Rational Grounds

Col. Hashim was in Tal Afar doing urban counter insurgency with 3rd Armored Regiment for Operation Restoring Rights/Freedom (both terms were used) during the summer of 2005 with Col. H.R. McMaster. He's done three tours in Iraq, and he'll be going back for his fourth (and, he hopes, final) tour this summer.

Tal Afar is a largely Iraqi Turkmen city with a 90% Turkmen and 10% Arab or Kurdish population. It's an old Ottoman garrison town; the Sarai district where Ottoman troops quartered is a rabbit warren surrounding an old castle. This is also where Iraqi troops have been quartered since time out of mind. This was where the first shots of the 1920 Iraqi revolt were fired.

The sectarian makeup is 75% Sunni, 25% Shia. Turkmens naturally provided most of the Sunni insurgency in Tal Afar. Hashim stated that Sunni & Shia were "always sniping at each other," so these tensions definitely go at least as far back as the summer of 2005.

The US military was concerned in large part with trying to increase the number of police in Tal Afar and the surrounding area. The key issue for the Tal Afar residents was who controlled the police. At one point the Sunnis did; when a new Shia commander fired 700 of them and replaced them with his men those who were fired joined the insurgency.

The staffing of the police was primarily a method for employment and patronage; the sheikhs, having lost significant influence in the aftermath of the invasion, were always trying to regain some of their power and position. Hashim told of one sheikh who wanted 400 of the young men in his tribe - virtually all of them - hired as police for his area. When the US commanders protested that they had to include young men from neighboring areas as well, the sheikh cursed them (the other young men) as scoundrels and thugs, saying that these other areas were lawless. When Hashim replied that this would seem to indicate that those areas needed the police more than the sheikh's, the sheikh responded, "Boy, get with the program. I need to keep my men employed."

Tal Afar was fairly hostile throughout Hashim's stay there. His convoys frequently hit IEDs - he was personally involved with three or four. Foreign "salafist jihadis" would come in through the badly policed Syrian border near Tal Afar by way Deir-el-Zor on the Syrian side. The insurgents would use the rivers to infiltrate into the Iraqi heartland & major cities. Frequently insurgents would try to move about dressed as women. But, that said, Hashim reported that the insurgency was and is mostly Iraqi - foreigners only comprise about 10-15%. Iraqis can tell an Algerian or Saudi from a mile away by their manner or accent, and these guys usually don't know the area or dialect. The foreigners need the native Iraqi insurgent infrastructure to succeed.

The term "mainstream insurgents" described most of the population in Tal Afar according to Hashim. US commanders did and still do negotiate with "mainstream insurgents" – local sheikhs and power brokers and those with legitimate grievances. They do so to draw them into the system and keep them from resorting to violence.

Commanders in Tal Afar frequently had to deal with national Iraqi notables & central US authorities as well. Hashim found the central authorities (Iraqi & US) indecisive, opaque, and frequently corrupt.

During Operation Restoring Rights/Freedom, US forces tried to move the insurgents out step-by-step. The used a lot of sniper units to strangle movement in the city and proceeded in phases. The plan had to include the aftermath as well; a restoration of normalcy. The ACR (Armored Cavalry Regiment) did that fairly effectively, but Hashim was doubtful that that will become the norm for the rest of the country. The problem is that these lessons are not learned institutionally and passed on. There is a reluctance in the Army to learn effective counterinsurgency, according to Hashim. We end up having to relearn the same lessons every time.

As previously stated, the Tal Afar insurgency was/is mostly Sunni Turkmen - lower middle class, public sector employees of the Hussein regime. They participated as Ba'ath officials, army & police officers, and civil employees. The Turkmen were known as very good marksmen and trained snipers in an army that famously can't shoot. (Hashim described the most common Iraqi defensive technique as the "death blossom" - a frantic firing in all directions that frequently took out many friendly units and perhaps wounded a few US soldiers.)

Hashim recounted one conversation he had with a captured insurgent:

AH: Why are you fighting?

CI: Because you are here. Why are you here?

AH: To spread democracy and build a democratic Iraq.

CI: Are you willing to die to do this?

AH: Um. No, not really. But I am a professional, and I am here doing my job for my country.

CI: Well I'm willing to die to make you leave.

Hashim talked a little about why these guys were fighting, and it came down to several different reasons. There is one group of jihadis determined to use terrorism to foment a civil war. But the most common rationales captured insurgents gave were: fighting the occupation, fighting for their material interests (jobs, resources), or fighting because of heavy-handed US actions in Iraq. The ideological rationales were: fighting for their identity (to defend who they are), fighting to defend a "tribal" honor, fighting to defend their nation and/or Islam.

Saddam is frequently held up as a symbol for the insurgency, but virtually no one actually wants him back. Rather, at most insurgents are humiliated at his treatment and see his treatment as representing certain truths about the occupation.

The "fighting for identity" bit obviously required a little elaboration, and Hashim explained that the invasion upset pretty much the whole of Iraqi society. In the aftermath of that, Iraqis are figuring out who they are or want to be now that Saddam is gone. Hashim says that there has been a fusion of nationalism and Islamism going on, promulgated in part by The Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq. They never refer to the insurgency as a jihad but rather as a war of national liberation. And you now have former Ba'athists turning to salafism and proselytizing in the insurgent areas.

