Understanding Iraq: Initial Assessment (Update Three: Model: Small Wars and the Theory of Games)
Assessment
Given the available information, I conclude that Iraq was in a state of near collapse prior to the American Invasion. Our prolonged occupation only further exasperated the ethnic, sectarian, tribal, and religious tensions, and the forecast is that Iraq will head into civil war. But, the Iraqis must be left to determine their own path to peace without further intervention. At most, we can contain the violence by blocking the borders, but we should not pick a winner in this fight.
Intent
This is just one assessment for consideration to be examined for accuracy. It is by no means the truth, but it is important to explore this hypothesis. This is part of a much larger on-going work, but given the urgency of today, I felt it necessary to share my initial findings.
Purpose
The Logic and Method of Collaborative Design by Brigadier General Huba Wass de Czege
The logic and method of design outlined in this paper is first and foremost a collective research methodology for considering the best available information to make sense of what is known in order to construct an explicit and shared hypothesis of the very unique, dynamic and complex power and influence networks that pertain to the mission and how to act through them to take best advantage of the inherent situational potential for change. It is also a collective methodology for continually refining the command's understanding of them, and for facilitating collective adaptation accordingly.
Assumptions
Methodology
Mixed methods generated from 1. 120,000 person census of Iraqi populace, 60 key leader interviews, and over 300 tactical interrogations in Diyala River Valley by 5-73 Recon from Aug 2006-Nov 07, 2. Open source scanning and American Operational Summaries Dec 07-Present, 3. Interviews with select Iraqi citizens in December 2011, 4. Select Articles from SWJ including Richard Buchanan’s Rural versus Urban Insurgency , Malcolm Nance's The Basrah Gambit, and John W. Jones’ How We Lost the Peace in Iraq, 5. Select books including Mark Kukis’s Voices From Iraq and Nir Rosen’s The Triumph of Martyrs.
Model: Small Wars and the Theory of Games
A hybrid of Maynard Smith's ESS, John Nash's Arbitration, and Warden's third ring
Analysis
In the mid 1990’s, Saddam barely managed to contain his internal security threats, and Iraq was deteriorating rapidly due to the cumulative effects of the Iran-Iraq war, the invasion of Kuwait and subsequent American intervention, global economic restrictions, and military containment strategy. In 2003, we just failed to understand Iraq or perhaps we overestimated our own abilities.
Saddam ruled by layer upon layer of Soviet and Nazi styled heavy-handed suppression and pacification. In the most nihilistic fashion, uneducated and violent fighters were recruited out of the Diyala River Valley to serve in the Fedayeen, Saddam’s version of Hitler’s Schutzstaffel or Stalin’s secret police. Saddam’s government was built on a house of sand, and it was only a matter of time before it collapsed.
In eastern Diyala province, The Council, a Sunni based Wahhabi separatist movement not affiliated with Al-Qaida, were mobilizing, recruiting, and training a shadow government/counter-state essentially carving out a semi-autonomous region. Coupled with the Kurdish resistance in the North and competing Shia factions in the South, groups like The Council would have eventual forced an Iraqi revolution.
Groups like The Council will now provoke new tensions in Iraq with the American withdrawal. This crisis will start in Diyala province, the center of gravity for the Sunni Resistance in Iraq, nested along the old Silk Road. While the Iraq Surge suppressed their efforts, The Council merely withdrew to the countryside to regroup, refit, and prepare for the long war.
Instead, Iraq faced nearly a decade of bloody occupation and will have to overcome the physical, mental, and emotional tolls that are the secondary and tertiary effects of current U.S. foreign policy. Specifically, today, over 600,000 Iraqis are externally displaced, an unknown number internally displaced, at least 100,000 killed, another 1,000,000 wounded, and millions of young men and women have grown up knowing only war.
Our efforts at treating a “gunshot wound” as prescribed by General David Petraeus’ Field Manual 3-24 Counterinsurgency only prolonged the suffering and missed the cancer.
