Author: Helena

US-Iranian contest in Iraq, Part 2

When I wrote this post last night, I did not say anything as to whether I believed that Iranian or pro-Iranian agents were involved. That was by intention. I’m not at all in a position to know.
I have heard, however, from usually reliably sources, that some serious, reality-based people in the US administration believe this to be the case. At one level, for the whole of the narrative of that JWN post to hang together, that’s all that’s required. At another level, it is undoubtedly true that:

    (1) The assault on the PJCC in Karbala was an operation of great sophistication and complexity, and had some of the same m.o.’s as, for example, Lebanese Hizbullah ops in Lebanon. There is considerable learning and experience-pooling among all the anti-US, anti-Israel fighting forces across the region, including directly between some Iraqi organizations to Lebanese Hizbullah, and between L.H. and some actors inside Iran;
    (2) The “response” of the US-“Iraqi” forces was quite pathetic– they can’t even tell us for sure how many large SUVs were involved in the original attack!
    (3) This attack must have scared the bejeesus out of everyone trying to do operational planning for the US forces in Iraq… Where was, at a very minimum, their ground forces IFF or secure communications system?? The idea that a large, multi-SUV convoy of anti-US forces, with the people in it wearing the new US-style camo fatigues and speaking English, can be careening far and wide throughout the country must be pretty terrifying for them. Maybe there are ten more convoys like that one? Who knows?
    (4) Also, did the attackers manage to take some communications or other sensitive US equipment with them as they fled? Quite likely…
    (5) In sum, the US military planners now need to be worrying not just– as I mentioned in this January 22 post– about the very live possibility that some of the Iraqi forces with whom they intend to “coordinate” during the upcoming phase are giving real-time info to the insurgents/opposition forces, but also about the possibility/probability that much of the terrain of Iraq, including terrain across which their vital supply lines run, is completely out of their control, and they may now have no idea who’s careening around in it. (For which outcome, they could perhaps thank in large part their earlier encouragement of the proliferation ofall kinds of mercenary forces inside the country.)

Anyway, the above observations deal mainly with operational issues. With, of course, inevitable political consequences. In yesterday’s post I addressed the broader political-strategic dimensions of the affair. Regarding whether I think it possible that some Iranian government-backed formation undertook the attack on PJCC Karbala, I’d say Yes. If there was an Iranian hand in the affair, then it would most likely have beenundertaken as a response to the “arrests” of civilian Iranian diplomatic personnel in Arbil as well as, perhaps, a sort of “shot across the bows” of the US, as a warning to them not to heat things up too much for the pro-Iranian forces in Iraq…
But as I say, I’m in no position to put a probability figure on that scenario. If anyone with good access to real info, including from the presumably US investigation into the whole affair, would care to add something to our knowledge base here, that would be great.

The deadly US-Iranian contest in Iraq

TheJanuary 20 raid on the joint US-Iraqi security “coordination” center in Karbala was even more operationally complex and sophisticated, and therefore worrying for the US commanders in Iraq, than I had understood it to be when I blogged about it on January 22nd.
Today (Friday), AP’s Steven Hurst and Qassim Abdul-Zahra wrote, and the US occupation force’s press office later confirmed, that instead of all five of the US army’s fatal casualties having been killed during the attack on the coordination center itself, only one of them was killed at that time, while the other four were captured from the center, driven away by the assailants, and discovered only later, with fatal gunshot wounds in their heads, at the point some 25 miles away to the east where all or some of the American-style SUV’s used in the assault were abandoned by the assailants, who got away undetected.
The sophistication and scale of the attack has left some people guessing that Iranian or pro-Iranian operatives were involved. If so, the operation may well have started out as an attempt to capture and hold some US soldiers “in response to” the US forces’ capture/arrest of five Iranian government employees in Arbil/Erbil, northern Iraq, on January 11.
If that was the plan, wouldn’t it have made more sense for the assailants to have kept the captured US soldiers alive? (And the question then would be: where? In a “liberated zone” within Iraq, or in Iran?) But anyway, something evidently caused the assailants not to proceed with such a plan, if indeed that had been their first option. What they apparently did succeed in doing was getting away safely from the place in Al-Mahawil District where they abandoned five of their black SUVs along with the bodies of three of the murdered soldiers and the soon-to-be-dead body of the fourth one.
Today, before I saw that AP story on this, I had read this article in the WaPo, which seems to give some relevant background to the whole story of the Arbil “arrests” and the Karbala assault. In it, Dafna Linzer writes,

    The Bush administration has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq as part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Tehran’s influence across the Middle East and compel it to give up its nuclear program, according to government and counterterrorism officials with direct knowledge of the effort.

Linzer dates the decision to adopt the new, tougher policy to,

    Last summer, [when] senior administration officials decided that a more confrontational approach was necessary, as Iran’s regional influence grew and U.S. efforts to isolate Tehran appeared to be failing…

These officials described the previous policy used towards Iranian agents identified in Iraq as one of “catch and release”, which was, “designed to avoid escalating tensions with Iran and yet intimidate its emissaries.”
She wrote:

    Three officials said that about 150 Iranian intelligence officers, plus members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Command, are believed to be active inside Iraq at any given time. There is no evidence the Iranians have directly attacked U.S. troops in Iraq, intelligence officials said.
    But, for three years, the Iranians have operated an embedding program there, offering operational training, intelligence and weaponry to several Shiite militias connected to the Iraqi government, to the insurgency and to the violence against Sunni factions…

However, she also writes this:

    In Iraq, U.S. troops now have the authority to target any member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, as well as officers of its intelligence services believed to be working with Iraqi militias. The policy does not extend to Iranian civilians or diplomats. Though U.S. forces are not known to have used lethal force against any Iranian to date, Bush administration officials have been urging top military commanders to exercise the authority.

But the new, more confrontational policy has evidently sparked some serious disagreements within the administration.
Linzer wrote:

    Senior administration officials said the policy is based on the theory that Tehran will back down from its nuclear ambitions if the United States hits it hard in Iraq and elsewhere, creating a sense of vulnerability among Iranian leaders. But if Iran responds with escalation, it has the means to put U.S. citizens and national interests at greater risk in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
    Officials [unidentified] said [CIA head Michael] Hayden counseled the president and his advisers to consider a list of potential consequences, including the possibility that the Iranians might seek to retaliate by kidnapping or killing U.S. personnel in Iraq.

