It’s been a very Iraq-focused week here in Washington DC. Herewith, some quick notes.
Note 1.
Yesterday, the Prez made his appeal for support ( = congressional funding) of a plan– let’s not call it a “strategy”– whereby the number of US troops in Iraq would be rolled back to their pre-surge level of around 130,000 by next July.
Bottom line: if Bush gets what he wants, then he would have succeeded in “buying” himself an extra 18 months– between Dec 2006, when he desperately had to come up with some alternative to the Baker-Hamilton plan, and July 2008, when the situation will, he hopes, return to what it was in Dec. 2006.
In US political terms, this would buy him a very valuable period of time on the political calendar. It has also, to some extent, tied the Democrats in knots and revealed splits in the Democratic Party.
In US human terms, 773 US service members have been killed in Iraq so far this year. If that attrition rate continues through next July, then we could estimate that Bush’s time-buying “surge-then-desurge” maneuver would cost a total of 1,550 additional US families their loved ones’ lives.
In Iraqi political and human terms, the first 9 months of the “surge” up until now have been disastrous.
Note 2.
I was only able to watch a few portions of the hearings earlier this week, when Petraeus and Crocker appeared before large sessions of first the House and then the Senate. (Then, they worked the big MSM very intensively for what looked like nearly a full further day.)
The Senate hearings looked much more serious than the House ones. The Senators have a lot more self-confidence, authority, experience, and gravitas when they deal with witnesses– even witnesses as “august” (and cocksure) as David Petraeus.
I did see the great moment when our Senator, John Warner, leaned craggily forward and asked Petraeus whether he could truly say that what he was doing in Iraq was actually serving US national security, and Petraeus notably could not answer with any form of a “Yes.”
(Crocker looked like a scared apparatchik throughout the whole thing.)
Note 3.
As readers are all probably well aware, Bush’s big “buddy” in Anbar province, Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, was killed there yesterday. Abu Aardvark had some interesting background material on Abu Risha on his blog on Tuesday.
Here on JWN, commenter Alex contributed some even deeper historical background about the Abu Risha tribe:
- By the way, if you’re interested, the Abu Rishas are famous in history. This is what I wrote about them 20 years ago. Sorry if it is a rather long quote, but you will not find this on the internet.
“Abu Risha was the hereditary name of the shaikhs of the Mawali. The family had been founded by the legendary Hamad Abu Nu`air in the 15th century. The Mawali, who traced their descent back to an Umayyad prince, at that time were one of the most powerful tribes. The Abu Rishas founded a state which stretched from Qal`at Ja`bar as far as Haditha, with their capital at `Ana. European travellers from Cesare Frederici (1563) and Tavernier (1638) knew of Abu Risha, Amir of Ana, who called himself King of the Arabs.
`Ana was then the meeting point of roads from Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, to Aleppo, Tripoli and Homs. The Abu Rishas maintained a customs station at `Ana. According to Teixeira (1604), the customs charge in `Ana was 5 ducats per camel load for high-value goods such as spices or cloth, and 1 ducat per load for goods of lesser value such as dates. A small proportion of this was paid to the Turks. John Eldred (1583) gives the toll as #40 Sterling for a camel load.
The Ottomans appointed the Abu Risha as Bey of the Sanjaqs of Dair and Rahba (modern-day Deir ez-Zor), Salamiyya, `Ana and Haditha.
In return the Mawali provided military assistance. For the Georgian campaign of 1578, the Serasker obtained 3-4000 camels, forage for horses and other provisions from the Mawali. The reconquest of Baghdad by the Safavids in 1623 led to the installation of a Persian garrison at `Ana, but within two years it had been expelled by the Abu Risha shaikh, Mutlaq. Philip the Carmelite in 1629 saw the town half-ruined as a result. The Ottoman attempt to retake Baghdad in 1629-30 was supported by Abu Risha, but shortly afterwards Mutlaq changed sides, was removed from his position by Khusrau Pasha of Mosul, and replaced by another Abu Risha, Sa`d b. Fayyad. In the final recapture of Baghdad by the Ottoman Sultan Murad IV in 1048/1638-9, Abu Risha sent Bedouin cavalry and a supply train of 10,000 camels.
