Iraq and Afghanistan

Noah Feldman has recently published a courageous book entitled What We Owe Iraq : War and the Ethics of Nation Building. As one of the advisors in Iraq after the beginning of the occupation and as an authority on Iraq and Islam, Feldman brings to the task an impressive resumé. His argument is that whatever the mistakes and misjudgments that we made in going into Iraq when and how we did, we now have a moral obligation to stay and complete the task of building democracy in Iraq, but only by adhering to some rather different rules than previous colonizers. Whatever we do we must create stability and security. After that we can assist the many factions in the country to work out their differences and fears through democratic processes.

I am sympathetic to the argument. But Feldman is unfortunately stuck with “democracy” as the only acceptable outcome for Iraq because our generation has not learned any other way of thinking about political alternatives for countries harder to govern than our own. In his own presentation he points to Somalia and Haiti as cases of American and international failure to live up to their trusteeship responsibilities. I would assume that he would think that less than democratic regimes in these countries might be preferable to what they have now. But he has no tools to thinks about such regimes, and so fails to make them part of the discussion.

What people everywhere, and especially in the less developed world, crave more than the institutions of democracy as we understand them are security, stability, legitimate government, and freedom (understood as independence or autonomy). The people of the two Kurdish enclaves in Iraq, for example, have governments that we often hold up as examples and that probably satisfy their people to a reasonable extent. Yet neither is really a democracy. Neither is likely to vote out of local power their entrenched party and personal leaders. The parties will see to this. Further afield, the people of China are coming to challenge the rest of the world on all fronts, economically and even in terms of “soft power”. Yet China does not have a democracy. Its people accept the regime because it is Chinese (therefore “free”) and legitimate in their eyes (a vague and yet apparently meaningful concept). China appears fully accepted by Washington. The communist government of Mongolia before the collapse of the USSR ruled as an authoritarian communist party. Yet it modernized its people and offered services unheard of in the developing world. Everyone I talked to in the early nineties in Ulan Bator was amazed how modernized the Mongolians were. Sexual equality was well advanced. This contrasted remarkably with the way of life and services offered by “democracies” that I was visiting at the same time, such as the Dominican Republic, India, or Guyana.

All of which suggests that regardless of our pretensions, we would be doing an important service to the Iraqi people if we left behind a free, stable, secure, and legitimate Iraqi government regardless of the extent to which it reflected the standards of a modern liberal democracy. Perhaps the best way to get independence, legitimacy, stability, and security is through the establishment of effective democratic institutions. But we should remember that these institutions are merely means to the broader goal of leaving behind a responsible Iraqi state that serves its people.

The Presidential election went fairly well and we are looking forward to parliamentary elections that will make possible the creation of a fully functioning democracy in Afghanistan. However, all is not going well. The United Nations reports that Afghanistan is now producing more opium and heroin than it ever has in its history. Kabul’s interior minister claims that 87% of the world’s opium is produced in Afghanistan. This is no doubt a considerable exaggeration but gives some idea of the size of the problem. It is also significant that more and more of the processing of the raw opium into products meant for Western markets is now in Afghanistan. We can take comfort in the fact that reconstruction and improved security has now made possible the resurrection of a viable industry that had languished under the Taliban. However, experience in Colombia and elsewhere suggests that drugs and democracy make poor companions. For drugs are in the hands of a few people, often warlords, self-appointed or appointed by Kabul, who because of their control over relatively immense resources are able to control the countryside on a detailed basis through either intimidation, bribery, or other means of affecting the political process, democratic or not. There should be no doubt that the majority of the legislators elected in the near future will be beholden to a greater or lesser extent to the drug lords. This will be democracy, but perhaps not what we had in mind.

The government talks a good, anti-drug line, but it is during its watch (and that of the foreign soldiers as well) that the problem has mushroomed. There is some crop destruction, but in the long run it is unlikely to succeed. For farmers there is simply no crop that will come close to matching what opium offers in returns. The only effective control seems to be overproduction, and the effectiveness of this control will necessarily wax and wane. In addition to the other built-in advantages of growing opium, the lack of adequate transportation between farm and market also increases the attractiveness of a light, easily transported product for most Afghans. No one has good ideas on how to control this problem. certainly democracy and national self-determination are not going to help. Obviously creating democracies in the world cannot be our only concern.

