One lesson he draws is that the US messed up big-time in building the ISF (Iraqi Security Forces):
Coalition planners assumed that the Iraqi security forces would be a public institution that acted in the best interests of the entire population. The commanders of the National Police had other plans. The Ministry of the Interior was initially controlled by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shia group that, as its name suggests, wishes to remold Iraq into a Shia republic along the Iranian model. Having experienced severe repression at the hands of the state security forces in the Saddam era, they viewed control of the police forces as an absolute necessity. The Iraqi police, and especially the Iraqi National Police, became a force created with Coalition resources and yet subverted to advance a violent sectarian agenda.I'll ask my tired question again. If a US Army War College publication like Parameters can publish straightforward, critical analyses like this that reflect reality rather than the Bush administration line, why can't the Establishment press do it more often?
The result was predictable. Just as good intentions in El Salvador fueled the creation of [a counterinsurgency group called] ORDEN and the murder of thousands of campesinos, good intentions in Iraq created the National Police and resulted in the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad. National Police units facilitated the operation of Shia death squads in neighborhoods they were responsible for, ran their own network of secret prisons and torture chambers, and were implicated in repeated massacres of Sunni civilians. The situation became so bad that an entire Iraqi police commando brigade was taken off line for retraining, nine brigade and 17 battalion commanders were replaced, and the Coalition pressured Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki into naming a new, reformist Minister of the Interior.
Unfortunately, the damage caused by the rush to achieve security through the creation of the National Police may be irreversible. Much like the structures of ORDEN [in El Salvador] that survived the formal dissolution of the organization in 1980, the Ministry of the Interior and the National Police have proven resistant to reform. Despite Coalition efforts, the force is still overwhelmingly Shia, and the government has ignored a recently created police training center in Anbar Province, according to its commander. Additionally, the National Police are widely reviled and have been so thoroughly discredited in the eyes of the population that General James Jones’s commission on Iraqi Security Forces recommended it be entirely disbanded. (my emphasis)
Chamberlain also makes a point of how important it is that the external allies supporting counterinsurgency efforts keep a credible threat of withdrawal. The Republicans seem incapable these days of even considering such a thing:
A successful counterinsurgency campaign has to carry within it a credible threat of withdrawal. Rather than a security plan that will be implemented regardless of political change, security aid should be tied to political benchmarks. Consistent failure to achieve those benchmarks can result in the continual drawdown and eventual elimination of US support. In one sense this is brinksmanship - the host nation government's fear of revolution versus the US government's discomfort with instability. But in another, it's just common sense; without political reform, American forces will be mired in and contributing to the perpetuation of an unending conflict. Feckless, self-interested, sectarian politicians do not deserve the sacrifices in blood and treasure required to prop up their regimes. (my emphasis)Again, why can't our Big Pundits ever seem to put things this clearly?
Tags: counterinsurgency, iraq war, robert chamberlain
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