Aha! So now do we see a reason for the timing of some of these leaks to Dafna Linzer??? It certainly looks to me like people in Hayden’s camp– having seen what happened in Karbala last Saturday– were in effect saying to the hot-dogs within the administration: “Told you so!”
By the way, in case you’re interested in knowing which way Condi Rice swung on the hot-dog vs. the relative doves on this issue, Linzer’s reporting indicates clearly that Condi was sitting firmly on the fence there, while trying to keep her rear end well covered…
And if you read further down in her article you can discover some interesting background about the policy shift, including the fact that it was undertaken in connection with the Israel-Hizbullah war of last summer:

    Officials said a group of senior Bush administration officials who regularly attend the highest-level counterterrorism meetings agreed that the conflict provided an opening to portray Iran as a nuclear-ambitious link between al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and the death squads in Iraq.
    Among those involved in the discussions, beginning in August, were deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams, NSC counterterrorism adviser Juan Zarate, the head of the CIA’s counterterrorism center, representatives from the Pentagon and the vice president’s office, and outgoing State Department counterterrorism chief Henry A. Crumpton.

Linzer quoted an un-named “senior counterterrorism official” as having told her in a recent interview that,

    “Our goal is to change the dynamic with the Iranians, to change the way the Iranians perceive us and perceive themselves. They need to understand that they cannot be a party to endangering U.S. soldiers’ lives and American interests, as they have before. That is going to end.”
    A senior intelligence officer was more wary of the ambitions of the strategy.
    “This has little to do with Iraq. It’s all about pushing Iran’s buttons. It is purely political,” the official said. The official expressed similar views about other new efforts aimed at Iran, suggesting that the United States is escalating toward an unnecessary conflict to shift attention away from Iraq and to blame Iran for the United States’ increasing inability to stanch the violence there.

Linzer also noted this:

    In interviews, two senior administration officials separately compared the Tehran government to the Nazis and the Guard to the “SS.” They also referred to Guard members as “terrorists.” Such a formal designation could turn Iran’s military into a target of what Bush calls a “war on terror,” with its members potentially held as enemy combatants or in secret CIA detention.

… Meanwhile, if you want to see the substance of the news release that the US military people in Iraq put out today about the Karbala incident, here it is:

    At approximately 5 p.m., a convoy consisting of at least five sport utility vehicles entered the Karbala compound. The armed militants wore American-looking uniforms and carried U.S.-type weapons convincing Iraqi checkpoints to allow their passage.
    Once inside the compound, an estimated nine to 12 armed militants engaged the American troops with rifle fire and hand grenades.
    While defending the command post, one Soldier was killed and three others were wounded by a hand grenade thrown into the center’s main office which contains the provincial police chief’s office on an upper floor.
    During the attack in the main building, Soldiers defending it reported hearing a series of explosions in the compound causing the Soldiers to seek cover. Three U.S. military Humvees were damaged from the explosions.
    The attackers broke off the assault withdrawing from the compound with four captured U.S. Soldiers.
    The insurgents then drove out of the Karbala province and into neighboring Babil province, encountering an Iraqi police checkpoint. The sport utility vehicles passed through the checkpoint, but the Iraqi police trailed the vehicles, suspicious of the group.
    After proceeding further east and crossing the Euphrates River, the assailants drove north toward Hillah, abandoning five SUVs, U.S. Army-type combat uniforms, boots, radios and a non-U.S. made rifle.
    Iraqi police in pursuit found the abandoned vehicles and equipment near the Iraqi town of Al Mahawil. [AP says this is about 25 miles from Karbala.]
    Two Soldiers were found handcuffed together in the back of one of the SUVs. Both had suffered gunshot wounds and were dead. A third Soldier was found shot and dead on the ground. Nearby, the fourth Soldier was still alive, despite a gunshot wound to the head. The Iraqi police rushed the severely wounded Soldier to a nearby hospital, but the Soldier died enroute.
    “The precision of the attack, the equipment used and the possible use of explosives to destroy the military vehicles in the compound suggests that the attack was well rehearsed prior to execution,” said Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, spokesman for Multi-National Division-Baghdad.
    “The attackers went straight to where Americans were located in the provincial government facility, by-passing the Iraqi police in the compound,” said Bleichwehl. “We are looking at all the evidence to determine who or what was responsible for the breakdown in security at the compound and the perpetration of the assault.”

As I had noted earlier, the US military’s January 21 press release about the incident stated– as it turns out, quite incorrectly– that “Five U.S. Soldiers were killed and three wounded while repelling the attack.”

Faiza on “Living in a state of waiting”

The latest English-language post that Faiza al-Araji has on her blog is extremely powerful. Earlier, I “Delicioused” it, to put it onto the sidebar here. But there are more things that Faiza writes there that are worth pointing to. Hence this post.
Faiza writes from Amman, where she’s been living for I guess around a year now– ever since she was just able to get her son Khaled out of a very ugly and sectarian detention situation inside Iraq.
So in this most recent post she writes:

    If it were a government loved by the people, why would they need an occupation force to support them?
    If it were really a government wanted by the Iraqis, then it is not necessary for the occupation to remain; let the occupation withdraw, and the people along with the government will cooperate to eliminate that bunch of rebellious rioters…
    But the actual fact is that this government is isolated, not trusted by the Iraqis. This is a government which the Iraqis feel regretful for having elected, after its credibility has fallen in front of them, after its stupidity, partiality, sectarianism and foolish acts became evident to the people, its slackness in defending the Iraqis and protecting them, its surrender and submission to Bush’s decisions and instructions…
    If the elections were to be repeated now, the Iraqis would not choose those faces again. They destroyed our lives; they lied to us, and did not fulfill any of the things they promised… they spread chaos, hatred, segregation and injustice among people…
    This government didn’t provide the minimum level of security and protection to the Iraqis… every Iraqi house is a target to them; meaning- they are ready to storm any Iraqi house, to arrest any Iraqis citizen, to torture any citizen, or kill him…whatever…

And this:

