The secret of The Surge

Rosa Brooks summed it up pretty well last week in The walls around Bush's Iraq strategy Los Angeles Times 12/20/07.

Over the last year, sectarian cleansing has often occurred with reluctant American connivance. Our troops have watched helplessly as neighbors have driven out neighbors, and the walls that U.S. troops build help freeze the new sectarian boundaries in place. In Washington, the administration still speaks of a unified Iraqi central government and "national reconciliation," but in practice, we've gained a respite from violence in part because we've given up on reconciliation and accepted sectarian segregation as the new status quo.

In other words, for all the early rhetoric about benchmarks, "political progress" and reconciliation, the truth is that most Washington insiders accept that we're heading toward a different and much grimmer version of Iraq. As Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group comments: "Iraq is moving in the direction of a failed state, with competing centers of power run by warlords and militias. The central government has no political control whatsoever beyond Baghdad, maybe not even beyond the Green Zone."

We used to say we wanted freedom and democracy. But these days, we'll settle for more warlords, more segregation and fewer bodies. (my emphais)

Anthony Cordesman has out a new analysis of the status of the Iraq War, Progress in Iraq: The December Report on Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq (Center for Security and International Studies) 12/20/07. He highlights the current Department of Defense (DOD) definition of success in the Iraq War: "The strategic goal of the United States in Iraq remains a unified, democratic and federal Iraq that can govern, defend and sustain itself and is an ally in the war on terror."

He looks at what it would take to achieve that goal. One thing is something that is hard to see as anything other than an open-ended US troop commitment, in practice:

The US needs to maintain a strategic relationship with Iraq that provides stable support for Iraqi security, accommodation, economic development, and the creation of effective governance over a period of at least three to five more years. This does not mean maintaining current US force and aid levels, or not making US support conditional on a realistic level of Iraqi progress. It does mean understanding that 2008 cannot be a decisive year in building stable accommodation, only a beginning.

So, great. After six years of war (March 2003 will be at the sixth anniversary0, we will finally reach the beginning - if we're lucky.

I have to give Cordesman credit. Given his grim prognostications, it takes some real vision to keep optimism about achieving some kind of victory, as he is. Or at least this optimistic: "There are ... strong indicators that the glass has gone from one that was mostly empty [at the end of 2006] to one that is at least half full."

He also points to the need for Iraqi political reconciliation. Due to the developments that Brooks' column highlights, that possibility at the national level faces even greater obstacles now than before The Surge. Juan Cole writes at his Informed Comment blog in Top Ten Myths about Iraq 2007 12/26/07:

The government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has for the moment lost the support of the Sunni Arabs in parliament. The Sunnis in his cabinet have resigned. Even some Shiite parties have abandoned the government. Sunni Arabs, who are aware that under his government Sunnis have largely been ethnically cleansed from Baghdad, see al-Maliki as a sectarian politician uninterested in the welfare of Sunnis.

Then there's the issue of basic governmental services. Cordesman writes:

Iraq governance remains weak at every level and ineffective at many. There is no agreement on a political structure that can lead to the creation of effective local and provincial governments, define Kurdish autonomy and the form federalism will take, or shape the tangible political structure of accommodation and differences in governance by major sect and ethnic group and in mixed areas. This process will take at least several years to develop and reach some level of stability. (my emphasis)

Remember that business of developing the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) about which we used to hear promises all the time? Cordesman sees that as vital, and writes:

It is unclear that real progress can be made in these areas before far more progress is made in accommodation, and it may well be three to five more years before a reasonably stable mix of police, courts, and a heavily "federalized" rule of law can emerge. (my emphasis)

In other words, another five years to get there. If everything goes well.

He also points to the need for economic development, which is going terribly slowly because of all the other problems.

Cordesman points out in a restrained but unmistakable way the secret of The Surge which the Rosa Brooks column addresses when he writes that "the unplanned Sunni uprising against Al Qa'ida that has been the real key to the successes of the last several months."

Here, "Al Qa'ida" refers to the radical Salafist groups that call themselves "Al Qa'ida in Iraq" (AQI), whose affiliation with Osama bin Laden's central Al Qa'ida group is fairly tenuous.

The "unplanned Sunni uprising" refers to anti-American Sunni militias with whom the Americans started actively collaborating in attacking AQI. While doing so, the Sunni militias have not been focusing on killing Americans and have focused less on civil war against the Shi'a. But there is little reason to think that the Sunni militias have given up their intention to fight the American occupation and the Shi'a.

Pursuing this course of allying with the Sunni militias against AQI would make more sense as part of an immediate exit strategy. But as part of an indefinite commitment to American troop presence, it reinforces the power of local Sunni militias who will later turn to fight the Americans and the Shi'a, and makes the establishment of a functioning national government more difficult. As Joost Hiltermann says in the quotation above, it pushes Iraq more in the direction of being a failed state for a protracted period.

Another way to put it is that the short-term "success" of The Surge was achieved by accepting in practice for 2007 that Iraq is a failed state and that the US military had to work with what it had. Again, that would mean one thing as part of an exit strategy. But as part of an effort that requires American combat troops to fight for 5-10 years more, it makes the political problems in Iraq more intractable.

Tags: anthony cordesman, iraq war, juan cole, mccain escalation, rosa brooks, surge