Iraq

Hello All:Here's the latest NewsNote installment.It covers the next step in Iraq. Economic jobs programs are this year's model. I am north of Baghdad.

(Kirkuk Iraq) - America is taking the next logical step in Iraq to cut violence. Too bad it’s about 4 years late. Until the latest spike in violence, insurgent activity had dropped off dramatically, to about 40 American deaths a month. Partly because renegade religious leader Muqtada al Sadr declared a ceasefire. But mostly because the Sunnis for the most part threw in the towel. Al Qaeda's barbarous acts against the very Sunnis who most supported them drove those same Sunnis to turn against the insurgent group and throw them out. Now many of the Sunnis are manning checkpoints, riding around in cars and generally keeping the peace in their own neighborhoods across the Sunni areas. Now American patrols routinely stop at these checkpoints, talk and joke with the Sunni 'fighters,' hand out some water, and find out what the insurgents are up to in the area. It's a remarkably effective way to quell violence. If someone lays a roadside bomb, it’s these neighborhood security groups that have the local knowledge to find the perpetrator. For this the Americans pay the Sunni fighters the princely sum of somewhere between $125 a month to $250 a month per fighter, depending on the area. In this part of northern Iraq there are 12,000 of these fighters. Upward of 70,000 across the country. It is probably the best bargain America ever made. One of the reasons the al Qaeda message was initially so attractive is because al Qaeda paid good money. For an unemployed Iraqi man, especially one with a family, getting $100 in return for firing a gun at America forces or helping to lay a roadside bomb is a meal ticket good for a month. Many American officers knew as far back as 2004 that the economic incentive was a major factor in quelling the insurgency. That’s not surprising. Counter-insurgencies are waged at the level of the village, neighborhood and household. That meant sergeants, lieutenants and captains knew what was going on better than the generals. But that knowledge didn’t flow upwards. To take away the economic attractions of al Qaeda meant the Americans needed to spend money on a massive scale and spread it around in small chunks. Like a 1930s-era Works Projects Administration. That essentially is what these US-funded Sunni security groups do - they pay American dollars to military-minded Iraqis to stay away from al Qaeda. We out-bid al Qaeda for their services and we won. Violence is down. It works. Finally and at last the military is taking that idea and extending it. A new program called the Civilian Service Corps (CSC) is being created. It aims to get thousands of people into job training and into viable construction companies, and give them a guaranteed paycheck for about a year, courtesy of the America taxpayer. It will bring economic stimulus to large areas of Iraq. The idea, essentially, is to let the Iraqis eat their way out of the insurgency. As ideas go it’s a winner. But the problem with ideas like this is they are not 'sexy.' Economic training and jobs programs are... yawn... boring. Sadly, they are also much more effective than kicking in doors and shooting people. This massive jobs program didn’t happen in 2004 because the American military leaders didn’t have the ability to take the information from below and develop something like the CSC. And because the rules governing the military's use of funds for civil projects actually prohibited spending money for programs like the CSC. It will be interesting over the next year to see if the CSC works. If it doesn’t work it won't be because it's not a good idea - it's probably the best one of the past year. It will be because the idea is so gosh-darn unbearably boring that no one will take it seriously.

Fighting the Shiite Militias (At Last)
by Doug Grindle
April 12, 2008

Years of sweeping one of Iraq's biggest problems under the rug has finally come home to roost.

Since Sunday, reports indicate 19 Americans have died in Iraq. That’s the worst week in Iraq this year. It is up significantly from the average of casualties over the past few months, which have been running at just under 40 per month.

Conventional wisdom holds that violence in Iraq is bad. But in this case, perhaps that's not as true as usual.

Much of the fighting is centered on delivering a major blow to the Shia militia known as the Mahdi Army, run by renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. This is no rag-tag militia of no account.

Estimates have held steady for years that the militia has between 70,000 and 80,000 members. Al Sadr is supported by Iran politically and almost certainly financially. And Iran almost certainly gives the Mahdi Army and other militias the worst type of roadside bombs, called "explosively formed projectiles", or EFPs, which are highly effective in killing Americans.

The Mahdi Army is bad. It is out of control. Last year, for several months in mid-year, half of the American casualties in Baghdad were caused by Shia militias; of them, the Mahdi Army is the biggest and most dangerous one.

In this context, a reckoning is long overdue. Reports indicate that reckoning was originally scheduled for June by American and Iraqi forces, but was precipitously brought forward by the Maliki government more than two weeks ago, when Iraqi soldiers launched an assault on Shia militias in Basra.

