Grindle

Reporting from Iraq:Or visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-H4Rj6k-WU&feature=channel_page

Here is the latest report from Doug Grindle: For technicians clearing landmines left over from previous wars, there is a thing called a 'toolbox' approach to getting rid of the old buried weapons. Read more

Doug Grindle, October 14, 2008 Pech Valley, northeast Afghanistan

This is a fairly wild region thats just now coming under better control - and slowly at that.

Afghanistan is Improving Slowly. As much as the news from Afghanistan tends to be bad these days, some bright spots are already faintly discernable on the horizon.As I have mentioned, things in Afghanistan are no piece of cake. Attacks are up about 30 percent this year.

For the first time the generals have said the situation in Pakistan will need to be solved before the war in Afghanistan can be won. And the war is getting deadlier. More than 130 US soldiers dead so far this year. Roadside bombs, used to such deadly effect in Iraq, are now well and truly part of the Afghan scene. The Afghan defense minister said the other day bomb makers, sophisticated enough to know how to blow apart coalition vehicles, are forsaking Iraq as a lost cause and flocking here instead.And the drug trade continues, often under the protection and sponsorship of the Taliban. Corruption is rife in the government and security forces.Whew! How bad can it get over here? It's pretty bad.And yet.. and yet.Some of those hopeful signs are starting to emerge, and they are going to get bigger as the time goes on.

Development is the keynote of the strategy to win here. Here in the Pech Valley, I am typing this on a small base by a river on the valley floor. The Pech used to be terrible from one end to the other. About 2 years ago the government (paid for by the US) ran a paved road along the bottom. Now the Pech Valley is pretty quiet on the bottom, and the insurgents spent most of their time in the hills above the valley, dropping in mortars and rockets on bases like this one. The moral: development works. Too bad it will take another year before roads go into the side valleys, where the same peace-making can be expected to take place. Some places will never be peaceful (the Korengal, a side valley of the Pech, is one example). But overall,
development works. - In the northeast the US military is now moving to arm the
local tribes to fight the insurgents. This is the same strategy that General David
Petraeus (now commander of US Central Command) used in Iraq to win the support of the Sunnis. Which won the war there. Essentially, you pay the tribes to act as
militiamen. For a wage they fight the insurgents. It is the earliest of days yet
to see if this will work here (about 2 weeks in). But we know unemployment causes
instability. 10 percent of the population is poor enough to want to fight for
their supper. This strategy ought to work here as it worked in Iraq.- Corruption
is plenty lousy. But the government is finally beginning to fire people who have
their hand in the till. Five provincial governors are 'reformist' governors whose
backgrounds are working for NGOs. They are the antithesis of warlords, who are
universally corrupt.

A body called the Independent Directorate for Local Governance has been set up to appoint provincial government officials, who are generally not corrupt. Still, all too often corrupt officials are let off. Or they are 'fired' and promoted. But there are Afghans out there who will resist bribery on a large scale. The earliest steps have been taken.- The economy is getting better, slowly. People are desperately poor still. Prices are rising. But the number of cars in Kabul has risen approximately four-fold since 2001. There is money in the markets of provincial capitals. As roads are built trade invariably increases. The process is just beginning- Afghanistan can expect a mini-surge of US troops. Some analysts, such as the British ambassador to Afghanistan, believe foreign troops are the problem not the solution. Not so. A surge of troops into the northeast, which can insulate Pakistan’s restive tribal area across the border, will bring much of the stability needed to build more roads! This is a
good thing, even though many other provinces will not be covered. And even though
the money for roads too limited, even here near Pakistan.

The Afghan National Army (ANA) is supposed to double to about 125,000 men within 5 years. At last. The ANA is good, and this should have happened years ago.- The Pakistanis are arming their own tribal militias across the border. It could well be possible to foster a split within the Taliban, which is becoming a criminal conspiracy at heart, if the right pressure is exerted long enough.So in all, the news from Afghanistan is grim. It is terrible. But for the first time in months, it looks like the news from Afghanistan could be much improved by the middle of next year.

WCCA member, long time supporter and friend Doug Grindle sends us his latest "News Note" .

