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June
30, 2003
Descending into the Quagmire
The
Occupation of Iraq
By Col. DAN SMITH
Between May 1, when President Bush declared that
major combat in Iraq was over, and June 26, 57 U.S. and eight
UK military personnel have died in Iraq. That is more than one
death every day. To the U.S. and UK toll must be added the sometimes
tens or scores of Iraqis, both Saddamists--military, intelligence,
fedayeen, non-Iraqi volunteers--and innocent civilians.
Having splashed the President's declaration
over their electronic and newspaper front pages and magazine
covers, the media are edging ever so gingerly toward serious
questioning of what kind of "war" U.S. and UK troops
(the "Authority") are fighting in Iraq. "Counterinsurgency,"
a 1960s buzzword, has already re-appeared in some reports. The
dreaded "quagmire" has also been voiced. The Pentagon
denies it is doing "body counts"--although the media
always seems to know the number of guerrilla dead. Can "free
fire zones," "five o'clock follies" (the daily
official U.S. military briefings in Saigon), and "light
at the end of the tunnel" be far off?
These phrases bring to mind Bernard Fall,
author, chronicler, and journalist in the Vietnam War. Very early
in that war--December 10, 1964--Fall delivered a lecture at the
Naval War College on "The Theory and Practice of Insurgency
and Counterinsurgency." Parts of his presentation seem as
current today in the context of Iraq as they were in 1964 for
Vietnam.
For example, Fall believed that the real
objective of guerrilla (or small) war methods is to advance "an
ideology or a political system." The U.S. government saw
fighting as the primary challenge and responded by seeking a
military solution. In so doing, it misjudged the depth and extent
of political action by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong--the
primacy of "political, ideological, and administrative"
control--and thus the true nature of their "revolutionary
warfare." Moreover, in failing to properly assess the political
and ideological (nationalistic) forces at work in Vietnam, the
Johnson and Nixon administrations tended to mischaracterize (or
ignore) the multitudinous economic and social cross-currents
that were represented by those committed to the cause of Vietnam
unification under Vietnamese leaders.
The result was a steady build-up of U.S.
personnel and equipment and the expenditures of billions of dollars,
none of which brought the U.S. any nearer to the tunnel's end--but
all of which added to the casualties on both sides and exponentially
increased the alienation of the civilian population. Even Buddhist
monks protested, with some expressing their opposition to the
repressive Saigon government and the actions of its U.S. ally
through self-immolation. As Fall noted, "One can do almost
anything with brute force except salvage an unpopular government."
History Repeating
Itself
The Bush administration seems headed
toward committing the same mistakes of its Vietnam-era predecessors--plus
a number of its own. Washington expected that the dominate Shi'ite
(62%) population, long subservient to the minority Sunnis (35%),
would at least welcome its "liberation" by the Western
coalition forces if not assist them in ousting Saddam and his
cronies. Instead, the dominant reaction has been a growing disillusionment
with and sustained protests about the continuing absence of basic
services--water, electricity, telephone, garbage and sewage removal,
basic policing, and physical security--for all classes of Shi'ites
and Sunnis under the coalition occupation.
Prior to the U.S. attack in March, 2003
the Iraqi people were promised participation in a post-war effort
to build a functioning interim democratic governance structure.
In April, two meetings of 43 and 250 Iraqi "leaders"
selected by retired General Jay Garner, the Pentagon's man-on-the-scene,
were held "to advance the national dialogue among Iraqis
regarding composition of an Iraqi interim authority." No
decisions were made, in part because of unhappiness with the
selection process and dissension about the tribal and geographical
representation (there are 2,500 tribes and sub-tribes in Iraq).
One prominent returned exile, Ahmad Chalabi, said: "The
composition at this time looks like Noah's Ark, but that is fine
at this stage." (Reuters)
Within two weeks, the idea of an "interim
Iraqi authority" was dead. The new top man-on-the-scene,
L. Paul Bremer III, said that the security situation remained
too unsettled and that additional "purging" of Saddam
loyalists from the police, civil service, and political parties
was needed. Bremer plans to appoint a council of 25-30 "advisers,"
which he will control. This reversal almost immediately sparked
calls for the U.S. to leave Iraq from the more militant, competing,
fundamentalist Shi'ite factions--Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim's
Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Moqtada al-Sadr's
adherents, and Abdul Karim al-Enzi's Dawa sect. (Al-Enzi caught
the mood exactly: "Democracy means choosing what people
want, not what the West wants.")