The inscription on the early Ottoman mausoleum at Jami` al-Mashhad contains a reference to Abu Risha, and has been identified as a mausoleum of the dynasty. The Ottoman period of the Islamic palace at Qal`at `Ana, excavated by the State Organisation for Antiquities and Heritage, may also be their work.
In the second half of the 17th century the Ottomans set up and deposed Abu Risha amirs frequently. When the long-distance trade declined, the Mawali became a robber tribe. In 1720 the Pasha of Raqqa, with help from Karaman and Aleppo, and at the same time the Pasha of Baghdad with support from Diyarbekir, Mosul and Shahrizor, planned to attack the Mawali; but this attack was not undertaken, perhaps because of the Persian war which began in 1723.
The power of the Mawali was broken by the `Anaza in the second half of the 18th century. A delegation of `Anaza were murdered while guests of the Mawali. It was said, Bait al-Mawali bait al-`aib – “The house of the Mawali is the house of shame”. As a result the Mawali were pushed away from `Ana, and moved into northern Syria, where they are to be found today.”
Note 4.
The buzzword that Petraeus and Crocker were seeking to get into circulation for how the “politics” of their approach in Iraq is supposed to work is that it’s a “bottom-up” approach. This reminds me unavoidably of the long-told story of Andrei Gromyko’s slight mis-stating of the well-known drinker’s toast of “Bottoms Up!” …As told, though not very effectively, in the third paragraph here.
Small update Saturday: That link broke. The short version of the story was that when Dean Rusk was the Secretary of State (early 1960s), there was a big state dinner in Washington for Gromyko. And when Gromyko made his toast, he addressed it to Rusk’s prim and proper wife saying “Up your bottom!”
Anyway, for some reason I have been reminded of this story every time I hear Petraeus on TV earnestly talking about having discovered a “bottom-up” strategy for Iraq.
Note 5.
Meanwhile, in terms of true grassroots organizing in Iraq, this item from the BBC looks to me like excellent news.
It has a picture of Iraqi nationalists standing with their national flags and anti-sectarianism banners atop one of the 20-foot-high concrete blast walls with which the occupation forces have been attempting to “quarter off” many of the neighborhoods of Baghdad.
Here’s the lead of the story:
- Hundreds of Iraqis have staged a protest against the building of a dividing wall between a Shia district of Baghdad and a Sunni area.
Residents of the Shula and Ghazaliya districts waved Iraqi flags and chanted slogans rejecting both the proposed separation and the US occupation.
They demanded the government intervene to ensure the barrier is demolished.
The US military said the wall would reduce sectarian violence and stop the movement of weapons and militants.
What do you see when you see photos of citizens waving banners on top of walls imposed by outsiders and demanding that the walls be brought down? I see something to celebrate. But I’m thinking maybe the people who are running the occupation see it as a big potential threat to their extensive “quadrillage” ( = movement control) plan for Baghdad and potentially the whole of the country.
The word “quadrillage”, of course, comes de la langue francaise, where it was used to describe the counter-insurgency strategy the French used to such destructive but unsuccessful effect in Algeria and Vietnam. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose, eh?
Helena
Scott provided some useful insights on the status of US pilots who found themselves walking during an attack on Iran a few weeks ago.
The Supreme Leader was giving us chapter and verse today.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6995000.stm
If The Supreme Leader thinks the Supreme Leader of the Western Word and all its Alliances has a case to answer what hope have the pilots?
I will let the rest of the commenters have a go now. Do you think Young Mr Bush could get a fair trial?
Doubts over withdrawal of UK troops from Iraq
While our friend Reidar Visser who is very interested and specialist in South Iraq trying to make UK troops withdraw from a Saddam Castle in mid town of Basra a big deal as if that UK troops will leave Iraq, I don’t know how this story twists that UK troops in fact playing a tactic maneuver south Iraq as what reported in British newspaper Independent last Wednesday 12th of September
The ‘proxy war’: UK troops are sent to Iranian border
British soldiers return to action as tensions between US and Iran grow
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2953462.ece
So As Bush now changes his mind, what’s the reality of this move?
