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?
BAGHDAD-With the number of violent deaths in Baghdad hovering around 2,000 a month, the U.S. and Iraqi security forces have launched a new effort to pacify the capital. But-as with everything else in Iraq-there are no guarantees that it will be any more successful than the previous attempt, which even senior U.S. commanders here concede was woefully ineffective. That initiative, by the newly formed government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, failed utterly in its attempt to secure the city from the Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias who are conducting much of the killing, kidnapping, and
torture of their fellow Iraqis. Some 4,000 U.S. troops, and an even larger number of Iraqi soldiers, have been sent to the capital as reinforcements for the new effort. Among both Iraqi and American officials, there is a growing consensus that the entire war effort hangs in the balance.
The war has reached this grim crossroads, many here believe, because the mounting centrifugal forces and the failure to achieve the basic requirements of peace are threatening to doom the Maliki government, or at least render it irrelevant. If the level of violence can't be significantly reduced in the coming months, the strained patience of Americans may also reach the breaking point, a growing number of politicians and military officers say. John Warner, the Virginia Republican and longtime chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, recently warned that if Iraq plunges into all-out civil war, Congress will have to reconsider its 2002 authorization for the use of troops here. In a letter to President Bush, longtime House Armed Services ranking member Ike Skelton of Missouri compared the battle for Baghdad to Midway in World War II as the "decisive battle" at a "critical and dire phase" of the war.
The danger of the strategy contemplated in the new security effort, however, is that much of the energy of the Iraqi and American forces will be poured into one more series of house-to-house sweeps, as thousands of soldiers fan out in cordon-and-search operations, knocking on doors and confiscating weapons and ammunition. Such tactics, U.S. commanders said in a series of in-depth interviews over the past few weeks, address only the symptoms of the current conflict, not its causes, while they risk further alienating the very civilians whose allegiance the fledgling government desperately needs.
Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, spokesman for the U.S. four-star command, the Multi-National Forces-Iraq, says the new strategy must be seen in its proper context. "The Baghdad Security Plan is a complete package," he emphasized. "We've always said that the military cannot win the peace around this country. All it can do is set the conditions to allow the political process to work so that it can establish peace." There are two economic components to the new plan, Caldwell says. Short-term relief programs will be funded by the United States, after which the government of Iraq is supposed to step up with $200 million in infrastructure-development and jobs projects. Whether that will happen, however, is anyone's guess. Another senior general points out, acerbically, that previous campaigns in Fallujah and Tal Afar failed to provide sustained aid. The man in charge of daily military operations in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, says failure now is not an option. "If we don't follow up with a build phase," he told U.S. News, "then I don't think Baghdad can be secure."
Power vacuum. Getting Baghdad right is just part of the challenge, and it may not be possible to bring lasting peace to the city without significant breakthroughs on the core issues of the conflict. The lack of political progress during the past year created a power vacuum that allowed sectarian violence to spiral out of control. Today, many seasoned American military officials grappling with the Iraq problem express frustration that there has not been more progress on implementing the official strategy's key political, economic, and security imperatives. There has been a failure to put sufficient resources and manpower toward achieving the fundamental requirements for peace, many U.S. commanders say. Among their principal complaints: A political reconciliation pact has not been achieved. Too little has been spent on reconstruction and services to win over ordinary Iraqis, and too few of the 138,000 U.S. troops are being used to mentor Iraqi security forces.
The lack of security is only the most obvious symptom of the lack of progress. Even armed U.S. soldiers cannot move around any more freely than they could a year or two ago. They travel from Baghdad's airport to downtown on high-speed choppers or on a hulking armored bus called the Rhino. Riders don helmets and bulletproof vests for the midnight rides. Drivers wearing night-vision goggles pilot the Rhinos with headlights off, in a convoy guarded by humvees bristling with heavy-caliber guns and escorted by attack aircraft.
Resupply convoys still roll mostly in the dead of night, snaking out of military bases in long lines. Military personnel hopscotch from base to base by plane or chopper. On a recent flight aboard a small Army cargo plane called a Sherpa, the pilot flew fast and low-no more than 200 feet off the ground-because the plane's slow climbing speed makes it vulnerable to antiaircraft missiles. Pilots jokingly call the main supply base at Balad the "duck pond" since Iraqis take frequent potshots at the many aircraft there. The most notable difference in the movement of people is the long lines of Iraqis at the airport with their belongings piled high. They are leaving, and few seem hopeful of coming back. Those who can't leave are rushing for whatever security they can find, many in the armed sectarian bands. "Everybody," says a senior U.S. officer in Iraq, "is just trying to survive."
One official puts the top political priority in blunt terms. "A viable government is needed to reduce the violence." By which he means a government that has explicitly gained the allegiance of all of Iraq's main groups. Since the fall of Baghdad, obviously, that hasn't happened. "We've wasted a lot of time here in the last three years," says another senior officer, ticking off the various interim governments, elections, even the writing of the Iraqi Constitution, which failed to address, much less resolve, the major points of conflict. The previous efforts, several U.S. military officials complain, were all about process when the focus should have been on the bargains that still need to be struck among the Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish groups to hold Iraq together. Process, these officials say, will never be enough to win over skeptical, fearful, and warring Iraqis; what's needed instead is an actual deal, arrived at through hard-knuckled bargaining and with sufficient carrots and sticks to make it work. The U.S., with its military, must be ready to be the guarantor.