Hello All:
I hope alls well.
Sorry - this is only a week after the last NewsNote!
Oh well never mind.
The roadside bomb situation is getting worse here, getting to be more like Iraq used
to be.
The more things change...
If this is all too much just send an unsubscribe
all the best
Doug

//////////

Khost, Afghanistan - With the US Army's strategy in Afghanistan, victory at best is
going to be a long time coming. At worst it isn’t going to come at all.
The US strategy is based on a broad-based plan that assumes the insurgency
cannot be stopped by killing terrorists alone. Instead of killing the
insurgents, the villages which harbor the insurgents must be brought over to the
side of the government.
As I've mentioned before, this strategy is the Marie Antoinette 'let them eat
cake' philosophy turned on its head - if the peasants are starving and unhappy,
provide them wells, electricity, schools and a government that cares and they
will decide to support the government. Add in security, whereby the locals have
a reasonable chance of surviving if they resist the insurgents, because the
Afghan army and police patrol the villages consistently, and victory will come.
This strategy of course takes literally years to implement. It takes two to
four years to build the main roads, years more to build the infrastructure
inside the villages at the ends of the roads. But it should work.
This is of course the rosy scenario (though it is reasonably likely to work).
But there are some flies in the ointment that could wreck the plan. And there
isn't much time left to experiment because after seven years of war, time here
is running out.
The flies are:
* Tribal rivalries and divisions. Many tribes hate each other and uniting them
is difficult. More importantly, tribes stick together. Getting each village to
sign on with the government often requires the entire tribe to sign on. But
building a well in one village won’t persuade a whole tribe to back the government.
Especially when half the tribe lives across the border in Pakistan and those members
are paid regularly by insurgents to kill Americans. Hydro projects on this side of
the border don’t influence anyone across the border in Pakistan. And there had be
plenty of those projects on this side of the border.
* Corruption is eating the system. Corruption isn’t just petty thievery and
graft. It isn’t just pilfering fuel supplies meant for army and police vehicles.
It isn't even giving your incompetent cousin the army commander’s job that should
have gone to someone who actually is able to do the job properly. Corruption is a
breakdown in the rule of law. It means rapists of children are not brought to
justice. Murderers and terrorists get out of jail for a bribe. Families are
dishonored and the government is seen as the problem, not the solution.
Americans describe corruption as an Afghan problem which the Afghans must solve
themselves. Phooey. America pays for and props up the government. Exerting
leverage to demand mass firings of incompetent army officers, government
officials who steal from their constituents, and jailers and judges and police
who refuse to arrest criminals or let them out of prison, is badly needed.
America has the leverage to impose it. In time the country will grow out of
corruption, as the economy revs up and as bad people are slowly eased out. But
for now some government sectors - namely the army and the criminal justice
system - should be held to a high enough standard that firings for corruption
are commonplace and not the exception. These sectors should not be a mockery of
what the government is supposed to stand for, because that alienates the very
people now sitting on the fence. It wouldn't matter if America had a different
strategy, but it does matter when the US strategy hinges on popular good will
toward the government.
* The last fly is unfortunately the US effort itself. Many US military officers
and civilian officials make too many excuses for basic failings.
Problem - USAID and State Department are not pulling their weight. How can the
Afghan government be stood up with a handful of civil advisors in each province?
It cannot. The excuse - no one wants to serve in the provinces which are
'unsafe'.
Problem - the police training is years behind where it shoudl be because police
training was not taken seriously until 2006. The excuse - the international
community failed its mission in previous years.
Problem - there are too few US soldiers and US Marines training Afghan police
and army units, and it's going to get worse as the security forces expand. (For
instance, most Afghan Army battalions have half the US advisors the US Army plan
says they need.) Problem - major infrastructure projects take literally years
longer than they should. (For instance, the Khost-Gardez road, repaving 62
kilometers, will take 5 years to complete. But the roadwork itself is expected
to only take about 7 months). Problem - there are too few helicopters.
Problem - the US intelligence services (civil and military) are providing
rudimentary service to the war effort at best, in the prime task of finding and
killing insurgent plotters throughout Afghanistan.
The excuses are generally that Afghanistan is a sideshow compared to Iraq and we
are doing the best we can with limited resources. But that is an excuse, not a
reason for such widespread problems.
Almost two years ago General Petraeus altered the way of doing things in Iraq,
with smaller bases, more troops and better coordination with locals (especially
Sunnis). The result was a win (a fragile win but a win nonetheless). In
Afghanistan, more forthright talking, more creative solutions and less excuses
are needed.
Otherwise it’s going to be a long war, and possibly one without end. The
American people are patient, but a 20-year-war here is untenable, and you can
bet al Qaeda and the Taliban know it too.