According to Hashim, right now there are three contending national identities: a Sunni-Turkmen/Sunni-Arab identity, a Shia-Arab identity, and a Kurdish identity. The insurgency has sharpened these distinctions, and the Sunni insurgency can no longer really incorporate the other two identities. There has been a distinct increase in ethno-sectarian "dislike" - your enemy is now your neighbor, where once Iraqis lived relatively peacefully together. Sectarian differences have come to be perceived as immutable as ethnic differences – Shi'ism is increasingly seen as a Persian "virus," infecting Arab lands in some quarters.

Hashim then talked about the tactics employed. In any guerrilla campaign there is a deliberate blurring of military and civilian boundaries by insurgents, because this redounds to their advantage. Attacks on them are more likely to hit civilians, increasing discontent and widening their recruiting pool. Hashim said that reports of a new "decentralized" form of insurgency were overblown. All insurgencies have a hierarchical setup with a top-tier cadre to direct the strategy. The cells at the bottom of the pyramid will have varying degrees of autonomy but they must have logistical networks to carry out any attacks.

More generally, insurgencies employ guerrilla warfare and terrorism and require logistics & resources. They usually have political wings. They can't defeat a paramount military head on, but they can make a country ungovernable and thereby force the other side to give up. To do this they target local collaborators, police, and infrastructure. Note that at first the Iraqi insurgents attacked heavily armed US combat soldiers. They quickly learned not to do that - something Hashim understandably referred to as "combat darwinism." Finally, for the insurgents the population is the "center of gravity" of the war. They need it to support them and hide them to survive.

This is all very important because, according to Hashim, most the opponents we will face in the future are going to employ these tactics. They won't want to stand still and be defeated on the field immediately. These are timeless principles of insurgency, but each insurgency has its own peculiarities that cannot be transferred across time & space. You have to know what lessons to take from each historical example of insurgency to know how to fight future ones.

In Iraq, Hashim says the insurgents have largely succeeded - Iraq is virtually ungovernable today. Insurgents have used media very effectively. They have websites and strategy is well disseminated. They do an excellent job of targetting vulnerabilities and destroying infrastructure.

Hashim laid out four ways insurgencies end: insurgent victory, COIN (counter-insurgency) victory, endless war, or a stalemated equilibrium. He listed Vietnam, British occupied Malaysia, Afghanistan and the Turkish/Kurd conflict as examples, respectively.

He also laid out three basic COIN strategies: Extermination (aka the Roman option), Coercion (a dehumanization & brutal repression campaign), and "Hearts and Minds."

He described the basic principles of COIN as having: a clear political goal, an integrated military-social-economic-political plan, ensuring civil-military coordination, recognizing that the population is the center-of-gravity in the conflict, ensuring good strategic intel on the region and country, building effective operational intel (with an emphasis on HUMINT), building effective local police systems, and functioning according to lawful standards to maintain legitimacy in the eyes of the locals, your own public, and the international community.

The Iraq campaign has failed on most of these, says Hashim. The CPA officials were generally short-timers, there for three months and then gone, and ignorant of Iraq, nation-building, and counterinsurgency. Their attitude was "we don't need the Sunnis." In the words of one CPAer - "Fuck 'em." They felt that with the support of 75% of the population, they didn't need to worry about the Sunni discontents. According to Hashim this is a profound mistake and misunderstanding of how insurgencies work.

Hashim confirmed that the Iraqi army and police are basically ethno-sectarian militias. He said that, when we leave, they will dissolve into their constituent parts. We won't be able to leave for five to ten years if "Iraqization" is going to work at all.

Hashim ended his main talk here, and took questions.

Won't the Sunnis lose if we pull out - shouldn't this make them more willing to compromise?

AH: The Sunnis don't think so – they don't even believe they are the minority. They think they are stronger & better trained & better fighters period, and believe that the Arab countries will come to their aid against Iranian involvement.

What would you do, if you were made commander in Iraq right now?

AH: I would separate the various ethno-sectarian populations at the fault lines (Kirkuk, Baghdad, Diyala, Tal Afar, etc.). I would focus our attention & combat power on ethno-sectarian fault lines to prevent the outbreak of a full-scale civil war.

Where are we headed - what's going to happen in Iraq?

AH: We're not in a good place right now. Anybody who tells you different is not telling the truth. We were never interested in democratizing Iraq - that was an ideological device. We've done nothing to establish institutions of democracy – just religius and ethnosectarian differences. The CPA survived on the basis of "divide and rule." This was enshrined in the first independent government created.

Iraq is a big black hole - resources go in and nothing comes out. There is a low grade civil war right now, with ethnic cleansing; denying this given the casualty levels is just silly. We aren't going to prevent a full-scale civil war if we don't recognize the problem now. The country won't split up as long as we're there, but we're having a defacto split even now. We also can't just stop midway and revamp our strategy. The best bet is confederalizing Iraq into autonomous mini-states and run the country on that basis until the present emotions die down.

Everything you say tells me we're going to lose. Shouldn't we leave?

AH: It's hard to be objective about this. I've lost friends and countrymen; I've seen kids get blown up by IEDs. It's hard to say just cut our losses. It will take 15 years to win. But we've lost so much already, and so have the Iraqis, I don't want to say we shouldn't try.

What happens if we pull out?

AH: Civil war and ethnic cleansing, a division into three component states. There will be involvement by neighboring countries - Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran will definitely be overtly involved. Naturally the divisions in Iraq will be exported throughout the region. Remember that Iran is only 62% Persian; you're going to see a replay of 15th-16th century Europe.

And wow, that's why I don't blog more of these things. Whoof.