Brian M Downing
Most accounts of the Second Gulf War (2003-11) attach significant importance to the US’s adoption of counterinsurgency doctrine in ending the Sunni insurgency there. The shift away from conventional warfare to winning hearts and minds is said to have changed the course of the war and brought a measure of peace to Iraq. Counterinsurgency (COIN) enjoyed new prestige in the public and military.
The welcome change of fortunes in Iraq, however, was not brought about by separating the populace from the insurgents. It was brought about by a very different process of negotiating with, and eventually allying with, the insurgents themselves. As events now make clear, this alliance was only temporary. It has broken down and Iraq is once again wracked by Sunni insurgents.
Quelling the Sunni insurgency was based on specific dynamics inside Iraq which are unlikely to be found elsewhere, chiefly the insurgents’ desperate situation. These dynamics most certainly are not found in Afghanistan. Understanding what happened in Iraq will give a better idea of which foreign policy objectives the US may reach and which military strategies will help in those efforts. It will also give insight on events unfolding today in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon – most of which are unfavorable to US interests and to regional stability.
Insurgency and counterinsurgency, theory
An insurgency is a military-political effort, based on popular discontent, which seeks to mobilize sufficient support to oust an existing government. Insurgent political and military cadres seek to increase their power by playing upon senses of injustice, exclusion, and inequality. For example, Malayan insurgents objected to ethnic exclusion, the Huks and Moros of the Philippines to foreign presence and religious exclusion, and the Viet Cong to unfair land distribution and foreign occupation.
Counterinsurgency (COIN) attempts to weaken and ultimately defeat the insurgency. It has two goals. First, the state uses political and military resources – far more of the former – to undermine popular support for insurgents. This can be done through reforms that bring excluded groups into the political system; through developmental aid such as medical and veterinary help, school systems, irrigation systems, and agricultural modernization; and through programs such as land reform that remedy inequalities.
An insurgency and counterinsurgency, then, constitute a contest – at times a violent one – between two competing governments, each with its own administrators, tax collector, judges, myths, and centers of power. COIN seeks to build a more appealing government than the one the insurgents offer, then it seeks to weaken popular support for the insurgent rival to such an extent that it loses local support. Bernard Fall’s succinctness is masterful: “a government that is losing to an insurgency isn’t being out-fought, it’s being out-governed.”
COIN is begun in a few villages or districts – ordinarily “easy” ones where insurgents are weak and the government has support. First, government forces clear insurgent forces from an area, driving them from any fortified positions, supply centers, and secured areas they have established.
Second, police and militia units protect the locals from insurgents. Medical, veterinary, and economic help. Government security and services spread out in the “oil spot” manner, from villages to districts to entire provinces. Expansion is often slow and uneven, as local populations have varying loyalties to the insurgents and varying hostilities to the government. The process is slow, often painfully so. It may take many years for the oil spot to expand widely and the insurgency to wane.
Third, in addition to separating the people from insurgent forces, a successful COIN reconciles the populace with the government. People formerly supportive of the insurgency now accept political dialog over armed rebellion. This may be done through formal democratic processes or by traditional bargaining between the government and tribal leaders and village elders.
An effective COIN undermines popular support for insurgent forces. Insurgents face difficulty in collecting taxes, recruiting new soldiers, and gathering intelligence. Insurgents rely more on threats and assassinations, which further erodes popular support. The government wins greater support from the population. The insurgents decline in numbers and efficacy, before becoming little more than nuisances that can be handled by local police activity or that disappear altogether.
Insurgency and counterinsurgency, Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq ousted Saddam Hussein, but it also ejected a Sunni Arab minority from their control of the predominantly-Shia country’s army, state, and economy – positions of privilege they’d enjoyed since the British installed the Sunni Hashemites on the throne after World War One. The sudden loss of power and prestige in 2003, capped off by the unceremonious dissolution of the army, created widespread anger and an insurgency soon flared.
The insurgency had several leadership bases. First, the Baath Party had developed a secret cell structure back in the 1950s when it was an underground movement and retained in the event it was ousted one day. Forced underground by the US invasion, the Baathists organized resistance to the occupation and, later, the Shia government.
Second, the army maintained some of its command system. Loyalties and patronage ties endured even after disbanding. Parts of the officer corps and rank and file fought the occupiers in a guerrilla manner rather than in the conventional one they’d long trained in and taught civilian insurgents in bomb making and small-unit tactics.
