State of Iraq - What The Surge Hath Wrought

NYT reporter, Dexter Filkins, returns to Iraq for the first time since the height of sectarian violence in 2006, the year before General Petraeus implemented the counterinsurgency strategy. He is stunned at what he finds. Ironically, it can be summed up as hope and change.
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This from Mr. Filkins writing in the NYT:

At first, I didn’t recognize the place.

On Karada Mariam, a street that runs over the Tigris River toward the Green Zone, the Serwan and the Zamboor, two kebab places blown up by suicide bombers in 2006, were crammed with customers. Farther up the street was Pizza Napoli, the Italian place shut down in 2006; it, too, was open for business. And I’d forgotten altogether about Abu Nashwan’s Wine Shop, boarded up when the black-suited militiamen of the Mahdi Army had threatened to kill its owners. There it was, flung open to the world.

Two years ago, when I last stayed in Baghdad, Karada Mariam was like the whole of the city: shuttered, shattered, broken and dead.

Abu Nawas Park — I didn’t recognize that, either. By the time I had left the country in August 2006, the two-mile stretch of riverside park was a grim, spooky, deserted place, a symbol for the dying city that Baghdad had become.

These days, the same park is filled with people: families with children, women in jeans, women walking alone. Even the nighttime, when Iraqis used to cower inside their homes, no longer scares them. I can hear their laughter wafting from the park. At sundown the other day, I had to weave my way through perhaps 2,000 people. It was an astonishing, beautiful scene — impossible, incomprehensible, only months ago.

When I left Baghdad two years ago, the nation’s social fabric seemed too shredded to ever come together again. The very worst had lost its power to shock. To return now is to be jarred in the oddest way possible: by the normal, by the pleasant, even by hope. The questions are jarring, too. Is it really different now? Is this something like peace or victory? And, if so, for whom: the Americans or the Iraqis?

. . . When I left Iraq in the summer of 2006, after living three and a half years here following the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, I believed that evil had triumphed, and that it would be many years before it might be stopped. Iraq, filled with so many people living so close together, nurturing dark and unknowable grievances, seemed destined for a ghastly unraveling.

And now, in the late summer of 2008, comes the calm. Violence has dropped by as much as 90 percent. A handful of the five million Iraqis who fled their homes — one-sixth of all Iraqis — are beginning to return. The mornings, once punctuated by the sounds of exploding bombs, are still. Is it possible that the rage, the thirst for revenge, the sectarian furies, have begun to fade? That Iraqis have been exhausted and frightened by what they have seen?

“We are normal people, ordinary people, like people everywhere,” Aziz al-Saiedi said to me the other day, as we sat on a park bench in Sadr City, only recently freed from the grip of the Mahdi Army. The park was just a small patch of bare ground with a couple of swing sets; it didn’t even have a name, yet it was filled to the bursting. “We want what everyone else wants in this world,” he said.

. . . Everything here seems to be standing on its head. Propaganda posters, which used to celebrate the deaths of American soldiers, now call on Iraqis to turn over the triggermen of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the Mahdi Army. “THERE IS NOWHERE FOR YOU TO HIDE,” a billboard warns in Arabic, displaying a set of peering, knowing eyes. I saw one such poster in Adamiyah, a Sunni neighborhood that two years ago was under the complete control of Al Qaeda. Sunni insurgents — guys who were willing to take on the Qaeda gunmen — are now on the American payroll, keeping the peace at ragtag little checkpoints for $300 a month.

In Sadr City, the small brick building that served as the Mahdi Army’s headquarters still stands. But not 50 feet away, a freshly built Iraqi Army post towers above it now. Next to the army post, perhaps to heighten the insult to the militia, the Iraqi government has begun installing a new sewer network, something this impoverished and overcrowded ghetto sorely needs. “Wanted” posters adorn the blast walls there, too, imploring the locals to turn in the once-powerful militia leaders.

Inside the Sadr Bureau, as it’s called, the ex-militia gunmen speak in chastened tones about moving on, maybe finding other work, maybe even transforming their once ferocious army into a social welfare organization. I didn’t see any guns.

