A Battle Against the Odds

A Battle Against the Odds - Mark Moyar, Wall Street Journal book review.

On Sept. 11, 2006, exactly five years after 9/11, the Washington Post divulged a classified U.S. intelligence report under the headline, "Anbar Is Lost Politically, Marine Analyst Says." According to an anonymous American source, the report said that "we haven't been defeated militarily but we have been defeated politically—and that's where wars are won and lost."

It is true that the situation in Anbar Province, a hotbed of Sunni Muslim resistance in western Iraq, was dire at the time. Three years earlier the Americans had arrived intent on winning over the population through democratic governance and economic development. But most local civilians—out of support for Sunni insurgents or fear of them—had rejected U.S. requests to serve in the government or participate in development projects. American units ended up spending most of their time battling swarms of guerrillas.

In A Chance in Hell, Jim Michaels, a military reporter for USA Today, deftly explains how the so-called Anbar Awakening emerged from this seemingly hopeless set of circumstances, saving the troubled province and the rest of Sunni Iraq. Whereas many accounts of the Awakening have portrayed it as an American creation, Mr. Michaels shows that it was largely the handiwork of Iraqis, particularly a local leader named Abdul Sattar Abu Risha. Mr. Michaels details how Sattar, a sheik of a minor tribe, formed a robust tribal alliance against al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) before striking a deal with the Americans...

More at The Wall Street Journal.