Provoked by decades by Saddam, the initial invasion for regime change was justified, but our continued intervention only made Iraq worse. The Iraqis must find their own way.
I agree wholeheartedly with the first point here that OIF did not spark the civil war. It’s a view that gets looks of surprise, but the fact is, as Mike suggests, Iraq was looking at some kind of collapse under Saddam- the 1991 Shia intifada alone is thought to have caused 150,000 deaths. Even without Iranian or US assistance, the Shia rebels still captured at least 3 major cities in Southern Iraq. Sanctions in the ’90’s, by the UN’s own admission caused the deaths of an estimated 500,000 children.
So, if the Iraq invasion was immoral, then liberal commentators opposed to it have to ask what was so gentle about the situation within Iraq before 2003.
Iraq now, in the absence of intervention and under Uday and Qusay Hussein would likely involve another grim scenario.
In terms of grand strategy, the naysayers will say “so what?” Why spend a trillion dollars on a moral cause? (liberation.)
This is where John Nagl is correct to point out that Iraq sits atop some of the worlds biggest oil reserves. Why should a country potentially the richest in the region exist in squalor as global energy supplies dwindle?
A successful invasion could have, in theory, created a new Saudi Arabia for the west, and for Blair and the neocons, the intersection of moral cause and energy security was just too tempting.
So, in my opinion there was a decent strategic reason to go in.
Enter the Neoconservatives. While the SWJ community may ponder on tactics pre surge, or whether the surge was decisive, one is forced to look at how some of the worst counterinsurgents were political appointments in the Green Zone trying to privatise Iraq just as the country fell to pieces. I think some of the biggest mistakes happened there- we all know commanders on the ground, in many areas, were making sound decisions before the surge. But were the men in suits backing them up?
Lastly, Petraeus:
I have to disagree here, but then, I am a diehard armchair commentator who has never been to Diyala- I generally try and avoid rough areas of London!
What the surge/ introduction of FM 3-24 did, while perhaps not decisive, forced al Qaeda into a position where they launched a counter offensive.
The failure of this offensive allowed some breathing space for more Sunni’s to enter the political process, and for all the Shia led autocracy, AQI has still not recovered. In fact, I don’t think they ever will. Now, while the political process is being rapidly eroded by Nouri al Maliki, we have yet to see the outcome. Debate aside, the history simply has not been written.
Which leaves my personal conclusion here: Mike suggests no more intervention in Iraq. In terms of rushing troops back in etc. I agree.
However, the issue now is leverage, and by that I mean big arms deals and training -OSC-I.
Many commentators have said it before, but why should we proceed with assistance to a government that is eroding the peace that our armed forces fought for?
It’s time for Washington- and the UN, to spell this out to Maliki…
I think Mike is spot on correct with this argument, and it reflects my experience in west Baghdad in 2006. Mike’s concluding point is that the Iraqis are going to have resolve for themselves the fundamental issues that still divide them as a society (the civil war never ended in Iraq with the Surge, it only froze it in a very tenuous place).
In this sense, and as much as this goes against the Coin-Surge narrative, General Casey’s overall operational method in Iraq made sense because it was premised on the idea that ultimately Iraqis had to solve their problems. Casey better than anyone else understood what Andrew Bacevich has often emphasized the limits of American military power to achieve societal transformation in the world’s troubled spots.
The Surge actually injected an artificial injunction into this mix. I say artificial because of the narrative that has been created that it worked and ended the Iraq civil war and as Petraeus often says “saved Iraq from a desperate situation.” It did nothing of the sort, and we are seeing the proof of that today in Iraq.
gian
MikeF,
We’ll never what would happened if we didn’t invade, so reasonable men can disagree. I had many peers in Special Forces who believed we could have toppled Saddam using UW, but I think their opinion was biased from the results of the coalition warfare in Afghanistan that sort of looked like UW. I am not rejecting the possibility that UW may have worked, but it would have been much more difficult than many think for the following reasons:
1. Saddam’s military and secret police had a firm grip on nation’s capital, and they were relatively loyal to Saddam if for no other reason their life probably wouldn’t have been very successful under Kurdish or Shi’a rule (as we’re seeing now). You’re absolutely right that our invasion didn’t trigger the ethnic tensions, since they always existed, but our invasion did remove the forces that kept them in check.
