Aftermath

by Nir Rosen

  In November 2006 Bush met with Maliki in Amman. He told Maliki he would send more troops to stabilize Baghdad, but he needed his Iraqi counterpart’s support. U.S. military leaders were skeptical of Maliki. They said he was sectarian and knew what was going on in the streets. But McGurk sympathized with his position; he knew Maliki would lose if he took on the Mahdi Army. Maliki wanted to work Shiite politics and weaken the Shiite militia before taking them on. The Iraqi prime minister gave Bush his commitment.

  EVEN THOUGH THE SURGE was controversial at its inception, its success would become something of a proverbial truth, and the proponents of the new counterinsurgency strategy—known by its acronym, COIN—would soon become very influential over the American defense establishment. Gen. David Petraeus, with whom the surge would become identified, had spent the course of 2006 reshaping how the U.S. military thought about counterinsurgency. He effectively had a yearlong graduate course in COIN while based at the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center (USACAC) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he served as commanding general. There, along with Conrad Crane, John Nagl, Marine Gen. James Mattis, and others, he wrote the U.S. military’s manual on COIN. According to the manual, called FM 3-24, the purpose was to “relearn the principles of counterinsurgency,” create better learning organizations in the military, and change the Army and Marine Corps. It was not just about winning Iraq and Afghanistan; it was written “to help Army and Marine Corps leaders to conduct COIN operations anywhere in the world” [emphasis added].

  Some in the CIA and the National Security Agency were wary when Petraeus was appointed to run the war in Iraq. In 2004 he had been in charge of training the Iraqi Security Forces. The Iraqi army had performed poorly in the battles of Najaf and Falluja, even though Petraeus was still briefing the U.S. government about how great the Iraqi Security Forces were. Battalion-level commanders were complaining that 80 percent of the Iraqi army were absent without leave and that the ones who did show were incompetent. Petraeus was considered a liar by these figures within the CIA and NSA—typical military, refusing to admit there was a problem. But Petraeus could be candid among his fellow military officers, so it was likely that in his briefing to civilians he was constrained by Rumsfeld’s worldview, which obstinately refused to see the reality of disaster in Iraq.

  Petraeus was not one to publicly undermine policy. He would be hailed as a “warrior scholar,” but in 2004 he was still part of the “stay the course” school. In fact, in 2004 he wrote an optimistic op-ed in the Washington Post about the war in Iraq, which was perceived to be entering the political debate during an election year, something usually taboo for someone so high in the chain of command. In the op-ed, titled “Battling for Iraq,” he listed the numbers of recruits and graduates from the Iraqi Security Forces. “I see tangible progress,” he wrote. “Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt from the ground up. . . . Iraqi leaders are stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces courageously.” Though he admitted there were setbacks, he insisted there were “reasons for optimism.” “Iraq’s security forces are, however, developing steadily and they are in the fight. Momentum has gathered in recent months. With strong Iraqi leaders out front and with continued coalition—and now NATO—support, this trend will continue. It will not be easy, but few worthwhile things are.”

  Perhaps a clue to Petraeus’s real thinking is the fact that by the end of 2005 he was back in the United States working on the new counterinsurgency manual, which turned out to be a scathing critique of how the military had been fighting the war in Iraq. Similarly, between 2003 and 2004, he had opposed Bremer’s de-Baathification, dismissal of the Iraqi army, and free-market reforms in Iraq. He e-mailed his men, telling them to ignore Bremer, basically urging insubordination. Petraeus wanted to provide stability in Iraq and knew Bremer was destabilizing the country.

  Petraeus was a masterful bureaucrat. He took an Army that was focused on fighting a conventional war—whose standard practice, in the words of a State Department official I spoke to, was to place their boots on the heads of Iraqi men they were detaining—and got it to “turn on a dime to fight an insurgency.” Petraeus would become the most influential U.S. general since George C. Marshall. The surge would also be seen as a panacea to U.S. problems in Afghanistan. The story I tell in the next chapters is more complicated than both Petraeus’s hagiographers and critics claim.