Today’s paper brings us the news that in Basra several hundred Shiites have founded an organization called the “Anger Brigades”. They are angry at the killing in cold blood of Shi’as, particularly in some incidents south of Baghdad. They demand that local Sunni and Saudi clerics issue fatwas condemning the killing of Shi’as by Sunnis. If not, they will be on the war path. Their ostensibly intention is to fight with Sunnis who have come in from other countries, but this could be just the beginning of a much larger fight. The war of Sunnis and Shi’as was advocated as readers may recall in a note from Zarqawi many months ago. Why he thought a war of Shi’as and Sunnis would benefit the Jihadist cause is not clear. But what is clear is that the Islamist extremists are mostly extremist Sunnis for whom Shi’as are just as much heretics as Christians. Attacks on Shi’as by their comrades in Pakistan have already indicated as much. News of this new form of Shi’a militancy comes at the same time as we learn of the arrest of Sunni clerics in Baghdad and surrounding areas for advocating violence against Americans. It should also be noted that strong reactions against what has happened in Falluja seems this time to be largely confined to the Sunni area. This was not the case when Falluja was attacked the first time. It also comes a time when the only Iraqi anti-insurgent forces the have proved effective are Kurds, a people who have been fighting other Iraqis, particularly Sunni Arabs, for many years.

I hate to be an advocate of sectarian warfare. But the ability of the Shi’a and Kurds to stand up to the Sunni Arab nationalists and Islamists may be exactly what we need to save our preemptive experiment in Iraq. This being the case, it is hardly the time for the United States to engage in a war of words with the Iranian government over the question of nuclear weapons. It is true that the main Iraqi Shi’a leaders reject the leadership of the Iranian theocrats. Nevertheless, this is treacherous ground and we should for the time being, at least, tread carefully.

Yesterday’s paper brought a lengthy Op-Ed by two Dartmouth political scientists on the insurgency in Iraq. It reluctantly came to the conclusion that we were almost sure to fail unless we divided up the country or turned it over to another strongman, neither of which alternatives they approved. They argued their case with reference to seven major insurgency wars: France in Indochina, the United States in Indochina, the British in Malaya, the French in Algeria, Israel in the Occupied Territories, and Russia in Afghanistan and in Chechnya. Only the British won. But their opponents in Malaya were a minority within a minority — and yet it took twelve years.

However, on examination one can find ways in which all the other insurgencies were also quite different than what we face in Iraq. For one thing, as readers of this blog have heard too often, the guerrilla war in Vietnam against the Americans was won not by guerrillas but by divisions of North Vietnamese troops led into Saigon by tanks. In this case and Afghanistan, the guerrillas were heavily supported with money and arms by an outside power (USSR in Vietnam and US in Afghanistan). The insurgency in Iraq receives some outside support, but not anything like the support of a major power such as the United States in Afghanistan. Next, and most important, the goals of the guerrillas in these examples were well spelled out and known by all participants. Generally, they wanted a country of their own. Now to the extent that our opponents in Iraq fight on the basis of “kick out the foreigner”, this would seem to be a similar situation. However, for most Iraqis (the Shi’a and Kurds) the situation is by no means so simple. They see an opportunity to have a country of their own only if the foreigner succeeds in putting down the Sunni Arab minority. Movements such as that of Muqtada al-Sadr seriously confuse this issue, but the anti-Sunni Arab cause still seriously conflicts with the insurgency’s nationalist cause outside of the Sunni Arab heartland.

With all the caveats, it is still the case that putting down an insurgency such as that in the Sunni Triangle remains a very difficult task. It would be less difficult if we really intended to stay indefinitely. Regardless of some extremists in the White House, the American and British people (and even less other Coalition partners) do not intend to stay. We do not have twelve years. Without linguistic skills, often remaining in the country only a few months, the Americans soldiers are hardly the skilled colonialists that the British and French were. Insurgencies of this kind are more easily contained through police work than through the use of Marines, tanks, and artillery. We also have trouble depending on our local “native forces”. As the authors of the Op-Ed point out, the use of local security forces has often failed in these situations. They are generally poorly trained and poorly motivated. This sounds like most of the units on our side in Iraq. Unfortunately, with unemployment at record levels, most members of these forces simply sign up for a job. And when we do have some motivated local forces, such as the Kurds, they may be considered almost as much outsiders by the locals they confront as we are.

The one bright spot continues to be the inability of the insurgency to actually come up with a reason for fighting. Recent evidence suggests that the number that are outsiders fired by Islamic Jihadism is actually quite small. Most are nationalists, and most of the money is coming from money hidden in Syria by the Baathists as things fell apart. Many of the insurgent soldiers are also mercenaries, paid in some cases by the number of Americans killed. The old Baathist vision for Iraq is unlikely to enlist many outside its closed ranks. Their rallying cry is essentially negative and anti-foreign. This can be potent enough in some cases, but for most Iraqis it is likely not. The interim government and the Americans have at least an image of the future society they want. The Baathist nationalists do not. We can hope this will eventually be their undoing.

