We’ve seen it before. The infusion of more American troops into Baghdad, teaming up with "government" forces to clear neighborhoods of insurgents, only to find three months later that the insurgents are back stronger than ever, and the government military is nothing but an arm of the Shi’ite militias. How could this newest escalation be any more successful?
Here’s how the Surge could work, starting with the role the Americans might play
We need to look at what’s different this time, and think through how the Sunnis and Shi’ites will attempt to take advantage of the Surge. What’s different is that this time American forces are going to be stationed permanently in fortified police stations in strategic parts of Baghdad, which itself will be cordoned off into nine separate areas. In all previous attempts at pacifying Baghdad, the Americans handed off security responsibility to the Iraqi military, who promptly ceded the territory right back to the insurgents (read Sunnis) or the police (Shi’ite militias). The civil war would resume, with police seeking out Sunnis at checkpoints, hospitals and other locales, leaving dozens of tortured Sunni bodies to be found the next morning on the streets of Baghdad. The Sunnis would retaliate with their own kidnappings, drive-by shootings, and suicide bombs (courtesy of foreign jihadists).
There are several critical elements of the proposed American security plan, including the proper location of the nine "demilitarized" zones, and the degree American soldiers and marines actively patrol each zone. The nine areas one must assume are going to be selected by sectarian identity – those neighborhoods such as Mansour that are Sunni, those like Sadr City that are Shi’ite, and those that are mixed where ethnic cleansing is being practiced. The walls isolating each area (yet more concrete barriers for Baghdad) must be formidable, and the checkpoints must be manned by Americans who are viewed as impartial in the civil war, and not as trigger happy as in the past.
The American troops are expected to begin their duties under the Surge (once the walls and fortifications are built) by conducting house-to-house searches for insurgents, militia members, and their weapons. What is crucial about these searches, besides the way in which they are conducted, is whether the U.S. can continue to conduct them from time to time, to keep the neighborhoods clear of anyone wanting to perpetrate violence. The second crucial element of the American presence is whether the troops can patrol their neighborhoods at night routinely, making it much more difficult for the death squads to operate. The mere presence of such patrols, operating nightly as well as by day, will not be sufficient to deter violence – there will have to be some willingness on both parties to the civil war to step back from violence.
What motives do either side have to engage in a cease fire?
The Sunnis have already transformed their insurgency from its previous focus on the Americans, to a new focus on the Shi’ites. According to a number of press interviews with anonymous Sunni insurgent leaders, the devastation wrought by the Shi’ite militias has been sufficient to convince the Sunnis that the Americans are all that stand between them and possible genocide. Clearly in a lot of Sunni minds, they are losing the civil war, or at least control of Baghdad. To the extent Sunni neighborhoods are perceptively and truly protected from the Shi’ite militias by the American barriers and by American military patrols, the Sunnis will have no motivation to send car bombs to the American-manned checkpoints, or to attack the patrols if they are viewed as operating without prejudice to Sunni interests or their cultural sensitivities.
The Shi’ites are more problematic; they are currently winning the civil war, and they have incentive to keep things going as they are. But they are also the victims of insurgent attacks, and here too, if the barriers and patrols are seen as protecting the Shi’ites from Sunni depredations, there may be a chance for Shi’ite cooperation. The Americans, after all, will be sharing their fortifications with official government troops, who are well-known to be infiltrated by Shi’ite militias. So in effect, the Americans will be patrolling the Shi’ite areas with Shi’ite military units, lessening the tendency for the Shi’ite militias to attack the patrols.
Much depends on American behavior. If the goal of these patrols is to keep Sunni insurgents out of Shi’ite neighborhoods, and to therefore maintain domestic security, the Surge may work for the Shi’ites as well as the Sunnis. Shi’ite militia members can melt away for awhile; weapons can be hidden. If the American patrols seek to aggressively disarm the Shi’ite militias and incarcerate their members, all bets are off. Sadr City, for one, may erupt into set battles between the Mahdi Army and the Americans, similar to what occurred in Najaf.
Assuming the Americans can avoid armed conflict with the Mahdi Army, the Surge could produce a cease fire in the civil war, and allow for domestic commerce to resume in some limited form. The Shi’ites could pursue their current military advantage through political means, since they already control the Parliament (which, however, hardly meets anymore, at least with a majority of its members). Whether this would be an end to the civil war is certainly open to question, and depends on how long the American troops can keep the peace in Baghdad, and whether Anbar and other provinces can be tamed as well. But if even a temporary cease fire lasting six to twelve months takes hold, the Surge could be viewed as a success.
Of course, quite a lot could go wrong with this optimistic view. Among the very substantial risks are these:
· 21,000 American troops may simply not be enough for effective patrols. The civil war could be carried on stealthily at night by Sunnis and Shi’ites alike, finding ways to infiltrate opposition territory.
· How will these American troops be supplied, and how do the supply convoys receive protection?
· The official government forces that are going to share the fortifications with the American troops are clearly Shi’ite dominated, and militia infiltrated. American forces even in their secure neighborhood locations could be betrayed by their Iraqi "colleagues", causing substantial losses that the American public may not tolerate.
· Lt. General David Petraeus, now in command of the U.S. counter-insurgency program in Iraq, has a record for conducting non-offensive, effective house-to-house searches. Can he instill these methods among all American forces in Baghdad? Are there enough translators to help in these searches? Are detention centers capable of handling yet another inflow of prisoners, and will such arrests serve only to inflame both the Shi’ites and the Sunnis? Will his colleague General Ray Odierno work at cross-purposes to Petraeus? Odierno has a record of using smash and grab tactics when it comes to rooting out the "bad buys".
· Some reports indicate that the al-Maliki government, in order to fulfill its commitment to augmenting government troops as part of the Surge, will bring in Kurdish Pesh Merga forces. How receptive will Sunni or Shi’ite communities be to Kurdish-American patrols? Will this exacerbate rather than lessen ethnic conflict in Iraq?
· Does the establishment of nine individual ethnic enclaves in Baghdad only worsen the civil war, making the lines of demarcation that much clearer?
· Are the religious and ethnic hatreds and passions already existing in the civil war too strong to allow for a de facto cease fire?
· Will Moqtada al-Sadr set aside his well-known antipathy to the American presence in Iraq, and allow Americans to patrol Sadr City and other Shi’ite enclaves? How long will his patience last, to the extent he shows any?
· Will the foreign jihadists cease their efforts to stir up the Sunni-Shi’ite conflict?
· Is the Iraqi government strong enough to take advantage of even a temporary restoration of security? To what extent can the Americans quickly mobilize the $1.0 billion in restoration aid they have promised, and how will the U.S. prevent this money from being siphoned off by corruption?
· While all this activity is taking place in Baghdad, what chances do the Americans have of taming the insurgency in Anbar and elsewhere in Iraq?
· Iran is already a significant behind-the-scenes player in Iraq and has been the major beneficiary of the American fiasco there. Is the Surge in Iran’s interest, or do they have incentive to cause it to fail?
These are highly formidable obstacles to the success of the Surge. A few of them may be insuperable difficulties. But it is important in our assessment of the Surge, whatever we think of George W. Bush and the deceit and incompetence that has accompanied this war, to recognize the possibility for success. Even a temporary success lasting a few months would alter the dynamic of public discussion of the war in the U.S. and globally. We need to recognize that there are some things different this time, and that occasionally an unpredictable and completely unexpected outcome does occur.