Then, in late June, a clear signal came
that the U.S. was getting closer to falling into a Vietnam-like
quagmire. Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who was at first
quite tolerant and even supportive of the invading troops, wrote
of "great unease" concerning the length of the U.S.
occupation, the failure of the U.S. to grant Iraqis self-rule,
and what he saw as the biggest threat to Iraq: "the obliteration
of its cultural identity." (Washington Post, June 23) As
if to accentuate the Ayatollah's remarks, within 48 hours six
UK military police were dead and another eight UK troops were
wounded in two attacks deep in Shi'ite dominated southern Iraq.
Distant Rhetoric
The rhetoric from Washington seems as
distant from what is happening on the ground in Iraq today as
it was during the Vietnam War. The President and his representatives
point to the $2.5 billion for Iraq's reconstruction in the March
supplemental, of which $700 million has been committed. They
trumpet the vaccination programs for Iraqi children and the expected
troop augmentations of 20,000-30,000 from as many as 41 other
countries to assist with security in Iraq--troops for whom, in
many cases, the U.S. is footing the bill.
Even with this force augmentation, the
U.S. military will continue to carry the load. There are still
146,000 U.S. military personnel in Iraq (plus 16,000 UK troops)
and another 45,000 providing support from Kuwait. More than 210,000
National Guard and Reserves have been called up for either homeland
defense, duty in the Balkans and the Sinai Desert, or the Iraq
war itself, with many into their second year of continuous active
duty. U.S. planners say a new Iraqi army of 40,000 will be ready
in three years, a clear signal that administration assurances
of being out of Iraq in two years simply will not happen. Some
in Congress predict a 5- to 10-year presence.
U.S. forces will also continue to bear
the brunt of the casualties. In the fighting up to and including
Baghdad's capture, 138 U.S. forces were killed; of the 57 who
have died since May 1, 20 were killed by hostile fire (plus the
UK dead noted above). Washington says the casualties are "militarily
insignificant," while field commanders note a seemingly
steady stream of outsiders entering Iraq for the immediate purpose
of killing U.S. soldiers and a longer-range goal of building
pressure in the United States for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
The demonstrations by disgruntled Iraqi
civilians, civil servants, and cashiered military officers seeking
back pay or pensions, combined with the plethora of firearms
in Iraq, have contributed to Iraqi civilian casualties as U.S.
troops react to the taunts ("America is the enemy of Allah"),
gunfire, and general chaos in Iraq. In Baghdad's first post-war
public opinion poll, 73% said the U.S. had failed to provide
adequate security in the city. (London Times, June 20) But even
as they deride the lack of results, Iraqis sense that, for now,
they have no option; in the same poll, only 17% want the Western
troops out immediately. That figure may start to increase if
U.S. troops continue to engage in "security practices"
that Iraqis deem <inappropriate--e.g>., male soldiers "patting
down" Iraqi women while looking for weapons or arresting
minor children. And a surge in "Yankee go home" sentiment
could be expressed in increased attacks on U.S. forces by new
groups in new, often Shi'ite areas.
Such opposition, armed only with AK-47
rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, and light mortars may seem
puny against tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and modern aircraft
with precision-guided munitions, but that is what Vietnam-era
administrations thought in the 1960s and early 1970s. Between
June 9 and June 22, the Pentagon logged 131 "incidents"
involving U.S. troops in Iraq, including 41 attacks on U.S. compounds,
26 attacks on sentry or observation posts, and 26 on convoys.
(New York Times, June 22) The next 24-hour period saw an additional
25 incidents. Moreover, not all heavy weapons in Iraq are being
collected by "the Authority." The 70,000 Kurdish pesh
merga will retain their tanks and artillery until their expected
integration into the new Iraqi army. (Obviously, not all 70,000
can be amalgamated; those excluded could cause problems later.)
A question the Bush White House and the
Pentagon still have to answer is just how many U.S. military
men and women will be needed to pacify and provide security in
Iraq. Before the war, on February 25, 2003, then-Army Chief of
Staff Eric Shinseki told Congress that "several hundred
thousand" troops would be needed in post-war Iraq. Both
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz,
sharply disagreed, with the latter stating that Shinseki's estimate
was "wildly off the mark." But the question lingers
for many in Congress, the U.S. public, and the armed forces.
