Brian M Downing
The United States’ war in Iraq, as is more apparent with each passing year, is going badly. The administration of President George W Bush has recently admitted as much and announced a new strategy – or at least a new word. “Counterinsurgency” glitters in studies of guerrilla war, darkles in news reports, but is not generally understood. Accordingly, the term either enjoys a talismanic quality, offering hope of reversing failing fortunes, or it is dismissed as a new buzzword, replacing others that have lost luster and utility.
Counterinsurgency doctrine was developed by innovative British and French officers as they fought anti-colonial movements during the post-World War II period in Malaya, Indochina and Algeria. In these conflicts, Western armies, which were accustomed to fighting other conventional armies (that is, each other), sought to learn to fight indigenous forces, which fought guerrilla-style and enjoyed support from the local population.
In essence, counterinsurgency doctrine presents ways of defeating insurgent guerrillas by separating them, physically and politically, from the local populace. A critical start is moving people away from areas of substantial guerrilla activity and relocating them to areas under government control. (The Strategic Hamlet Program of the Vietnam War is a case in point.) Alternatively, military force is used to drive insurgents out of an area, leaving the people in place.
Second, government forces, both military and civilian, maintain a presence in the cleared area or relocation camp. They live and work among the people, protect them from attack, and eventually develop their trust. Government forces operate much like cops on their beats (an often-encountered simile in the texts, this), building confidence, trading favors and developing intelligence networks.
In time, the government provides basic services, jobs and education – things guerrillas promise but can rarely deliver amid war. Having established a secure locus, government control expands by repeating the process in adjacent areas, spreading across the country like an oil spot on water (another often-encountered simile), until the guerrillas are pushed into geographically and politically marginal areas, and the insurgency founders.
The record of counterinsurgency programs is mixed, successful here and there, but often only in specific regions of an embattled country (Algiers in the Algerian War) and for reasons peculiar to those regions (ethnic mistrust in Malaya).
It might be useful at the outset of efforts in Iraq to ask whether the US military is capable of developing and putting into place an effective counterinsurgency program. Though the hard experience of Vietnam and the intervening 35 years afforded the motivation and time to develop counterinsurgency training, the military remained focused on fighting the Warsaw Pact in Central Europe and, later, conventional armies in the Middle East.
Furthermore, US generals resisted emphasis on counterinsurgency, in no small part to reduce the likelihood of being sent to fight another guerrilla war – something that after Vietnam they all but vowed to avoid.
The marines might be prepared to fare better. They developed a measure of expertise in Central America during the 1920s and 1930s and later used it limitedly though moderately successfully in Vietnam. Civilian leadership over the past 10 years or so has mandated greater emphasis on “civil operations” – a cousin of counterinsurgency – but both the US Army and Marine Corps have learned much of their counterinsurgency skill in the unforgiving classrooms of Iraq.
General David Petraeus, the new US commander in Iraq, a gifted officer who has studied long and hard there, will institute the new curriculum. Many of his students are tired, however, and perhaps not amenable to putting aside long-standing outlooks and methods.
The beginning of the new counterinsurgency program has been well publicized. In Baghdad, Sunni Arab sections of the city will be cleared of insurgents and whatever al-Qaeda fighters are also there. This will be the most intense combat of the war – the battle of Baghdad. The announcement of Baghdad as the beginning point, though unavoidable and obvious, is problematic.
As attuned as anyone to recent announcements, insurgent leaders, who have thus far demonstrated formidable tactical skills and increased cooperation among factions, know precisely where and roughly when the new phase will start. Preparations have almost certainly begun. Arms caches, observation positions, fields of fire and tiers of explosive devices are probably being set up for a defense in depth throughout Sunni Baghdad.
Insurgent leaders probably know they cannot defeat the US and Iraqi troops in the battle of Baghdad, at least not in the usual sense. They will seek to inflict high casualties on US and Iraqi troops, force US firepower to devastate Baghdad at least as much as it did Fallujah, and attempt to cause Iraqi army units to disintegrate or at least balk.