“Please don’t print my name in your newspaper,” one former Mahdi Army commander asked me with a sheepish look. “I’m wanted by the government.”

As for the Americans, they are still here, of course, but standing ever more in the background.

. . . The other day I rode in a helicopter to Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, the Wyoming-size slice of desert west of Baghdad. Two years ago, 30 marines and soldiers were dying there every month. In 2005, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia declared Anbar the seat of its “caliphate.” Since then, violence in Anbar has plummeted. Al Qaeda has been decimated. I was coming in for a ceremony, unimaginable until recently, to mark the handover of responsibility for security to the Iraqi Army and police.

Standing in the middle of the downtown, I found myself disoriented. I had been here before — I was certain — but still I couldn’t recognize the place. Two summers ago, when I’d last been in Ramadi, the downtown lay in ruins. Only one building stood then, the Anbar provincial government center, and the Americans were holding onto it at all cost. For hundreds of yards in every direction, everything was destroyed; streets, buildings, cars, even the rubble had been ground to dust. Ramadi looked like Dresden, or Grozny, or some other obliterated city. Insurgents attacked every day.

And then, suddenly, I realized it: I was standing in front of the government center itself. It was sporting a fresh concrete facade, which had been painted off-white with brownish trim. Over the entrance hung a giant official seal of Anbar Province. The road where I stood had been recently paved; it was black and smooth. The rubble had been cleared away. American marines were walking about, without helmets or flak jackets or even guns.

In the crowd, I saw a face I recognized. It was Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national security advisor. It had been a long time since I’d seen him. Mr. Rubaie is a warm, garrulous man, a neurologist who spent years in London before returning to Iraq. But he is also a Shiite, and a member of Iraq’s Shiite-led government, which, in 2005 and 2006, was accused of carrying out widespread atrocities against Iraq’s Sunnis. Anbar Province is almost entirely Sunni.

As Mr. Rubaie made his way through the crowd, I noticed he was holding hands with another Iraqi man, a traditional Arab gesture of friendship and trust. It was Brig. Gen. Murdi Moshhen al-Dulaimi, the Iraqi Army officer taking control of the province — a Sunni. The sun was blinding, but Mr. Rubaie was wearing sunglasses, and finally he spotted me.

“What on earth are you doing here?” he asked over the crowd.

I might have asked him the same thing.

. . . In August, before I came back to Iraq, I visited Gen. Ray Odierno in his office at the Pentagon. As the deputy commander in Iraq from late 2006 to early 2008, General Odierno had helped execute the buildup of American troops that has helped quell the violence. When we met, he was preparing to assume command of the American forces here, taking over for Gen. David H. Petraeus.

General Odierno, an enormous, imposing man, has come a long way in Iraq.

. . . When he returned to Iraq in late 2006, General Odierno concluded that the American project in Iraq was headed for defeat. The American officers whom he was replacing had reached the same conclusion. “I knew that if we continued the way that we were, then we were not going to be successful,” he said.

Hence the troop increase. At its most basic level, General Odierno explained, the premise of this “surge” was that ordinary Iraqis didn’t want the violence. That is, that the chaos in Iraq was being driven by small groups of killers, principally those of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who, by murdering Shiite civilians in huge car and suicide bomb attacks, were driving ordinary Iraqis into the arms of Shiite deaths squads and the Mahdi Army. If that dynamic could be broken, ordinary Iraqis would stop relying on militias to protect them. Something approaching normalcy might return.

“We believed that the majority of the Iraqi people wanted to move forward, but you had these small groups that didn’t,” General Odierno said. “So we had to protect the people, and go after these groups.”

And so they did, with a series of offensives against the Qaeda insurgents in and around Baghdad in 2007 and then, earlier this year, in Basra and in Baghdad against the Mahdi Army. Along the way, the Americans got a huge break: The leaders of Iraq’s large Sunni tribes, which had included many insurgents, decided to stop opposing the Americans and join them against Al Qaeda. The Americans, seizing the opportunities, agreed to put many of the tribesmen, including many former insurgents, on the payroll.

The Sunni Awakening, as it is called, cascaded through Sunni areas across Iraq.