How Many Troops and
for How Long?
Traditional military doctrine estimates
that a conventional army requires roughly a 10-to-1 size advantage
if it is to defeat a well-equipped, well-executed, persistent
insurgency. But where insurgents, while less centrally organized,
are still too powerful for standard police (or where standard
police do not exist), responding to and measuring against armed
insurgent strength may not be the best gauge. In 1995, James
Quinlivan, writing in the Army War College's quarterly, Parameters,
suggested that force requirements should be based on the need
for population control (to cut off support to the insurgents)
and local security--that is, the need to "win hearts and
minds" and therefore requires a force proportional to the
population.
Quinlivan describes three historical
force ratio levels. The first, one to four security personnel
per 1,000 population, is essentially the ratio for ordinary policing.
In a military setting, the U.S. Constabulary force in post-World
War II Germany was staffed at 2.2 per thousand for "enforcing
public order, controlling black market transactions, and related
police functions." The same ratio existed in the UN Transitional
Authority in Cambodia (1992-1993), whose duties included "supervision
of the cease-fire and voluntary disarmament of combatants, supervision
of about 60,000 indigenous police to provide law and order, and
administration of a free and fair election." But the UN
had little real presence outside the main urban areas.
The second force ratio is from four to
ten security personnel per 1,000 population. India's campaign
against militants in Punjab, viewed as quite punitive by many,
was implemented at a ratio of almost 6 per 1,000 population.
At the high point of the 1965 U.S. intervention in the Dominican
Republic, whose purpose was preventing civil war and restoring
"stability," Army and Marine personnel operated at
a ratio of 6.6 per 1,000 population.
Quinlivan's third ratio level is above
ten per 1,000 population. Military examples of this level are
the Malayan Emergency of the 1950s when foreign and full-time
indigenous security forces operated at a ratio of 20 per 1,000
population. The same ratio pertained to the combination of the
Royal Ulster Constabulary and British troops in Northern Ireland
for much of the period 1969-1994. Here, multiple small groups
advocating separation from or continued union with Great Britain
waged war on each other, and one side fought "occupying"
security forces with a goal of forcing them out--conditions that
are unfolding in Iraq today.
Applying the average of 2.2 per 1,000
of level one to Iraq would require 52, 800 individuals. But Iraq
is not a defeated, broken, devastated country like Germany. Nor
is it at peace or semi-peace, where the main task is maintaining
public order. It is still a country at war, a country saturated
with weapons, a country that is becoming more and more restless
under its "liberator."
Level two ratios of 6 and 6.6 yield 144,000
and 158,400, respectively. These are comparable strength totals
to what the U.S. and its allies have in Iraq today. Yet these
forces seem unable to isolate Iraqi and foreign militants who
have come into Iraq to fight "the Authority" and to
provide both the perception and reality of public safety. Perhaps
even more important is the need to avoid any hint of punitive
measures that inevitably would lead to a precipitous decline
in general Iraqi tolerance of foreign forces.
At 10 per 1,000 population, the point
of intersection between levels two and three, Quinlivan's numbers
skyrocket to 240,000. (Interestingly, just in Baghdad, where
the population is roughly five million, there are 55,000 troops,
producing a ratio of 11 per 1,000.) Matching the British experience
in Malaysia and Northern Ireland at 20 per 1,000 doubles this
total to 480,000, which is the total authorized strength of the
active U.S. Army. Clearly, any of these levels are impossible
to sustain given the demands for and on people. Even level two
ratios may be impossible, given that 5 of the Army's 10 active
divisions currently are engaged in Iraq.
In Iraq, as one phase of the "global
war on terror," the Bush administration chose war and occupation,
and must now face the consequences of its choices. Having dislodged
the previous regime by force, the U.S. increasingly is caught
in the quagmire of depending on force to control the Iraqi people
in the name of national and regional "peace." But "peace
through war" or the threat of war is a costly chimera, both
for the "victor" and the loser. This truth was well
understood by the 19th Century British statesman Edmund Burke,
who noted that "War never leaves where it found a nation."
What remains to be seen is what price
will be exacted from the U.S. public--and in what condition Iraq
will be in two, five, or 10 years.
Dan Smith
is a military affairs analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus, a
retired U.S. army colonel and a senior fellow on Military Affairs
at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. He can be reached
at: dan@fcnl.org
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