  ALMOST ON ARRIVAL in February 2007 Petraeus headed straight to Ramadi, capital of the Anbar province, to see Col. Sean McFarland of the First Brigade, First Armored Division. McFarland’s brigade had been in Ramadi since June 2006. Before that they had been in Tal Afar, where soldiers were practicing an approach called “clear, hold, and build” and living in combat outposts (COPs) with the townspeople. While these outposts initially suffered heavy attacks, in battle the Americans usually dominated, and attacks fell after the first summer.

  (Capt. Robert Chamberlin believed the real reason Tal Afar was pacified was the cleansing of its Sunnis and the tacit American support this received. After serving in Tal Afar he wrote an article in Military Review in 2008. “Shiites now dominate a community that was formerly 70 percent Sunni,” he explained. “Shiites made up 98 percent of the applicant pool in a July 2007 recruiting drive for the local police. The Sunnis moved to nearby villages and sought shelter with families and tribes, but they still think of Tal Afar as ‘their’ city.”)

  Living in COPs allowed the Americans to have greater access to Ramadi’s infrastructure and to reach out to local leaders. In the early days of the U.S. invasion, these leaders had generally supported the resistance. They eventually turned against Al Qaeda, but their attempts to expel the group in 2005 failed. The tribes were crushed, killed, and forced to flee. This time they had American support; that made a difference.

  McFarland initially found a city dominated by Al Qaeda-linked groups with almost no Iraqi Security Forces. He set up tribal militias called provisional auxiliary police and stationed them so they could protect their own area. The Americans protected the homes of collaborating tribal leaders. Instead of warning that they would soon be leaving, the Americans promised to remain as long as it took. McFarland believed it was his attempt to recruit thousands of locals to the Iraqi police that led to what would be called the Sons of Iraq program—known in Arabic as Al Sahwa (the Awakening)—in which previously antagonistic Sunni militias began to cooperate with the Americans. Brutal Al Qaeda retaliatory attacks on police and the tribal leaders who backed them increased local hatred of the group.

  The Americans found a young “sheikh” called Sattar Abu Risha. He was not exactly a tribal leader, and he was not exactly fighting for freedom, but he was willing to fight Al Qaeda in return for American support. Unlike past rebellions against Al Qaeda, this time the Americans propped up their new ally. They had two Marine battalions in downtown Ramadi, and they parked a tank in Abu Risha’s front yard and visited him twice a day. In September 2007 Abu Risha held a conference establishing the Anbar Awakening. More and more tribes in the area joined. When Awakening tribes were attacked, the Americans provided air and armor support and rescued them.

  “The enemy overplayed its hand and the people were tired of Al-Qaeda,” McFarland wrote in a 2008 article in Military Review. “A series of assassinations had elevated younger, more aggressive tribal leaders to positions of influence. A growing concern that the U.S. would leave Iraq and leave the Sunnis defenseless against Al-Qaeda and Iranian-supported militias made these younger leaders open to our overtures. Our willingness to adapt our plans based on the advice of the sheiks, our staunch and timely support for them in times of danger and need, and our ability to deliver on our promises convinced them that they could do business with us. Our forward presence kept them reassured.” Petraeus supported the introduction of the Awakening phenomenon elsewhere. Paying people who used to shoot at Americans was a radical step, but he did not consult his chain of command. “Petraeus did what he wanted to do and sought approval after, and he
had enough clout to do it,” an American intelligence official told me.

  IN DECEMBER 2006, when Washington began to push new troops to Baghdad, General Casey, the head of Multi-National Forces Iraq (MNF-I)—the U.S. military formation that provided overall command and control for operations in Iraq—summoned the Iraqis and laid out the new “surge” plan with Prime Minister Maliki, Defense Minister Abdul Qader Muhammad Jassim, Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, and the First Cavalry team. The Americans called it the Baghdad Security Plan, while the Iraqis called it Fard al-Qanun (Imposing the Law). Maliki approved the concept and committed to bringing in more Iraqi troops and letting the Americans “target all criminals,” which included Shiite militias and Sadrists. It was a momentous step for Maliki, whose collaboration with Shiite militias was viewed by the Americans as an obstacle to their goals.

