The Gamble

by Thomas E. Ricks

  It wasn’t clear where the talks were going, especially because the Americans had almost no sense of what was happening in Basra, the largest city in the Shiite south. One of the few reporters to venture there at this time was Solomon Moore of the New York Times, who in February 2008 found a “deeply troubled” city where doctors, teachers, politicians, and sheikhs were being kidnapped and murdered. “Most of the killings are done by gunmen in police cars,” Sheikh Khadem al-Ribat told him. A senior Iraqi police officer reported that Shiite militias had taken 250 police cars and 5,000 pistols.

  “I think all hell is going to break loose down there,” said an American military intelligence officer.

  THE AMERICAN MILITIA: FRIENDS OR FOES?

  The last nongovernmental armed group in Iraq that was being reevaluated that winter was the genuine American militia, the 20,000 to 30,000 private security contractors who, loosely controlled and operating under a hazy legal regime, guarded American diplomats and other contractors. One of the side effects of the new U.S. strategy, founded on protecting the people, was to cast a harsh new light on the security contractors, and especially their willingness to open fire on civilian vehicles.

  The heavy use of these contractors long had been an anomaly in the Iraq war. When historians look back on the conflict, one aspect on which some are likely to focus is how American forces relied heavily on contractors to truck supplies, cook food, and provide technical support. But they probably will look most closely at the armed civilians hired to provide security to State Department personnel and other American officials, as well as to many of their fellow contractors engaged in reconstruction projects. This group of mercenaries by far constituted the second largest group in the “coalition,” after U.S. forces. (Indeed, the so-called coalition continued to crumble, with the shrinking British contingent of 4,100 based at the Basra airport doing almost nothing, and the next largest troop contributor, the former Soviet state of Georgia, being forced in the summer of 2008 to precipitously withdraw its 2,000 soldiers from Iraq, where they had been operating checkpoints along the Iranian border, so they could help fight the Russians back home. Oddly, of the 24 nations in the group, some of which contributed just a handful of soldiers, 17 were former Communist states.) In the post-9/11 world, one security company, Blackwater, was paid around $1 billion by the U.S. government, much of it for work in Iraq.

  Many of the private security contractors carried noticeable chips on their shoulders, the likely effect of really being responsible to no one for their behavior. One day in 2007, for example, a knot of about seven white American males stood in the airport in Amman, Jordan, waiting for one of the two daily Royal Jordanian Airlines flights to Baghdad. They were dressed in “mercenary casual”—short-sleeved shirts, multipocketed khaki cargo pants, and wraparound sunglasses on their heads. Some sported tattoos on their biceps. Two carried daypacks that had B+ and A+ stitched on them, denoting their blood types. They conversed in the distinctive acronym-heavy jargon of the U.S. military. One Kiplingesque story of desert intrigue began, “There was this TCN in the secondary QRF,” referring to a Third Country National, who ranks low in hierarchy of status in the world of mercenaries, on a Quick Reaction Force, a group that is supposed to stand ready to aid elements in trouble.

  A bedraggled Jordanian baggage handler in baggy blue overalls pushed his cart up to the point where the group of Americans blocked his way. “Ex-coo,” he said deferentially, and too quietly. “Ex-coo.”

  The men gazed at him as he tried to ease his cart through them. They hadn’t heard his soft voice, and they didn’t move. “Be polite!” ordered one of the Americans. “Say, ‘Excuse me’!”

  The small Jordanian man looked up at the American and repeated, “Ex-coo.”

  “Okay, then,” the mercenary said, and stepped aside.

  “What’s up?” asked one of his colleagues.

  “I’m just telling this motherfucker to be polite,” he explained. This occurred not in Iraq, but in Jordan, where the group had no legal standing or protection.

  Once in Iraq, security contractors behaved even more brusquely, leading Iraqis to loathe them. The bodyguards were notorious for moving around Baghdad without regard for other cars or even pedestrians, driving on the wrong side of the road and even on the sidewalks. Ann Exline Starr, a former adviser to the American occupation authority, recalled being told by her protectors, “Our mission is to protect the principal at all costs. If that means pissing off the Iraqis, too bad.” (The Washington Post’s chief of security in Baghdad once asked me to change my shirt before going out because, he pointed out, the outfit of black polo shirt and light khakis that I was wearing resembled too much the typical dress of many security contractors.)