///////////////

Doug Grindle Writes:

Hello All:
Here is the latest installment of the NewsNote.
It deals with intelligence. Which is really what Afghanistan is all about.
This Gmail account is a temporary one as here at FOB Salerno in Khost
province as the military computers hate hotmail.
Afghanistan is slow slow slow going. On this subject as in so many others.

Doug

///////

The war in Afghanistan is a counterinsurgency.
Counterinsurgency is above all an intelligence war - a matter of pinpointing
the right targets at the right place at the right time so they can be
captured or killed.
Intelligence matters because without it, the coalition effort is reduced to
what the man in the humvee can learn about what's going on around him as he
drives around. Often this seat of the pants, "feeling-out" intelligence, or
lack thereof, results in a humvee hitting a roadside bomb, and people are
often injured or killed. Good intelligence allows security forces to create
a new way of doing things.
Then it is too bad that seven years into the war, much of the intelligence
effort in Afghanistan is rudimentary and fragmented and bound by serious
shortcomings.
There are in essence three types of intelligence used to stop attacks.
The most basic kind, called 'pattern analysis', charts past hostile acts
and predicts when and where future hostile acts will take place. For
instance, insurgents plant roadside bombs on this bend in the road during
the full moon. So the next time the full moon hits, be wary of this corner
or, even better, set an ambush and take out the bomber-setters when they
arrive to emplace the bomb.
This is run of the mill, common intelligence; easy to collect and easy to
graph, because bombs that hit friendly forces are easy to record.
The second kind of intelligence allows Americans and Afghans to kill High
Value Targets (HVTs) - the people who plan and direct the minions who set
the roadside bombs.
In order to be effective, intelligence needs to predict this HVT will be at
a certain place at a certain time. This allows soldiers or special
operations people to swoop in and capture or kill him.
In Iraq the problem was never knowing who was the HVT. It was predicting
when and where he is expected to be somewhere to catch him. HVTs tend to
move every night to avoid this trap. Many snatch raids came up empty
because the HVT was not where he was expected to be.
This is called 'actionable intelligence' - the ability to predict he will be
at his house at 11pm tonight. Plain old intelligence saying a man is an HVT
is a useful start, but it is not 'actionable'.
So obviously, intelligence is not just information, it is secret
information. If the HVT knows the Americans know he plans to be somewhere,
he will change his plans. The information is useless if it is not secret.
In this scheme of things, the intelligence effort in Afghanistan is a mess.
On the simple matter of 'pattern analysis', of predicting where a roadside
bomb will be set, the Afghan forces are just beginning to set up a system
for tracking past acts, in oder to predict future acts. The Americans
already do. This is intelligence of the most basic kind. But because so
few Afghans can even write, it is a major task for the Afghan security
forces to get rolling, and is only just beginning.
On the more difficult matter of generating actionable intelligence, the
nature of Afghanistan itself presents insurmountable hurdles. HVTs may be
expected to stay overnight in the house of a village elder, but how do you
identify the house if there are no maps of the village, no street names nor
house numbers? How do you get in quickly enough if the insurgents can see
the dust plume from your humvees ten miles off and run away? And how do you
fly in more quickly if there are too few helicopters to run snatch
operations at a consistently high level?
It would require an agent on the ground to walk up to the house with a GPS,
get the grid coordinates, and then send in a helicopter team to snatch the
target - that is, if you first knew he was expected that night.
Sadly, none of those elements are in place on a large scale in Afghanistan.
So the HVTs can plot terror acts in comparative peace.
The Afghan National Army does have good contacts in the village, because
many of its soldiers grew up in them. Identifying HVTs and the terror teams
they "command" is no problem. Knowing who they are, though, is not enough.
Knowing where they are, where they will be at what time in the future, and
then doing something about it is currently an insurmountable problem in many
parts of the country. So, in provinces you have cells of 20-90 men, under
known leaders in specific districts, but there is little anyone can do about
it.
Then there is a third level of intelligence - real intelligence. That is
infiltrating a working terror network with an agent in place, who can send
back reports on operations, intentions and capabilities.
That is what the US and the Soviet Union tried to develop against each other
with varying degrees of success throughout the cold war. It is the ultimate
aim and gold standard of intelligence.
And it appears American and the Afghan forces aren't even on the road to
that destination, yet alone actually there.
D.G.

