The Economist is perhaps the world's most respected weekly news magazine. It makes Time, Newsweek, and US News and World Report look like People. It is read by people who's opinion really matter in our society -- people like Prime Ministers, Presidents, and CEOs. It is the very pinnacle of the elite press. Its line reflects that elitism, of course, but its pages has to reflect the truth because the people who read its pages both require and expect it.
Thus, their June 16th story on Iraq is very disturbing -- all the more so since they supported the invasion and have, consistently, been ardent surporters of the US mission to democratize Iraq and the broader Middle East. Though guarded in its description, their story paints Iraq as nothing less than a strategic disaster.
Note, as requested, several folks here have called for me to edit this diary. No problem -- don't want to get anybody in trouble! Also note, my comments are the comments in
within the quoted text. If folks still feel I'm breaking copyright then I'll delete it. I wasn't really able to do this earlier -- been busy with family stuff. Again, sorry for any concern this may have caused.
Read below:
Intro...and the Economist's opinion on the Iraqi Security Forces.
BAHRO TAHIR is not the brightest soldier in Iraq's new army. Last week, at an American-assisted military academy in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's home town, he began basic training for the fourth time. It was not that he wanted to spend another month studying tedious human-rights law and drilling under a blistering sun; Mr Tahir did not want to do that at all. Rather, according to the academy's Iraqi instructors, Iraqi army commanders tend to send to basic training only those too friendless or dim to wriggle out of it, which included Mr Tahir. "They said they were sending me here for a computer course," he lamented, to the amusement of the recruits within ear-shot, except for another basic-training veteran, who turned out to be deaf.
The instructors had more pressing concerns than the quality of their recruits. Two months ago, Iraq's Ministry of Defence took over the job of paying its employees, up to then paid by America, and since then they had not seen a cent. Language is also a problem, with half the recruits speaking Arabic and the others Kurdish, and few instructors knowing both. Perhaps the worst problem is the quality of leadership. The Iraqi colonel nominally in charge of the academy tried to employ his relatives, said his American supervisors, including one who was subsequently arrested in murky circumstances. He would not have been the first insurgent to practise on the academy's range: after the fighting in Fallujah, last November, American marines found the academy's badges on enemy corpses. Asked to estimate how many of the academy's students were motivated by a desire to help their country, Major Donald McArdle, the American in charge, reckoned 5%; his colleagues thought this too high.
* * *
In recent weeks, ISF units have taken charge of small areas of Baghdad and Mosul. By the end of this year, when elections are due to be held under a new constitution, they are supposed to number 230,000, and to be operating in divisions. America would withdraw, or so officials say, some troops early next year.
That is a pipedream. Corrupt, patchily trained and equipped, often abysmally led and devoid of confidence, most army units cannot operate above platoon-size. Between Iraqis and Americans there is deep mistrust: Iraqi units billeted on American bases are fenced off from their hosts as a security measure.
For every vaunted ISF success, examples of cowardice and incompetence abound. Even when stiffened by American forces, the ISF often flee when under attack. Iraqi marksmen have a habit of closing their eyes and spraying bullets in "death-blossoms", in GI slang. Some of the better units, including the 12-battalion, mostly Shia, police commandos, are accused of torture and sectarian violence.
Not that most American commanders--many of whom are on their second or third tour of Iraq, and want it to be their last--admit these deficiencies. To "put an Iraqi face" on operations, they are often accompanied by an Iraqi counterpart. But during operations observed by this correspondent in the violent northern town of Tal Afar last week, the "Iraqi face", that of a genial Kurdish general, spent much time with its eyes closed, gently dozing.
Now the Economist makes the case for staying...in other words, what has gone right in Iraq? What are the signs of hope?
Given that only a single American-trained Iraqi battalion existed a year ago, there has been a lot of progress. Desertion rates among the ISF, chronic last year when whole battalions hotfooted it, are currently low. With better leadership--if this could only be found--about 40% of army and paramilitary battalions are thought to be close to operating with minimal American support, and another 25% are only six months behind. Within 12-18 months, it is said, these units should be operating independently.
* * *
Furnishing them with the necessary headquarters and support units will take longer. As will the training of the police.
But.....
Top American officers in Iraq say that the United States should not contemplate making significant troop withdrawals for at least two years, perhaps longer.
Assumming our casualty rate stays the same that cost us another 1,679 killed, 11,315 wounded, and another $180 billion dollars for a grand total of 3,418 Killed, 24,170 wounded, and nearly $360 billion dollars.
On the recent operations:
A recent night-time raid with Iraqi soldiers and police commandos in Khalis, a mostly Sunni district north of Baghdad, illustrated both progress and shortcomings. The Iraqi officers were stirred to issue orders to move only on learning that their American mentors--part of a new scheme to embed 10,000 American troops in the ISF--were on the way. The orders then sparked terror in the ranks. Soldiers asked to be excused from the mission, complaining of sore limbs or faulty weapons. Many took sedatives, which Iraqi troops use to control their panic. "Better they take drugs than run away," an Iraqi officer explained. "Most of these guys haven't had much military experience or training and the insurgents are ferocious."