    President Bush is sending more troops…
    Are they supposed to empty Iraq of its people, and send more American soldiers?
    We await going back to our country and houses, await the return of Iraq to us, await the scheduling of the foreign troops withdrawal, not the opposite…
    Here in Amman; there are hundreds of engineers, doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, pilots, university professors from all specializations, and PhD Degrees carriers…
    Most of them sit here without a job, for they are not permitted to work in Jordan. And if they happen to find employment, it would be a half-wages job, not enough to keep them barely alive…
    When we meet them, the talk is usually about Iraq; lamentation and sadness about what happened to the homeland and the people, wondering why the Iraqis are being driven outside their country to live half a life without a homeland, while foreign armies and foreign contractors come to live in Iraq and plunder its wealth?
    These excellent qualifications sit around here frustrated, smashed, being devoured by emptiness, loss and anxiety, looking at Iraq, with nothing in their power to improve things?
    In whose hands the fate of the country lies now?
    In the hands of foreign troops, a weak government controlled by Bush, and outlaw criminal militias? While hundreds and thousands of Iraqis, civilians and military, well qualified, who can solve the country’s problems, were removed from deciding the fate of Iraq?
    Iraq will be all right, when the decision goes back into the hands of its men and women, not those who obey the orders of Bush and his administration, but those who carry the love of Iraq, its independence and dignity, in their hearts….
    Who carry love for its people, its history and civilization…
    Who believe they are one people, with one past, and one future…
    Those are the ones who will achieve settlement and justice for Iraq…
    They do exist; waiting for the chance to save the country from the catastrophes that has befallen it…
    I always hear the question: what will happen to Iraq if the armies withdraw from it?
    And the answer, which I heard from most Iraqis, and made me smile: when the occupation leaves, all the mercenary agents will leave with it, for no one will protect them…
    And Iraq will go back to its people, those who love Iraq and want what is best for it…
    Bush knows this, and that is why he insists upon remaining in Iraq by flimsy excuses, because, if he withdraws his army, his dream and project will be smashed immediately, at once…
    But he will get out of Iraq…
    He will get out, in spite of his nose…
    For neither the Iraqi people want him there, nor the American people…
    I pray to God to defeat him, and to make victorious the will of the people who love life, freedom, and peace….

Regarding this last sentence, I personally am very opposed to the idea of seeking to “defeat” a person, as such, however lethal and harmful his actions… Rather, I’d say that first of all this person’s bad actions need to be stopped, and their effects as far as possible reversed; and then– hopefully– the perpetrator would be held accountable in some way for those actions…
Regarding Bush and his criminally reckless decision to invade and occupy Iraq, of course the hundreds of thousands who died cannot be brought back to life; and the maimed can’t be made whole. But the occupation can– and must!– be ended… And then, regarding accountability, I think many of the world’s peoples would vie to have the right to undertake such a process. Realistically, though, it is very unlikely indeed to happen…
Regarding Faiza’s wish for the victory of the will of the people who love life, freedom, and peace, I certainly say “Amen” to that.

Gen. McCaffrey speaks frankly to officers?

General Barry McCaffrey, a distinguished career Army officer who was Commander of the US Armed Forces’ Southern Command from 1994 through 1996, and then Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under Pres. Clinton, has apparently sent an email to his contacts in the armed services saying

    You should understand that we are coming out of Iraq.
    In 36 months we will have the preponderance of our combat forces out…
    The American people are going to tell the NEXT President to shut this down.
    That is our central strategic dilemma—if we had ten years at these current resource levels —we would have a 95% chance of success.
    We actually will only have three years.

These are the headlines in an email, titled “From: BARRY MCCAFFREY / Subject: Re: Iraq” that got passed on to me today. The person who sent it to me is someone I trust a lot; and that person says that s/he has no reason to doubt the provenance or the veracity of the text of this message.
I don’t know how to contact Gen. McCaffrey to request confirmation of its authenticity, but might figure out a way to do this tomorrow.
The end of the email says this:

    Feel free to share this email. See you as I come in and out of the war zones.
    Barry

So I’m sharing it.
The email is pretty hard-hitting in its criticism of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war. At one point it says:

    I think that the execution of the initial operation in both Iraq and Afghanistan — and the subsequent egregious bad judgment, arrogance, and micro-management of this war by Rumsfeld and team —so f’d it up that we were put in a terrible situation from the start. It did not need to be this way.

This seems to me to be consonant with– though more forcefully stated than– other comments McCaffrey has made recently. For example, this article published today says,

    Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey calls the surge and those plans “a fool’s errand” that almost certainly will produce many more American casualties and no great chance of success.

Here is the whole text of the email as I received it:

