I’d Stay and Be a Tourist but Can’t Take the Gun Play

by Eric Martin

Over the weekend in Iraq there were a series of armed clashes between Iraqi government forces (with US forces in support) and Sunni tribal elements of the Awakenings movement.  The violence was a manifestation of the growing frustration amongst the Awakenings groups at the Maliki government's slowness in integrating them into government security forces, as well as Maliki's spotty record in terms of making payments that are ostensibly due to Awakenings militias.  Most recently, Maliki's security forces made an arrest of a key Awakenings leader.  Brian Katulis provides the big picture, and analysis of the key issues:

The standoff between two U.S. “allies” this weekend in the heart of Baghdad is a harbinger of things to come in Iraq. The showdown between Iraq’s central government security forces and members of Sunni militias, known as "Awakenings," had nothing to do with the size of the U.S. troop presence in Iraq and almost everything to do with enduring tensions in Iraq—multiple struggles for power between competing Iraqi factions. [...]

What happened this weekendin central Baghdad between Iraqi security forces and members of the Sunni Awakening groups was not unexpected, in large part because many of the tactics used in the 2007 “surge” of U.S. forces built a shaky and unstable foundation. Violence broke out in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Fadhil—just a few miles north of the Green Zone—when Iraqi troops backed by U.S. forces arrested Adil Mashadani, an “Awakening” militia leader on charges of terrorist and sectarian crimes. According to news reports, Mashadani allegedly maintained ties with Al Qaeda forces, helped plan roadside bombing attacks against Iraqi security forces, and ran an extortion racket that squeezed Fadhil residents for tens of thousands of dollars.

Whether these specific charges against Mashadani are true or not, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that someone like Mashadani was on the payroll of the U.S. taxpayers. I argued in a paper on the Awakening groups more than a year ago that the same U.S. tactics that contributed to the so-called “success” of the surge were actually undermining the process of helping Iraq bridge internal divisions. The tactics employed during the surge helped create alternate centers of power in supporting new militias, which built a shaky foundation that led to short-term security gains at the expense of longer-term political stability.

The stated goal of the surge, according to the Bush administration, was to reduce violence in order to help Iraq’s political factions bridge their divides over power, but that has simply not occurred in a meaningful way. Iraq remains plagued by enduring political divisions, as I argued last September in a paper on Iraq’s political transition after the surge.

A key tactic used in the Iraq surge could essentially be likened to what was done in the run-up to the current financial and banking crisis in the United States—steps were taken to make things look better than they actually were, while real problems lurked beneath unaddressed.

As Katulis suggests, the surge did achieve the domestic political goal of muting much of the more vocal opposition to the Iraq war, but in essence, it did so by kicking the contentious can down the road.  The issues that were fueling the insurgencies prior to the recent downturn in violence are still there, unresolved, and starting to flare up again.  While all-out conflagration is by no means inevitable, these early warning signs bear heeding, and efforts must be made to finally resolve the simmering conflicts or these events will amount to grim foreshadowing.

Unsurprisingly, neocons like McCain campaign operative Michael Goldfarb are busy trying to touch up the cracks in the facade rather than admit to the gravity of the situation:

The New York Times reports that Iraqi militants are showing "new boldness" in their campaign of terror, which "like bubbles that indicate fish beneath still water, suggest the potential danger, all the more perilous now because the American troops who helped to pacify Iraq are leaving."

The paper does not report that U.S. fatalities in March hit an all-time low with nine Americans killed in Iraq. Just four of those deaths were caused by the enemy. Four Americans killed out of a force of some 140,000 troops. But rather than report on the damage inflicted on the insurgency by U.S. arms and strategy and its salutary effect on American casualties, the New York Times is babbling on about fish and bubbles...Meanwhile, Tom Ricks had a post up yesterday titled "Iraq: The Unraveling." In December 2006, it was unimaginable that U.S. forces would be averaging one KIA a week just two years later, yet here we are and most of the media is indifferent, while Ricks calls it an "unraveling."

While Goldfarb is right that US fatalities hit an all-time low in March, what Goldfarb doesn't mention is that, by Iraq Body Count's tallies, 412 Iraqi civilians were killed in March, up from 346 in February which was itself up from 296 in January (iCasualties puts those numbers at 252, 202 and 187, respectively).  While it is certainly good news that US fatalities are on the wane, that positive storyline should be tempered (if not rendered moot entirely) by the fact that Iraqi civilian deaths are climbing steadily.  After all, according to Goldfarb's narrative, we're currently fighting in Iraq to safeguard the Iraqi population.  So shouldn't civilian death rates be the real metric with which to judge progress?

To reiterate the central critique of the surge made by myself, Katulis and others: The surge was meant to usher in a peaceful interlude to facilitate the broaching of Iraqi political divides, paving the way for long term stability and peace.  However, the extra troops offered little in terms of containing the fighting, but there were reductions in violence nonetheless - with most of the gains achieved through the willingness of Sunni insurgent groups (and the Sadrists) to suspend their armed campaigns (as well as past sectarian cleansing/walling off of homogeneous neighborhoods).