Third, Sunni tribal leaders mobilized young men and resources into the effort. Saddam had built support from tribal leaders in the aftermath of the First Gulf War when army support was in considerable doubt. Elders sought to restore the state patronage which the Shia were likely to curtail. The sprawling Dulayim confederation, which had been prominent in the army and intelligence service, figured highly in the insurgency. They also played a critical role in the turnabout known as the Sunni Awakening, as we shall see.
Fourth, clerics preached opposition from mosques and village communities. The austere Salafists were quite important here. Their strict discipline, hostility to the West, and emphasis on the nobility of war made for dedicated fighters – far superior to the undisciplined street fighters of many insurgent bands. The western province of Anbar was home to several Salafist schools and, unsurprisingly, it saw some of the fiercest fighting.
Beneath these leadership structures, was the Sunni population – some eighteen percent of Iraq’s twenty-five million – who resented the US occupation, their sect’s disenfranchisement, and the ascendance of the Shias, whom they saw as loathsome apostates and treacherous allies of longstanding “Persian” enemies.
Shortly after the fall of Baghdad in the spring of 2003, American forces were beset by a fierce insurgency – a form of warfare which they had not been warned of and which they had not trained for. American divisional commanders were granted considerable leeway in dealing with the insurgency. This typically led only to degrees of conventional warfare and heavy firepower. However, some commanders, most notably David Petraeus of the 101st Airborne Division, adopted counterinsurgency techniques, including well-placed aid and evenhanded administration.
Most units nonetheless continued to rely on conventional warfare methods. There was little effort to secure neighborhoods and win support. Combat patrols came and went, seeking mainly to inflict casualties on the enemy. The US military has long been wedded to using its tremendous advantage in firepower to defeat enemies, ever since General Ulysses S Grant ground down the South’s armies in the Civil War (1861-65). It was difficult to convince generals, colonels, and even young lieutenants and sergeants to put aside established doctrines and tactics.
General Petraeus’s innovations demonstrated considerable adaptiveness amid a tumultuous war and belie simplistic views of inflexibility in the US military. They did not, however, end the insurgency or even meaningfully reduce it, not even when he became overall commander in Iraq in 2007 and COIN was trumpeted as the answer. Fortunately, important dynamics were underway before General Petraeus took command. They had nothing to do with COIN.
The Sunni Awakening
A remarkable change came in the Sunni areas in 2006, when insurgents ceased fighting the US and, against expectations – and against COIN experience as well – began to cooperate with them. This Sunni Awakening was a pragmatic arrangement that benefited both sides, though only for a few years. What, then, accounts for the change? The key lies in the difficulty, perhaps even hopelessness, of the Sunni insurgents’ position.
The Sunnis faced three formidable opponents. First, the US and other Coalition forces were inflicting high casualties on insurgent forces and wreaking great havoc on cities such as Fallujah.
Second, Shia militias were engaged in murderous campaigns against the Sunnis in mixed areas of the country, most notably in Baghdad. Shia forces, many of them armed and supported by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, were inflicting egregious casualties on Sunnis – fighters and civilians alike.
Third, al Qaeda had begun to attack the Sunnis – paradoxically, the people they’d come to help. Conflict between the former allies erupted over al Qaeda’s perception of insufficient piety and gratitude from locals. Locals did not welcome the imposition of Islamic Law or the foreign fighters’ expectations from local women. Resentments and arguments arose, soon followed by bitter fighting.
Despite knowledge of the terrain and local support, Sunni fighters could not have defeated US and Coalition troops, but they could have outlasted them. However, a US withdrawal would still leave the Sunnis to fight the Shias, who were three times as numerous as the Sunnis, and to fight the al Qaeda bands as well, whose ruthlessness made up for their small numbers.
The Sunnis faced an endless war and a bleak future. Millions had already fled abroad, others faced marginalization, expulsion, and violent death. The murderous sectarian fighting raised the specter of annihilation. Where could the Sunnis turn for help? Sectarian hatreds precluded allying with Shia militias, despite a common hostility to the foreign occupation. Reconciliation with al Qaeda would bring only slight help against Shia and American might.
