http://www.juancole.com/2008/07/social-history-of-surge.html
Thursday, July 24, 2008
A Social History of the Surge
<snip>
The only evidence
presented for the thesis that the "surge" "worked" is that Iraqi deaths
from political violence have declined in recent months from all-time
highs in the second half of 2006 and the first half of 2007. (That
apocalyptic violence was set off by the bombing of the Askariya shrine
in Samarra in February of 2006, which helped provoke a Sunni-Shiite
civil war.) What few political achievements are attributed to the troop
escalation are too laughable to command real respect.
Proponents are awfully hard to pin down on what the "surge" consisted
of or when it began. It seems to me to refer to the troop escalation
that began in February, 2007. But now the technique of bribing Sunni
Arab former insurgents to fight radical Sunni vigilantes is being
rolled into the "surge" by politicians such as John McCain. But
attempts to pay off the Sunnis to quiet down began months before the
troop escalation and had a dramatic effect in al-Anbar Province long
before any extra US troops were sent to al-Anbar (nor were very many
extra troops ever sent there). I will disallow it. The "surge" is the
troop escalation beginning winter of 2007. The bribing of insurgents to
come into the cold could have been pursued without a significant troop
escalation, and was.
Aside from defining what proponents mean by the "surge," all kinds of
things are claimed for it that are not in evidence. The assertion
depends on a possible logical fallacy: post hoc ergo propter hoc. If
event X comes after event Y, it is natural to suspect that Y caused X.
But it would often be a false assumption. Thus, actress Sharon Stone
alleged that the recent earthquake in China was caused by China's
crackdown on Tibetan protesters. That is just superstition, and callous
superstition at that. It is a good illustration, however, of the very
logical fallacy to which I am referring.
For the first six months of the troop escalation, high rates of
violence continued unabated. That is suspicious. What exactly were US
troops doing differently last September than they were doing in May,
such that there was such a big change? The answer to that question is
simply not clear. Note that the troop escalation only brought US force
strength up to what it had been in late 2005. In a country of 27
million, 30,000 extra US troops are highly unlikely to have had a
really major impact, when they had not before.
As best I can piece it together, what actually seems to have happened
was that the escalation troops began by disarming the Sunni Arabs in
Baghdad. Once these Sunnis were left helpless, the Shiite militias came
in at night and ethnically cleansed them. Shaab district near Adhamiya
had been a mixed neighborhood. It ended up with almost no Sunnis.
Baghdad in the course of 2007 went from 65% Shiite to at least 75%
Shiite and maybe more. My thesis would be that the US inadvertently
allowed the chasing of hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arabs out of
Baghdad (and many of them had to go all the way to Syria for refuge).
Rates of violence declined once the ethnic cleansing was far advanced,
just because there were fewer mixed neighborhoods.
This MNF graph courtesy of Think Progress makes the point:
[secviolencechartlarge.gif]
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Of course, Gen. Petraeus took courageous and effective steps to try to
stop bombings in markets and so forth. But I am skeptical that most of
these techniques had macro effects. Big population movements because of
militia ethnic cleansing are more likely to account for big changes in
social statistics.
The way in which the escalation troops did help establish Awakening
Councils is that when they got wise to the Shiite ethnic cleansing
program, the US began supporting these Sunni militias, thus
forestalling further expulsions.
The Shiitization of Baghdad was thus a significant cause of falling
casualty rates. But it is another war waiting to happen, when the
Sunnis come back to find Shiite militiamen in their living rooms.
In al-Anbar Province, among the more violent in Iraq in earlier years,
the bribing of former Sunni guerrillas to join US-sponsored Awakening
Councils had a big calming effect. This technique could have been used
much earlier than 2006, indeed, could have been deployed from 2003, and
might have forestalled large numbers of deaths. Condi Rice forbade US
military officers from dealing in this way with the Sunnis for fear of
alienating US Shiite allies such as Ahmad Chalabi. The technique was
independent of the troop escalation. Indeed, it depended on there not
being much of a troop escalation in that province. Had large numbers of
US soldiers been committed to simply fight the Sunnis or engage in
search and destroy missions, they would have stirred up and reinforced
the guerrilla movement. There were typically only 10,000 US troops in
al-Anbar before 2007 as I recollect (It has a population of a million
and a half or so). If the number of US troops went up to 14,000, that
cannot possibly have made the difference.
The Mahdi Army militia of Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr concluded a cease-fire
with US and Iraqi troops in September of 2007. Since the US had
inadvertently enabled the transformation of Baghdad into a largely
Shiite city, a prime aim of the Mahdi Army, they could afford to stand
down. Moreover, they were being beaten militarily by the Badr Corps
militia of the pro-Iranian Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and by Iraqi
security forces, in Karbala, Diwaniya and elsewhere. It was prudent for
them to stand down. Their doing so much reduced civilian deaths.