    From: BARRY MCCAFFREY
    Subject: Re: Iraq
    Good news that both Ryan Crocker and Dave Petreus will take the helm.
    Dave is the most talented person in uniform I ever met. Ryan Crocker is the best Ambassador I have ever seen. They have a losing hand. If anyone can sort this out–they will. I will bet that by next June we will have very public expression by the two of them of the situation on the ground—-and what will be required to save our position.
    ————————————————————————
    ———–
    Some thoughts. You should understand that we are coming out of Iraq.
    In 36 months we will have the preponderance of our combat forces out.
    It has nothing to do with achieving or not achieving our objectives.
    The American people are going to tell the NEXT President to shut this down.
    That is our central strategic dilemma—if we had ten years at these current resource levels —we would have a 95% chance of success.
    We actually will only have three years.
    The human and resource costs of the war are huge…the Administration rhetoric suggested it would be easy…. and then denied reality…Rumsfeld kept a mindless spin on the issue. Now, the expectations are saturated.
    Important we get this. The political system (the voters) are not going to accept 500-1000 killed and wounded and $8 billion per month.
    Again–it has to look dramatically better in 24 months or the next President begins to pull the plug.
    Yes…we are losing at this point. That is what the majority of the active Armed Forces now believe, that is what the American people believe, that is what the new Sec Def said at confirmation. That is actually my own view. The glide path is down –not up. Unless there is a surge of economic reconstruction aid from Congress and the Administration, unless there is a surge of equipment that gives Iraqi Forces a major advantage over the militias/insurgents/criminals, unless the Maliki Government can present a competent face to the Iraqi people as well as the American people—then I expect that we will suffer a disaster and be out totally by early 2009.
    Yes—essentially only the Armed Forces and the CIA are at war. (I understand and am grateful for the courage and dedication of all those other agencies who actually have volunteered to serve in these war zones). There is no engagement of the American people with the conflict. There is no sacrifice except for the families of those engaged. There is no tax to pay for the war. The government is bleeding money…the equipment of the Armed Forces is totally coming apart for lack of funding…the military manpower is inadequate to support the current strategy and Rumsfeld refused to support the funding to increase the numbers. No other branch of government is ORDERING employees into these combat zones to include the Foreign Service. Were it not for the brave 35,000 contractors —much of the support functions would have ground to a halt. There are few sons or daughters of senior figures in our government or Congress serving in these war zones.
    (The uniformed children of the Armed Forces are being killed and wounded in record numbers).
    The bottom line…we are not in Iraq to fight against Islamic extremism.
    We are there to take down the Saddam Regime, stand up a government and security forces that can control Iraq and not threaten us or their neighbors, jump start the economy, and then get out. We are foreigners and infidels…we gave these people a huge gift by saving them from Saddam. Now it has gone very badly wrong. We have a very short period of time to turn it around and then exit.
    You are still in service and you have committed your life to this struggle.
    I have great respect for all of you. Remember my generation started life with combat tours in a war that consumed 58,000 dead and 303,000 wounded.
    We did not lose the war because of the weakness of the American people or the lack of courage of our American soldiers—we lost because we had arrogant and unwise political leadership who never leveled with the American people—-and obedient and strategically incompetent senior military leadership. We also had a South Vietnamese government that was corrupt, incompetent, and lacked the dedication of their adversaries. At the end of the day—the Congress read the mood of the electorate— mandated a withdrawal —and then pulled the plug on resources for the war. (The war we were fighting was not actually against a Viet Cong insurgency…this was a civil war against a nationalistic, revolutionary movement that was fighting to unite the Vietnamese people and expel the French and American foreigners.
    We lacked the political will to seriously confront the North Vietnamese Armed Forces on the ground. They suffered a million dead but were NEVER seriously threatened enough to even consider giving up their struggle.) At this point in Iraq, we are not considering seriously any strategy to confront and defeat the Mahdi Army, the Rahmadi rebellion, the Iranian cross-border support to the Shia, the Syrian or other support for the El Anbar Sunnis, etc.
    So—I remain committed to supporting those in uniform, believe strongly that we must provide Iraq the resources to achieve our objectives, I am hopeful that we can turn this around, and grateful that Gen Petreus and Amb Crocker will take up the banner from Abizaid/Casey and Khalilzad. ( John Abizaid has been a national treasure who understood this whole thing from the start.)
    I will maintain an objective, non-partisan focus on the struggle and publicly argue for issues which I believe will help. I am not running for public office. However, I think that the execution of the initial operation in both Iraq and Afghanistan — and the subsequent egregious bad judgment, arrogance, and micro-management of this war by Rumsfeld and team —so f’d it up that we were put in a terrible situation from the start. It did not need to be this way.
    If we and the Iraqi government cannot achieve stability and a military US withdrawal in the coming very few years…the region and US interests are going to be severely menaced for the next 10 years or more. The Mid-East is vital to our international interests…Vietnam was not.
    Feel free to share this email. See you as I come in and out of the war zones.
    Barry

If anyone is in a position to provide additional information about the provenance or authenticity of this email, please contribute that information in a comment here or send me an email. Thanks!

Negotiations succeeding to avoid Sadr City showdown?

In today’s NYT Sabrina Tavernise has a really interesting article about the mayor of Sadr City, Rahim al-Daraji, who says he is authorized to speak on behalf of field commanders for the Sadrist Jaish al-Mahdi. Daraji, she writes,

    has approached Western military officials and laid out a plan to avoid armed confrontation…

Daraji reportedly forwarded the proposal to the Americans through Lt. Gen. Graeme Lamb, a British officer who is the deputy commanding general in Iraq, with whom he’s met twice in the past couple of weeks.
Tavernise writes:

    Mr. Daraji said in an interview that [Jaish al-Mahdi] field commanders would forbid their foot soldiers to carry guns in public if the American military and the Iraqi government met several basic demands, mostly involving ways to ensure better security for Sadr City. He is communicating with the commanders through a Shiite politician who is close to them.
    “The task is to eliminate the armed presence in Sadr City,” he said. “To confiscate illegal weapons,” carried openly by militia members in public places.
    The talks appeared to have been the first between an intermediary for the Mahdi militia and a senior commander from the American effort…
    Even so, it was far from clear whether Mr. Daraji, who said he was not related to Abdel Hadi al-Daraji, the former spokesman for Mr. Sadr who was arrested on murder charges last week, was even able to speak for the sprawling, grass-roots militia, which, according to American military estimates, numbers at least 7,000 in Baghdad alone.
    Saleh al-Agheli, a member of Parliament from Mr. Sadr’s political bloc, said the bloc’s political committee had “blessed and supported” the effort by Mr. Daraji.

She added this:

    The American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, confirmed that meetings had taken place and said that Mr. Daraji had told representatives from the American Embassy and from the military that local residents would not challenge weapons searches by American soldiers.
    “He said all the right things at this point,” Mr. Khalilzad said, but added that it was too soon to tell if the offer would lead to anything more concrete.

Back to Daraji, Tavernise wrote that he:

    said he represented 14 political and military groups in Sadr City. He said local residents, including Mahdi Army commanders, wanted to find ways to work with the Americans to avoid any large-scale confrontation. Commanders would tell militiamen to keep their weapons off the streets, he said, if Americans agreed to certain demands.
    Some of the actions Mr. Daraji said he had requested in exchange for the promises from the militias seemed likely to draw stony stares from American military officials, namely to stop conducting raids in Sadr City and to release a number of those who had been arrested.
    But other demands — to provide jobs for Sadr City residents, to bring in new construction projects and to triple the number of police stations there — seemed more realistic.
    [An unnamed source of hers who’s a] government official, who works as an aide to Mr. Maliki, said he trusted Mr. Daraji.
    “There is an honesty with this man,” said the official. “The chances for success are higher than before.”

Counterinsurgency in modern times

I’ve been thinking more about the challenges faced by Gen. Petraeus or any other commander who tries, in the 21st century, to organize a successful counterinsurgency campaign under the circumstances that:

    (1) this commander works within the military of a democratic country,
    (2) the counterinsurgency in question is being waged in another country, (known in COIN parlance as the ‘Host Nation’), and
    (3) the society within which the COIN campaign is being waged has a relatively advanced information/education infrastructure.

