The Gamble

by Thomas E. Ricks

  The turned insurgents at first tended to refer to themselves as “the Sunni Awakening.” Tellingly, Petraeus and other American officials used a variety of euphemisms, as if not to face head-on the sensitive reality that they were negotiating cease-fires with the enemy. Some units initially used terms such as “security contractors,” “neighborhood watches,” and “provisional security forces.” Then the official name became “Concerned Local Citizens,” until that Orwellian term was dropped for something marginally more realistic, “Sons of Iraq.” There was a small irony in this last term, because until Petraeus and Odierno took command, American officials often had labeled insurgents “Anti-Iraqi Forces,” even using the acronym “AIF” in briefings. Now those fighters had gone from being deemed to be against Iraq to being its progeny.

  The cease-fires didn’t quite amount to an amnesty, because there was no explicit forgiveness. But there was an implied one. Nor were they surrenders, because the fighters remained armed, and in some cases were given new and better weapons. They also went on the American payroll at about $10 a day per man, hardly a punitive step. The CIA paid bonuses to favored sheikhs. In reality these were paid truces of an uncertain duration and with a limited writ. The insurgents hadn’t come over to the American side or even necessarily endorsed American goals. Maj. Mark Brady, a reconciliation specialist with the 1st Cavalry Division, noted that one Sunni leader said to him, “As soon as we finish with al Qaeda, we start with the Shiite extremists.”

  But the turning proved the answer to the sticky problem seen in Baghdad in 2006 of U.S. forces being able to clear but Iraqi forces being unable to hold. That was especially true in Sunni areas, where Iraqi forces tended to be seen as tools of the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. The answer: Have the Sunnis do it themselves.

  At first, this new policy of paying off a former enemy was largely being done without informing the Baghdad government about it. “In the initial months, we weren’t even telling them [Iraqi government officials], we were just doing it,” said Emma Sky. Upon learning of the talks, she added, officials in the Baghdad government “accused us of creating a Sunni army that could lead to warlordism and possibly to a civil war.” These were concerns that would remain alive for years.

  During the spring many Iraqi commanders resisted meeting with the former insurgents who were volunteering to turn sides, said Col. Green, chief of operations for the 1st Cavalry Division. “They hadn’t received any orders from the Iraqi government,” he said. But soon, he said, many Iraqi battalion and brigade commanders began to work with the groups, even without direction from Baghdad. “They were finding ways to accommodate it, to share information, to deconflict the battlespace, even though they hadn’t had orders,” he said.

  Nor were the front-line troops being asked to work with their former enemies told much about the changeover. Cpl. David Goldich, a smart young Marine in al Anbar Province, recalled simply seeing local guys showing up with weapons and setting up a rudimentary checkpoint on a main road. To a Marine eye, they didn’t look impressive—“unshaven men wearing civilian clothes carrying rusty AK-47s milling about,” he wrote. But he soon concluded that “they are worth their weight in gold. . . . an amazing force multiplier that denied the enemy freedom of movement in a manner we could not.” They spoke the language, they knew the area, and they knew who wasn’t from it. Higher-ups wouldn’t approve giving supplies to the new guards, so Goldich’s unit decided to help them out and scrounged weapons and food for the men and bullet-proof glass and concertina wire for their checkpoints. “What we gave them we stole from base, and probably would have been punished if caught,” he recalled. (Goldich, who graduated from the University of Virginia before enlisting, also showed a far greater understanding of counterinsurgency than the Marine chain of command had after the Haditha incident. He took more risks, such as sometimes approaching Iraqis without carrying a weapon, because he thought it would help his unit achieve its mission. “My job is to defeat the enemy, not protect myself,” he reasoned.)