The result, now visible in the streets, is a calm unlike any Iraq has known in the five and a half years since the Americans arrived. Iraqi life is flowing back into the streets. The ordinary people, the “normal people,” as Mr. Aziz called them, have the upper hand, at least for now. . . .

Read the entire article. There is much more.

The forces arrayed against Iraq are significant. Iran has been beaten back - but only for the moment. Al Qaeda's defeat has been more significant, though it to could theoretically stage a come back. Corruption is endemic. Massive oil wealth is a blessing and a curse, increasing the wealth of the nation even as many eye a way to get their hands on an ill-gotten piece of the wealth. The Kurdish north is doing its best to take control of the oil fields near Kirkuk and to become a defacto separate country, threatening to tear Iraq apart.

Arrayed against those forces are a nation desperate to live in peace. It is a nation of intelligent and hardworking people with a history of intermixing between Sunni, Shia and Kurd. It is a nation that is hopeful of democracy to give it good and fair government. And Iraq still has a U.S. partner committed - for the moment - to seeing Iraq a success. Whatever the future may hold, for now, there is a hardwon peace.

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Another Take on Basra

A reservist serving in Iraq has some fascinating information and opinions on the Basra operation.



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This from an individual in contact with the folks at Powerline. Possibly the most fascinating aspect I think is that Iraqi Army units composed of Anbar Sunnis took part in the Basra Offensive. I have been waiting for some time to see the interaction between Shia and Sunni in military operations. This is good news indeed. This from Powerline:

. . . Nowadays, it has been weeks since we lost a soldier in Anbar. More incredibly Iraqi Army units, composed of Anbari Sunnis, have deployed to Basra to engage in the fighting, under PM Maliki's lead.

A year ago, the mere thought that the much-maligned PM would announce a major Iraqi-led offensive against fellow Shia would have been met with guffaws. Yet he announced it in late March this year, did not seek Coalition permission, and ordered 30,000 Iraqi Army and Police troops to deploy. More incredibly, they did deploy in good order, arriving in less than a week, with some units traveling hundreds of miles. And they fought. And they evacuated their own wounded using their own aircraft back to medical facilities.

Was the performance of the PM or the Iraqi forces up to our standards? Certainly not. Their pre-deployment planning was weak, as was their logistical support. As water and ammunition ran low, their ability and willingness to stay in sustained offensive small-unit combat wavered. The Iraqi units in Baghdad also fought against the Mahdi Army in supporting operations, exhibiting some of the same weaknesses. . . .

Read the entire post.

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In Iraq, Al Qaeda Documents Show Crisis & Collapse

Documents captured during raids in Iraq show al Qaeda in "total collapse" in some areas and detail the combined effects of the surge and the Anbar Awakening. Surprisingly, the authors do not attribute their defeat in any way to the Democratic victory in 2006, nor do they credit the creation of the Anbar Awakening to the same.


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This today from the Times discussing the contents of al Qaeda documents found by the military during the conduct of operations in Iraq:

Al-Qaeda in Iraq faces an “extraordinary crisis”. Last year's mass defection of ordinary Sunnis from al-Qaeda to the US military “created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight”. The terrorist group's security structure suffered “total collapse”.

These are the words not of al-Qaeda's enemies but of one of its own leaders in Anbar province — once the group's stronghold. They were set down last summer in a 39-page letter seized during a US raid on an al-Qaeda base near Samarra in November.

The US military released extracts from that letter yesterday along with a second seized in another November raid that is almost as startling.

That second document is a bitter 16-page testament written last October by a local al-Qaeda leader near Balad, north of Baghdad. “I am Abu-Tariq, emir of the al-Layin and al-Mashahdah sector,” the author begins. He goes on to describe how his force of 600 shrank to fewer than 20.

. . . Assuming the two documents are authentic — and the US military insists that they are — they provide a rare insight into an organisation thrown into turmoil by the rise of the Awakening movement. More than 80,000 Sunnis have joined the tribal groups of “concerned local citizens” [CLCs] that have helped to eject al-Qaeda from swaths of western and northern Iraq, including much of Baghdad.

US intelligence officials cautioned, however, that the documents were snapshots of two small areas and that al-Qaeda was far from a spent force.