Why he did this in this time?
Pay attentions to this part of GWB speech when he said in his speech:
they understand that their success will require U.S. political, economic, and security engagement that extends beyond my presidency. These Iraqi leaders have asked for an enduring relationship with America. And we are ready to begin building that relationship — in a way that protects our interests in the region and requires many fewer American troops.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/09/20070913-2.html
It’s along stay beyond….. beyond GWB presidency ….so isn’t another twist here?
Just to make you feel good isn’t?
“The goal of that propaganda is to get people to believe a claim that is contradicted by all of history and contemporary experience: the objective of the United States in its military interventions around the world has been not to expand and deepen economic domination (which has been the goal of all other empires) but to bring peace, freedom, and democracy to the world. U.S. officials are not the first in world history to assert such noble motives for such inhuman policies (just ask the Brits), but never has that claim been made so relentlessly, with so much help from allegedly independent journalists.”
It Didn’t Start with Iraq:?
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/jensen130907.html
It seems the Bush Desurgent will make your history even dirtier than it is now. Better try Brand X where the House of Reps. starts by cutting off funds. If you say, oh then we will be called obstructionists, well yes you are, that is the whole idea! And if you say, oh then we will lose the next election, tell me what will happen if you correctly figure Bush and Co intend to stay in the middle east bases, which happen to be in Iraq, permanently anyhow. Have you not already lost, so what is to be gained by waiting? This is just to set up failure as a possibility to avoid action, as in, our town should not finance a weekend festival in the park because it will probably rain and we will get blamed for wasting the money.
The Supreme Leader was giving us chapter and verse today.
As clueless as Bush is, being the subject of a scathing attack from the Head Mullah in Iran may be the only break he’s caught in months. Bush and Khamenei are both playing the same game. They cynically use each other for domestic advantage.
Hi Salah
BBC Radio at 6.00 is reporting Daily Telegraph says 2500 Brits could withdraw to Kuwait by Xmas this year.
Telegraph website is down so you will have to look later today.
Mr Gates is talking about less than 100,000 US troops in Iraq by Xmas 2008.
The Grand Old Duke of York
He had ten thousand men
He surged them up to the top of the hill
And he surged them down again
When they were up they were up
When they were down they were down
And when they were only halfway up
They were neither up nor down
[repeat]
“Mr Gates is talking about less than 100,000 US troops in Iraq by Xmas 2008.”
Are we expected to be impressed by that?
Frank al Irlandi,
Correcting your point as some news analyses said the US Troop level next July 2008 according to Peruse and GWB speech suggestion and numbers given from them US troop number still more than before the surge.
BTW did come to your mind these growing numbers of “Mercenaries in Iraq” which some reports suggested their numbers are top up of US troops now!!
A Surge of Mercenaries In Iraq Parallel’s US Troops Surge:
http://positivity.wordpress.com/2007/06/18/a-surge-of-mercenaries-in-iraq-parallels-us-troops-surge/
IRAQ: Private contractors outnumber U.S. troops in Iraq
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14554
Hi Shirin
“Mr Gates is talking about less than 100,000 US troops in Iraq by Xmas 2008.”
Are we expected to be impressed by that?
Actually I am hoping you will be.
There are two models I am looking for signs of, for this exercise in Iraq to terminate. The first is the Irish War of Independence in 1922 where both sides got to the point of exhaustion.
British Public Opinion forced an offer of a Truce which bought time for negotiation which eventually resulted in a Treaty and withdrawal by the British from 26 of the 32 counties of Ireland.
Sadly this was followed by a Civil War where one side was led by the only surviving leader of the 1916 rebellion Eamon de Valera who oposed abandoning the claim to six counties (I was at school with some of his grandchildren)and the other by Mick Collins and Arthur Griffeth who had a pragmatic attitude of half a loaf being better than no bread.
Sadly Mick Collins died in a pointless skirmish near the end of the war.
