one hand, and the disobedience of many on the other, pushed me to isolate myself in protest. I gave society a big proportion of my life. Even my body became weaker, I got more sicknesses.” (Editorial note: Sadr seems to be in poor health, if alive at all.  He is apparently in Iran where he has spent most of the last six months.  He should just stay there.)

Some finite number of foreign fighters as well as Iranians (Quds) and indigenous radical Shi’a in Iraq have fought for religious reasons, while the indigenous Sunnis have generally not.  Some very much larger percentage of Taliban in Afghanistan have fought for the same ideals.  Literally all of the Pakistani Taliban (Baitullah Mehsud) and al Qaeda fight for these same motivations, and using the wrong strategy to combat their influence will not only be ineffective, it will also be dangerous because it will prolong their life and increase their power.

Stéphane Taillat has a very smart post on his predominately French blog, but this one is in English so it will be friendly to most readers.  It is well worth the time spent to study his entire article.  The “money” quote follows:

COIN has no principles. In my mind, it’s the contrary, and that can explains this narrative. COIN is “context-driven”, so most of the procedures that seem to succeed now come from the field and were implemented at the beginning by many officer and leaders. COIN, as a mission, is a contingent phenomenon. It relies on doctrine, formation and training, tactical procedures that integrates technology, social skills and knowledge as well as situational awareness and leader’s initiatives. It cannot be deduced from principles but rather from a progressive and close intimacy with the social and psychological terrain, both local and of own units. last but not least, remember that today’s insurgencies are not like past insurgencies, as a result of which counterinsurgency can’t simply apply “lessons learned” from History without any harm.

On the whole we agree with him on the general thrust of the article.  Counterinsurgency is indeed “context-driven,” or situation-specific (although we do think that some basic ideas may be deduced from experience).  The post on COIN Analogy of the Day brought some degree of opprobrium concerning our dismissal of the British experience in Northern Ireland as being relevant to counterinsurgency in Iraq or anywhere else.  Whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, greater U.K. or English, the fact of the matter is that this was COIN among their own people.  They were the same, at least as compared to Iraq.  The religious, cultural, societal, and political framework was the same; the ethical morays were the same; the language was the same; and by and large the history is the same.

When the British landed in Basra, they may as well have been placed on a different planet.  Nothing was the same, and thus whatever the British learned in Northern Ireland instantly became irrelevant.  In 2003, the British Army fished in the waters of the Shaat al Arab on their days off.  In 2007 when the British retreated from Basra, they did so while telling the tall tale that since the very presence of the British themselves was causing the violence, it would be better if they just left.  In other words, no one would shoot at the Army if the Army wasn’t there.

These things are being said not just at this blog or by U.S. mouthpieces.  British Colonel Tim Collins has criticized the overall strategy, saying among other things that there were too few troops, and that “Britain’s withdrawal from a chaotic Basra has “badly damaged” its military reputation.”  The post on “COIN Analogy of the Day” was written partially in humor.  This post is not.

The American strategy was horribly bad, and if for no other reason than the inability to stand up the Iraqi Army due to cultural differences, most anyone with brain matter could have told the administration that “standing down when they stand up” was not a plan.  Fortunately, U.S. forces in Anbar did their own thing after 2004 regardless of command confusion.  And they won – this may be Stephane’s point.

Even today there seems to be yet more admissions of failure in Basra by the British envoy to Basra, while at the same time he looks for reasons and excuses (such as it was inevitable anyway) rather than force size, force projection and a learning strategy.

On a serious note, the British generals failed.  The British rank and file include warriors as brave and qualified as any armed forces in the world.  It behooves the Brits to become as open and learning about this whole affair as the U.S. has become.  Taking posts such as this one as insulting is not helpful and doesn’t make progress.  To use an American phrase, the “cookie-cutter” approach to COIN doesn’t work.

As we predicted approximately two months ago, the U.S. and Iraq have begun talks that will likely codify Iraq as a protectorate of the U.S. for some years to come.

The United States and Iraq began talks on Tuesday on the future of the US military presence in the war-ravaged country, the Iraqi foreign ministry announced.

“The two parties started today, in the ministry of foreign affairs, talks …. on agreements and arrangements for long-term cooperation and friendship, including agreement on temporary US troop presence in Iraq,” the ministry said in a statement.

On November 26, US President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki vowed to agree in 2008 on the terms for the future US military presence in Iraq.

The two leaders signed a non-binding statement of principles for the negotiations, setting a July 31, 2008 target date to formalize US-Iraq economic, political, and security relations.

At the time Maliki said the accord sets 2008 as the final year for US-led forces to operate in Iraq under a UN mandate, which the new bilateral arrangement would replace.

The new agreeement when finalised would trigger the end of UN sanctions imposed after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and return full sovereignty to the government in Baghdad.

“All the justification created by the former regime is now over,” Maliki said on November 26, a reference to Saddam Hussein, the dictator ousted by the March 2003 US-led invasion and later executed.

The talks between delegations of the two countries are expected to cover issues at the heart of the bitter US debate over the war — including whether Washington would have permanent bases in Iraq, how many US troops would be stationed here, and for how long.