That rush was not without cost. Any assault in Basra was almost bound to fail without meticulous and extensive preparation, given that the British moved out of the center of Basra last year and retreated to the city's airport, allowing Shia militias and organized criminals to assume creeping control of the place.

In Iraq there have only ever been two main opponents. The biggest, most urgent security threat came from the Sunni insurgents and their al Qaeda allies. That threat has fallen away as tens of thousands of Sunnis switched to the side of the government, which has put their erstwhile al Qaeda allies in a real bind, as they have been pushed farther from Baghdad into Diyala Province and Mosul in the north.

The other main opposition was always going to be the Shia militias, of which al Sadr is by far the most notorious and violence-prone leader. America and its Iraqi allies either would not or could not address this problem - until now - the thinking being that it was too difficult to fight both Shiites and Sunnis at the same time, and the Sunnis took precedence.

Instead the Shia problem was put on hold. Policy makers seemed to assume either the Shiite militias would fade away, as the legitimate Shia government co-opted them into the political process, or would eventually require a military solution when spare troops became available.

It appears that with the Sunni insurgency on the wane, the Maliki government feels those extra forces are now available.

As the casualty figures flow in, one hopes the cost of the recent fighting will not be too high. But one hopes even more fervently that this spasm of violence will bring about the true denouement of the al Sadr problem, and that his ultimate reckoning will not just fizzle out. The problem cannot be allowed to fester, to appear again another day. If it is not solved now, when will it be?

Blog/NewsNote March 16
re: Political Strategy

As the war in Afghanistan grinds on, the US Army continues to try to figure out how best to win it.
It’s been seven and a half years since the Americans went in and the Taliban was thrown out.
Since then, America has changed its strategy several times to deal with the ongoing insurgency.
Officers say in the early years, the army simply tried to win by fighting - essentially, win by killing enough Taliban and other insurgents that the problem would go away. They report that strategy was unsuccessful.
The strategy for 2007 centered on economic development. Essentially, build enough roads, schools and water points and the villagers most at risk will love the Americans and the central government enough to turn against "strangers" (insurgents) when they appear in the far-flung villages and throw them out or inform on them. That takes time to work, since roads can take 2, 3 or even 4 years to build in this mountainous country.
For 2008 the buzz-phrase is "political development".
Almost all villagers, the thinking goes, reject the Taliban and their authoritarian, regressive, oppressive and extremist rule. By something like a 94% to 6% margin, according to polls.
In practice, "political development" means that the magic ingredient will now be the government itself.
The thinking goes, inject the elected (or appointed) officials who represent President Hamid Karzai in Kabul into far-flung districts, and show the rural villagers the government "cares" about their plight and is interested in their participation in government (and in their economic development).
This will cause the villagers to side with the government and, again, kick out strangers and insurgents who come wandering through villages brandishing arms and demanding food and supplies.
Time will tell if this calculation is in fact correct.
This year the corollary buzzword to political development is "corruption," which is universally recognized as being very bad and getting, if anything, worse. American officers in eastern Afghanistan say corruption is their number one headache, ahead of the war-fight itself, because "political development" is dramatically weakened when villagers are forced to pay for building permits, vehicle passage, and anything to do with the government. Villagers resent the unlawful demands for payment, and their desire to back the Kabul government is undermined.
One reason corruption has become imbued in the fabric of society is not because Karzai is corrupt (though his cronies are considered almost uniformly to be). It is that he is too fearful to rein it in, and fears a backlash from powerful armed men with something to lose, which could lead to his early assassination.
Another reason corruption is rife is because the police agencies were allowed for 6 years, until fall of 2007, to be paid less than half a living wage for a family of five - about $60 or $80 per month instead of the $160 or so it actually takes to live. For many of the Afghan police forces, corruption was necessary to survive and is now ingrained.
So it is with hope, optimism and a feeling of deja vu that we head into the 2008 fighting season.
Of course, this strategy ignores the massive sanctuaries in the Pakistani tribal areas that serve as recruiting and training grounds for an enemy that will literally be out of a job if he lays down his arms. Those areas are untouchable.
All in all, this year should be an interesting one.

Doug Grindle writes:

"When Does The Level of Violence Become Acceptable?