Badr reassertion in Basra was also important, and ultimately received
backing this spring from PM Nuri al-Maliki. There were few coalition
troops in Basra, mainly British, and most were moved out to the
airport, so the troop escalation was obviously irrelevant to
improvements in Basra. Now PM Gordon Brown seems to be signalling that
most British troops will come home in 2009.
The vast increase in Iraqi oil revenues in recent years, and the
cancellation of much foreign debt, has made the central government more
powerful vis-a-vis the society. Al-Maliki can afford to pay, train and
equip many more police and soldiers. An Iraq with an unencumbered $75
billion in oil income begins to look more like Kuwait, and to be able
to afford to buy off various constituencies. It is a different game
than an Iraq with $33 bn. in revenues, much of it pre-committed to debt
servicing.
Senator McCain was wrong to say that US or Iraqi casualty rates were
unprecedentedly low in May.
Most American commentators are so focused on the relative fall in
casualties that they do not stop to consider how high the rates of
violence remain. Kudos to Steve Chapman for telling it like it is.
I'd suggest some comparisons. The Sri Lankan civil war between
Sinhalese and Tamils has killed an average of 233 persons a month since
1983 and is considered one of the world's major ongoing trouble spots.
That is half the average monthly casualties in Iraq recently. In 2007,
the conflict in Afghanistan killed an average of 550 persons a month.
That is about the rate recently according to official statistics for
Iraq. The death rate in 2006-2007 in Somalia was probably about 300 a
month, or about half this year's average monthsly rate in Iraq. Does
anybody think Afghanistan or Somalia is calm? Thirty years of North
Ireland troubles left about 3,000 dead, a toll still racked up in Iraq
every five months on average.
All the talk of casualty rates, of course, is to some extent beside the
point. The announced purpose of the troop escalation was to create
secure conditions in which political compromises could be achieved.
In spring of 2007, Iraq had a national unity government. Prime Minister
Nuri al-Maliki's cabinet had members in it from the Shiite Islamic
Virtue Party, the Sadr Movement, the secular Iraqi National list of
Iyad Allawi, the Sunni Iraqi Accord Front, the Kurdistan Alliance, and
the two Shiite core partners, the Islamic Mission (Da'wa) Party and the
Islami Supreme Council of Iraq.
Al-Maliki lost his national unity government in summer, 2007, just as
casualties began to decline. The Islamic Virtue Party, the Sadrists,
and the Iraqi National List are all still in the opposition. The
Islamic Mission Party of al-Maliki has split, and he appears to remain
in control of the smaller remnant. So although the Sunni IAF has agreed
to rejoin the government, al-Maliki's ability to promote national
reconciliation is actually much reduced now from 14 months ago.
There has been very little reconciliation between Sunni and Shiite. The
new de-Baathification law which ostensibly aimed at improving the
condition of Sunnis who had worked in the former regime was loudly
denounced by the very ex-Baathists who would be affected by it. In any
case, the measure has languished in oblivion and no effort has been
made to implement it. Depending on how it is implemented it could
easily lead to large numbers of Sunnis being fired from government
ministries, and so might make things worse.
An important step was the holding of new provincial elections. Since
the Sunni Arabs boycotted the last ones in Jan., 2005, their provinces
have not had representative governments and in some, Shiite and Kurdish
officials have wielded power over the majority Sunnis Arabs! Attempts
to hold the provincial elections this fall have so far run aground on
the shoals of ethnic conflict. Thus, the Shiite parties wanted to use
ayatollahs' pictures in their campaigns, against the wishes of the
other parties. It isn't clear what parliament will decide about that.
More important is the question of whether provincial elections will be
held in the disputed Kirkuk Province, which the Kurds want to annex.
That dispute has caused (Kurdish) President Jalal Talabani to veto the
enabling legislation for the provincial elections, which may set them
back months or indefinitely.
There is also no oil law, essential to allow foreign investment in
developing new fields.
So did the "surge" "work"?
The troop escalation in and of itself was probably not that
consequential. That the troops were used in new ways by Gen. Petraeus
was more important. But their main effect was ironic. They calmed
Baghdad down by accidentally turning it into a Shiite city, as Shiite
as Isfahan or Tehran, and thus a terrain on which the Sunni Arab
guerrilla movement could not hope to fight effectively.
It is Obama who has the better argument in this debate, not Senator
McCain, who knows almost nothing about Iraq and Iraqis, and
overestimates what can be expected of 30,000 US troops in an enormous,
complex country.
But the problem for McCain is that it does not matter very much for
policy who is right in this debate. Security in Iraq is demonstrably
improved, for whatever reason, and the Iraqis want the US out. If
things are better, what is the rationale for keeping US troops in Iraq?