- Please take the bigger picture - What's our exit strategy?
Or, I'd even settle for a definition of what victory means and how you
plan to get there.
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THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
U.S. Military Is Split on Insurgency Strategy
The divergence is over how best to use troops: spread out at small camps
among residents or concentrated at big bases away from cities.
By Solomon Moore and Peter Spiegel
Times Staff Writers
May 13, 2006
HADITHA, Iraq — In the region around Qaim, a northwestern Iraqi town
near the Syrian border, Marines are fanning out from their main base and
moving into villages as part of a new strategy to root out insurgents
who enter the country here.
The troops have set up 19 small base camps throughout the area and begun
routinely patrolling insurgent hot spots north of the Euphrates River.
The deployment follows a strategy favored by a new generation of
counterinsurgency experts: disperse, mingle with the population and stay
put.
But the shift comes as the Pentagon appears to be moving the overall
U.S. military effort in the opposite direction across much of the
country. Army units are being concentrated in "super bases" that line
the spine of central Iraq, away from the urban centers where
counterinsurgency operations take place.
The two approaches underscore an increasingly high-profile divergence —
some say contradiction — on how best to use U.S. forces in Iraq, and are
evidence of a growing debate in the upper ranks about the wisest course
of action.
The contrast also reflects the complicated mix of military goals and
concerns as U.S. troops begin their fourth summer in Iraq. Top
commanders are eager to begin shrinking the U.S. footprint, an implicit
step toward a gradual withdrawal of American forces. At the same time,
some field commanders are determined to break an endless cycle that
allows insurgents to move back into key areas as soon as U.S. forces
move on. That requires large investments of manpower.
Some military officials insist that the two strategies can coexist,
particularly given that Iraqis are being trained in counterinsurgency
and are expected to assume a larger role, with help from American
advisors. But critics consider it a choice between a smaller force and
an effective one.
On one side of the strategy debate is a growing cadre of military
intellectuals and counterinsurgency experts who advocate an
on-the-ground effort to deal with the insurgency, military analysts say.
This group includes, along with Marine units such as those in western
Iraq, mid-level officers such as Col. H.R. McMaster, commander of Army
forces in Tall Afar, where a counterinsurgency campaign has been cited
by President Bush as a model for the country.
On the other side are senior officers, including those at the U.S.
Central Command, who believe a reduced American presence will force
Iraqis to take up the burden of fighting the insurgency. Some have also
argued that a high-profile U.S. presence in cities stokes resentment.
The debate mirrors a discussion over the general posture of U.S. troops
in Iraq. Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, in charge of day-to-day military
operations, said in an interview with The Times this week that
"heavy-handed" treatment of Iraqis by U.S. forces fueled anti-American
attitudes.
In the counterinsurgency debate, experts both inside and outside the
Pentagon have begun to question the move to big bases and the push to
reduce troop numbers, particularly when Iraqi forces — especially the
Iraqi police, which have in some cases been accused of being branches of
sectarian militia — have yet to prove themselves.
"What we know works is presence; that was most visible in Tall Afar,"
said Kalev Sepp, an instructor at the Naval Postgraduate School who
helped write a critique of counterinsurgency strategy for Army Gen.
George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.
"The key to counterinsurgency is presence among the population," Sepp
said. "What do mass concentrations of American forces on a large base
do? If we put all our troops there and they're out of sight, what has
that accomplished?"
Marines in Al Anbar province, the west-central region that is home to
some of the most war-torn cities in the Sunni Arab heartland, appear to
have taken that question to heart. Here, as elsewhere, field commanders
are given wide latitude to make decisions on the ground, although
commanders in the region and in Washington set overall policy, in
keeping with U.S. and NATO military tradition.
Marine field commanders said the Qaim model would soon be repeated at
bases across Al Anbar, with more Marines scheduled to leave heavily
garrisoned encampments in Al Asad, Haditha and Hit to spread forces more
evenly throughout the province's towns and villages.
"We'll have a continuing presence in these areas," said Col. W. Blake
Crowe, commander of Marine forces in the western part of Al Anbar. "We
won't populate every village — we don't have enough force for that. But
we'll continue to contest every town and village. We just need to
contest them."