Hello All:Here's the latest NewsNote installment.It covers the next step in Iraq. Economic jobs programs are this year's model. I am north of Baghdad.

(Kirkuk Iraq) - America is taking the next logical step in Iraq to cut violence. Too bad it’s about 4 years late. Until the latest spike in violence, insurgent activity had dropped off dramatically, to about 40 American deaths a month. Partly because renegade religious leader Muqtada al Sadr declared a ceasefire. But mostly because the Sunnis for the most part threw in the towel. Al Qaeda's barbarous acts against the very Sunnis who most supported them drove those same Sunnis to turn against the insurgent group and throw them out. Now many of the Sunnis are manning checkpoints, riding around in cars and generally keeping the peace in their own neighborhoods across the Sunni areas. Now American patrols routinely stop at these checkpoints, talk and joke with the Sunni 'fighters,' hand out some water, and find out what the insurgents are up to in the area. It's a remarkably effective way to quell violence. If someone lays a roadside bomb, it’s these neighborhood security groups that have the local knowledge to find the perpetrator. For this the Americans pay the Sunni fighters the princely sum of somewhere between $125 a month to $250 a month per fighter, depending on the area. In this part of northern Iraq there are 12,000 of these fighters. Upward of 70,000 across the country. It is probably the best bargain America ever made. One of the reasons the al Qaeda message was initially so attractive is because al Qaeda paid good money. For an unemployed Iraqi man, especially one with a family, getting $100 in return for firing a gun at America forces or helping to lay a roadside bomb is a meal ticket good for a month. Many American officers knew as far back as 2004 that the economic incentive was a major factor in quelling the insurgency. That’s not surprising. Counter-insurgencies are waged at the level of the village, neighborhood and household. That meant sergeants, lieutenants and captains knew what was going on better than the generals. But that knowledge didn’t flow upwards. To take away the economic attractions of al Qaeda meant the Americans needed to spend money on a massive scale and spread it around in small chunks. Like a 1930s-era Works Projects Administration. That essentially is what these US-funded Sunni security groups do - they pay American dollars to military-minded Iraqis to stay away from al Qaeda. We out-bid al Qaeda for their services and we won. Violence is down. It works. Finally and at last the military is taking that idea and extending it. A new program called the Civilian Service Corps (CSC) is being created. It aims to get thousands of people into job training and into viable construction companies, and give them a guaranteed paycheck for about a year, courtesy of the America taxpayer. It will bring economic stimulus to large areas of Iraq. The idea, essentially, is to let the Iraqis eat their way out of the insurgency. As ideas go it’s a winner. But the problem with ideas like this is they are not 'sexy.' Economic training and jobs programs are... yawn... boring. Sadly, they are also much more effective than kicking in doors and shooting people. This massive jobs program didn’t happen in 2004 because the American military leaders didn’t have the ability to take the information from below and develop something like the CSC. And because the rules governing the military's use of funds for civil projects actually prohibited spending money for programs like the CSC. It will be interesting over the next year to see if the CSC works. If it doesn’t work it won't be because it's not a good idea - it's probably the best one of the past year. It will be because the idea is so gosh-darn unbearably boring that no one will take it seriously.

