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September 24, 2007
Go Down in Iraq, But Go Long
There is a central contradiction
in almost every defense of the surge that I have heard or read. More troops
and a new counterinsurgency strategy were meant to improve security so
that Iraqi politicians could then reconcile. But the most important evidence
cited to prove the surge's success shows that the process works the opposite
way.
Gen. David Petraeus said last week that the "most significant
development of the past eight months" was the alliance with local tribes
in Anbar province, a tactic that has now spread elsewhere. In Anbar, local
Sunni groups and the American military working together have regained
great swaths of territory from Qaeda forces. This is a big deal, moving
the most dangerous and unstable part of the country toward relative calm.
But political success is what led to military success, not the other way
around. In their retelling of the battle for Anbar, administration
officials say the Sunnis of the region -disgusted by Al Qaeda's methods
- gathered forces and saved their province from the perfidious jihadists.
There's some truth to this, but, as is often the case in Iraq, the whole
story is a bit more complicated. The United States had largely alienated Iraq's Sunnis by
engaging not simply in regime change but also revolution. It disbanded
all elements of the old order in which Sunnis were dominant - the Army,
the bureaucracy, the state-owned enterprises - and watched passively as
purges and ethnic cleansing mounted. By late 2004 some U.S. officials
recognized that they needed to draw even radical Sunnis, who dominated
the insurgency, into the new Iraq. The then Prime Minister Ayad Allawi,
a secular Shiite, encouraged this shift. Many Sunnis were also beginning
to recognize that they had made a mistake and made some overtures to the
United States. But hard-line Shiite politicians in Baghdad and hard-line
American officials argued vehemently against any contact with the enemy.
Plus, the Sunnis who would step into the mainstream kept getting killed.
Yet failure followed failure, Shiite militias ran rampant,
and the Sunni areas of Iraq, particularly Anbar, seemed lost. So the United
States began talking to the Sunnis, despite concerns about their links
to the insurgency. "This was a tough move for everyone," says one senior
U.S. official, who was not allowed to speak on the record. "People had
to start dealing with the enemy, or at least the people we had convinced
ourselves were the enemy." This political shift produced an alliance that
then made military gains possible. The surge has proved that more troops can produce enhanced
security - are you listening, Mr. Rumsfeld? - but it is a holding operation.
Eventually American troops will have to leave. What will cement the security
in those places that we control now is a political deal among various
factions in which they're all invested in stability. Without such a power-sharing
agreement, the order we build will degenerate when we leave - whether
that's six months from now or six years from now. Recall that we've stabilized
Fallujah and Ramadi several times before, only to have things fall apart
because there was no political follow-up. What would more time produce? A stronger Iraqi Army, greater
administrative capacity and less-sectarian police, says the administration.
But these are technocratic solutions to a political problem. All these
institutions will ultimately respond to the realities of politics in Iraq.
And every group in Iraq is keeping its options open, maintaining ties
to militias, local gangs and patronage and crime syndicates. (When the
Hakim family allows the U.S. military to dismantle its militias that run
large areas of southern Iraq - wearing various national uniforms - then
we will have a new Iraq.) And far from changing existing realities, the
surge has mostly helped the Sunnis build their own power base. Iraq is going to have to find its political balance. The
United States might propel Iraqi leaders to do so by relinquishing our
dominant security role, scaring them into compromise, just as we and the
Sunnis were pushed to make up. In any event, that's something we will
have to test, and there is little to be gained from waiting. One point the president made last week was fresh and important.
We have strategic, political and moral reasons to remain involved—as
long as the Iraqis request it. The most significant way we can help Iraq
is to be there for the long haul, assisting it economically and politically,
but maintaining a much smaller, more enduring military presence. That
is a far more strategic role for U.S. troops than policing the streets
of Baghdad. Making clear that we aren't going to disappear entirely will
change the calculus of all those groups in Iraq that are keeping their
"post-American" options open. The president is wasting his limited political capital
buying the surge a few more months. There is a much more important deal
to be had here—go down in troop levels, but go long. If you listen to
leading Democrats, most recognize the need for a smaller, longer American
mission in Iraq. But to get there, President Bush has to recognize that
the mission of 130,000 American troops in Iraq - for better or worse -
is done.