  Proponents of counterinsurgency obsessively study the history of so-called “small wars,” such as the British war in Malaya, the American war in the Philippines, the French war in Algeria, and the wars in Vietnam. Their doctrine emphasizes using the least amount of violence against the enemy, becoming familiar with the occupied country’s culture, and working to remove support for the insurgents. While this requires killing those who cannot be “reconciled,” it also requires creating local proxy forces and finding political solutions that the civilian population can see as a better alternative to backing insurgents. Proponents of COIN strategy realized that American tactics in Iraq had until then relied on brute force and killing.

  COIN theorists never answered (or even asked) questions such as, Should the Americans have invaded Iraq or Afghanistan in the first place, or should they be occupying other countries? Instead they focused on practical matters such as implementation. To them the American reliance on brute force was counterproductive, and the numerous “decapitation operations” in which insurgent leaders were assassinated were not useful. They exhorted less violence, fewer “kinetic operations,” which only alienated people. They urged military and civilian agencies to collaborate and to understand the concerns of the people and address them, providing security and responding to their grievances.

  American casualties peaked when their forces were involved in clearing insurgents from the belts. Once they transitioned to the hold-and-build phase, U.S. casualties declined drastically. But the extent to which the Americans protected the Iraqi population during the surge has been romanticized. American airstrikes killed more than 250 civilians in Iraq in 2006 but more than 940 in 2007 and another 400 in 2008. Thus, Americans killed more civilians in 2008 than in 2006, at the peak of the civil war—this despite the fact that the much-lauded scripture of the military’s COIN manual states, “The employment of airpower in the strike role should be done with exceptional care. . . . Even when justified under the law of war, bombing a target that results in civilian casualties will bring media coverage that works to the benefit of the insurgents.” In addition, artillery was used often during the surge for the purpose of “terrain denial,” even when that terrain was a populated area. This must not have felt very population-centric to the population.

  On January 11, 2007, the “Crisis Committee” had its first meeting in Baghdad, at which the Baghdad Operation Center was set up and Lieut. Gen. Abud Qanbar was designated as its commander. The BOC was formed to give the Americans a counterpart in the battle of Baghdad, to be Maliki’s face in Fard al-Qanun.

  Initially, the Americans didn’t want the BOC to be under Maliki’s direct control; they wanted it to be under the Defense Ministry’s command. Nor did they want Qanbar to lead it at first. The Iraqi general seemed too Soviet in his style and was too close to Maliki, but Qanbar proved flexible and able to learn. Brig. Gen. John Campbell, deputy commander of the First Cavalry Regiment, mentored Qanbar and also played a vital role in the success of the Awakening. He took Qanbar to meet some of the Awakening men, and Qanbar realized he knew them from the Saddam-era military. “Brigadier General Campbell had exceptional rapport with our Iraqi partners,” observed Maj. Andy Morgado, who served as a division maneuver planner and later as a combined arms battalion operations officer.

  Multi-National Forces-Iraq—headed by General Casey at the beginning of the surge, then by General Petraeus, and then by Gen. Raymond Odierno—was the overall strategic headquarters for U.S. coalition forces. Multi-National Corps-Iraq (MNC-I), the tactical unit responsible for command and control of operations in Iraq, was supposed to coordinate the actions of its subordinate divisions: Multi-National Division-Baghdad and Multi-National Division-Center, which was responsible for area south of Baghdad.