Fighting the Shiite Militias (At Last)
by Doug Grindle
April 12, 2008

Years of sweeping one of Iraq's biggest problems under the rug has finally come home to roost.

Since Sunday, reports indicate 19 Americans have died in Iraq. That’s the worst week in Iraq this year. It is up significantly from the average of casualties over the past few months, which have been running at just under 40 per month.

Conventional wisdom holds that violence in Iraq is bad. But in this case, perhaps that's not as true as usual.

Much of the fighting is centered on delivering a major blow to the Shia militia known as the Mahdi Army, run by renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. This is no rag-tag militia of no account.

Estimates have held steady for years that the militia has between 70,000 and 80,000 members. Al Sadr is supported by Iran politically and almost certainly financially. And Iran almost certainly gives the Mahdi Army and other militias the worst type of roadside bombs, called "explosively formed projectiles", or EFPs, which are highly effective in killing Americans.

The Mahdi Army is bad. It is out of control. Last year, for several months in mid-year, half of the American casualties in Baghdad were caused by Shia militias; of them, the Mahdi Army is the biggest and most dangerous one.

In this context, a reckoning is long overdue. Reports indicate that reckoning was originally scheduled for June by American and Iraqi forces, but was precipitously brought forward by the Maliki government more than two weeks ago, when Iraqi soldiers launched an assault on Shia militias in Basra.

That rush was not without cost. Any assault in Basra was almost bound to fail without meticulous and extensive preparation, given that the British moved out of the center of Basra last year and retreated to the city's airport, allowing Shia militias and organized criminals to assume creeping control of the place.

In Iraq there have only ever been two main opponents. The biggest, most urgent security threat came from the Sunni insurgents and their al Qaeda allies. That threat has fallen away as tens of thousands of Sunnis switched to the side of the government, which has put their erstwhile al Qaeda allies in a real bind, as they have been pushed farther from Baghdad into Diyala Province and Mosul in the north.

The other main opposition was always going to be the Shia militias, of which al Sadr is by far the most notorious and violence-prone leader. America and its Iraqi allies either would not or could not address this problem - until now - the thinking being that it was too difficult to fight both Shiites and Sunnis at the same time, and the Sunnis took precedence.

Instead the Shia problem was put on hold. Policy makers seemed to assume either the Shiite militias would fade away, as the legitimate Shia government co-opted them into the political process, or would eventually require a military solution when spare troops became available.

It appears that with the Sunni insurgency on the wane, the Maliki government feels those extra forces are now available.

As the casualty figures flow in, one hopes the cost of the recent fighting will not be too high. But one hopes even more fervently that this spasm of violence will bring about the true denouement of the al Sadr problem, and that his ultimate reckoning will not just fizzle out. The problem cannot be allowed to fester, to appear again another day. If it is not solved now, when will it be?