The night convoy supply run in Iraq isn't what it used to be.
Tonight we are doing the run between Camp Anaconda (40 miles north of Baghdad) and Camp Scania (almost 200 miles south of Baghdad).
The risks of doing this run are:
IEDs (improvised explosive devices - aka roadside bombs); EFPs (explosively formed penetrators - charges that blast molten metal through armor effortlessly); and small arms fire.
The drivers, huddled behind thick armored glass, peer into the night. All three crewmen in each humvee - the driver commander and gunner - focus intently on the 25 yards of road lit up by the glare of the headights, looking for bombs.
It is a testing time, for both the powers of concentration as well as basic human courage.
These people (men and women, for I am with B-Co, 297th combat support battalion, which includes women, including the woman driver in our truck, Spc Jiminez, known as "Jimmy") do this almost every night. They will continue to do this in coming months before rotating home to Alaska in the Spring.
Almost every night something happens on this road, called Tampa, which is the main supply route leading north from Kuwait, and along which flow masses of supplies - tires and bullets, ice cream and eggs - that an army uses to fight. A couple of weeks ago one of the trucks of this squad was blown up (no one was killed) doing a similar run. These soldiers drive all over Iraq, escorting supply trucks.
But despite the present danger, this run isn't what it used to be.
Its been two years since I first covered (another unit) driving this stretch of road. Simply put, this run sees a lot less action than before. There used to be more bombs, more small arms fire, more of everything, up until as recently as last June. These days the army's techniques are better, the insurgents are fewer in number. Attacks are down.
In recent months the army is running about one casualty a day. That's just under 40 a month, down from casualty counts of over 100 a month in mid-2007.
At some point Americans and Iraqis are going to have to contemplate the next step in the war (unless things reverse and get dramatically worse) - when does America call victory and go home? How many casualties per month does it take before a war becomes something less than a war? One American a week? Two a month? 70 Iraqis a week, both civilian and security forces?
For now this question doesn't affect daily life here. These soldiers driving the main supply route in the dead of night will keep on, until they head home in a few months.
For the soldiers, if you are part of a squad that takes a hit, even one casualty per year is almost certainly way too many."

WCCA member and friend Doug Gindle sent in this most recent report from western Iraq:

Al Asad airbase, western Iraq - As you know, Anbar Province in western Iraq is now pretty quiet. It used to be about the worst of the worst, and the bastion of the Sunni insurgency. Now there is about one tenth as much violence as before. It is pretty close to the 'acceptable level of violence' that is the goal here.
It has happened because the Sunnis have allied themselves with the Iraqi government and US military, and booted out al Qaeda.
But how did it happen? How did the Sunnis decide to fight against al Qaeda and throw in their lot with their sworn enemies?
This question is important. Very important. It is the final score card on how to fight these kinds of wars, how the US did here, and what to do next.
There are two very different answers as to what happened and why. One is right, one is wrong. I don't know which is which, but here are the versions and the evidence.
Scenario 1 - The Marines (who run Anbar) did such a great job the enemy just gave up. The combination of ferocious attacks coupled with civil affairs projects (building schools, wells, roads etc) convinced the local Sunni sheikhs, who make the decisions, that the game wasn't worth the candle. Why endure the hurt when the US Marines and subordinate units instead will offer economic benefits and then go home? So they joined the US and Iraqi government and went against al Qaeda. This scenario portrays the Marines as increasingly in control.
Scenario 2 - The locals got sick of al Qaeda and unilaterally decided to get rid of them. They fought al Qaeda and then allied themselves with the Iraqi government and the US military, which were seen as the lesser evil. The sheikhs realized the US would eventually leave. In this version, al Qaeda essentially controlled the province for years, but their tyranny became too onerous. Cutting hands off for stealing, summary executions for trivial offenses, killing popular local sheikhs for petty transgressions, forcing marriages between the daughters of local sheikhs and al Qaeda cadres. It was unbearable and so the Sunnis rose up.
The evidence is this:
- The Marines spent some money but not a huge amount on local aid projects. I don’t think I saw one in 2 years of being in Anbar. There were a good number, but there just seemed to be less than in other areas.
- The local Sunni sheikhs told US Army soldiers that last November (2006) they got sick of al Qaeda and started to fight them. The extremists were too out of step with mainstream Iraqi culture, which is actually quite permissive. The Sunnis fought al Qaeda from November until January, when the US military noticed what was going on. By March the US military was cooperating with the Sunni 'rebels', even on operations. By June it was over and the Sunni sheikhs won, al Qaeda lost.
- The conventional wisdom was that Anbar was a province that could be held but never converted. It would just eventually go along with developments in other parts of Iraq. The 'win' would be gradual. But in fact, within six months the change was 180 degrees, and the war was mostly won here. The flip was relatively quick - and not a gradually increasing ascendancy over the area predicted by the US military's own estimates.
So that's the evidence. And those are the theories.
This all matters because the Marines now want to 'take over' the war in Afghanistan, using their 'highly effective' methods developed in Anbar.
That’s a good idea if you believe the Marines won in Anbar - after all, they won because they know how to fight counterinsurgencies.
It is a lousy idea is you believe the other scenario - that al Qaeda was not only in control, but in such authoritative control that the local Sunnis were forced to take matters into their own hands. And the Marine methods created essentially no victory in the war. Al Qaeda did that all by themselves.
Personally I think the Marines ought to stay out of Afghanistan.