Progress on the political front during the surge-facilitated lull has been uneven at best - and the gains made through the willingness of Awakenings groups to forego violence are in jeopardy.  Unless a viable, lasting modus vivendi can be hammered out, violence will likely break out with more frequency and intensity.  The hard work remains, rendering Goldfarb's cheerleading about the low rate of US casualties out of place at best, and horribly callous at worst.  

This isn't supposed to be a war to make Iraq safe for US soldiers.  At least, according to the surge supporters' own rhetoric.  So maybe it's time that the Iraqi people were more than an afterthought when assessing the arc of events.

Comments

[jrudkis]

The rise of Iraqi casualties and the reduction of US casualties are related: they are related to the transition from US lead offensives to Iraqi led offensives. As the Iraqis take over, we should expect additional civilian casualties because the Iraqi military is not as well trained nor supplied as US forces, and therefore will not do the job as well.

This is related to COIN doctrine in that the indigenous force doing something poorly is better than US forces doing it well. It is the expected outcome.

So I don't think it is a metric of the overall trend anymore than quarterly reports reflect the health of the market: it is too short term to know if things are getting better or worse. The civilian casualty rate was expected to get worse even if the transition is going well.

Which is not to say that things are not getting worse, it is just that the numbers are not adequate as indicators.

Additionally, kicking the can down the road is a reasonable tactic for political discourse: we do it all the time ntaionally and internationally, and certainly did it when we set up our own country. Sometimes that is the only way to begin discussions about things you can agree on.

[Ugh]

This isn't supposed to be a war to make Iraq safe for US soldiers.

Nope, it was a war to make GWB feel like a tough-guy and one-up his poppy. Mission accomplished.

[Eric Martin]

So I don't think it is a metric of the overall trend anymore than quarterly reports reflect the health of the market

Granting this for the sake of argument, then it is eqaully pointless to argue about declines in US casualties being an indicator of success.

Certainly not as a way of waving away concerns over the Awakenings friction.

[jrudkis]

Granting this for the sake of argument, then it is eqaully pointless to argue about declines in US casualties being an indicator of success.

No, it is not an indicator of success, but it is probably an indicator that we are in fact moving toward more Iraqi led engagements, and therefore an indicator of an exit.

[Eric Martin]

Right, but then, previous spikes in Iraqi casualties occurred throughout our occupation, and were not indicators of our imminent exit.

Still, you might be right that this time it's different.

[Gary Farber]

"No, it is not an indicator of success, but it is probably an indicator that we are in fact moving toward more Iraqi led engagements, and therefore an indicator of an exit."

This seems to suggest that the more Iraqi civilian casualties, the happier we should be.

[cleek]

This seems to suggest that the more Iraqi civilian casualties, the happier we should be.

it's just the last throes of the birth pangs of Lady Liberty's breech delivery of a roll of flypaper.

[jrudkis]

This seems to suggest that the more Iraqi civilian casualties, the happier we should be.

I don't think that is correct, though it may be that having a high ratio of Iraqi to US deaths is a good indicator that we have pulled away from combat operations in favor of the Iraqi military.

After reviewing the IBC website, though, it looks like January, February, and March Iraqi civilian deaths is lower than the 3 months preceding, which were 527 in October, 472 in November, and 521 in December. Meanwhile, US death counts during those months were 14, 17, and 14, and for the first three months of this year US casuaties were 16, 17, and 9.

Granted the transition to Iraqi led patrols started gaining ground around October so that by January they would hit the ground running, but there does not seem to be enough variation to claim a trend.

So I don't think these numbers indicate a trend in any given direction, representing anything that we can discern, other than it is better than it was in 2006-2007, but worse than 2002-2003.

[Eric Martin]

Again, this post was in response to Goldfarb's claim that one month's data on US fatalities represented a trend. If one month is good for the goose, three months is more than good for the gander.

[jrudkis]

But isn't Goldfarb's post a response to the New York Time's cherry picked data that he felt was too gloomy, and should simply be balanced with good data? I think that makes him the Gander. I am not sure what comes after the Gander...maybe a duck?

Plus, the rest of his post was somewhat more measured:

In fairness, Ricks is rightfully concerned about the increasingly tense relationship between the Sunni Sons of Iraq and the Shiite government, but his concern hinges on "how things could fall apart if U.S. troops are withdrawn without more sustainable political deals." With casualties where they are now, shouldn't Ricks then be urging a slower, conditions-based withdrawal? At this rate it would take fifty years for American casualties to double. Is it really worth jeopardizing everything that's been gained just to get U.S. troops out a few months earlier?

Not that I agree with the suggestion that we could stay for 50 years and only double our casualties, but Goldfarb does acknowledge that things could go bad, and Goldfarb's point seems to be similar to the advice that Ricks posted from the Carnegie Foundation:

The dichotomous debate over Iraq -- one side supports (even if tacitly) indefinite occupation on the grounds that a full-scale civil war will erupt if the United States withdraws prematurely; the other supports a phased withdrawal of American troops from Iraq on the grounds that the occupation is increasingly a strategic liability - excludes moral considerations. Members of the former camp should ask themselves: is it right for the United States to stay in Iraq if it does not accord at least as much priority to the welfare of Iraqis as it does to its own strategic interests? Members of the latter camp should ask themselves: given how greatly Iraqis have suffered as a result of the war, is it principled for the United States to abdicate its humanitarian obligations to them under the banner of "ending the occupation?" Although each camp claims the moral high ground, the reality is that they both avoid the considerations that must underlie any moral posture.