Having encircled the first target-house, the stoned warriors charged, firing their Kalashnikov assault rifles into the night sky. Inside the house, they grabbed two youths and shot a third in the shoulder as he tried to escape. They then ransacked every room, found a video camera and several cassettes and threatened the prisoners with summary execution. The youths admitted to having filmed insurgent attacks. Both were soldiers of the old regime and former residents of Fallujah.
* * *
On the Violence and American Denial:
The past two months have seen a staggering explosion in violence, even by Iraq's standards. Over 1,000 people have been killed, mostly by some 160 suicide bombers. On June 14th, a suicide bomber killed 22 people and injured more than 80 in Kirkuk, an oil-rich city disputed between Kurds and Arabs. Throughout this week, dozens of bodies of soldiers and government contractors were found littered across western Iraq, most of them shot in the head.
So much for the notion that Iraq's elections in January had quelled the insurgency--a delusion to which some American officials are still prone. "I think everyone understands that it's getting better every day," said Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Gibler last week in Mosul, which was hit by over 30 suicide bombers in April and early May. "Of course, every nation that's got IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and drive-by shootings and suicide bombers has definitely got some security issues, and this country has got those. But we're working to change that." The colonel received a phone call minutes later, informing him that four of his men had been injured by a suicide bomber.
On the "Political Process"
Since the elections--in which few of the Sunni Arabs who dominate the insurgency voted--Sunni religious and political leaders have held talks with American and Iraqi officials, and some have indicated that they will support the next election.
Which was recently confirmed here:
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGB7XHCSEAE.html
This week, the national security minister announced a plan to offer amnesty to some insurgents, in an effort to separate those Sunnis who merely fear being marginalised by the Shia majority from dead-end Islamist fanatics. Yet it is not clear what influence, if any, the Sunni leaders could wield over their divided people.
* * *
The fact is that many more Sunni Arabs would have voted in the last election had they not been too afraid to do so. Their areas are no more secure now. Indeed, parts of Anbar province, the Sunni heartland, appear to be sliding deeper into war.
Several small towns, including al-Qaim and Haditha, are in effect held by insurgents--despite an American air assault on the former last month, which followed a firefight in which the marines were briefly outgunned. Even in Fallujah, the symbol of America's refusal to deny the insurgents sanctuary, they are said to have re-established a hold. Last month, Anbar's governor was killed after American troops attacked a house where he was being held hostage and ignited a stockpile of arms.
Again, confirmation that we have effectively abandoned most of Al-Anbar province to the insurgents. We simply don't have enough combat power in Iraq to hold anything other than the ground our soldiers and marines are currently standing on. We're playing insurgent whackamole with the lives of our young men and women.
* * *
On the Possibility of Civil War:
Meanwhile sectarian violence is rising.
For a truly horrifying description of the slow slide into civil war read this:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1514897,00.html
in the UK Guardian. Violence and uncertainty are slowly turning Sunni and Shia against one another in a manner very reminiscent of Yugoslavia.
For two years, Shia pilgrims have been murdered on the road between Baghdad and the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. Recently, in defiance of an edict by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential Shia cleric, Shia militiamen have taken reprisals. Last month, 14 Sunni clerics were murdered, sparking a wave of tit-for-tat sectarian murders in Baghdad's slums. In the district of al-Bayaa, two men were shot dead in a photography shop prominently displaying a picture of Mr Sistani. "If the government does not find the killers, I will solve the problem myself," vowed the brother of the two men, arguing that Mr Sistani's edict forbids acts of random violence, but not rightful vengeance.
but...the Economist says Iraq is not yet at the point of civil war:
While lawlessness and insurgency endure, so will low-level sectarian killing. But few Iraqi commentators predict civil war anytime soon. The Sunnis are too fractured, and the Shia leaders, secure in their democratic majority, have no wish for it.
* * *
On the Jihadis and the Suicide Bombers:
In Tal Afar last month, a Lebanese youth with his hands taped to the steering-wheel of a Chevrolet saloon drove a bomb into a funeral procession, killing 25 mourners. Two more suicide bombers then struck the town, killing 35. These death tolls were unremarkable, but the victims were not. They seem to have been selected merely for being members of two tribes, the Sada and the Jolak, who are the (wholly secular) rivals of another tribe, the Qarabash, which happens to be on good terms with the local Islamists. In Iraq these days, it seems, a suicide bomber can be had for the asking.
Here is a particularly damning statement:
Who would die so wantonly? It beats American intelligence officers. Asked about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a notorious--and, according to some reports, one-legged--Jordanian fanatic, a senior American official admitted, "We don't even know how many legs he's got."