This just in from Doug:
"Hello All:Heres this week's NewsNote from the war zoneI am cheating as I left
Iraq 3 weeks ago and am in Afghanistan, but there you go.As ever, return an
unsubscribe in the subject line if you like.All the bestDougPS - Also attached
for your ease of reading. --------------- The Bush Administration is busy
snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq.Violence is down 60-percent
over the last year. The usual reasons given are the surge of 30,000 extra troops,
the slowdown of Shia militia attacks after a ceasfire from Muqtada al Sadr, and
the Sunni switch, of Sunni tribes moving away from al Qaeda and toward the
central government.Of these factors, the switch of Sunnis against al Qaeda has
made the biggest difference on the ground.In a humvee of the 10th Mountain
Division in the Triangle of Death, driving the roads near Muhmuidiyah, the change
is striking. This was at one time one of the worst areas of Iraq, on par with
Ramadi and Fallujah.Comprising the whole swathe of land west and south of Baghdad
International Airport, the Triangle of Death was a black hole of casualties and
smart insurgents. Driving the roads was an exercise in expecting the worst.Last
summer those roads actually felt different. Previously, you knew something was
going to happen somewhere. You just hoped you missed it. But by last summer,
after the Sunnis had switched, many days were clear of any insurgent activity. It
felt like a load lifting from one’s shoulders.In some areas, attacks dropped
95-percent. That’s because there were physically fewer fighters on the other side
- the Sunnis had stopped setting bombs, and then kicked al Qaeda out to boot.But
now those same Sunnis are getting the short end of the stick. The coalition isn’t
taking them seriously enough, and their cooperation is in danger of withering.On
Saturday (March 22) an army Apache attack helicopter killed six of them who were
manning a checkpoint. Local US officers knew about the checkpoint, according to
published reports. Blue-on-blue incidents are common, and the Sunnis are killed
by Americans surprisingly frequently, even as they do security jobs for low pay,
saving Amercian lives.That is, when they are paid. The Sunnis, who have a
rapidly-changing array of officials names (the latest one is Sons of Iraq), are
often not paid. Manning a checkpoint and patroling the neighborhood brings in $10
a day for these fighters. There are about 80,000 of them across the country. It
is probably the bargain of the century, given the price of a single deployed
soldier, whose weekly meal tab alone is about $500, paid under food contracts
negotiated with Kellogg Brown and Root. By now many of the 'Awakening Councils'
that manage the Sunni fighters have had enough and are threatening to strike,
because theirt men have not been paid. Several councils are already are on stike,
pushing thousands of armed and potentially dangerous men back on the street
without a job or a sense of obligation toward the Iraqi government.Worse yet,
beyond the issues of pay and fratricide, the United States has not proven itself
a staunch advocate for the Sunni groups, in the face of the Iraqi government's
reluctance to embrace them. The Sunnis want to become a legitimate part of the
security forces. But the Shia ministry of the Interior, which runs the police,
wants nothing to do with them, and routinley rejects Sunnis applying for jobs.
The Ministry of Defense is also dragging its feet, reluctant to train and arm
potential rivals. These Sunnis are getting very short shrift from the Iraqi
government and meanwhile the US does... nothing.US Army soldiers visit sheikhs
west of Baghdad regularly. These sheikhs manage the fighters and decide if this
is a good idea. They hate al Qaeda. They have nowhere to go but into this
alliance with the Americans and the Iraqi government.But desperate men take
desperate measures. Over 30 Awakening Councils are threatening to strike over the
pay issue. Given the Sunnis' role in bringing a semblance of peace to much of
Iraq, it is madness to throw these people out in the cold. It is even more mad to
give them incentives to take up arms against the central government, by killing
them recklessly and rejecting their legitimate claims to security jobs. In 2003
the Sunnis used the rationale of protecting their community and interests when
they started this whole mess of an insurgency. In 2008 history must not be
allowed to repeat itself." D.G.

Doug Grindle writes:

"When Does The Level of Violence Become Acceptable?

The night convoy supply run in Iraq isn't what it used to be.
Tonight we are doing the run between Camp Anaconda (40 miles north of Baghdad) and Camp Scania (almost 200 miles south of Baghdad).
The risks of doing this run are:
IEDs (improvised explosive devices - aka roadside bombs); EFPs (explosively formed penetrators - charges that blast molten metal through armor effortlessly); and small arms fire.
The drivers, huddled behind thick armored glass, peer into the night. All three crewmen in each humvee - the driver commander and gunner - focus intently on the 25 yards of road lit up by the glare of the headights, looking for bombs.
It is a testing time, for both the powers of concentration as well as basic human courage.
These people (men and women, for I am with B-Co, 297th combat support battalion, which includes women, including the woman driver in our truck, Spc Jiminez, known as "Jimmy") do this almost every night. They will continue to do this in coming months before rotating home to Alaska in the Spring.
Almost every night something happens on this road, called Tampa, which is the main supply route leading north from Kuwait, and along which flow masses of supplies - tires and bullets, ice cream and eggs - that an army uses to fight. A couple of weeks ago one of the trucks of this squad was blown up (no one was killed) doing a similar run. These soldiers drive all over Iraq, escorting supply trucks.
But despite the present danger, this run isn't what it used to be.
Its been two years since I first covered (another unit) driving this stretch of road. Simply put, this run sees a lot less action than before. There used to be more bombs, more small arms fire, more of everything, up until as recently as last June. These days the army's techniques are better, the insurgents are fewer in number. Attacks are down.
In recent months the army is running about one casualty a day. That's just under 40 a month, down from casualty counts of over 100 a month in mid-2007.
At some point Americans and Iraqis are going to have to contemplate the next step in the war (unless things reverse and get dramatically worse) - when does America call victory and go home? How many casualties per month does it take before a war becomes something less than a war? One American a week? Two a month? 70 Iraqis a week, both civilian and security forces?
For now this question doesn't affect daily life here. These soldiers driving the main supply route in the dead of night will keep on, until they head home in a few months.
For the soldiers, if you are part of a squad that takes a hit, even one casualty per year is almost certainly way too many."