  Lieut. Col. Steve Miska, who served as a deputy brigade commander throughout Baghdad during the surge, told me that the additional soldiers provided a greater density of troops for more effective partnership with the Iraqi Security Forces. But another factor was important. In Baghdad, before the surge, none of the boundaries separating American forces matched those used by Iraqi forces, and none of those boundaries matched the political lines of baladiyas (local municipalities). As a result it was difficult to synchronize with local politicians or security forces, and there was little American integration or coordination with the ISF. The surge realigned the military boundaries with the political boundaries. “That allowed for sustained relationships between the Iraqi army, coalition forces, and political leaders,” Miska explained. “It restored confidence among the populace in many cases. The overall surge strategy realigned the Iraqi army boundaries to match the district boundaries in Baghdad. We did the same for the U.S. boundaries. The effect was that now the same U.S. and Iraqi commanders would work with the same local politicians to resolve issues.”

  The lines for the ten Baghdad “security districts” were drawn on a map by Lieut. Col. Douglas Ollivant, chief of plans for MND-B, and Major General Ali of the Iraqi Ministry defense staff, who had studied at Sandhurst (in 1971), the Indian Staff College, and the NATO staff college in Italy, and who spoke English well. Each of the districts would be under the authority of an Iraqi army or Iraqi National Police headquarters. This was a key meeting, where strategic boundaries were being drawn, and yet nobody from Corps, as Odierno’s staff was called, was present except for a very junior major who was there only as a note-taker. The surge plan was drawn up by Brigadier General Campbell, Colonel Toby Green, and Lieutenant Colonel Ollivant with little guidance from Multi-National Corps-Iraq. General Casey was present, however, giving very specific guidance. It was Casey who suggested creating joint security stations in Baghdad.

  In addition to the role played by McGurk and O’Sullivan, two outsiders played a crucial role in the push for more troops. Fred Kagan and Gen. Jack Keane are controversial figures: the former is a neoconservative military historian with no experience or specialization in the Middle East; the latter an imposing and intimidating retired general with a forceful personality. But they were effective because they provided a public voice arguing that a troop surge could work. While working on this book I met American officials who loved them or hated them, who attributed the whole surge to them or denied they had any significant role. “Success has many fathers,” one lieutenant colonel explained, and the surge was the only positive development anyone could point to in America’s catastrophic occupation of Iraq.

  In 2006 there were many voices calling for either an American withdrawal or an increase in American troops. Colin Kahl of Georgetown University and then the Center for New American Security visited Iraq in the summer of that year. Based on his experience he called for more troops or for a withdrawal, but he was ignored as an outsider and a Democratic partisan. (President Obama would later install him as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East.) There was a joint push for more troops coming from the NSC and the Keane/Kagan duo. Keane, who looked at Iraq from a purely military view, was the most consistent and longstanding advocate of a troop increase. “He was always poking,” one NSC member told me. J.D. Crouch, the deputy national security adviser, hosted an Iraq review in
December 2006. He convened small groups in which he appeared neutral, but he steered skeptics to the surge—and then convinced his boss, Stephen Hadley. One lieutenant colonel involved in the surge described Kagan as “just a blowhard who could be counted on to give the party line in print when he returned from each of his Petraeus-sponsored trips.” But another lieutenant colonel described him as a brilliant and rigorous thinker. “Kagan is the main guy behind the push for more troops, and Keane is an idiot,” he told me, adding, for good measure, that Casey and Fil were also idiots. Although neoconservatives have traditionally been advocates of increased reliance on airpower, Kagan broke with this neoconservative predilection for “shock and awe” tactics. Instead he believed that war was about influencing people on the ground, and thus required more troops. Kagan provided Bush with an alternative to the Senate’s Iraq Study Group report, which advocated a reduction in troops.

  An internal NSC review and Keane’s force of will persuaded the president to change course in Iraq. The push out of Washington for more troops was then utilized by Multi-National Division-Baghdad, with some oversight from General Casey, to secure Baghdad. General Odierno had a very different concept, his critics told me. “He wanted to use the troops out in the ‘Baghdad belts’ to go kill Sunnis,” one senior American officer said. Odierno’s role was “totally blown out of proportion,” according to one of the architects of the surge in Baghdad, “and I don’t think he really figures in the picture.” Major Morgado strongly disagrees: “Though Baghdad was a large problem set, it was not the only problem set,” he said.