[Lupita N]

If I were an Iraqi, I might really just want the people who wrecked my country's infrastructure, turned its politics over to religious nuts, made millions of my fellow citizens flee, and let loose the chaos in which hundreds of thousands of us died to just go ahead, tell themselves the humanitarian duty is all done, and please get the f__k out.

The total tone-deafness on display in discussions like these confuses and sometimes scares me. When I was robbed, the burglars didn't stay around to debate how they could improve the quality of life. I've been the target of two unsuccessful sexual assaults, and neither guy stayed to explain how my being raped would be the stepping stone to a better life for me. (Or for him, for that matter.) Some crimes and sins use up all of a person's right to talk about "humanitarian obligations."

[jrudkis]

Lupita,

Perhaps humanitarian is incorrect. On the otherhand, even in the personal examples you provided, presumably the perpetrators could have left you in worse position: perhaps killing or maiming you, or stranding you in a place you could not get help, or leaving you to be preyed upon by other bad people.

That they chose not to is not an example of humanitarianism, but surely it is good that they did not decide to leave you in worse shape than they did.

So the question now is how can we leave Iraq in the best position we can, recognizing we can't take back the robbery and sexual assault. Whether it is labeled as "humanitarian" seems small compared to the larger issue.

[bobbyp]

"So maybe it's time that the Iraqi people were more than an afterthought when assessing the arc of events."

Well, they never were more than that since the western powers drew up Iraq's boundaries down to this very day.

Change is hard.

[spockamok]

jrudkis, I think Andy Bacevich proposed a solution to the conundrum you cute. Any Iraqi whose life has been disrupted by the invasion, yet still feels they would be unsafe after US departure, gets to move to the U.S., unless they are a "radical or a mischief-maker" http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/27/2122

[Lupita N]

Jrudkis: I don't trust the good intentions of someone who's just harmed me and then wants to talk about doing me good unless they start by admitting the wrong and submitting to judgment for it. The US is one of those police chiefs who'll do anything for community relations except make cops pay any penalty for their wrongdoing, and wonders why others don't respect them. If this were any other nation, we'd be talking about invading them to put an end to multiple administrations of warmongering, and with some justice. We are not the solution, we're the problem, and will be that way until there's any real punishment for the perpetrators.

I think that's our humanitarian obligation, not more f'ing with Iraq.

[spockamok]

Events are showing that Katulis was right about the risks of paying off insurgents to switch the Awakenings. But did he have a solid alternative that was realistic?

Would it have been better to *not* pay for the Awakening members to shoot at others instead of U.S. troops?

Somehow, I doubt it.

[jrudkis]

Lupita,

That makes sense when you are talking about an event in the past, but in the current case, the harm is ongoing, so I think you probably would listen to ways to ensure that those who harmed you did not leave you in a worse position than necessary.

Feel free to prosecute after the victim is helped.

[Lupita N]

Leaving the victim in the hands of the criminals trying to violate her is damn close to never the right thing to do.

There are no humane empires. It always becomes necessary to choose the maintenance of the empire or the well-being and basic rights of the occupied. The US has chosen, continues to choose, the empire. If we were to do what the people of Iraq really need, we'd have to unravel the work of empire, and as a nation we're committed to not doing that. Instead, our national debate is about how to make Iraq the best China clone it can be, with as much good for them as is compatible with their not having any real fundamental autonomy.

So we'll bumble along and more people will get f'ed. Because that's what life is like under imperialists trying to dodge the realities of empire.

[scott]

jrudkis seems convinced of the "benevolent empire" theory in which we have the ability to make right all the things we've catastrophically fucked up in countries whose dynamics we understand dimly, if at all. I am not. I'm also amused by the arguments many make for continuing involvement that we need to remain to paper over the divisions of Iraqi society. This, of course, is the argument the British used cynically for decades to remain in India and anywhere else they wanted to stay. Like Lupita, I cannot (and don't think any of us should) get over the fact that we engaged in an unprovoked war of aggression against another country, causing death and injury to hundreds of thousands of people. Why do we have the right after committing that kind of stupid violation to remain there, spitting tidily vapid crap about "metrics of progress?" We don't belong there - our presence is the original crime against the people of Iraq, and by staying we perpetutate it.

[Eric Martin]

But isn't Goldfarb's post a response to the New York Time's cherry picked data that he felt was too gloomy

No. It was in response to a story about a very serious rift forming between the Awakenings and the Iraqi government. He wasn't citing data to counter data. He was citing data to counter a story that told of an extremely dangerous development - to say, no worries, things are really going great, just look here at US fatalities.

You're right that he does mention the rift, but only in passing as a throwaway line on the way to his other point.