Doug Grindle, one of WCCA's volunteer Community Producers (Government Issue, series on WCCA) is currently in north Afghanistan. I intentionally left out his location. Here is what he writes:

Hello All:

Here is the latest NewsNote.
It is in the form of a story. I'll be cutting them back in legnth for your reading ease next time. But this is the story of northern Afghanistan, so i figured it is worth the whole treatment.
The bottom line - it's working there all right but it is a snail-like progress.
And its' not guns, it's money that makes the difference.
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Combat Outpost Najil, Laghman Province, Afghanistan - Soldiers of 158th Infantry watch as mortar shells explode against a hillside about a half mile away. The sun beats down, the temperature is over 100 degrees on the soldiers who have walked over two miles from their base to get here. They are happy to take a break.

The soldiers are spotting for the mortar rounds after walking up to the edge of the impact zone to make sure it is clear of civilians. They shooed several herdsmen and their cows and sheep away. Now the mortars echo across the valley and the four villages near the base. A few minutes later the Afghan artillery soldiers fire their big guns from the base. The shells zip overhead and explode, sending more echoes across the valley.

Lobbing shells is good practice for the real thing. It is also a show of force designed to keep insurgents off the slopes near the base, and give them second thoughts about attacking. Insurgents favor attacking with mortars or rockets, but lately it’s an infrequent problem.

"It is pretty quiet around there," said Spc Chad Halstead, a National Guardsman from Honolulu. "I'm not worried about any big attacks. They do occasional hit and runs and we respond to that."

Soldiers are working to get the villagers on their side. That's why they carefully clear the area before firing. They are also pushing a slew of development projects in the province designed to win over the locals. They are also widening road between here and Methar Lam, the provincial capital. And just up the road from the base, civil affairs soldiers are paying to rebuild a river crossing. Lately the strategy of an iron fist in a velvet glove has been working as attacks drop off.

But it is not absolutely quiet here. Attacks do happen. A few days before, two men in a nearby village opened fire on a passing convoy of humvees. They soldiers caught one of the men. They say headman of the village decided to show the soldiers he does not approve of their presence. Luckily no one was hurt. But less than two months before, this unit, the 1-158th Infantry from Arizona, lost a soldier who died in an attack by a roadside bomb in Methar Lam.

"At first when it happened I was just really frustrated. We're out here trying to help them and they're trying to kill us," said Sgt Jose Rodriguez of Ewa Beach HI.

If this area is not completely pacified, the problem increases exponentially the farther north you go. The soldiers are forbidden to venture more than a few miles along the road past the base because it is deemed too dangerous.

But that is where they most need to go, soldiers say. Taliban and other insurgents - al Qaeda and a fundamentalist Afghan movement called the HiG - exist in strength in villages farther north. They also pay local fighters to attack the American and Afghan soldiers.

Combat Outpost Najil does not have enough soldiers to confront the nest of insurgents in the valleys further north. So the soldiers here try to extend government influence in their little valley, building roads and other projects.

The Americans have no plans to increase their troop numbers in this valley. Instead they are engaged in a two-pronged strategy to quell the violence.

They will wait for the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police to grow in numbers and effectiveness and eventually extend their influence north. "My battalion's main focus is the buildup of the capacity of the Afghan security forces," explained Ltc Alberto Gonzalez, commanding officer of the 1-158 Infantry battalion. "Ultimately it's their country and it's their responsibility to get into all those areas and provide the security people need in order to support the government."

And secondly, the soldiers will rely on development to tamp down the violence. Americans hope the locals will eventually turn away from insurgent money and toward regular commerce, as the number of jobs rises when new roads and development projects are finished.

Soldiers say this strategy is already working in the areas it has been tried. But it will take time. And with the limited number of troops here, it is the only one available.

We continue to pray for peace and Doug's safety.
MD