We had a rerun of the shooting between 1969 and 1996 until people realised that there wasn’t a military solution and that economic union within the EU made the conflict pointless. Bill Clinton sent an outside facilitator to talk both sides out of their entrenched positions and the last battallions of the British army (other than a small garrison) left the province this year.
The second model is the French model of leaving Algeria. The generals had effectively won the war by killing everybody who opposed them.
Having a weak and innefectual government in France at the time didn’t help maintain civil control of the military
They decided that they weren’t having it when Charles de Gaulle decided that there was no point in an endless war and ordered the troops home.
The mutiny that followed failed, but not before the French government had a bad scare at the idea of a paratroop division coming to Paris.
The Foreign Legion Paratroops sang ” Non je ne regrette rien” as they were being hauled off to jail.
I used to listen to the latest reports of bombings in France by the OAS (an organisation of Mutineers)on the evening news as I was growing up.
The news that Mr Gates is reducing troop numbers is an encouraging sign that the civilians are still in control of the US military and that the chain of command still works.
Numbers of contractors isn’t everything. They become a leaderless rabble without organisation, logistics and leadership. Mercenaries are only as reliable as their next pay packet.
Salah
The logistics problem is probably the biggest one the contractors will face.
Unless they can depend on the supply of fuel water ammunition and food they will be paralysed.
Once they see the writing on the wall they will quietly slide away to other gulf countries.
Frank, no, I am not impressed by the declaration of a lame-duck secretary of defense that one year after he leaves office there will be a whole 23% fewer troops in Iraq than there were on the day he left.
Of course, the only thing that would really impress me would be if Gates announced that by the time he leaves office there would be a 100% reduction in troops and the city-state the U.S. has built in Baghdad would be turned over to be used as a home for displaced Iraqi families, widows, and orphans.
Unfortunately, the only ones who can accomplish that is the Iraqis themselves by giving the Americans a nice send-off from the roof of the – ahem! – “embassy”.
Shirin
I share your ambition. Only snag is that it is election year in the US.
Now I suspect you are younger than Helena or me. so you won’t remember the candidature of this gentleman and the inestimable George Wallace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay
If you run the US Army out of Baghdad in 2007 you get a landslide for a pair that look like this. They got 13% of the popular vote when they ran. Then we wake up one morning to read about a million dead Iranians and Helena and Scott being sent off to the reeducation camps on cattle trucks.
So lets remember our Clausewitz and say to ourselves War is the continuation of diplomacy by other means. Think Metternich.
Lets see if we can get Helena or Scott to open up a topic about what you do the day after the last chopper leaves the roof of the Embassy.
Would you go back? The country needs trained professionals to rebuild the infrastucture and get the country going again.
How on earth do you sort out the mess of who owns what house in what district of the city?
How do you reprocess the four million displaced persons?
Do you remember the scene at the end of the Lawrence of Arabia film where General Allenby lets the Arabs run Damascus. Caricature maybe but something to be avoided.
Juan Cole tells us today that there have been 16,000 cases of Cholera in Iraq since late August.
Shirin (and Salah)
Paddy Ashdown has a “how to” book if you fancy being Secretary General’s High Representative.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Swords-Ploughshares-Building-Century-Bringing/dp/0297853031/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/202-2846885-1343032?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1189888183&sr=8-1
I agree with its 5 star rating.
Frank, tell me, is continuation of the current downward spiral better than “letting the Arabs run Damascus”? (And by the way, that sounds a hell of a lot like a sideways way of saying that Arabs are not capable of running their own cities.)
What I know is that letting Iraqis work out their own situation, no matter how badly done, beats the hell out of letting the U.S. continue to try to impose its self-interested will on the country and destroy it and its society in the process. Certainly Iraq has never been as badly managed as it is now, and that is hardly the fault of the Iraqi make-believe government, who don’t in any case have the power or the authority to run anything, including their own meeting schedule.)
I don’t know what your point is about the cholera epidemic, but I would point out to you that even at the worst of times nothing like that ever happened when Iraqis were running the country.