Waging a “successful”, military-based (i.e. coercive) counterinsurgency campaign under such circumstances is, I think, impossible.
For a foreign power to use forceful means to affect the political outcome within any given country/society causes a direct clash with the principles of democracy, of sovereignty, and of a respect for basic human rights. (This is even more clearly so when the forceful means in question include means that are directly and permissively lethal, as is spelled out at several points in Gen. Petraeus’s recently published COIN “manual”. See my analysis here.)
Democracy: It is a basic underpinning of the theory of democracy that differences can and must be solved through nonviolent means, including negotiation, bargaining, and the forging of agreement over decision rules. When a powerful foreign power intervenes within the polity of any given nation this sends a powerful message to natinals of that country through the demonstration effect. And it also– under all the theories of counterinsurgency since the dawn of time– results in the arming of one part of the host-nation citizenry against the other, making a mockery of any commitment to “democracy” within the host nation and sowing further grievances and demands for vengeance for, quite possibly, several generations to come.
Sovereignty: People in the human-rights movement in rich western countries often see “sovereignty”– especially the sovereignty of countries in the impoverished, formerly colonized world– as an impediment to the enjoyment of human rights. But the sovereign independence of nations is also an expression of the democracy among peoples; and indeed, there is no possibility for any society to enjoy democratic self-governance so long as vital, national-level decision-making is done or is constrained in any way by foreigners. And while human rights are, certainly, often abused by sovereign governments in many places around the world, there is literally no possibility at all for peoples who are ruled by foreigners to have any assurance that their rights will be respected. When a foreign power conducts and controls the conducting of a COIN campaign within a completely different nation, that is a complete violation of the principle of sovereign independence.
Human rights: Any COIN campaign will almost certainly, by definition, involve infringements on basic human freedoms including the freedoms of assembly, of movement, of political organizing, etc. That’s the case even when they’re conducted “within” nations, e.g. in recent times Northern Ireland, or Nepal. Very frequently the rights abuses involved will be considerably more serious… And this is probably much more likely to be the case where the people doing the COIN don’t identify culturally in any way at all with those against whom they are fighting.
… And thus, we see these dilemmas for a guy like Petraeus who tries to be very smart, very articulate, and very “sensitive”, and who tries to mount a successful COIN campaign on behalf of the US– a country whose people like to think of them- (our-)selves as committed to democracy and human rights. I explored some of those dilemmas a little further in that Jan. 10 blog post I linked to earlier…
I imagine sometimes Petraeus must really envy his counterparts in, say, Russia, who can organize almost whatever they want to in a place like Chechnya without having to worry too much about the effects that revelations from Chechnya will have on their standing back home.
Another thing, too. The Russian commanders in Chechnya don’t have to worry about very much news ever seeping out of Chechnya… Certainly, not as much as Petraeus has to worry about news getting out of Iraq, or the Israelis need to worry about news getting out of Lebanon (last summer), or out of Palestine, today. The development of means of recording like small videocams, small audio recorders, digital cameras, and laoptop computers, and the development of means of disseminating reports and recordings across large distances, mean that fighting a COIN battle in Iraq or Palestine today is a very different matter from, for example, what the British were able to do against the Mau Mau in the 1950s, or the French did against national-liberation “insurgents” in Algeria, or in Vietnam.
(Or, what the British did against the Palestinians in the 1930s, or against the Iraqis in the 1920s… Those campaigns both provide strong and worrying precedents that live on in the folk-memories of their peoples.)
The US forces in Iraq (and perhaps even more so in the more under-reported reaches of Afghanistan) may have tried to undertake some of the very abusive types of action that those earlier imperial commanders did… As their US predecessors also did in numerous wars from the wars against the Native Americans right here “at home”, on through several bloody “small wars” abroad, including in Vietnam and repeatedly, over and over again, in Central America…
But here’s the thing. At some point in history, such wars became politically unwinnable. The British may have “won” on the battlefield in Kenya; and indeed, they ground the Kikuyu insurgents in the north right into the dust as they did so… But still, they had to get out of the country and leave it to become independent. The same with the French in Algeria. As Clausewitz knew, and warned everyone so long ago, the point of military operations is not to win the battle, it’s to win the war. And at some point in the 1950s or so, at the political-strategic level all those “counter-insurgency” campaigns fought around the world by democratic powers were lost.
I was reading this little article, from the January-February 2006 Military Review, that Petraeus submitted to the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday, in connection with his confirmation hearings there. It’s titled Learning Counterinsurgency: Observations from Soldiering in Iraq. He sums up his findings there in the following lessons:

    Observations from Soldiering in Iraq:
    1.“Do not try to do too much with your own hands.”
    2. Act quickly, because every Army of liberation [Yes, that’s honestly what he calls the US army in Iraq! ~HC] has a half-life.
    3. Money is ammunition.
    4. Increasing the number of stakeholders is critical to success.
    5. Analyze “costs and benefits” before each operation.
    6. Intelligence is the key to success.
    7. Everyone must do nation-building.
    8. Help build institutions, not just units.
    9. Cultural awareness is a force multiplier.
    10. Success in a counterinsurgency requires more than just military operations.
    11. Ultimate success depends on local leaders.
    12. Remember the strategic corporals and strategic lieutenants.
    13. There is no substitute for flexible, adaptable leaders.
    14. A leader’s most important task is to set the right tone.

The whole article there doesn’t get much more profound than that. (In his explanation of #2, he writes, ” in a situation like Iraq, the liberating force must act quickly, because every Army of liberation has a half-life beyond which it turns into an Army of occupation. The length of this half-life is tied to the perceptions of the populace about the impact of the liberating force’s activities… ” I don’t think that at the hearing yesterday anyone asked him specifically if he didn’t think that had already happened… )
I’ve also been reading the answers Petraeus had prepared to questions that the Senate Armed Services Committee’s members had given him prior to yesterday’s hearing. There are some interesting things there– a singal that he’s not necessarily going to go straight against the sadrists in Sadr City, for example… and an admission that the Army is already “stretched and straining”…
But I am really, really disappointed that no-one on the committee had submitted any questions about the grave human-rights implications of the types of “Rules of Engagement” Petraeus was writing about in his manual.
It seems the august senators either don’t “get” the extreme political and moral relevance of that issue, or they prefer not to think about this issue, but instead seek to leave such thinking to the military’s “professionals”. Either way, it seems like a serious abdication of their duty.