The idea behind the new campaign is to repeat the military's success
last year in Tall Afar, where Army units cleared out insurgents and
flooded the town with patrols and small-unit interactions with
residents. Bush and others have touted the approach.
But not all military officials agree with the praise. Some senior
Central Command officials have been dismissive of Tall Afar, telling
military analysts and scholars recently that too much has been made of
the success there. Duplication of that effort across Iraq would require
many more U.S. troops than are available, they said.
In Washington, the push for troop reductions has largely been attributed
to the Bush administration's desire to show progress before the November
congressional elections.
But current and former military leaders said it was misleading to
attribute the push solely to politics. Central Command officers,
including Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the Centcom commander, have argued
that the large presence fosters a "dependency syndrome" within the Iraqi
military, which continues to rely on Americans to do the heavy lifting.
Abizaid, who has specialized in the Middle East in both his military and
academic career, has long been doubtful of Americans' ability to
integrate into Iraqi cities. Increasing the number of U.S. troops would
simply mean more armed soldiers with little understanding of local
culture, he has told colleagues.
In Al Anbar, evidence of a "dependency syndrome" is apparent. In a
recent operation with American advisors in the Haditha area, an Iraqi
company of 70 soldiers found four men listed by the U.S. military as
suspected insurgents and turned them over to the Marines. The operation
followed several failed attempts by U.S. troops to find the same suspects.
But some U.S. trainers said the Iraqi soldiers' success was an exception.
"There's a lot of lip service being given about letting the Iraqis do
independent ops, but nothing much is happening," said Capt. James Beal,
one of the trainers who live alongside Iraqi troops at Haditha Dam. "A
lot of our guys just don't believe in letting Iraqis get out and do things."
A new and increasingly vocal group of counterinsurgency experts prefers
U.S. troops for such roles, even if it slows the learning curve for
Iraqi forces. A new joint counterinsurgency field manual, expected to be
completed by late summer, recommends that troops move off large bases
and into towns for counterinsurgency campaigns, the strategy used in
Tall Afar.
"You've got to get out among the population," said Conrad Crane, a
retired Army lieutenant colonel who is the lead author of the manual.
"You can't lock yourself away in compounds."
A preview of the manual, which will be published this month in the
journal Military Review, calls on U.S. forces to "immerse [themselves]
in the lives of the people" and says successful counterinsurgency
efforts require long-term commitments.
"Insurgents are strengthened by the belief that a few casualties or a
few years will cause adversaries to abandon the conflict," the Military
Review article says. "Only constant reaffirmations of commitment backed
by deeds will bolster public faith in government survivability."
There is also concern that U.S. commanders are pushing Iraqi forces into
counterinsurgency roles too soon.
"Abizaid has a wrong notion about prioritization of problems," said
Fredrick Kagan, a former instructor at West Point who is now a military
analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank.
"It's not that the things he's worried about are not problems, but he's
trading off providing security to the Iraqi people to solve those
problems. We have been pushing the Iraqi security forces out in the
fight to do things before they're ready."
In Al Anbar, results in the Iraqi police training effort have been
decidedly mixed. The Marines see their ability to recruit local Sunnis
to police forces as a sign of progress. But as in Shiite regions in the
south, where many police forces have been infiltrated by a militia loyal
to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr or the Iranian-linked Badr
Brigade, they have been forced into an uneasy alliance with nascent
Sunni militias that have sprung up in the province.
Four months ago, for example, in a suburb of Haditha, a band of Sunni
Arab tribesmen formed a militia to battle the insurgency and stage
security checkpoints around the town. The militia turned over dozens of
suspected insurgents to the Marines, who were initially reluctant to
endorse yet another paramilitary force in a nation of private armies.
Recently, however, Marine commanders have decided to support the militia
with money and training, a risk they believe has paid off.
For Marine Capt. Quintin Jones, the uneasiness of working with an
acknowledged militia is outweighed by advantages of being on the ground
with locals.
"When they tell us that something is happening or that we can find
insurgents in a certain spot, they usually are right. They give us great
intelligence," Jones said. "A lot of times they can just spot the bad
guys better than we can."
Moore reported from Haditha and Spiegel from Washington.
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