PS I am not sure what makes you think I am so much younger, but since it is not based on my in-person appearance, I don’t think it would make me feel flattered. :o}
Shirin
As Scott points out being a Grandfather can make you feel old. I imgaine you as young, competent articulate, and a great cook.
I frequent Damascus, Homs and Amman so I know Arabs can run major cities and do it well. I worked in Kosovo so I know a little bit about post conflict reconstruction. It is difficult. Every now and then you do need troops to keep order when rioting breaks out.
I agree with you about letting the Iraqis run their own country. There is a letter from Field Marshal Montgomery to General Percival in Percival’s papers, written about a year after the two of them left Ireland where both had been trying to capture or kill Tom Barry’s West Cork Flying Column for two years.
Montgomery remarked to Percival that the Irish were making a much better job of quietening the place down than the Brits ever had.
The point about the Cholera epidemic is that with the electricity system in ruins and with a unpurified water system in parts of Baghdad any new government is going to be faced with a nightmare if the disease gets to Baghdad. Richard Evans “Death in Hamburg” is an impressively detailed description of a major city in the grip of a Cholera epidemic.
One of the reasons I commended Paddy Ashdown’s book to you (He was commanding a platoon of marines in Belfast when I was working a shift in a Refugee camp in the south of Ireland for childen evacuated from Belfast) is that he says that one of the biggest mistakes you can make when you are Viceroy is let the troops go home early.
The Iraq Make Believe (what Riverbend used to call the puppets) Government doesn’t really have a reliable army. I disagree with Juan Cole who said that whoever controls the 70 odd reconditioned Hungaian T-72s controls the country. Hizb Allah showed that the guys with the Anti Tank weapons have the advantage now over the tanks. We saw how NLF and FLOSSY fought it out in Aden as the Brits left.
The nightmare we ALL want to avoid is to pull the Americans out in the space of three months and then six months later have them roll back up the road from Kuwait to restore order because Baghdad has gone like Mogadishu, the middle class have fled to refugee camps on the border and the health services have collapsed. If that happened they would never go home. Ever!
I hate to sound like Ryan Crocker but I have some sympathy with his statement that if you don’t like Darfur you are going to hate Baghdad after a premature pullout. If you can’t imagine it try reading Robert Fisk.
We can speed up the withdrawal after the US election provided they don’t elect a (……) fill in the apropriate word here.
We didn’t get them out last year so the election season will prevent anything sensible being done this year.
On might expect that since actual violence has gone up on par with the surge, it will be presented, when the number of troops decreases, in tandem with a corresponding drop in violence, that the presidents plan continues to be successful.
U.S. troop surge in Iraq ultimately ineffective
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/editorial/20070917TDY04010.htm
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/II14Ak04.html
(tip to Juan – more on the “anbar myth” — which sure gets repeated a lot lately here in the US)
Now compare that to today’s bizare rosey view of life in Iraq – and how the center is holding by Ajami:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010610
And so it goes.
Speaking of Abu Risha and the Anbar “myth” (aka lie), this article reveals Abu Risha’s true original motive, which was not fighting the Al Qa`eda knock-offs in Iraq, but profiting from American contracts – much more consistent with his usual operations. Sorry that the article is in Arabic.
As for `Ajami, he is a shameless shill for the Bush regime. He is Bernard Lewis in an Arab costume. Utterly disgusting.
Wait – that was unfair to Bernard Lewis, who at least was once quite a good historian. Too bad he didn’t just stick to what he was good at.
PS It would not concern me in the least if Iran DID get “the bomb”, and I would not blame them in the least if that were one of their goals.
Posted by: Shirin at September 15, 2007 05:47 PM
Er it seems the French disagree.
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20070916.WWW000000070_kouchner_durcit_le_ton_face_a_liran.html
The Germans who have a few more investments in Iran than France does are being very quiet indeed.
The Russians arent commenting on the Iranian report that the fuel for Bushehr is ready for shipment.
http://www2.irna.com/en/news/view/line-22/0709168961115327.htm
Well, Frank, “the French” – aka Sarkozy, who is looking more and more like Bush’s putative new poodle – may disagree all they want based on whatever pretext they choose. That will not change my mind until and unless I see something from Iran to indicate that they would actually be more dangerous with nuclear weapons than, say, the United States has been and continues to be.