Released IDF documents reveal ethnic cleansing effort in South Lebanon

HaAretz’s Amos Harel has an informative reconstruction of the decsionmaking last summer within the Israeli General Staff, over crucial aspects of the– failed– war against Hizbullah.
This reconstruction gives a lot more background and context to the chaos and indecisiveness in the decisionmaking that were evident at the time (and that I wrote about in my Boston Review article, here.)
Harel writes:

    The outgoing Chief of Staff Dan Halutz strongly opposed a broad ground operation until the very last stage of the war… even though the two General Staff members also from the air force – Military Intelligence Chief Amos Yadlin and Major General Idan Nehushtan – supported such action. What is surprising is that the two major generals who supported a broad ground offensive at an early stage – Deputy Chief of Staff Moshe Kaplinsky and Chief of Operations Gadi Eisenkot – changed their views as the war continued and then hesitated to carry out such an offensive.
    A Haaretz probe in recent weeks has enabled, for the first time, a reconstruction of critical parts of the exchanges during a series of meetings headed by the chief of staff… The General Staff emerges from the exchanges as seemingly confused and hesitant.

Harel appears to base much of his report on actual transcripts of some of the key meetings, though he nowhere provides any sourcing or provenance, or even any comments about that matter. We have to take his account on trust.
The article is all extremely interesting. But the most disturbing part is his account of a key July 16 meeting about the possibility of trying to seize the substantial southern town of Bint Jbeil (normal population: around 30,000 souls):

    on July 16, Bint Jbail is raised for the first time as a target for a possible IDF operation. Major General Benny Gantz, head of the ground forces, makes the recommendation to the chief of staff. “Hassan Nasrallah’s victory speech [in May 2000 after the IDF’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon] was made in Bint Jbail. We must dismantle that place, it is a Shi’ite place – and they must be driven to the North. I would even consider a limited ground operation in this area, which can be held.”
    … The former chief of staff, Moshe Ya’alon, emphasized the need to “stamp the psyche” of the enemy. [That was favorite theme of Ya’alon’s, with regard to the Palestinians, back when he was still chief of staff… You’ll note that though his approach inflicted horrendous damage on the Palestinians, for some reason it still failed to persuade them to ‘cry uncle.’ Perhaps Ya’alon lacks any capacity to learn? ~HC] He was talking about the importance of symbolism. It turns out that in the second Lebanon war the “stamping” happened to us. The focus on the damage to symbols emerges over and over throughout the war. The fact that Bint Jbail, a Shi’ite town, became a bloody trap and the Golani Brigade suffered eight dead on the morning of July 26, only intensified the IDF’s obsession with the place.

Harel has long excerpts from what appears to be the transcript of a crucial meeting July 26– a day when the IOF suffered a particularly bloody setback in Bint Jbeil. He notes that during that meeting,

    The chief of staff reiterates the possibility of intensifying the air operation, including the targetting of civilian infrastructure in Beirut.
    “I intend to put this once more on the [government’s] table. I say that before we start moving divisions, [to the rivers] Awali, Zahrani, Litani, it does not matter. We must bring Lebanon to a different place.”

Throughout Harel’s account you can certainly see the deep indecisiveness that was reigning in the General Staff. He gives no sign of what was going on at the political level at that time, or in the interface between the two. Those meetings would be interesting to learn this much about, too.
But at the end of the day it is the frustration these guys feel that comes acorss the strongest.
He concludes with this utterance that military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin reportedly made on July 28:

    On the matter of the Katyushas, we must show that it is possible to defeat this thing, otherwise it will follow us for years. Apparently this can only be done on the ground … Come on, our fathers beat all the Arab states in six days and we are not able to go in with two divisions and finish off [the area] south of the Litani?”

Grave implications of the Karbala raid

It seems the US authorities were not eager for the US public (or anyone else) to know the details of the lethally effective raid mounted against US occupation forces in Karbala last Saturday.
These details clearly indicate the size and creativity of the unit that undertook the attack, as well as the existence of significant collaboration between the anti-US attackers and members of the “Iraqi security forces” who were co-deployed with the targeted Americans at the “Provincial Joint Coordination Center” (PJCC) in Karbala.
There are a number of significant layers to this story. One is, it seems, the ineffectiveness of the attempt the US forces have been making to establish “information dominance” over the whole of the Iraqi area of operations…
But first, let’s go to what today’s WaPo story reported about the raid:

    The armored sport-utility vehicles whisked into a government compound in the city of Karbala with speed and urgency, the way most Americans and foreign dignitaries travel along Iraq’s treacherous roads these days.
    Iraqi guards at checkpoints waved them through Saturday afternoon because the men wore what appeared to be legitimate U.S. military uniforms and badges, and drove cars commonly used by foreigners, the provincial governor said…
    After arriving at the Provincial Joint Coordination Center in Karbala, 60 miles southwest of Baghdad, the attackers detonated sound bombs, Iraqi officials said. “They wanted to create a panic situation,” said an aide to Karbala Gov. Akeel al-Khazaali, who described the events with the governor’s permission but on condition of anonymity because he fears reprisals.
    The men then stormed into a room where Americans and Iraqis were making plans to ensure the safety of thousands of people expected to visit the holy city for an upcoming holiday.
    “They didn’t target anyone but the American soldiers,” the governor’s aide said.
    After the attack, the assailants returned to their vehicles and drove away. It was unclear how many people participated, and the men’s identities and motive remained unclear, but the attack was particularly striking because of the resources and sophistication involved, Iraqi officials said.
    The men drove off toward the city of Babil, north of Karbala, where they shot at guards at a checkpoint, said Capt. Muthana Ahmad, a police spokesman. Vehicles later recovered contained three bodies and one injured individual. The U.S. military took possession of the vehicles, the spokesman said…
    Saturday’s attack appeared to present a new danger to authorities in Iraq: assailants who disguise themselves as officials and travel in convoys.
    “The way it happened and the new style, the province has not seen before,” said Abdul al-Yasri, head of the provincial council in Karbala.