The Sunnis’ only option was an agreement with the US, which was itself bereft of options. The American public was increasingly restive over the high casualties and lack of progress, and the White House was looking for a solution to yet another protracted land war in Asia.
American commanders – chiefly local ones – detected the insurgents’ predicament and skillfully negotiated agreements with leaders. Insurgents began to cooperate with US troops in establishing security and expelling al Qaeda. Tribal elders of the Dulayim confederation were especially prominent in these deals. American officers and insurgent leaders forged a mutually beneficial arrangement: the US protected and armed the Sunnis in exchange for a ceasefire and cooperation against al Qaeda.
The US delivered services to Sunni groups (including commissary privileges for elders) and rebuilt devastated urban districts. The US also redeployed more of its combat troops against Shia militias, especially those of al Sadr, and in a few months mauled them quite badly in major cities, easing the sectarian fighting that had raged since 2005.
The Sunni Awakening differs significantly from COIN. American forces did not detach the populace from the insurgents nor did they defeat them in battle. Instead, American forces brought insurgents over to their side – allied with them. The insurgent-population relationship remained intact. Indeed, the US gave arms to Sunni militias, which is as antithetical to counterinsurgency doctrine as anything could be. Further, there was no gradual expansion of secure areas in the “oil spot” manner; the process was more of a changing tribal alliance or a diplomatic coup.
Most importantly, there was no reconciliation between the insurgents and the government. This is increasingly clear with ongoing events in Iraq. Though the US attempted to bring the Sunnis into the emerging democratic process, the effort was fruitless, perhaps even pointless. Sectarian hatred was too high after so much murderous fighting. In the aftermath of decades of Sunni rule, marked as it was by daily oppression and intermittent slaughter, a founding principle of the new Iraq had come into being. Though unstated in any public document, the Shia majority will never permit the Sunnis to have significant political power. They have not wavered from this principle.
COIN in Afghanistan
The apparent success of COIN in Iraq brought confidence, within the US military and public, that it could be used successfully in Afghanistan, where the Taliban had reemerged from havens in Pakistan and spread across the south and east. It would simply be a matter of an adaptive military organization implementing proven ideas.
Three years on, however, the campaign has had very little impact, save for carving out a few enclaves such as Marja (Helmand province) and holding on to other areas where local Pashtun tribes have long opposed the Taliban. Security has not spread out from these enclaves in the “oil spot” manner, nor has there been reconciliation with the government in Kabul. Fighting remains difficult and many districts are likely to fall once US/ISAF forces depart in the next year.
The reasons for the failure of COIN in Afghanistan will be debated for many years. A few points will likely become salient. COIN was begun only in fits and starts and with a bewildering number of commanders who were unable to bring coherence to the project. The US relied too much on bureaucracies and contractors whose large footprints and ponderous procedures only underscored local senses of being occupied by foreigners.
The Karzai government’s failure to reform and the presence of safe havens in Pakistan greatly reduced COIN’s chances. The Taliban and other insurgent groups enjoy safe havens across the border in Pakistan, whose military, or portions thereof, support them.
A comparison between the Iraqi and Afghan insurgents reveals vastly different strategic positions. In Iraq, insurgents were beset by US-Coalition forces, Shia militias, and al Qaeda bands – a position described here as hopeless. The Taliban face no such strategic nightmare: Pakistan continues to support them; indigenous Afghan forces are thus far ineffectual; sectarian conflict is weak; and al Qaeda bands have no conflict with the Taliban. The Taliban can concentrate their energies on US/ISAF forces in a manner that Iraqi insurgents never could. They do not face destruction and do not have an incentive to cooperate.
COIN has fallen flat in Afghanistan, delivering no abatement of the insurgency or reconciliation between people and government. Little has changed and the US is withdrawing from Afghanistan, leaving the hapless country with an uncertain future. Counterinsurgency may well have a similar uncertainty in American strategic thinking.
Consequences of the US-Sunni truce in Iraq
It has been six years since the Sunni insurgency eased and a year and a half since US troops left Iraq. This has granted some perspective on the consequences, for Iraq and the region, of the truce the US forged with the Sunni insurgents.
The insurgents were not defeated or disbanded, nor was the Sunni populace reintegrated with the Baghdad government. As the US departed in 2011, the Shia government disarmed and dissolved many of the US-backed Sunnis militias; it promised to integrate other parts into the national army and security forces, but for the most part reneged. Remember the founding principle of the new Iraq: no Sunni power.