. . . The Anbar letter conceded that the “crusaders” — Americans — had gained the upper hand by persuading ordinary Sunnis that al-Qaeda was responsible for their suffering and by exploiting their poverty to entice them into the security forces. Al-Qaeda's “Islamic State of Iraq is faced with an extraordinary crisis, especially in al-Anbar”, the unnamed emir admitted.

In an apparent reference to al-Qaeda's brutal tactics, he said of the Americans and their Sunni allies: “We helped them to unite against us . . . The Americans and the apostates launched their campaigns against us and we found ourselves in a circle not being able to move, organise or conduct our operations.”

He said of the loss of Anbar province: “This created weakness and psychological defeat. This also created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight. The morale of the fighters went down . . . There was a total collapse in the security structure of the organisation.” The emir complained that the supply of foreign fighters had dwindled and that they found it increasingly hard to operate inside Iraq because they could not blend in. Foreign suicide bombers determined to kill “not less than 20 or 30 infidels” grew disillusioned because they were kept hanging about and only given small operations. Some gave up and went home.

Finally the emir recommended rewards for killing apostates, using doctors to kill infidels and offering gifts to tribal leaders. He said al-Qaeda's fighters should be sent to more promising areas such as Diyala province or Baghdad — which is exactly what happened.

Rear-Admiral Gregory Smith, the US military spokesman in Baghdad, called Abu-Tariq's testament a “woe-is-me kind of document”. It calls the Sunnis who switched sides a “cancer in the body of al-Jihad movement”, and declares: “We should have no mercy on them.”

. . . Most of the first battalion's fighters “betrayed us and joined al-Sahwah [the Awakening]”, he says. The leader of the second ran away and all but two of its 300 fighters joined the Awakening. The activities of the third were “frozen due to their present conditions”. Of the fourth he writes: “Most of its members are scoundrels, sectarians, non-believers”.

He lists 38 people still working for him but beside five names he has written comments like “We have not seen him for twenty days” or “left us a week ago”. He concludes, wistfully: “And that is the number of fighters left in my sector.”

Extracts from letters

. . . Unnamed emir, Anbar province

“The Islamic State of Iraq [al-Qaeda] is faced with an extraordinary crisis, especially in al-Anbar province. Al-Qaeda’s expulsion from Anbar created weakness and psychological defeat. This also created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight.

“The morale of the fighters went down and they wanted to be transferred to administrative positions rather than be fighters. There was a total collapse in the security structure of the organisation.”

Read the entire article.

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Iraq - War, Peace, the Economy, & Progress

There is much to report on Iraq, though none of it appears in the MSM. Below is a rollup of recent news of the war, the continuing gains in security, and economic gains in Iraq.





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There is little direct reporting in the MSM from Iraq these days. Fighting does go on, with Mosul being the main battleground today. This from the Long War Journal:

Al Qaeda is still is able to operate in Mosul, and maintains its only established supply line to Syria in the Mosul region, according to a December 2007 assessment of the terror group's capabilities by Multinational Forces Iraq. "In ... Mosul and the rest of Ninewa province we still have a very tough fight to go," said Major General Mark Hertling, the commander of Multinational Division North said in a press briefing on Jan. 22, just one day prior to a major attack in the city.

. . . "We have formed an operations centre in Ninewa (province) for a final war against Al-Qaeda and the remnants of the former (Saddam Hussein) regime," Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki said on Jan. 25. "Today our forces are moving towards Mosul. What we have planned in Ninewa will be final. It will be a decisive battle." . .

Read the article. What is heartening about this particular battle is the degree to which it is being led and fought by Iraqi forces. As Bill Rogio notes, "This is a capacity that was nearly nonexistent just one year ago when the surge began . . ."

(Update): Al Qaeda is still able to pull off the occasional suicide bombing, the most recent using tactics utterly inhumane and despicable. Al Qaeda has been blamed for tricking two women afflicted with Down's Syndrome into becoming human bombs:

Two women suicide bombers who have killed nearly 80 people in Baghdad were Down's Syndrome victims exploited by al Qaida.

The explosives were detonated by remote control in a co-ordinated attack after the women walked into separate crowded markets, said the chief Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad General Qassim al-Moussawi.