I don’t know how long that PJCC had been operating in Karbala… Or indeed, if it is still operating today? But very evidently, what happened there Saturday was a massive breach of security… And the fact the assailants were able to drive their multiple vehicles out of the compound after the attack without incident indicates– perhaps even more strongly than the fact that they were able to get into it so easily– that they most likely had a number of confederates among the Iraqi security personnel working there.
Which presumably was a major reason why the US authorities in Baghdad did not want to divulge the details of the attack too widely.
The US military’s press release about the attack, issued yesterday, said only this:

    The Provincial Joint Coordination Center (PJCC) in Karbala was attacked with grenades, small arms and indirect fires by an illegally armed militia group Jan 20. Five U.S. Soldiers were killed and three wounded while repelling the attack.
    Initial reporting by some media outlets indicated falsely that the attack was conducted by Coalition forces…
    “The attack on the Karbala Provincial Joint Coordination Center was aimed at Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces working together toward a better future for the citizens of Karbala,” said Lt. Col. Scott R. Bleichwehl, Spokesperson for Multi-National Division-Baghdad.
    The location has been secured by Coalition and Iraqi security forces…

Today’s waPo account says this:

    U.S. military officials said Sunday that they could not discuss the attack in Karbala in detail because it remained under investigation. But they said the version of events provided by the governor’s office was consistent with their preliminary findings.

This a serious admission. It is an admission, in effect, that Bleichwehl and his fellow officers– who are, of course, extremely strongly concerned about the wellbeing of all the US soldiers in the field in Iraq– are unable to hide the fact that some members of an Iraqi unit co-deployed with those Americans were most likely complicit in the anti-US action, while the others were either unwilling or unable to intervene to foil the attack.
Bush’s new “surge” plan for Greater Baghdad– and the whole of the US counterinsurgency effort in Iraq– depends crucially on effecting a large increase in mthe numbers of US soldiers co-deployed with members of the “Iraqi security forces.”
But the news from Karbala– which is only the latest, though perhaps the most serious, incident in which Iraqis co-deployed with Americans have apparently given aid to anti-US attackers– is likely to make the US commanders in Baghdad, Qatar, and Washington more wary than ever about such co-deployments. “Force protection”, that is, the protection of the lives and wellbeing of their own soldiers, has been the overwhelming mission of the US deployment in Iraq all along, and has been pursued even at the cost of risking the lives of much greater numbers of Iraqi soldiers or civilians.
Given the US public’s strong concern about US casualties, this emphasis on force protection is, perhaps, politically understandable. In announcing the most recent “surge”, Bush has tried to signal that the US public might need to accept that there could be some increased US casualties during its early phases– but he “promised” us, as well, that these would not last for long…
But all in all, for the Bushites, it’s an extremely inopportune time for detailed news about an attack like the one in Karbala to get out and be disseminated to a wide US readership.
And yet, they proved unable to suppress the news. This, primarily because the Karbala provincial governor was apparently unwilling to participate in their cover-up…
Which is an indication of the Bushites’ large and continuing political problems in Iraq, as well.
Update, Mon. 4:45 p.m.:
IraqSlogger had these additional details, from Az-Zaman:

    According to Az-Zaman, the armed men who executed the operation wore the uniforms of the American Army, and rode in ten GMC jeeps. After the operation, the American forces prevented the governor and the municipal board members from entering the hall, but the governor held a press conference in his home, where he described the attack and said that the armed men came from “a neighboring province”. Az-Zaman interviewed a guard in the Police building who said that the attackers “came in an official visit”, but when they were intercepted, the attackers “took the weapons and phones” of the guards and asked them to lie on the ground. The guard added that the attackers executed the operation and left in a short period of time, destroying an American Hummer before they departed. The Americans were in yard of the building when the attack occurred, and no casualties were reported among the attackers, the newspaper added.

Soldiers and clowns in Tuwani, Palestine

This, from Art Gish, with the Christian Peacemakers Teams in At-Tuwani, Palestine:

    18 January 2007
    Israeli peace activists brought four clowns to the Palestinian village of At-Tuwani this morning to give a performance at the school. Just before the performance began, Israeli soldiers also entered the village. This was the same group of soldiers who have accompanied Palestinian school children past the Ma’on settlement for the past few days. The soldiers seemed angry and concerned about a van parked in the village.
    The soldiers arrested the driver of the van, with his wrists tied behind his back. The soldiers were rude, arrogant, and aggressive, but not physically abusive. Soon the soldiers were surrounded by a dozen village women, including an elderly woman who lectured them in Arabic. I felt sorry for the poor soldiers. They seemed frightened. They ordered everyone to move away, but the villagers only moved closer. Not one person obeyed any of the soldiers’ commands. They were practically powerless. What can one do, even if armed with an M-16, when no one will comply with one’s orders and one is being filmed? They moved the handcuffed young man to the other side of the jeep, but the women also moved to the other side of the jeep. The village women were calm, but strong.
    After about ten minutes, the soldiers put the man into the back of the jeep and drove away. I was worried. What would they do to him? They drove to below the village, stopped, and released the man. I was upset with the whole scene, but realized the Palestinians were calm. Their faith [is it faith or experience] is deeper than mine. They consider the soldiers to be ignorant and crude, and are not surprised by how the soldiers act.
    I headed toward the school to watch the four clowns do their acts for the children, who loved every minute of it. These clowns came to the village with a different attitude than did the soldiers. They came in friendship, without guns, and received a positive response. The contrast was striking. I wondered, “Are the people who sent the young soldiers here really that ignorant and naïve, that clueless about what makes for peace?” The clowns may have been silly, but their actions were profound.

Chronicle of a debacle foretold

The waPo’s Michael Abramowitz and Peter Baker have apparently been partially anointed by the Bush White House as its current chroniclers of choice. And thus, in today’s Wapo, we have their “authorized by the White House” version of how Bush undertook the allegedly extensive “policy review” that resulted in the current escalation plan.
The short version of the story of this policy review would be “ABB”: that is, “Guys! Cobble together a policy that is Anything But Baker-Hamilton”. But I guess the White House spinmeisters wanted to craft a longer, slightly more compelling narrative for it that would make their boss look deliberative, decisive, and wise…
And so we have “A&B”, Abramowitz and Baker.
They write:

    A reconstruction of the administration’s Iraq policy review, based on more than a dozen interviews with senior advisers, Bush associates, lawmakers and national security officials, reveals a president taking the lead in driving the process toward one more effort at victory — despite doubts along the way from his own military commanders, lawmakers and the public at large.