2. The uprisings you mentioned (Kurds, Shia) were large, but geographically isolated and didn’t generate popular support, and there wasn’t any unified action between the Kurds and Shia. Don’t forget the Kurds were divided between several groups, but the two main actors KDP and PUK didn’t trust one another. Since the Kurds and Shias were in geographically and demographically unimportant areas (except the oil fields), Saddam and his henchmen didn’t hesitate to use chemical weapons and a burnt earth approach to rapidly defeating the uprisings. Yes they captured some towns, but they didn’t hold them once they were opposed, and the massive death toll was due to thousands of rebels and civilians getting killed. I had a chance to interview/interrogate some of participants who were involved in the uprisings both in the North and the South (it was a personal interest of mine), and there was no illusion by any of the rebels that they had a chance unless the West intervened (as we subsequently did in Libya).
3. If the West did intervene in a way that would have resulted in a Kurdish or Shi’a victory it would have more destablizing than stablizing. Behind closed doors both senior Shi’as and Kurds said that the only hope for a relative stable Iraq is a Sunni leader. Of course we didn’t listen, instead we believed an election would determine the best ruler, but what it really determined is the larger mob rules. What do the locals know about their culture anyway?
For an insurrection to be successful we would have had to win over senior members of the security forces that were willing to oust the Saddam family, which would be a coup instead of a popular uprising. The people were too scared to act, nor were they united. A successful coup on the other hand, where the new Junta managed to keep control of the security forces may have worked (again we’ll never know). After that we could have worked with the new military government diplomatically to implement political and economic reforms. Our only hope of maintaining control after the invasion was to co-opt the Iraqi military, but we all know the great decisions made regarding that course of action.
Saddam’s position was always precarious, which is why he was constantly conducting purges, to include killing some of his closest friends that he didn’t feel he could trust. However, I don’t think he was at risk of failing or experiencing greater instability than he did after DESERT STORM. The fact that he survived that and the subsequent uprisings sort of indicates he had the situation well in hand. Also our economic sanctions allowed him to consolidate more central power and make the people more dependent on him.
It is of course interesting to ponder other courses of action to have removed Saddam from power, and some may have been doable with various degrees of support from the West and regional nations, but the day after wouldn’t have been much better than what we have now. The only advantage would be that we wouldn’t have thousands of troops in Iraq conducting COIN (again like Libya), so the subsequent mess would have been their mess to deal with as it always should of been.
Rumsfeld professed the same view. Rumsfeld, in 2006, in a Bob Woodward interview, claimed he (Rumsfeld) was a get-in-and-get-out-guy, with Jay Garner, and that he was blind-sided by Bush sending Bremer to Baghdad.
Rumsfeld, from the interview:
http://www.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=3744
Mike,
I don’t see Samarra. Buchanan was in Diyala.
Mike,
I like how you’ve set this post up. If you are adding the Design piece with regards to purpose, it may be helpful to attempt to cite stuff that not only supports the initial hypothesis, but also opposing viewpoints. I’d say this can fall on posters though and still be a good framework for a discussion. In terms of design, the greater the variety of the starting viewpoints the better. Kudos.
For too many people, the United Nations and its outlawing of war simply doesn’t exist. It’s never mentioned. Rule of law? Rules of the road? They apply to others. Let’s instead speak of morality, strategy and practicality.
This is a pity because the UN Charter was a beneficial product of a lot of good people’s efforts and now to disregard the Charter, which is international law, in deference to various estimates of morality, strategy and practicality, none of which alter the law, is wrong. But it elevates the military profession, so that’s good.
In all honesty, I am not sure about the analysis that renewed civil war is in the offing. But like I said before, I was never in the Diyala river valley.
