02.28.08
The Myth of the Surge : Rolling Stone
(Updated with my commentary)
I saw this article while strolling through my local Borders (looking in vain for some tables to take advantage of their T-Mobile HotSpot). I hoped it was online so I could easily share it with others, because I think it’s an important look into what’s really going on in Iraq with these “Awakening Councils” and the supposed progress that is being reported in the media.
The Myth of the Surge : Rolling Stone
I support a withdrawal from Iraq as soon and as fast as logistically feasible. I came to this conclusion over time last year, as it became apparent that our continued occupation there was not helping resolve anything, and may in fact be hurting things. In the past couple weeks, we’ve all heard about recent progress in Iraq, supposedly tied to the “surge” (read: escalation) of American troops. Sectarian violence is down, insurgents and militias are turning from their former ways and allying themselves with the US forces against terrorism.
I began to wonder… what if Gen. Petraeus’ strategy was really turning things around? Doesn’t such progress warrant some more time after all? Thankfully, Nir Rosen’s article has disabused me of such wondering. It seems that the recent “progress” so widely touted is actually rather hollow.
When General Petraeus was made Commanding General over the forces in Iraq last year, he advocated a new approach to the occupation. Petraues is, by all accounts, a scholar of managing occupations and guerrilla conflicts- he literally wrote the book on the subject. Petraeus advocated a more considered approach, based in large part on the lessons of past conflicts, including the experience of British colonial forces, and the failures experienced in Vietnam.
The gist of the Petraeus strategy, at a high-level, is to provide security by increasing the number of occupational forces patrolling the cities, and to use the resulting increase in security to buy time for both physical and political progress. Nothing can move forward if armed factions are given the room to wreak havoc, halt commerce and generally terrorize the populace.
At Petraeus’ own admission, he can only play one part in such a strategy. For lack of economic and political progress in place, the increased security will only work as long as we’re willing to maintain the escalation of soldiers.
For months critics of the “surge” have contended that, while violence has been (supposedly) on the decrease, there was no corresponding political progress from the Iraqi government. A week or two ago, that apparently changed with the Iraqi government passed a few bills that we’ve been waiting to see in regards to oil revenues and constitutional reforms. At the same time, the so called “Awakening Councils” were springing up in the Anbar province, a hotbed of former Sunni insurgency and Al Qaeda In Mesopotamia (AQIM) operations. These militias had apparently turned a corner and decided to join the US in its pursuit of eradicating terrorists and remaining insurgents.
The Awakening movement was originally formed when the Abu Mahals tribe proposed an alliance with the US military in driving out rival tribes allegedly allied with AQIM. The administration has touted this development as a great achievement. The Iraqis were rejecting the terrorists and allying with the Multi-National Forces (MNF). Former insurgents and their sympathizers had decided to make the building of a better, stable Iraq their priority, and are joining with the MNF and Iraqi National Police (INP) for that goal.
As Rosen’s article demonstrates, however, most of the “political progress” has come at the hands of our military. The Awakening movement currently consistes of a patchwork of mostly Sunni militias (disjoint since the Abu Mahals leader Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi was assassinated in a suicide bombing last September). They are kept on “our” side by a combination of money and arms. They hate the Shiite-dominated INP and continue to feud with them where possible, only suspending hostilities when under the watchful gaze of American forces. When these factions are not jockeying for more cash and armament handouts from the US, they are manipulating US forces for their own agendas, taking advantage of the fact that our military doesn’t know who can be trusted, and most of them don’t know enough Arabic to even understand when their “allies” are plotting right next to them. The Iraqi government has pledged to disband the Awakening councils, and has rejected most attempts to absorb the militias into official army or police forces in any meaningful way.
I fear that some of the lessons of history may have been lost on us. Gen. Petraeus seems to know how to run an occupation. The question we should be asking, however, is how do we build a nation (if, indeed, such is possible). Look to Petraeus’ sources of inspiration- British colonialism. The British surely knew how to run an empire in their time. On building nations out of their colonies, however, they seem to have been lacking. Indeed, Iraq, after all, is a former British mandate, created by the combination of a few regions of the former Ottoman empire. Since then it’s been one series of authoritarian regimes followed by overthrows. The Brits may have known how to run an empire, but until we’re ready to annex Iraq outright, perhaps the most succinct lesson from their history when it comes to colonialism is “don’t”.
This all adds up to my conclusion that what we are seeing here is not a thawing of relations, but rather a temporary regrouping. The Sunni militias are building their strength with American support for the inevitable resurgence of hostilities with the the Shiite government. They may have no love for AQIM, but they display outright hatred for the INP and the Iraqi government, and in fact still demonstrate hatred of the occupational forces, albeit subdued as long as we are supplying them. Far from dissolving the Iraqi insurgency, we are now supplying and financing them. We are not securing a peace that will last after our withdrawal- we are only ensuring a bloodier civil war.
I hope that American voters are not fooled into believing that these superficial reports we’re hearing on the airwaves are indicative of any chance of long-term stability in Iraq being achieved by our occupation. One need only look at the voices now predicting success… they are the same voices who were cheering the war in the first place, then slowly became silent (even eschewing the Bush administration they previously championed) as things fell apart in Iraq. Now they are cheering on the occupation once again… this time it’s working… we finally are succeeding… we have to keep the “surge” going. These are people who ought to have no credibility with us.
I urge readers to not fall for these antics. Our occupation of Iraq is a failure, and no amount of further blood spilled or money lost on the situation will improve it. It is clear that the Bush administration will never listen to reason, and we are consigned to another year of relatively uninhibited occupation; but we have a chance to empower a new administration to admit our failures and withdraw our troops, return many of them to the homes they’ve been away from for so long, and refocus our military to endeavors worth making.