They will create diversionary uprisings elsewhere in the Sunni Triangle, strike into Shi’ite neighborhoods of Baghdad, and attempt to cut off the city from fuel and food supplies.
Insurgents will be bolstered by the expectation that high US casualties and the devastation of large parts of Baghdad will decisively transform US opinion into wide and intense opposition insisting on a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, however graceless that might be.
The battle of Baghdad will be furious, and because of its proximity to the Green Zone it will be televised. It will be watched with keen interest throughout the Arab world, which sees in these events the possibility, perhaps now the likelihood, of a long-standing hope – Arabs strategically defeating Americans.
Rallying Sunni support to the largely Shi’ite government constitutes another hurdle. Counterinsurgency doctrine assumes that much of the local populace can, through entreaties and services, be won over to the government. Whatever empirical evidence from other wars there is for this, it is necessary to assess the counterinsurgency’s prospects in Iraq by specific potentials in that country, not those drawn from past applications. Baghdad is not the Mekong Delta; Iraq is not Malaya.
Sunni Arabs believe that the US invaded their country under false pretenses, stripped them of their deserved positions in the state and army, and intentionally humiliated them. They had, over the course of many decades, built a modern, prosperous nation, only to see it turned over to Shi’ite fanatics, in league with foreign powers, determined to expel if not extirpate them. They have suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties and endured arbitrary roundups and imprisonments. Two million or so have fled the nation and many have been tortured (a dark, largely unmentioned part of counterinsurgency); some have been killed during torture.
It remains to be seen whether Iraqi Shi’ites, who have long despised the country’s Sunni Arabs and now predominate in government, will demonstrate munificence toward them or use the battle of Baghdad to crush them. One might also wonder whether US troops – not the generals, the troops – are inclined to treat Sunni Arabs justly, those increasingly hated hadjis who for almost four years now have waged a savage and pitiless war.
A further aspect in gauging a counterinsurgency’s prospects is the sophistication of insurgent organizations. The Ba’ath Party, through which Saddam Hussein ruled, provides important organizational strengths. It had existed clandestinely for many years since the 1940s and, either out of paranoia or astute assessment of domestic and foreign dangers, retained, even while in power, the ability to flee underground and fight its way back to power. The redoubtable Ba’athist cell network now serves as a basis for clandestine operations.
The old Iraqi army figures too. Former officers bring organizational skills, an extant command structure and expertise in weaponry, especially in infantry tactics, mortars and explosives. Disgraced by the seemingly invincible US military twice and dishonored by unceremonious demobilization after Baghdad fell, they burn for vengeance. Guerrilla forces, more suitable to their society and culture than conventional formations, are making vengeance look attainable. Tribal and religious networks also provide organizational patterns and impart moral energies to guerrillas.
In the absence of strong US congressional opposition, a counterinsurgency program, with Baghdad its starting spot, seems inevitable. The outcome might be as well. To be successful, US and Iraqi forces must accomplish most if not all of the following: deliver serious damage to insurgent organizations; inflict heavy and daunting casualties on insurgents; avoid suffering casualties that cause already weak US support to collapse or the fledgling Iraqi army to disintegrate; bring government services to Sunni Arab people and win them over; avoid losing ground in adjacent cities during the battle of Baghdad; and retain sufficient military and governmental resources to replicate the program outside Baghdad. A tall order, to be sure.
If successful, counterinsurgency will undermine the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement and elicit – or force – greater cooperation between Sunni and Shi’ite groups. If not, it will worsen sectarian conflict and strengthen the insurgency. In the US, it will underscore the impracticality of the Bush administration’s goal of transforming the Middle East into a Western-oriented region and lead to powerful if not irresistible public and congressional demands to withdraw expeditiously. The heretofore pliant US generals themselves may call for the same. The administration stands at the Tigris – the die is cast.
Brian M Downing is the author of several works of political and military history, including The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam. At the age of 18, he was awarded a Pentagon grant to take part in Vietnamese history. He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.
(Copyright 2007 Brian M Downing.)