  For some, angering Iraqis was a sport as well as a business. One widely watched video showed some contractors firing from the back of their vehicle on an Iraqi highway, hitting cars behind them, apparently for fun. “The Iraqis despised them, because they were untouchable,” Matthew Degn, an adviser at the Iraqi Interior Ministry, told the Washington Post’s Steve Fainaru about the contractors. “They were above the law.” He said that Blackwater’s Little Bird helicopters, bristling with armed men, often buzzed the ministry, “almost like they were saying, ‘Look, we can fly anywhere we want.’” (Fainaru, who would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the use of mercenaries in the Iraq war, also reported in his book Big Boy Rules that a Peruvian told him that among the Peruvian security guards in Iraq were former members of the Shining Path, the Maoist guerrilla organization that, Fainaru noted, in Peru “had massacred thousands of peasants during the eighties and early nineties.”)

  On Christmas Eve in 2006, a Blackwater man while drunk shot and killed a bodyguard for Adel Abdul Mahdi, one of Iraq’s two vice presidents. Two months later, a Blackwater sniper shot and killed three guards at the Iraqi Media Network, a state-funded television station. In May, a company team shot and killed a civilian at the gates of the Interior Ministry, provoking an armed confrontation with Iraqi police.

  Few American commanders ever liked having armed men in their area who were ostensible allies yet who were not subject to American rules and laws. But in the first several years of the war, when commanders put “force protection” above all else, there wasn’t much daylight between the approach taken by the U.S. military and the private trigger pullers. Then, in early 2007, as the top priority in the U.S. mission became protecting the people, there suddenly was a huge difference between how the two types of armed Americans were acting in Iraq.

  Matters came to a head on a Tuesday afternoon in September 2007, when employees of Blackwater who were guarding a convoy just outside the Green Zone shot and killed at least 17 Iraqis. The Blackwater men said they were responding to an ambush, and the company would back them up, saying they acted in self-defense. But several Iraqi eyewitnesses disputed that, and parallel investigations by the U.S. military and the Iraqi government would conclude that no one fired except the contractors. Iraqi police said the shootings occurred just outside the headquarters building of the Iraqi National Police, an area heavily protected by checkpoints in every direction, making it difficult for anyone to set up an ambush. Maliki would call the incident a cold-blooded crime. A U.S. military report, based upon interviews with soldiers who arrived on the scene and with Iraqi eyewitnesses reported that there was “no enemy activity involved,” and that many of the Iraqi civilians were wounded as they tried to drive away from the American convoy. “It had every indication of an excessive shooting,” said Lt. Col. Mike Tarsa, a battalion commander in the 1st Cavalry Division. Capt. Don Cherry concluded that “this was uncalled for.” Five of the Blackwater guards involved in the incident were indicted in December 2008 by a federal grand jury on charges of manslaughter and assault.

  FROM BERLIN TO BAGHDAD

  It was striking that the most thoughtful of those around Petraeus, the advisers who knew most about the region and took the longest view, also tended to be the most skep
tical about political progress. Pundits back home began declaring victory in Iraq, but the closer one was to the country, the more one saw the potential problems. “There is a chance of this breaking down at a whole range of points,” Crocker said in January 2008.

  Emma Sky was optimistic about security but pessimistic about politics. She flew to Washington, D.C., to deliver the keynote speech to a CIA conference on Iraq. “The psychological impact of the surge has been huge,” she said in that talk. “We have shown to ourselves and our critics that we are not defeated, and we have shown Iraqis that we are trying to help them. So there is a whole new psychological dynamic.” But, she continued, “we also have created a whole new load of risks. We have created this huge bottom-up momentum on the Shia and Sunni street.”