  Later in the spring, the process became more formalized. Odierno established a “reconciliation cell” in his headquarters to track the turnings and to advise commanders on how to do it. This was partly because commanders were asking for guidance about who they were allowed to talk to, whether they should treat with insurgent leaders, and how to respond to those leaders’ requests for money, weapons, and official support. Odierno laid down some informal guidelines: Don’t talk to war criminals. Don’t give them ammunition. And if they ask you to stop doing raids in their area, tell them you can’t promise that. Powell, the planner, recalled that “General Odierno’s guidance was, ‘We are going to be striking deals with people who have killed American soldiers. That may turn your stomach, but that’s the way forward.’ ”

  Once brigade and battalion commanders grew comfortable with the process, “it really started to catch on,” said Brig. Gen. Mark McDonald, who was overseeing the new cell. The new opening with the Americans offered the Sunnis a way out from their unhappy alliance with al Qaeda. It is probably no coincidence that in April, as the top American commanders threw their weight behind the turning, the Islamic Army, a group of Sunni insurgent militias, posted on jihad websites a nine-page letter denouncing al Qaeda. It complained that al Qaeda had killed more than 30 of its fighters that spring. Abu Mohammed al-Salmani, a member of the group, said that the terrorist organization was killing far more Sunnis than the Americans were. “People are tired of this torture,” he told a reporter. “We cannot keep silent anymore.”

  But as the turning edged closer to Baghdad, the central government grew more vocal about the deals being made. Maliki began sending alarmed messages asking exactly what the Americans thought they were doing. “They are trusting terrorists,” charged Ali al-Adeeb, a prominent Shiite politician. “They are trusting people who have previously attacked American forces and innocent people. They are trusting people who are loyal to the regime of Saddam Hussein.”

  “It’s like raising a crocodile,” Saad Yousef al-Muttalibi, a member of the Maliki cabinet, told the Washington Times. “It is fine when it is a baby, but when it is big, you can’t keep it in the house.” The Baghdad government feared that the American government was going to feed baby crocodiles for its own purposes and then leave Iraq—just as the reptiles were beginning to snap at Baghdad. Later in the year, Maliki’s Shiite bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, would issue a statement condemning the American embrace of “those terrorist elements which committed the most hideous crimes against our people” and demanding “that the American administration stop this adventure.” Other Shiites charged that after the Americans left, there would be two armies in central Iraq—one loyal to Baghdad, and one not.

  There also was some suspicion that that was precisely the American plan—that is, create a balancing force of Sunnis to deter the Shiites from wholesale suppression of the Sunnis once the Americans were out of the way. Petraeus flatly denied that the new groups were a helpful counterweight to the Baghdad government, but planners below him were perhaps more candid. “As their growth grows, the national government will be in jeopardy,” said Lt. Col. Jeff McDougall, one of Odierno’s senior planners. “So it’s a forcing mechanism,” he said, posing a useful “or else” to the Shiite political leaders in Baghdad.

  Even neutral observers had some qualms. Patrick Porter, an Australian military historian, later would call the new American allies in Iraq “a coalition of gangsters, tribal leaders and opportunists.”

  Not all American military officials were comfortable with the approach, worrying that the short-term security gain obtained would create long-term political problems. “What we’re doing is creating a secessionist state out west,” said a senior U.S. military intelligence official. “The Anbar tribes will be capable of keeping order, and also of keeping a Shiite-dominated army out of Anbar.” In other words, argued retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich, the Americans were avoiding military defeat by embracing political failure.r />
  Some American troops were antsy about working alongside men who had fought them, and probably killed some of their comrades. “If Jack Bauer doesn’t negotiate with terrorists, why does the American army?” asked Spec. Alex Horton, a young Texan who served in Baghdad and Baqubah in late 2006 and early 2007.

  Horton reported a cold exchange between a member of his platoon and a turned insurgent. “Do you want to kill me?” the American soldier asked.

  “Yes,” replied the Iraqi, who had been a member of the 1920 Brigade, an insurgent group that broke with al Qaeda in 2007. “But not today.”

  But most American commanders liked what they were seeing. Some, in fact, soon seemed to grow more comfortable with the former insurgents than they did with the Iraqi police.

  One day in late May in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Amiriyah, some local militiamen painted a sign on a wall, “Down with al Qaeda, long live the honest resistance.” It was a classic ploy: Members of al Qaeda angrily arrived to paint over the disrespectful graffiti, only to be greeted by an explosion that killed three of them. Al Qaeda sent in reinforcements, who were caught in a firefight that lasted several hours, killing another nine al Qaeda members.