While I agree that a renewed and more violent civil war- perhaps originating in Diyala is possible I can also envisage:
-Localised outbreaks of violence along the 2005/6 fault lines (e.g Diyala/ Babil) that ISF will in some cases contain, in others fail to contain due to their patchy performance/ loyalty. The violence will remain localised with continued VBIED attacks in Baghdad because:
-Some local Sunni groups may refuse to partake in renewed insurgent and/or civil war fighting due to the fear of renewed AQI intervention. Thus adding to the locality of violence.
-For every Sunni tribal leader who warns of violence, there is another who remains committed to stopping AQI.
-Very violent counterinsurgency may happen in areas where violence flares up, e.g a renewed Falluja insurrection could be met with merciless retaliation from Maliki’s most loyal units. But I think this could stay localised.
-The severity of such localised outbreaks of violence is restricted due to
: The fragmented nature of the ISF, divided between Badr, Peshmerga and Sadrist loyalties to name but a few, not to mention lesser parties such as Fadhila. Some of those followers subscribe to extreme sectarian intolerance. Others are opposed to it. Therefore, the full force of the ISF cannot be counted on to weigh in hard in the event of renewed, widespread violence, in turn limiting the severity of the violence.
-Localised outbreaks of violence and terror attacks will still probably not effect the southern areas where Iraq’s oil infrastructure and multi- nationals now operate.
-There is the hypothesis that in many of the disputed areas, the Shias have emerged on top, i.e, the civil war has in many areas (but not everywhere) nearly run it’s course.
From Mike’s perspective:
One serious scenario could involve several Sunni majority provinces bypassing the Iraqi constitution and declaring autonomy,as they have already called for referendums, prompting Maliki to send troops to arrest provincial leaders. Subsequently their gaurds try to defend them, and this finally escalates into street battles/ civil war.
But I think there is still a lot of dialogue happening in that arena before we get that far- politically, I think Maliki is actually pushing the Kurds and Sunni’s closer together.
Maybe I am naive. But while I don’t think Iraq’s future is a bed of roses, I am not certain of the collapse hypothesis either. In terms of picking a side, we still have to put pressure on Maliki if he continues to push Iraq to pieces…politicians would do well by looking at arms contracts. Maliki publicly asked US companies to invest in Iraq- the developed nations need to make him earn it.
Bob.
Mike,
Are you aware that several insurgent and special groups recently announced that they would join the political process and give up armed struggle now that the U.S. has withdrawn. The two largest Special Groups the League of the Righteous and the Hezbollah Brigades were among them, along with around 4-5 Sunni insurgent groups.
According to the U.N. there were 18,668 attacks in 2008, for an average of 1,555 per month. In Jan. 09 Iraq held provincial elections and many Sunni groups, including some insurgents, decided to participate. Ninewa is a good example. That led to a marked drop in attacks and deaths in Iraq, which lasted from 2009-2010. In 2009 there were 8,909 attacks, avg. 742.4 per month, a 50% drop in violence. In the 2010 parliamentary elections, Sunnis again participated in large numbers. For that year violence was largely unchanged from 2009 with 9,213 attacks, avg. 767.7 per month. Last year, violence took another big drop however, going down to 5,470 attacks, avg. 455.8 per month, a 40% decline.
With the U.S. out, and these militants dropping out of the fight I would predict a further improvement in security in 2012, which would undermine your argument that Iraq is heading for a 2nd civil war after the 2005-2008 one.
You seem to be specifically intersted in Diyala. Violence there remained largely constant throughout 2011, and it was usually the 3rd or 4th most violent province. Baghdad and Ninewa were the most violent.
Interesting analysis Mike. I am former State Department and have spent much of the last year doing business in Iraq, traveling the country without security and without incident. Iraq will be just fine, as it would have been had we never entered in 2003 (and probably now facing an Arab Spring revolution from within). Check out more detail at http://taleoftwosprings.wordpress.com. I am not sure what victory is. But if there is victory, it looks like Kids Day at Basra Land.
There is a beautiful Iraq, far from the t-walls, MRAPs and FOBs that few of us ever got to see, in which 98% of all Iraqis live.