And here is a disturbing trend...more suicide bombers are Iraqis:
Until recently, it was said that all the paradise-seekers were foreigners: that Iraqis didn't do suicide bombing. This is probably still largely true. In the rare case that a bomber's nationality is established, it is usually foreign. Saudi, Palestinian, Yemeni, Syrian and Jordanian bombers have been identified. Most of them probably entered the country from Syria. But with Iraq's own Islamists becoming increasingly radicalised amid the mayhem, a growing minority of suicide bombers appear to be homegrown. Several would-be Iraqi bombers were recently arrested in Mosul. Most were middle-class university students, though, according to the American soldiers who shot and arrested her, one was a middle-aged woman.
A middle-aged woman. Middle-class university students. These are not "dead enders", these sound like established members of Iraqi society.
* * *
Finally, they come right out and say it:
Strategically, this is a disaster for America.
Think about that. The editors of the Economist are not kooks. For them to say this speaks volumes about what the state of affairs is in Iraq. Their reason?
An Iraq refashioned in its image was supposed to persuade angry Arabs of the joys of liberal democracy. Yet the country is now breeding Islamist terrorists of its own. Having no objective but to destroy Americans and the Iraqi government they have helped to create, they will not stop their attacks until American troops quit Iraq, or possibly even after then.
Tactically, for American troops, the suicide bombers are more manageable. Rarely have they penetrated American armour, with many American casualties the result of IEDs, which are much more numerous. Not so for the ISF, however, who drive around in soft-skinned pick-up trucks; 270 Iraqi soldiers and police were killed in May, mostly by suicide bombers. On June 15th, a suicide bomber wearing an Iraqi uniform killed at least 23 people and injured 29 in an army mess hall in Khalis.
In fact, even without killing Americans, the suicide bombers are scoring hits by ensuring that American troops remain deplorably trigger-happy, firing on many innocent motorists, and so creating more insurgents. In eastern Mosul alone, around five such incidents are reported each month. On June 14th, American marines killed five unarmed civilians after firing on two cars at a checkpoint in Ramadi, having been attacked by a suicide bomber moments before.
But, is there still hope?
In fairness, some American fighters are striving to develop a softer touch. On patrol in Mosul last week, soldiers dropped by shops to ask the locals how they were doing. But, running hunched from shop to shop, rifle at the shoulder, their faces hidden by helmets and mirrored shades, they remained an intimidating sight. One shopkeeper politely asked them not to come again during the day as they were scaring away his customers.
And yet Mosulis, like most Iraqis, do now seem more willing to co-operate with their occupiers. Last year, a hotline for Iraqis to call in with information about the insurgency received barely 100 calls a month. Since the election, it has been receiving 300-400 calls, leading to the killing or capture of several mid-level insurgents.
The impression that there is still hope for America's forces in Iraq is reinforced farther west, towards the border with Syria, in Ninewa province. American hawks have accused Syria of flooding insurgents across this border, though it is hard to tell how they know this: until recently, America had deployed only 450 combat troops to police 200 miles (320km) of unfenced border and dozens of hostile towns, including Tal Afar, a place of 250,000 people, which saw a full-scale battle between American troops and insurgents last year.
In April, when a 4,000-strong American cavalry regiment was hastily sent to the area, it found virtually every town in insurgent hands, and Tal Afar a ghost-town. Shops were shuttered, schools were closed and the town's hospital was filled with wounded insurgents. Tal Afar's 200 policemen were besieged in an Ottoman fortress; the town's mayor, being alive, was assumed by the Americans to be an insurgent sympathiser.
Since then, the soldiers have set about proving a simple truth: where American troop numbers are increased, security improves. Columns of Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles now patrol Tal Afar's bomb-blasted streets. On its previous deployment, to Anbar, the regiment made many of the mistakes common to American forces in Iraq, admits its thoughtful commander, Colonel H.R. McMaster. These included the tendency to arrest military-age males indiscriminately. In Tal Afar, it is acting according to the intelligence it receives. As a result better intelligence is forthcoming. On a foot-patrol with the regiment in Tal Afar last week, half a dozen people offered information on the insurgents terrorising them. On the strength of one such tip-off the day before, 28 carefully identified suspects were surgically seized.
More troops are needed, they say.
Such operations are impressive, but they only confirm what every American soldier in Iraq knows full well: there are far too few of them to secure the place. Even the regiment in Tal Afar is hard-pressed. Though it was sent, in part, to police the border with Syria, it can spare only 300 soldiers to the crossing-point at Rabiya. The unit's commander said they might be able to slow the flow of arms, but expected them to have no impact on the numbers of suicide bombers entering the country.
Moreover, while the cavalrymen rode north, gaps opened behind them. They were previously charged with securing Baghdad's southern approaches, including the towns of Mahmudiya, Latifiya and Iskandariya, an area riven with sectarian violence. They were replaced by a much smaller force, an exercise in futility, elegantly described by one commentator as "ironing the wrinkle around the shirt."
Everyone here at DailyKos realizes the gravity of the situation in Iraq, but this story, I think, crystalizes the string of reports we've all been reading about into a coherent message:
The Economist saying this is significant.