Sunni resentments flared, as they had after the US dissolved the army in 2003, which has a decided parallel to what the Shias did in 2011. This has led to the reemergence of an insurgency directed against the Shia government. As of the summer of 2013, the fighting borders on civil war and a secessionist movement is building. Furthermore, the old Sunni insurgency, or at least parts of it, has once again allied with al Qaeda.
Looking at the region, we see that many Iraqi fighters have gone off to fight in the Syrian civil war, probably in the service of Sunni principalities – chiefly Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The relationship between the Iraqi insurgents and Sunnis from other countries is not a recent development. From the early years of the insurgency, US intelligence identified foreign financial support for insurgents. The money came in from outraged Sunnis but perhaps also from state coffers. It was the Sunni principalities, after all, who had vigorously but futilely argued against the US invasion of Iraq. They claimed – with considerable strategic vision, it turns out – that ousting Saddam would be a boon for Iranian/Shia power. The region would be destabilized and a “Shia arc” would stretch from Iran, across Iraq and Syria, into Lebanon.
Saudi and Qatari support for the Sunni insurgents has two goals. First, it seeks to counter Shia-Iranian influence in post-Saddam Iraq by bleeding them, financially and physically, through the ongoing campaign of bombings and assassinations. Ultimately, they seek an autonomous Sunni region in central and western Iraq or perhaps one day, an independent Sunni state that forms a barrier in the Shia arc.
Second, the regional Sunni powers are directing their resources, and some Iraqi personnel, to the war against Bashir Assad’s regime in Syria, which is Alawi – a Shia sect. During the insurgency against the US, supply lines came in from Syria, bringing fighters and weaponry into the war. Today, these supply lines bring fighters and weaponry into Syria. Sunni Iraqis operate inside Syria and are thought to be especially skilled in urban fighting and bomb making.
The goal is either pushing the Alawis and Shias into an enclave on the Mediterranean littoral, where their population is concentrated, or, more aggressively, breaking Alawi-Shia power altogether, making them into a weak minority under Sunni domination. The Shia in Iraq wants a powerless Sunni minority; the rebels in Syria want a powerless Shia minority.
Achieving their goals in Syria may encourage the Sunni monarchies to turn their increasingly heady attention to Lebanon, where Hisbollah, a Shia party which is sending troops into Syria to support Assad and is close to Iran, has attained considerable military and political power. As of July 2013, this scenario seems well underway.
Ousting Hisbollah will be at least as difficult as ousting Assad is proving to be. Hisbollah has a powerful military wing, trained and armed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Hisbollah guerrillas ground down Israeli resolve in the south and forced its withdrawal. Furthermore, a war on Hisbollah would precipitate a significant Iranian response, perhaps by rousing the disenfranchised Shia populations in the Sunni states, perhaps by strikes on those states’ oil facilities.
The Sunni powers will face a strategic dilemma in Lebanon. Defeating Hisbollah would be a tremendous boon for Israel. It would oust Jerusalem’s strongest peripheral enemy and in all likelihood restore the preeminence of pro-Israel forces in the country.
The Saudis seek to build a powerful anti-Israeli bloc, comprising the Sunnis of Iraq and Syria. This would bring leverage on the Palestinian issue and significant power prestige to the House of Saud, inside the realm and throughout the Arab world as well. The Saudis will likely need such an infusion in coming years as it faces a painful and uncertain succession and a more insistent younger population.
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The Sunni Awakening, though welcome and important in extricating the US from Iraq, was not a counterinsurgency campaign. The US did not detach the population from the insurgent fighters or reconcile the people with the government. The US negotiated a temporary truce that left insurgent groups intact, protected them, and even armed them. These fighters remain hostile to the Baghdad government and are engaged in an expanding war against it. Furthermore, Sunni insurgents have been mobilized by the Sunni principalities and deployed into Syria as part of a campaign against Shia-Iranian power – a project that bodes ill for stability in the region and for democracy as well.
The Awakening may be seen one day as an opportunistic stratagem employed by the insurgents to defend themselves from superior forces. They found a way to survive and fight another day. They are fighting today in causes inconducive to regional stability and harmful to American interests.
Copyright 2014 Brian M Downing
Originally published in Geopolitica