The main official whose words are quoted by name in the article is Bush’s National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley. So this really is the “authorized version” of the chronicle.
About the most significant aspect of A&B’s narrative is that, in their attempt to make Bush look “decisive” and “leaderlike”, they make Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki look like a pathetic US cat’s-paw… This, in contradiction of the official administration story so far wherein Bush is sending in the surge in troops “in response to a request from the Iraqi government.”
Right there at the top of theie story, A&B write that when Maliki and Bush met in Amman on November 30, Maliki formally presented– Power Point slides and all!– a proposal whereby US troops would

    withdraw to the outskirts of Baghdad and let Iraqis take over security in the strife-torn capital. Maliki said he did not want any more U.S. troops at all, just more authority.
    The president listened intently to the unexpected proposal at their Nov. 30 meeting, according to accounts from several administration officials. Bush seemed impressed that Maliki had taken the initiative, but it did not take him long to reject the idea.

So much for Iraqi “sovereignty.”
Later, A&B tell us of Bush that,

    He never seriously considered beginning to withdraw U.S. forces, as urged by newly elected Democratic congressional leaders and the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. And he had grown skeptical of his own military commanders, who were telling him no more troops were needed.
    So Bush relied on his own judgment [oh my G-d, what a terrifying thought… ~HC] that the best answer was to try once again to snuff out the sectarian violence in Baghdad, even at the risk of putting U.S. soldiers into a crossfire between Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias. When his generals resisted sending more troops, he seemed irritated. When they finally agreed to go along with the plan, he doubled the number of troops they requested.[!!!]
    It was a signature moment for a president who seems uninfluenced by the electorate on Iraq and headed for a showdown with the new Democratic Congress. Presented with an opportunity to pull back, Bush instead chose to extend and, in some ways, deepen his commitment, gambling that more time and a new plan will finally bring success to the troubled U.S. military mission.

These nearly always unnamed “senior Bush advisers” etc who are quoted by A&B admitted to the chroniclers, however, that along the way they– though not, of course, their extremely wise and omniscient boss– had made at least two key errors of political judgment.
One was regarding US politics, where,

    They understood that many if not most Democrats would not welcome a troop increase but thought at least some would grudgingly go along — not anticipating what ended up as near-universal opposition by Democrats and visceral anger even among some Republicans…

And the other error was regarding Iraqi politics:

    By early fall, even as Bush was on the campaign trail accusing Democrats of defeatism, he and his senior advisers were coming to the conclusion that his core assumptions were wrong. The political process would not lead to security in Iraq. In fact, it would have to be the other way around. And they started to doubt the advice from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and senior commanders in Baghdad that troop levels were adequate to contain the violence.
    “It was pretty clear when you started to look at our assumptions, many of them just weren’t right,” said a senior administration official, who like others discussed internal deliberations on the condition of anonymity.

And thus, as we have seen, the “way forward” to the surge involved, right after the November 7 elections, Bush firing Rumsfeld and the two senior commanders in Iraq.
A&B describe how the White House’s “Iraq policy review” picked up steam after the election:

    The Bush team concluded that the previous Baghdad security plans had failed for four reasons: The Iraqis never took ownership over security, Maliki placed political constraints on military operations, there were not enough reliable Iraqi and U.S. forces, and there was no serious effort to rebuild areas taken back from insurgents or militias.
    Bush spent hours in conversation with Maliki, on the phone and in videoconference, probing to determine whether he could count on the prime minister. “The president decided we need to bring this issue to a head,” one senior adviser said. “We need to clarify whether this government is really a partner or not.”

A&B write that one “problem” for Bush,

    was that the military did not necessarily want more troops. Army Gens. John P. Abizaid, the Middle East commander, and George W. Casey Jr., the commander in Iraq, opposed an influx of U.S. forces because they were unconvinced it would change the dynamics on the ground.
    Resistance from Casey and the Joint Chiefs of Staff flared throughout the process. On Dec. 13, Bush went to the super-secure “tank” at the Pentagon to listen to his top generals, only to walk away convinced that some of them were trying to manage defeat rather than find a way to victory.
    Bush decided to placate some of the concerns expressed by the generals about the overextended military and told The Washington Post six days later that he would expand the size of the Army and Marines. When Gates went to Baghdad that week, he came back with Casey’s agreement for more troops based on the understanding that the commander would no longer be held back by the Iraqi government and that the United States would address the country’s economic needs.
    “He was not overriding his commanders,” one Bush aide said of the president. “But he was pushing them to identify what went wrong and what do we need to change what happened.”

Of course he was overriding his commanders. But they pushed back just a tiny bit, and got something they wanted out of that negotiation. Namely, an assurance that the US troops in Iraq “would no longer be held back by the Iraqi government.”
However, even having Casey’s agreement for some increase in troop levels, Bush continued to hold out for an increase even larger than Casey had agreed to:

    Bush had already decided to replace Casey with Petraeus, and through intermediaries the president reached out to Petraeus, who was supportive of more troops than Casey requested.
    So the president reversed Casey’s plan, deciding that all five brigades would go to Baghdad in a phased deployment. “The president came out and said, ‘Let’s err on the side of making sure they have everything they need,’ ” said a senior official.

So there is the political insiders’ “backstory” on this horrendous debacle of an escalation that is about to unfold.
… And if we should want an additional indicator of just how truly reckless this surge policy is, we could note that even that old hawk Henry Kissinger today came out in the WaPo with a lengthy peroration that was unprecedentedly critical of it.
I guess Henry’s deal with the many newspapers that carry his opinion columns is that they not make the texts available on the web, and I’m afraid I don’t have time to type in very much of what is in his piece today. But he warned explicitly that, “These circumstances have merged into an almost perfect storm of mutually reinforcing crises… ” [both within and beyond Iraq.]
Henry is also urging that the administration needs to talk with both Iran and Syria…
So if even he is this worried about the situation and about the way the Prez’s present policy feeds into it, then the rest of us should certainly be scared about its recklessness… Very scared indeed.