Other officials said the women were apparently unaware of what they were doing in what could be a new method by suspected Sunni insurgents to subvert toughened security measures. . .

Read the article. (H/T Jawa Report) Why is it that I expect that this will make it into the arguments posed by our far left as to why we need to surrender in Iraq?

Elsewhere in Iraq, the Pax American is taking hold. Violence continues to fall. The "January 2008 figure" for Iraqi civilian deaths "was more than 76 percent lower than the 1,971 civilians killed in January 2007 when Iraq was on the brink of sectarian civil war." "As the security situation has improved in the southern belts of Baghdad, coalition officials find themselves more involved with building local governance capacity and creating jobs." Michael Yon recently posted from his embed with the 1-4 Cav in a mixed Sunni-Shia neighborhood in the south of Baghdad:

. . . The 1-4 CAV has not been attacked since 9 September 2007. This is incredible, considering that their AO had been one of the worst battlegrounds in Iraq. I remember my first embed with 1-4 CAV in late March 2007. As soon as I arrived, I went out on a raid; the next day we were in a firefight. But even then, there were glints of hope. Now it’s nothing but tea and progress.

. . . There is so much cooperation between the 1-4 CAV soldiers and their Iraqi neighbors, both Sunni and Shia, it seems surreal. Lieutenant Colonel James Crider, commander of the 1-4 CAV, told me the story of one local bad guy who had been detained but was released, only to return to the neighborhood. Within a day, eleven Iraqis had either called in to 1-4 CAVs tip line, or stopped soldiers on the streets to report the bad guy’s presence. Incidents like this explain why Al Qaeda is having a hard time trying to re-germinate here.

Read the entire article. And, via Political Insecurity, there is this post from Michael Totten:

At the end of 2006 there were 3,000 Marines in Fallujah. Despite what you might expect during a surge of troops to Iraq, that number has been reduced by 90 percent. All Iraqi Army soldiers have likewise redeployed from the city. A skeleton crew of a mere 250 Marines is all that remains as the United States wraps up its final mission in what was once Iraq's most violent city.

“The Iraqi Police could almost take over now,” Second Lieutenant Gary Laughlin told me. “Most logistics problems are slowly being resolved. My platoon will probably be the last one out here in the Jolan neighborhood.” . . .

One of the major turning points in Iraq came with the Anbar Awakening and the creation of the Concerned Local Citizens Brigades to patrol their neighborhoods. The number of people involved in the CLCB has grown to 80,000, and are made up of 80 percent are Sunni and 20 percent Shiite. They have been paid $300 a month by the U.S.. As the program looks to conclude, the question has been whether these individuals would be absorbed into the security apparatus. According to Military spokesman Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, some 20% of these individuals have requested to join either the police or the military, and about half, or 9,000 have now been screened and are either undergoing training or on the list to enter training. The screening process is ongoing for the other 9,000.

With the Pax Americana descending upon Iraq comes the ability to rebuild infrastructure and the economy. The Times reports:

Oil production in Iraq is at its highest level since the US-led invasion of 2003, reaching 2.4 million barrels a day, thanks largely to improved security measures in the north.

The country’s Oil Ministry will shortly invite international oil companies to bid for contracts to help Iraq to boost output at its investment-starved "super-giant" oilfields. Production is expected to pass the prewar level of 2.6 million barrels by the end of the year, and Hussain al-Shahristani, the Iraqi Oil Minister, told The Times that he expected production to reach six million barrels a day within four years.

The International Monetary Fund predicts that Iraq’s economy, boosted by rising oil revenues, will grow by more than 7 per cent this year. . .

Read the article. If you want to beat the recession and take part in a dynamic economy, it would seem that you need to move to Baghdad.

Probably the best sign of all in terms of anecdotal evidence of the peace descending on Iraq comes from Iraqi Pundit:

Those who believe fearful Iraqis have locked themselves in, and are barely surviving a civil war might be surprised to learn that my fellow countrymen have managed to blend the newest technology with dark-edge humour. They are using the novelty of YouTube as a vehicle for expression and entertainment, mocking Iraq's firebrand buffoons and having a little fun at the expense of Western soldiers.