The present situation in Iraq appears once again to be reaching disaster proportions. Part of the trouble has been the insistence that without control of every part of the country, we cannot hold the promised January elections. Once again I would like to suggest that this must be finessed. We have the vast majority of Kurds and Shi’as either on our side or neutral. It would be nice if they lived in definite geographical areas, but they do not. Particularly in cities such as Baghdad and Mosul there is a mixed population, although there are different areas of these cities dominated by particular groups. Nevertheless, with careful consideration of the views of democratic party leaders and Ayatollah Sistani we can bring about enough peace in three-fourth of the country to hold reasonably good elections. They have long insisted that this is what they want.

At this time, we must hold urgent meetings with the leaders of Iraqi factions and parties laying out the conditions of our withdrawal from the country. Going over the map area by area (and sometimes out lines will not follow the provincial boundaries) we should demonstrate how and when American and other coalition forces will withdraw as they are replaced by Iraqi national army, guard, police, or militia units. We must make it clear that immediately after the election succeeds in areas where it is feasible a timetable for this area will be laid out. This timetable will have an estimated date of departure for major American and coalition units from this “Democratic Iraq” in July 2005. This discussion should strengthen support for elections since it will tie our departure from specified areas of Iraq to election success. Democratic Iraq will at this point might be expected to include more than half the country’s area and perhaps 60% of its people.

We should then discuss what will happen in the remainder of the country, labeled “Occupied Iraq”. This is the area where effective elections will not have been held by February 1 and where Iraqi national security forces still cannot without outside assistance guarantee reasonable security. In Occupied Iraq we will promise to hold the line against the insurgency with American and coalition troops until such time as Iraqi national forces can take over. We will attempt to do this without major offensive actions. After national forces have had three months of experience through assuming security functions in Democratic Iraq, their more experienced units should be introduced into Occupied Iraq. Experiments with their introduction should begin in mixed contexts such as Mosul and Baghdad. Only after they have shown their effectiveness in such situations will these forces be used to replace American forces in the most hotly contested Sunni Arab areas. Gradually the American presence would then be reduced in Occupied Iraq. The transition process should not be hurried. But there should be a commitment to have all major American units out of Iraq three months after Iraqi national forces have assumed responsibility in essentially all Sunni Arab areas.

From about May to August, Democratic Iraq will be in the process of extending its control over the entire country. In those areas in which it was not possible previously to hold successfully elections, they should be held or reheld and the resulting winners integrated into the national parliament.

If it is impossible to work out such an agreement and the accompanying timetable with a sufficient number of the most representative non-insurgent leaders, then the United States should calmly point out that the American public and that of the other coalition partners are not committed to an unending military presence in the country. If the Iraqi leadership does not go along with our suggestions, or propose alternatives that meet our objectives in other ways, our intention will be to remove our forces by July 1 through a phased withdrawal regardless of the security situation. If they still wish to hold the elections in January, we will help where we can. But we cannot guarantee security everywhere, and we cannot be responsible for the possibly unrepresentative nature of the result nor the ethnic fighting that may break out as we leave. Nor will we be able to prevent the possibility of a further deterioration of the security situation for Iraqis in much of the country.

The War in the Sunni Triangle and environs seems to be going worse than ever. As American forces finish up Falluja, the insurgent counterattack in many other cities and towns throughout the Arab Sunni area and beyond its fringes appears to be getting ever more destructive. These are concentrating their fury on the new Iraqi police and the oil export pipelines. They are also anxious to do damage to the Americans wherever they can be found. The Falluja victory is fraught with more and more questions. To me, the most alarming is the change of military reporting to emphasize “body count”, with all the implications of the usage that came back to haunt us in Vietnam. “Body count” is a handy way to measure “success” when fighting a war on multiple fronts, or without a front at all. Here, the usual measure of success, the taking of territory no longer makes sense. Two problems with “body count” are that it more starkly reveals what is happening in a war than more sanitized measures and its wild unreliability. It relies on the men and officers directly involved in military actions reporting back truthfully. But these persons know that their reputations in this war and throughout their careers will depend on whether they were successful in battle. Consequently, overestimation cannot be avoided. In this case, as Falluja winds down, 1600 insurgents are reported to have been killed in the city. Reporters with the troops say, however, that they have seen very few bodies. Usually this has been ascribed in Iraq to the Arab habit of immediately burying persons where possible. But it is hard to imagine that the hard-pressed guerrillas in Falluja have had time to bury more than a 1000 bodies.