  A few days later, on May 29, Lt. Col. Dale Kuehl, commander of the American battalion operating in the neighborhood, got a call from a local religious leader. “We’re going after al Qaeda,” he said. “What we want you to do is stay out of the way.” It was in effect a replication of what MacFarland had experienced in Ramadi nine months earlier.

  The next day at noon, loudspeakers in mosques broadcast a call to attack local members of al Qaeda. Black-clad militiamen began moving through the streets. Kuehl was inclined to stand back and watch the situation unfold. But after al Qaeda counterattacked the next day and surrounded the militia members, he had second thoughts, and dispatched Stryker armored vehicles to rescue the militiamen. It was a confusing fight for his troops, because both sides were wearing similar outfits and wielding AK-47s and other weaponry. (Soldiers frequently identify the enemy not by sight but by the sound of their guns.) The Americans were impressed with the tactical skills of the militiamen. “These guys looked like a military unit, the way they moved,” Capt. Andy Wilbraham told the Washington Post’s Joshua Partlow. “Hand and arm signals. Stop. Take a knee. Weapons up.” The leader of the militia was a former Iraqi army captain who called himself Haji Abu Abed.

  GETTING TO KNOW YOU

  Upon meeting your insurgent enemy, Kilcullen had told American officers, you will be surprised: “Your worst opponent is not the psychopathic terrorist of Hollywood, it is the charismatic follow-me warrior who would make your best platoon leader.”

  He was right. In July 2007, for example, Col. Martin Stanton, chief of reconciliation at Odierno’s headquarters, met with some newly former insurgents outside the ragged little town of Mahmudiyah, one corner of the area south of Baghdad that American troops had dubbed the “Triangle of Death.” They were in farmlands, he said, “but these guys didn’t look like farmers. They were lean, tough, in their twenties. Their answers were crisp. Their weapons were clean and well oiled. . . . These are serious men, disciplined. They were very polite. They weren’t effusive.” That impressed him: They were acutely aware of how strong they were, and they weren’t kowtowing. They clearly didn’t feel they had lost the fight. His analysis was that “here was an enemy that, for reasons of their own, have come forward. . . . We had not defeated the Iraqi insurgents. What I took from that meeting was that they were still a going concern, but they were willing to take a chance with the Americans.”

  Biddle, the sometime adviser to Petraeus, was even more impressed by the former insurgents he met a few months later in Arab Jabour, south of Baghdad. “They were by far the most professional military organization I’d seen in Iraq, aside from the Americans and the British,” he recalled. “They had a military bearing. They stood up straight. Their shirts were tucked in. I was simultaneously impressed, and glad that it was daylight.”

  The Americans also were willing to be forgiving on motives, in part perhaps because it made it easier to work their with former enemies. Lt. Col. Mark Fetter, another officer working on reconciliation issues, said that in his experience, insurgents were young men who “have got to eat. There are so many we’ve detained and interrogated, they did what they did for money.”

  Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of the U.S. division just south of Baghdad, summarized, “They’re honorable men and they want to take care of their families.”

  The Americans learned a lot from their new friends. The police chief of Fallujah, Col. Faisal Ismail al-Zobaie, wanted to deter the manufacture of car bombs, so he ordered his force to monitor car mechanics’ shops, where the bombs were assembled, and also to count the oxygen tanks at the hospital, because the canisters were used as bombs. He knew to take those steps because he was a former insurgent. The downside was that along with his knowledge, he had brought his Saddam-era attitudes. While he insisted he didn’t torture prisoners, he did concede that he sometimes had them beaten. “Iraq obeys only force,” he explained to the Washington Post’s Sudarsan Raghavan. He also said he had come to a better understanding of the U.S. presence: “I have realized that Americans love the strong guy.” His view of his country’s political future was equally blunt: “No democracy in Iraq. Ever.” Two months later, he would be given new reason for his harsh view of life in Iraq: Insurgents executed his uncle, a school principal, apparently in the hope that Zobaie would attend the funeral. The police chief cautiously stayed away, but a boy walked into it wearing a suicide vest, and many of his relatives were among the 23 dead.