I suspect the REAL problem with Iran having nuclear weapons would be that it would make them a great deal more difficult to bully than they are now.
But really, does anyone seriously believe that the whole nuclear weapons business is more than a convenient pretext for implementing phase 2 of the Project for A New American Century?
Shirin
I must confess I am out of my depth getting into the field of multilateral deterrence.
As I remember it Mutual Assured Destruction and other deterrence mechanisms are based on the premise that both sides are rational actors. If one of the players in this rather thorny piece of game theory is not rational then you have a problem knowing what to do next.
One of the reasons for the denigration of the President of Iran has been to paint him as irrational. As the Iranians don’t have a warhead yet it isn’t clear how such a thing would be controlled and its use would be authorised. They might implement the same measures as we do.
However, as I said, I am out of my depth and, deliberately, haven’t read the books to understand the issue adequately.
However here is an interview with someone who knows.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/hardtalk/5303658.stm
The interview is 25 minutes long and the thing starts to get interesting after 12 minutes.
Sir Michael teaches at Kings College London if you want to sign up for a course.
طالب الشيخ علي الحاتم، احد شيوخ عشائر الدليم في العراق، القوات الاميركية برفع يدها عن بعض المناطق التي يتمركز فيها تنظيم «القاعدة» ليتولى ابناء عشائر «صحوة الانبار» تطهيرها، في ما طالب الايزيديون الحكومة والقوات الأميركية بتطهير مناطقهم في الموصل من «القاعدة».
وقال الحاتم لـ «الحياة»: «نطالب القوات الاميركية بمنح ابناء مجلس الصحوة مجالاً اكبر للتحرك في مناطق محافظة الانبار (120 كلم غرب بغداد) للقضاء وبشكل تام على اوكار القاعدة في اطراف المحافظة»، واستغرب «اصرار القوات الاميركية على منع مقاتلي الصحوة من دخول بعض المناطق التي تعتقد انها معقل لتنظيم القاعدة» مشيراً الى ان «هذا يعني ان هناك دولاً اجنبية تدعم القاعدة وتوفر لها الامكانات التي تتناسب وحجم نشاطاتها الارهابية» مؤكداً ان «مناطق الرمادي والخالدية والفلوجة باتت من المدن الهادئة والمستقرة امنياً بفضل جهود ابناء مجلس الصحوة». لكنه قال «ما زال طريق 130 كلم و160 كلم والمناطق المحاذية لبحيرة الثرثار تعد من المناطق الساخنة والتي تسيطر عليها القاعدة» لافتاً الى ان «مجلس الصحوة سبق وان تقدم بطلبات الى القوات الاميركية في تلك المناطق لتطهيرها الا ان الاميركيين قدموا تبريرات كثيرة بينها انه لا يتم دخول تلك المناطق الا وفق خطط امنية مدروسة». الى ذلك شهد الأسبوع الأخير عودة قوية للعمليات التي تنفذها «القاعدة» انطلاقا من مناطق شمال الصقلاوية الريفية (غرب الفلوجة). فعلى رغم أن الشرطة تمكنت خلال عمليات واسعة من تطهير منطقتي الزغاريد والشيحة، اللتين كانتا تمثلان مصدر قلق للمنطقة من عناصر «القاعدة» في عملية كبيرة نفذتها أواخر شهر آب (أغسطس) إلا ان معظم المسلحين تمكنوا من الإفلات من الطوق الأمني بسبب عدم إحكام القوات الأميركية تطويق المنطقة وتركها بعض الطرق الفرعية مفتوحة ما مكن أغلب المسلحين من الهرب مشياً على الأقدام
http://www.albadeeliraq.com/new/showdetails.php?kind=move&id=3407
http://www.albadeeliraq.com/new/Print.php?kind=move&id=3407
Merde!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2171856,00.html
The French speak very politely to the Russians who have invited them to exploring for oil.
Tant pis!