Iraqis have been posting clips on the popular Internet video site showing male U.S. soldiers dancing good-naturedly if clumsily with their Iraqi counterparts or with people in the streets. "One hilarious minute-long segment captures an American military policeman, complete with flak jacket and weapon, spinning round and round while a group of Iraqi policemen cheer him on," says AFP.

To the animation taken from the film Happy Feet, Moktada Al Sadr "is portrayed as the 'chief' penguin who dances while his follower penguins shout his name. The over-dubbed Arabic music is taken from a rally held by the militia and Sadr's supporters." . . .

Read the entire post here.

Not all reports about Iraq are good – or accurate. For those types of reports, we turn to America’s MSM and, today, the Washington Post. Dana Priest of WaPo tells the tragic tale of soldiers committing suicide in 2007, laying the tragedy on the stress of the wars. And she tells us that this number of soldier suicides in 2007 is the largest in any single year. Gateway Pundit tells us what Dana Priest and WaPo do not. The suicide rate for military personnel is the same as if not lower than that for the general population, and indeed, the suicide rate among our soldiers has been significantly lower during the war years of the Bush presidency than it was under the Clinton presidency. What a sorry lot they are at WaPo.

The reality is that Iraq remains a place where peace and democracy will only take permanent hold through long term vigilance and bravery by those utterly determined to succeed. Big problems loom on the horizon. The two biggest threats to Iraq now are Kurdish separatism and Iranian interference. I blog on the former separately today.

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Good News From Iraq As Harry Reid Throws His Support to Al Qaeda

Does that graph look like security has vastly improved in Iraq to you? It doesn't to our Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Doing his best impression of Baghdad Bob, Reid stated during a press conference, responding to the question of why the Democrats are losing their "battles on the Hill" to Republicans:

"Who's winning?" Reid asked a group of reporters. "Big oil, big tobacco. ... Al Qaeda has regrouped and is able to fight a civil war in Iraq. ... The American people are losing."

Reid seems to be following up his earlier declaration of defeat in April. That hasn't panned out so well for him, but he's obviously not giving up the good fight, even if al Qaeda in Iraq has. Even Osama - "the darkness [in Iraq] is pitch black" - bin Laden himself isin't providing Reid any support. Unfortunately, we will never know if another pint of blood was spilled because of statements like this from Reid, but clearly that possiblity palls in comparison to the chance for partisan political gain.

The above graph is courtesy of Bill Rogio at the Long War Journal, who takes a look at the numbers and graphs just released by the IMF-Iraq. They show signficant declines in violence virtually across the board, and a more than 100% increase in the number of weapons caches found. Visit the Long War Journal for all of the graphs. Harry Reid aside, Iraq seems moving towards success more and more every day.

And in more good news, the Iraqi government has taken a major step forward in integrating its Sunni population, both from a political and security standpoint. This was a large matter of concern highlighted by the Washington Post and blogged here. One would think WaPo would prominently display the follow up to their then valid gloom and doom front page article, but they seem to have missed it for some reason. Perhaps its not newsworthy. Fortunately, USA Today has not:

Iraq's Shiite-dominated government has agreed to take over support of a U.S.-funded plan that has organized thousands of Iraqis — including former insurgents and their sympathizers — into local security groups.

The move is a long-awaited step toward national reconciliation, said Saad al-Muttalibi, an official at Iraq's Ministry of National Dialogue and Reconciliation.

"It's now reassuring that the government of Iraq recognizes that this is a program that has worked in Anbar and is beginning to work elsewhere in the country," said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a U.S. military spokesman.

Iraq intends to move the guards into training programs as quickly as possible, Muttalibi said. "It's not a good idea to have people with guns running around the streets," he said.

The movement toward local security began in predominantly Sunni Anbar province, where tribal leaders and their followers agreed to work with U.S. and Iraqi forces in fighting al-Qaeda. The program expanded rapidly elsewhere, including Baghdad.

At first, Iraq's government eyed the groups warily and considered them a potential threat. . . .

Read the article. Now, with today's most surreal thought - if we could only get the Iraq War funded . . .

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