  The purpose of the surge, she said, was to buy time and space for the government of Iraq to reach accommodation. But she had concluded that wasn’t going to happen. “What I came away thinking was, you could buy time and space for the government of Iraq, and it wouldn’t reach accommodation, because the system isn’t capable of it.” That is, the political structure of Iraq as it existed in early 2008 simply couldn’t do what the Americans were asking it to do. The best thing the Americans might be able to get from it was time while waiting for a new generation of political leaders to emerge.

  Likewise, Joel Rayburn, the savvy strategist on Petraeus’s staff who had helped shape Fred Kagan’s thinking about a surge and then came out to Baghdad to work on Iraqi affairs in the context of the region, said he saw little chance of political progress. “My own view, and it is at odds with the institutional view, is I don’t see us moving forward politically.” He gave the surge “an incomplete.” The test, he said, would be provincial elections, if and when they came—not only whether they would be held, but whether they would be fair enough to achieve balanced representation.

  Retired Army Col. Joel Armstrong, who also had been involved in the planning that Gen. Keane took to the White House, agreed that the theory of the surge hadn’t played out. “It hasn’t worked as well as I hoped,” he said in 2008. “There are lots of people in Iraq who want to put together a better life, but there are lots of people in power who don’t seem to want that.”

  One way to understand Iraq in 2008 was through the prism of the Cold War. It took decades to be resolved, and during that time, Germany was divided, millions were deprived of their basic human rights for decades, and uprisings in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland were suppressed along the way. But full-scale war never erupted, and eventually Germany was reunited and the walls dividing people came down. The surge, said one White House aide involved in Iraqi affairs, pointed toward a similar minimal way forward. “It has shown Baghdad how a bare minimum modus vivendi can be had,” he said. “They can have their own neighborhoods and live in peace, even if it’s in Sunni ghettos.” At some point, he said, they would start blending together again—perhaps, he ventured, three years in the future or perhaps in thirty.

  The Americans first had been seen as liberators by Iraqis, Barbero said, and then as occupiers. But by the end of 2007, he continued, they were more trusted by the major factions than those groups trusted each other, and were beginning to be seen as protectors and intermediaries. “I think our presence is one of the moderating forces,” agreed a senior U.S. Special Operations officer in Baghdad. “It provides a venue for discussion, dialogue.” No longer the sand in the gears, they had become the glue in the situation, perhaps the only thing holding Iraq together. As in Europe after World War II, that amounted to a recipe for keeping U.S. forces in Iraq for a very long time.

  Stephen Biddle, an astute defense expert and sometime adviser to Petraeus, argued that by cutting deals with dozens of local Sunni insurgent groups and Shiite militias, the U.S. military indeed had put itself on the hook for staying in Iraq for decades. “A continued presence by a substantial outside force would be essential for many years to keep a patchwork quilt of wary former enemies from turning on one another,” he concluded.

  In retrospect, the winter of 2007-8 appears to be a time of missed opportunity, when Iraqi leaders should have made great strides politically but didn’t. It was at this point that the surge began to fracture: It was succeeding militarily but failing politically.

  10.

  BIG WASTA

  (Spring 2008)

  You know, we all feel much older than we did in 2003,” Petraeus said one day early in 2008 after being asked about the impending fifth anniversary of the war. “And not just five years older, but vastly older. It seems like light-years ago, frankly.” As he spoke he sat stiffly erect in a straight-backed chair, the better to ease the strain on his damaged pelvis. Despite being in phenomenal physical condition, the fatigue was evident on his face. He long had looked about a decade younger than his age, but now was beginning to look like what he was, a man in his midfifties carrying a heavy load.

  “His patience level is much lower,” noted Brig. Gen. Joe Anderson, who had commanded a brigade in the 101st Airborne under Petraeus. “His sense of humor is diminished. He’s a bit disconnected, distant.”