To do such a deal, a senior coalition official says, it is essential not to demonize the key players. Right now, one such "demon" is Moqtada al-Sadr, the young firebrand Shiite cleric who has built both a potent militia and a highly popular political movement over the past three years. His party now controls five ministries and has 32 legislators, and his militia, Jaish al-Mahdi, numbers in the thousands. This official argues that a multipronged approach must be taken to the militias' various components, which include unemployed youths who are the foot soldiers, the criminal opportunists who run the bomb factories, and the hard-core fundamentalists who are torturing and executing Iraqis for belonging to the wrong sect.
Disbanding. In fact, that very approach was advocated as part of a security plan written about six months ago. Under it, each militia would produce a one-time list of members, and some number would be allowed to join the Iraqi security forces as individuals and spread across different units. The Badr Brigades Shiite militia, for example, which has about 17,500 members, would be given 5,000 slots. Many of its members are aging, so an economic incentive might be sufficient to win their retirement. The key to making this plan work is to offer it simultaneously to both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias. Some of the Shiite-led government's members, however, want to make the offer only to Shiites.
The lack of a political compact has direct bearing on the security mess. First, the length of time it took to form the government created a vacuum in which the militias' strength and influence grew. Maliki, named prime minister in April after months of haggling among the parties, espoused a 24-point national reconciliation plan, but lack of progress has it hanging by a thread today. One sign of gridlock occurred after Iraqi Army commanders asked that the government's Council of Representatives reaffirm Maliki's order that all illegal armed groups, Shiite and Sunni, be pursued equally. The council adjourned, instead, for summer break. The result? Still more violence. "There are forces in Baghdad," a senior coalition official says, "who feel they do not have the support of the government yet to confront some of the threats that are impacting them daily."
The economic deficiencies in Washington's Iraq strategy are every bit as glaring as the political ones. Of more than $300 billion spent on the war here, one senior official calculates that only about $8 billion has gone for economic reconstruction, services, and infrastructure. The imperative to provide economic benefits to ordinary Iraqis is not born out of some vague humanitarian impulse, U.S. military officials here emphasize, but one that directly affects the security of the country and the viability of the government. "That is how you get people to help you police the environment and provide you with the intelligence you need," says a senior official. "With a little more investment, we could turn Baghdad around," he adds, suggesting a figure of $10 billion over three years. "How do we know this approach won't work? We haven't even tried it yet."
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.
Police purge. The argument is that all efforts should be bent on improving Iraqis' ability to take charge of their own security. The Iraqi Army has been given the lead role in about half of the country (map, Page 53). There is a strong view within the U.S. officer corps here that Iraqis must be put in charge so that they will take ownership of the country's problems. But others lower down on the totem pole caution that the handover to Iraqis should not be accelerated much faster. And many commanders caution that U.S. advisers will be needed for years to reinforce the training and professionalization of the forces.
There is also a growing consensus that Iraqi forces will have to be bigger to do the job of securing Iraq. The military and police now number 298,000 and will reach 325,000 by year's end. The Maliki government plans to seek more. One yardstick calls for three Iraqi soldiers to replace every American one, which would mean 390,000. Some Vietnam comparisons suggest that as many as 500,000 are needed. In any case, just to meet the current goal, new recruits are needed to replace roughly 18,000 who have resigned or been wounded or killed.
The picture in the Iraqi police forces is far less positive. Overseen by the Interior Ministry, these forces outnumber the Army by about 40,000. Starting this month, the Iraqi National Police are being pulled from duty to undergo a much-needed overhaul. A senior coalition official says that five to six of the 26 police battalion commanders have been implicated in sectarian or criminal violence or both and should be purged and, perhaps, prosecuted. Unlike the Army, where efforts have been made to balance the ethnic mix to reflect the population, the National Police is still 75 percent Shiite, although that is down from 92 percent. In recognition of the need for greater mentoring, the police advisory teams are being increased to 200 from 158. Another very serious problem are 150,000 armed guards assigned to various ministries, who officials say are committing many of the crimes and killings. The Interior Ministry proposes taking control of them and having the United States purge and retrain them, but this will require Iraqi legislative approval.
Beefing up U.S. advisory teams could also make them less vulnerable. They will be increasingly exposed as U.S. forces consolidate onto 50 bases by year's end. That means that resupply lines for outlying advisory teams will be longer, quick-reaction forces will be farther away, and the medical evacuation may be more difficult.
President Bush has said on many occasions that he will heed Casey's advice on when and how fast to draw down U.S. troops. Backing away from earlier hints of a drawdown this year, Casey now wants to see "significant" improvement in the levels of violence by Ramadan, in late October. That also happens to be the eve of the U.S. congressional midterm elections.Despite adverse polls, the administration continues to argue for "staying the course" on Iraq, and Casey's spokesman argues against a rush to judgment. "Our presence has been there for three years, but this government has been in place for two months," says Caldwell. The new Baghdad security effort, he explains, will be a "rolling campaign," and the hope is that success in one area will have a positive effect on the other more difficult places like Sadr City.
The alternative, championed by opponents of the war, is to set a deadline for pulling out troops.
Between the two stark alternatives, however, another possibility exists. According to officials in the trenches of America's grinding war, there is still time to make significant changes in resources and manpower to achieve the key political, economic, and security goals of the strategy. But not much. Citing Ulysses Grant in the darkest days of the Civil War, one senior official said, "It's time for 2-o'-clock-in-the-morning courage on our part and the Iraqis' part."
This story appears in the September 4, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.