In the widespread counterattacks outside Falluja, it is reported by our officers that the insurgents seem to be better organized and trained than they have been. This is true both of conventional attacks and of suicide bombings that now involve more than one attacking vehicle at a time. Better planning and coordination also seems to be true of the overall pattern of attacks. The guerrillas are less intent now on vanishing after each attack. They are more out in the open more of the time than they have been. Their morale is obviously high, even foolishly high. Yet the most recent consensus seems to be that this is largely a Baathist or nationalist campaign rather than a campaign by religious extremists. In Falluja, 1000 were captured, of which only a handful were non-Iraqis. Apparently, the movement feels they can take the losses. If we assume there were 5,000,000 Sunni Arabs before the war, this makes 2,500,000 males, of which perhaps 1,500,000 were potential fighters. Let us assume that 750,000 of these are bitterly opposed to the Americans; this is not an unreasonable number given the interviews that reporters have had with Sunni Arabs. If we have killed 75,000 in this war, it means we have killed only 10% of the potential Sunni Arab guerrilla pool. Armies have in the past often suffered fatalities at this rate and continued to come out and fight.

There seem to be a steady stream of those groups exiting from the struggle. Doctors with Borders has left. The Hungarian parliament has decided that their troops should come home now rather than stay until after the elections as their government has wanted. The argument of the center-right group that led the charge on this is that the troops were there to help bring democracy. They have concluded that this is not going to happen, so they should come home now. It makes sense to them, but it doesn’t help our government and its allies. Many Americans are going to start thinking the same thing.

American officers also carry a heavy burden. For they know that they must persevere in a task that they have found increasingly discouraging. In this latest go-around, they have successfully organized a large-scale offensive into Falluja, chosen as a target because it had become symbolic of the ability of the resistance to succeed against the Americans and had become a center for the Islamist resistance, the most virulent form of the insurgency. It was also decided at the highest levels that the government must have control over all parts of Iraq for the elections in January to be “legitimate”. Yet the battle has worked out according to the plan of the insurgents and not their own. And they knew that this is what would happen. They knew that the Americans would have to use heavy firepower from air and ground to win a quick and decisive “victory”. They knew that this would require the destruction of much of the city and the incidental killing of many of the civilians that had not been able or willing to leave. They knew that this would have political costs. They knew that most of the insurgents and particularly their leaders would be gone before their troops could capture the place. And they knew that these cadres would instigate battles elsewhere in the country. They knew that the only way the “capture” of the city could have any meaning in the long run would be if the accompanying Iraqi governmental forces and police could quickly take over from the Americans and establish a new order in the city. They also knew that these forces might not be up to the challenge. They also knew that the most reliable governmental forces for the job would be Kurdish or Shiite units, but that these might end up being treated by the Fallujans as much as outsiders as the Americans.

What has happened since in the rest of the Sunni Triangle and nearby fits the predictions made before the battle. There have been major insurgent attacks. The most organized attack was in Mosul where an insurgent force said to be 500 strong attacked a number of points simultaneously. Many places the police failed, fleeing or deserting. The subsequent firing of the police chief, the bringing in of Kurdish units, and the return of American forces from the Fallujan area seems to have calmed the situation, but again at what cost? In Ramadi, near Falluja, the streets appear to be again out of control. And as they ponder the daily “police blotter” of enemy actions, the officers read in their brand new counterinsurgency manual that the longer Americans take the lead in counterinsurgency operations, the greater the resentment of the population, and the more the legitimacy of the host nation government is called into question. But the officers also know that decisions are being forced by events. They may have to put their reading on hold until this is over — or until a reassignment back to the States.

It is not often that I wave the flag for soldiers in Iraq. Many flag wavers seem to have other agendas than simply “supporting our troops”. But as one reads the stream of information that the media pour out every day and takes time to focus on the families who have lost members or have them gravely injured, the predicament of average GIs in Iraq becomes ever more obvious. They have been sent into battle for what appear to be high-minded objectives, the freeing of a people from tyranny and the establishment of democracy. But except for those fortunate enough to find themselves in the more peaceful areas of Iraq, our GIs face a reality that is both more challenging and more discouraging. They find that they can win every battle and yet be surrounded by enemies who wish them dead. They find that their country did not prepare them for the counterguerrilla operations in which they are now involved. They were not given the armament they should have had, and they were not supported by a large enough force to do the job. The army has just now brought out a new manual for fighting guerrilla war to replace one that was forty years old. The Marines have gone into battle with a “small wars” manual published in 1940 that tells them how to manage mules and teaches them that mixed-race societies are "always difficult to govern, if not ungovernable, owing to the absence of a fixed character.'' (This must seem strange to the present generation of American GIs in which many are of “mixed race” even though they have not thought much about such a designation.) They know little of the language or customs of the people they are meant to save. Although they know that the security forces of the new Iraqi government are supposed to be on their side, they are unable to communicate with them, see them in uniforms of all kinds, and often find they are either hostile or unreliable or both. They do not know whom to trust, even people in American uniforms may not be Americans. They do not know where the “front” is, because as soon as they move through an area, insurgents may appear behind them in the areas they have just “cleared”. Alternately brave and fearful, excited and dead tired, idealistic and cynical, many live in a dream-like world in which goals become reduced to making it through until the day they can go home.