The Battle For Baghdad
For U.S. Troops, this may be the last chance to head off a full-blown civil war. There's a plan, but will it work?
White elephants. The objective, obviously, is for ordinary Iraqis to experience the benefits of the economic programs. The special U.S. inspector general in Iraq recently testified to Congress that the most effective aid in this regard was not the large development projects undertaken by civilian government aid agencies and private contractors but the military commanders' emergency response program, or CERP fund. Large-scale civilian projects have produced some enormous white elephants, like the R3 water-treatment plant in Baghdad, on the northern edge of one of the most conflicted zones, Sadr City. Residents can go to the plant to get water, but homes aren't hooked up to it. "What we have built," one U.S. general said in frustration, "is the world's largest water fountain." Another example: In restive Diyala province, a water plant built to provide water to 36,000 homes today supplies fewer than 6,000.
The current U.S. budget request for economic aid to Iraq is only $355 million, and just $276 million for next year. The U.S. ambassador in Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has pinned his hopes for more on an international donors conference sponsored by the United Nations, even though less than $4 billion of $13.5 billion originally pledged by other countries in 2003 has been forthcoming. Neighboring gulf countries have not even agreed to forgive Iraq's debt. "I really believe that reconstruction has to continue, be that with U.S. funds or foreign funds," says Chiarelli. Iraq's legislature must prioritize its huge agenda to tackle the most important issues first, and in the meantime, the general says, "we've got to make sure we continue the rebuilding as they go through the process of passing laws."
The U.S. strategy calls for "standing up" Iraqi forces so that U.S. troops can gradually hand off policing and patrolling tasks to them. But even though this is the primary security task, there are only 4,000 U.S. advisers serving on military transition teams, or MiTTs, supplemented by special operations forces and a "partnering" arrangement with U.S. conventional forces based in the area. The number of partnered units is beginning to drop, as they are being concentrated on fewer and fewer bases. Finally, the U.S. advisers are mostly at the battalion level or above, when this type of insurgent warfare is mostly fought at the company, platoon, and squad level.
Despite a great deal of lip service paid to "counterinsurgency," more U.S. manpower is still being employed in offensive combat operations than in classic counterinsurgency tasks of protecting the population and denying its use to the armed opposition. In practice, many U.S. troops have been used for large-scale sweeps, efforts to seal borders, and chasing insurgents around in lightly populated areas. Massive security operations, including, most notably, the Fallujah offensive, wreak indiscriminate damage, as opposed to the precision, intelligence-driven raids on specific buildings where insurgents have been found.
Even worse, in terms of wasted manpower, are the huge layers of military bureaucracy that have built up here. There is a four-star strategic command in downtown Baghdad, led by Gen. George Casey, the ranking general in Iraq. Under Casey, there's a three-star command led by Chiarelli. Yet another three-star general, Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, is in charge of training Iraqi forces. There are thousands of soldiers in command staffs who labor over daily briefings and endless PowerPoint presentations. Hundreds more are employed in force-protection operations and providing basic services to the bases scattered around the country. On the sprawling U.S. military base next to the Baghdad airport, there are 14 speed traps monitored by military police with radar detectors in their SUVs.
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