Brian M Downing
Most accounts of the Second Iraq War (2003-11) attach great importance to counterinsurgency programs in ending the conflict there. The shift from using heavy firepower to winning hearts and minds is said to have created a “Sunni Awakening,” which changed the course of the war and brought a measure of peace.
In retrospect, the effectiveness of counterinsurgency (COIN) was an illusion. Its doctrines were uncritically bruited amid a vexing unpopular war. The Sunni Awakening came from entirely different reasons.
The invasion of Iraq ousted Saddam Hussein but it also displaced a Sunni minority from control of the predominantly-Shia country’s army, state, and economy – positions of privilege they’d enjoyed since the British installed the Sunni Hashemites in Baghdad in the 1920s. The sudden loss of power, capped off by the US-ordered dissolution of the Sunni-dominated army, created widespread resentment and anger, which developed into armed opposition. A deadly insurgency raged for several years and the American occupation was becoming costly, if not precarious.
A remarkable change, however, began in 2006 when insurgent fighters suddenly stopped fighting the US and, almost miraculously, began cooperating with them. Though the turnabout was hard-earned and displayed admirable political acumen, it did not stem from counterinsurgency programs.
The Sunni Awakening differed from counterinsurgency in three main areas. First, the fighting did not wane because COIN policies detached the population from the fighters; it waned because American forces convinced the fighters to come over to their side – ally with them and mount patrols with them. Indeed, the US gave arms to Sunni militias, which is as antithetical to counterinsurgency doctrine as anything could be. A successful counterinsurgency defeats insurgent forces; the Sunni Awakening allied with them and even armed them.
Second, there was no slow expansion of secure areas in the “oil spot” manner found in counterinsurgencies. The Sunni Awakening was more of a large-scale tribal volte-face or diplomatic coup, which covered whole swaths of Sunni Iraq – and in an astonishingly short amount of time. Counterinsurgency is painstakingly slow; the Sunni Awakening was breathtakingly fast.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, there was no reconciliation between the insurgents and the government. Though the US attempted to bring the Sunnis into an emerging political process, the effort was fruitless, perhaps even pointless, as sectarian hatred was too high after years of 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 was that the Sunnis must never again hold political power – a principle from which the Shia majority has never wavered.
If not COIN, what then does account for the Sunni Awakening and the decline in fighting? The key lies in the hopelessness of the insurgents’ position. The Sunnis were fighting three formidable enemies.
First, of course, the US and other Coalition forces were inflicting high casualties on insurgent forces. Second, Shia militias were engaged in murderous onslaughts on Sunnis, most notably in Baghdad where Moqtada al Sadr’s militia and kindred groups were inflicting egregious casualties on Sunnis – fighters and civilians alike.
Third, al Qaeda had begun to attack the Sunnis – the people, paradoxically enough, they’d come to help. Conflict between the former allies erupted over al Qaeda’s perception of insufficient piety and gratitude from locals. Austere versions of Islamic law were not welcome and al Qaeda fighters’ expectations of grateful local women met with rebuffs and resentments. Arguments followed, then fighting.
Sunni fighters, despite local support and knowledge of the terrain, 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 al Qaeda forces 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 insignificant help against Shia and American might.
The only option was to come to 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 a protracted land war in Asia.
American commanders – chiefly local ones – negotiated agreements with insurgent leaders, whose fighters then began to cooperate with US troops in establishing security and expelling al Qaeda. The US delivered services to Sunni groups (including PX privileges for elders), rebuilt devastated urban districts, and even armed the Sunni fighters. In return, the US redeployed more of its combat troops against Shia militias, especially those of al Sadr, and in a few months mauled them.
American troops and Sunni insurgents forged a convenient arrangement: the US protected and even armed the Sunnis in exchange for a cessation of hostilities and cooperation against al Qaeda. The Sunni Awakening, then, looks more like adroit diplomacy than it does a counterinsurgency program such as the ones said to have turned the tide in Malaya, Greece, the Philippines, and Algeria.
The Sunni Awakening might even one day be understood, not as a skillful American use of counterinsurgency, but as an opportunistic Sunni stratagem to defend against superior Shia and al Qaeda forces. Sunni insurgents survived to fight another day – and today they are fighting in Iraq against the Shia government and in Syria against the Alawi-Shia government there. Lebanon beckons.
Accordingly, the Sunni Awakening is playing out in a manner inconducive to regional stability and harmful to American interests. The military is now reappraising COIN, as should other parts of the foreign policy establishment.
Copyright 2013 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a political/military analyst and author of The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.