Amir Taheri has an analysis at the New York Post in which he claims that Iran now worries about too hasty a retreat by the U.S.  While I disagree with his analysis for reasons that are too detailed to enumerate at the moment, his article is worth glancing at due to the inclusion of what is quite possibly the ugliest picture of Moqtada al Sadr that has ever been published.  He looks like a toothless buffoon who needs a shave.  That menacing scowl is gone, possibly because he knows that we have sights on him.  There is no question that Iran wants the U.S. out of Iraq, and in case it has not sunk in the first thousand times it has been said, the Multinational Force again reiterated that Iran is playing a destabilizing role in Iraq.

… there are still groups and elements that are supporting the training and financing of criminal elements here inside of Iraq.  And we have briefed on multiple occasions the role that these groups inside of Iran are playing to support the special groups with training inside of Iran, the delivery of capability through that training that’s then exported back into Iraq, the funding of the activities of these special groups, as well as the, in some cases, the supplying of arms and munitions. 

The discovery of the caches that we continue to find on the battlefield today, some of which are fairly new in terms of its manufacture of the weapon itself, suggests that the activity of the training and financing, when added together with the constant flow of weapons into this country, makes for a very volatile and dangerous situation.

Hopefully the long term presence of U.S. troops will see them less involved in constabulary operations and more involved in border security, training, and region stabilization.  The surge will eventually end, constabulary operations will be fully handed over to Iraq, and large numbers of troops will come home.  But at least some diminished number of troops will remain in Iraq for a decade, and the Middle East for longer.

Al Qaeda finds it difficult to emplace IEDs because of the population (which points them out to U.S. forces) and UAVs operating discretely above.  Further, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, direct kinetic engagements are being avoided.  The kill ratio which has been maintained throughout both Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom is approximately 10:1.  This has caused huge losses for al Qaeda (and the Taliban in Afghanistan), and they have largely transitioned to a tactic which is much more surreptitious and difficult to stop: the suicide bomb.  Eight U.S. soldiers died Monday due to this tactic.

A man walked up to a group of American soldiers on foot patrol in an upscale shopping district in central Baghdad on Monday and detonated the explosives-filled vest he was wearing, killing five soldiers and wounding three others and an Iraqi interpreter who accompanied them.

In eastern Diyala Province, north of the capital, three more American soldiers and an interpreter were also killed Monday when they were attacked with an improvised bomb, according to the military, which did not release any more details.

Another soldier was wounded in the blast.

The suicide bombing in Baghdad was the deadliest single attack on American soldiers in the capital since the height of the troop buildup here last summer. Nine Iraqi civilians were also wounded in the blast, according to officials at Yarmuk Hospital, where the victims were taken.

Reports from Iraqi witnesses suggest that the soldiers may have let down their guard because of the relative quiet of the last few months, leaving the safety of their Humvees and chatting with residents and shopkeepers.

Hours later, a car bomb exploded outside a hotel in the northern Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya, killing two people and wounding 30 in the first significant attack in that city in several years.

Noncombatants have also been targeted with the violence in other parts of Iraq.

A roadside bomb has killed at least 16 people travelling on a bus in southern Iraq, reports say.  At least 22 people were also wounded in the attack.

The civilian passenger bus was travelling on the Basra-Nasiriya road some 80km (50 miles) south of Nasiriya, police said.

The attack came a day after eight US soldiers and an interpreter were killed in two separate incidents, the US military said.

One attack took place in Diyala province, killing three soldiers and an interpreter, while five other soldiers were killed in a suicide attack in Baghdad.

As if consistent with swarm theory, al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan have also directed their efforts away from direct kinetic engagements and are using the same tactic of suicide bombs.

A new United Nations report says insurgent and terrorist violence in Afghanistan sharply increased last year, with more than 8,000 conflict-related deaths …

His report also highlights the way the conflict has changed from a conventional war between western forces and the Taliban to an insurgency using suicide attacks, assassinations, abductions and roadside bombings.

Pakistan has recently seen its share of the same thing.  On Tuesday, Lahore suffered another suicide attack.

Suicide attackers detonated two huge truck bombs in Pakistan Tuesday, killing 26 people, partly demolishing a police building and deepening a security crisis facing the new government.

Another 175 people were wounded in the attacks in the eastern city of Lahore, which came just minutes apart in the morning rush-hour and left rescue workers scrambling through rubble in a bid to find survivors.

It is ultimately ineffective to fight these tactics within the battlespace itself.  By the time the suicide weapon (the ordnance and the human) has made its way to the population it is too late to stop it.  There is no incentive to stop these tactics on the part of the jihadists, because they can directly reverse the kill ratio to their own advantage.  These tactics have to be fought at their proximate birthplace, which in this case is Iran and Syria for Iraq, and Iran and Pakistan (NWFP and FATA) for Afghanistan.

The stream of jihadists has to be dried up.  The enemy has adapted his tactics to reverse the kill ratio in the battlespace.  Without adaptation by U.S. forces, we cannot long sustain this reversal of effectiveness.  The hard choices must be made about black operations against known facilitators and handlers in Syria, air strikes against training camps in Iran, strikes into the NWFP and FATA areas of Pakistan, and other options that should be available to stem the flow of global fighters.  It’s a matter of winning or losing the campaigns.