  One day U.S. forces lost five troops in two different bombing attacks. Petraeus, like Col. MacFarland in Ramadi two years earlier, reminded his staff of Gen. Grant’s prediction after being beaten on the first day of the Shiloh battle: “He is sitting there with a soggy cigar at the end of this terrible day, confused as all get out, and says, ‘Yup, lick ’em tomorrow,’” Petraeus recalled. For him, Grant’s terse comment symbolized the need for willpower: “I think it takes that kind of indomitable attitude and sheer force of will at times in these kinds of endeavors.” Gesturing at an aide, he said, “These guys have heard me say it a couple of times.”

  Petraeus’s wasta was growing. He couldn’t know it then, but the following months would bring resolution in several areas that had been nagging him.

  FALLON OUT, PETRAEUS PEOPLE UP

  In March, Adm. Fallon finally went too far. The offended party wasn’t Petraeus but, significantly, the White House, as the admiral shot his mouth off in a feature article in Esquire magazine that made him look like the only thing standing between President Bush and an American war with Iran. The profile, written by Thomas P. M. Barnett, a former professor at the Naval War College, portrayed Fallon as “brazenly challenging” President Bush on whether to attack Iran, pushing back “against what he saw as an ill-advised action.” Barnett was clearly an admirer, praising the new Centcom chief as “a man of strategic brilliance” whose understanding of the tumultuous situation in Pakistan “is far more complex than anyone else’s”—a questionable assertion, given that Fallon was new to the region, while some American officials, such as Ryan Crocker, had been dealing with it for decades. Fallon clearly had cooperated with Barnett, with the author accompanying him on trips to Egypt and Afghanistan over the previous year. The article quoted Fallon as saying one day in Cairo that “I’m in hot water again” with the White House, apparently for telling Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak that the United States would not attack Iran.

  But Barnett hadn’t done Fallon any favors in return. Asked about the article by e-mail, the admiral confusingly called it “poison pen stuff ” that is “really disrespectful and ugly.” He did not cite specific objections. Nor did he seem to understand during the first few days after the article appeared how much trouble he was in. Some at the Pentagon saw the quotes simply as Fox Fallon being Fox Fallon. But the article was raising eyebrows elsewhere in the government, including the White House. He might have kept his job under Rumsfeld, who barked more than he bit, and under Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who just wanted everyone to get along. But Gates and his new chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mullen, were a different team. Gates spoke softly but acted quickly. A few days later, Fallon began to understand it was time to go “when the SecDef stopped taking his calls,” said a White House aide.

  “Admiral Fallon reached this difficult decision entirely on his own,” Gates said in an unsc
heduled news conference announcing the departure. “I believe it was the right thing to do, even though I do not believe there are, in fact, significant differences between his views and administration policy.”

  Not only would Fallon be pushed out of Central Command after barely a year in the job, he would be replaced by his erstwhile nemesis, Petraeus. Surprisingly, Petraeus wasn’t happy about any of this. After Iraq he had wanted to go to European Command, not Centcom. And he felt that after months of wrangling, he and Fallon had worked out a way of living with each other. Indeed, when Petraeus had briefed Fallon on his plans for Iraq after the end of the surge, Fallon had been so agreeable that after the briefing, Pete Mansoor had turned to Petraeus and said, “You know, he couldn’t be more supportive.”

  By the time Fallon was on the way out, Petraeus said, “Actually we had a very good relationship.” He began the next morning’s briefing by saying to his staff, “We’re sorry to see this happen to Admiral Fallon. We want to thank him for his help to MNF-I.”

  Fallon, who had arrived in Baghdad a few hours earlier and was participating in the briefing, then added, “I made a decision that it was an unnecessary distraction in a time of war, so it is time for me to move on.”

  Petraeus had hoped that at European Command his wife could join him as he rebuilt NATO to deal with Afghanistan and the future. Instead he was made Fallon’s successor at Central Command, condemning him to several more years of wrestling with Iraq and the Middle East. His aides said that Petraeus actually had recommended several other officers to Gates for the Centcom post. Among the names floated, they said, were Marine Gen. James Mattis and Army Lt. Gen. Pete Chiarelli. But Petraeus insisted that he didn’t bring up names with Gates, but simply had said, “You know, I think that there are certainly others who could do the job.”