  If there was a question about motives, it was asked more of the Americans by critics of the process, who worried that the Americans were just paying the insurgents to stop fighting without any plans to ensure that the payments would continue as long as needed. One critic of the surge, Col. Gian Gentile, a thoughtful officer who commanded a battalion in Iraq in 2006, called the deals with militias “cash for cooperation.” He skeptically asked, “Have they really sided with us? Or, are they siding with their own side and using us and our money to prepare for a bigger fight down the road they know is coming?”

  One officer involved in reconciliation issues, Maj. Brady, agreed that at least some insurgents were doing just that. “They watch TV,” and so are aware of the American political debate over leaving Iraq, he said. His guess was that they had decided “to get themselves into a position to defend themselves, if there is going to be a civil war. They are coalescing their forces.”

  But others involved in the policy said such criticisms didn’t grasp what was happening. Foremost, said Mansoor and others, was the ability of Americans to help protect people, which turned groups and especially the sheikhs leading them. These men were angry with al Qaeda, and had asked the Americans to shield or help them. “You don’t get public rejection of al Qaeda if the people don’t feel secure, if they are going to get their heads lopped off,” said Rapp. “Our having troops in the population gives them confidence to do that, and that helps the Awakening spread.” Thus the surge reinforced and spread the turning of insurgent groups.

  Months later, U.S. troops on a raid in southern Salahuddin Province found the revealing diary of a regional leader of al Qaeda in Iraq. The repeated theme of his entries in the fall of 2007 was how the flipping of the insurgency was eroding his group. “There were almost 600 fighters in our sector before the tribes changed course,” he wrote. “Many of our fighters quit and some of them joined the deserters.” Now, he said, he had “20 or less” fighters deemed reliable—and he wasn’t even sure about a few of those who seemed to be avoiding him. One former member kept possession of some 2,000 C-5 rockets and a sophisticated RPG-9 grenade launcher, he complained. “We have to keep trying with him to get our weapons and ammunition back,” he noted.

  He had plans for revenge on those who had abandoned him. “We were mistreated, cheated and betrayed by some of our brothers who us
ed to be part of the jihadi movement. Therefore we must not have mercy on those traitors until they come back to the right side or get eliminated completely.”

  THE INSURGENT WHO LOVED TITANIC

  Capt. Samuel Cook, who was commanding the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment’s C troop in the northern Tigris Valley in Salahuddin Province, a bit north of where that diary was discovered, had been pursuing the local leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, whom he considered a “very passionate, eloquent speaker, well educated.” The terrorist leader offered to talk, and Cook took him up on it. “He was tired of being on the run, and he no longer believed in what he had once been preaching,” Cook said. He provided information on the whereabouts of a higher al Qaeda leader for the province, who was killed in a firefight two weeks later.

  He also told them that al Qaeda in Iraq had three major sources of funding: crime, the Kurds, and the Iranians. Cook would use this information adroitly, asking local Sunni insurgents why they thought al Qaeda was their friend, if it was on the payroll of the dreaded Persian power. The insurgents, who had affiliated with al Qaeda as the surge began to hit them, also were growing tired, Cook recalled.

  Cook had a light touch. In December 2007, he sent a letter to the community wishing them a happy Eid al-Fitr, a festival that marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and one of the most significant Muslim holidays. At the beginning of the Eid feast, he met with the al Qaeda man, telling him that he had enough evidence to detain him. The man responded that Cook was wading into a fight between tribes, implying that he didn’t understand the situation. Cook countered, “We have far too many reports from people in your own tribe to make this a tribal affair.” Cook then told the man and some sheikhs who had waited outside that the reconciliation process is not easy and that the al Qaeda man and he disagreed on his guilt, but that out of respect for the Eid holiday, he wouldn’t detain him at this time. As Cook hoped, those three actions—the letter, the meeting, and the show of respect—persuaded other insurgents to come see the thoughtful American.