WCCA member and friend Doug Gindle sent in this most recent report from western Iraq:

Al Asad airbase, western Iraq - As you know, Anbar Province in western Iraq is now pretty quiet. It used to be about the worst of the worst, and the bastion of the Sunni insurgency. Now there is about one tenth as much violence as before. It is pretty close to the 'acceptable level of violence' that is the goal here.
It has happened because the Sunnis have allied themselves with the Iraqi government and US military, and booted out al Qaeda.
But how did it happen? How did the Sunnis decide to fight against al Qaeda and throw in their lot with their sworn enemies?
This question is important. Very important. It is the final score card on how to fight these kinds of wars, how the US did here, and what to do next.
There are two very different answers as to what happened and why. One is right, one is wrong. I don't know which is which, but here are the versions and the evidence.
Scenario 1 - The Marines (who run Anbar) did such a great job the enemy just gave up. The combination of ferocious attacks coupled with civil affairs projects (building schools, wells, roads etc) convinced the local Sunni sheikhs, who make the decisions, that the game wasn't worth the candle. Why endure the hurt when the US Marines and subordinate units instead will offer economic benefits and then go home? So they joined the US and Iraqi government and went against al Qaeda. This scenario portrays the Marines as increasingly in control.
Scenario 2 - The locals got sick of al Qaeda and unilaterally decided to get rid of them. They fought al Qaeda and then allied themselves with the Iraqi government and the US military, which were seen as the lesser evil. The sheikhs realized the US would eventually leave. In this version, al Qaeda essentially controlled the province for years, but their tyranny became too onerous. Cutting hands off for stealing, summary executions for trivial offenses, killing popular local sheikhs for petty transgressions, forcing marriages between the daughters of local sheikhs and al Qaeda cadres. It was unbearable and so the Sunnis rose up.
The evidence is this:
- The Marines spent some money but not a huge amount on local aid projects. I don’t think I saw one in 2 years of being in Anbar. There were a good number, but there just seemed to be less than in other areas.
- The local Sunni sheikhs told US Army soldiers that last November (2006) they got sick of al Qaeda and started to fight them. The extremists were too out of step with mainstream Iraqi culture, which is actually quite permissive. The Sunnis fought al Qaeda from November until January, when the US military noticed what was going on. By March the US military was cooperating with the Sunni 'rebels', even on operations. By June it was over and the Sunni sheikhs won, al Qaeda lost.
- The conventional wisdom was that Anbar was a province that could be held but never converted. It would just eventually go along with developments in other parts of Iraq. The 'win' would be gradual. But in fact, within six months the change was 180 degrees, and the war was mostly won here. The flip was relatively quick - and not a gradually increasing ascendancy over the area predicted by the US military's own estimates.
So that's the evidence. And those are the theories.
This all matters because the Marines now want to 'take over' the war in Afghanistan, using their 'highly effective' methods developed in Anbar.
That’s a good idea if you believe the Marines won in Anbar - after all, they won because they know how to fight counterinsurgencies.
It is a lousy idea is you believe the other scenario - that al Qaeda was not only in control, but in such authoritative control that the local Sunnis were forced to take matters into their own hands. And the Marine methods created essentially no victory in the war. Al Qaeda did that all by themselves.
Personally I think the Marines ought to stay out of Afghanistan.