The battle for Baghdad
The Americans could be about to embark on the most dangerous phase of the conflict since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, pitting themselves for the first time against the Baghdad stronghold of the Shia cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr.
There was much media scepticism following United States President George Bush’s speech on Wednesday night over whether US forces would actually enter in strength into Sadr City, the huge slum area on the capital’s east bank, home to two million Shia.
But the new Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, made a clear-cut pledge at a press conference in Washington on Thursday morning. ”All parts of Baghdad are going to be involved in this campaign, including Sadr City,” he said.
Since 2003, US troops have taken on Sunni Muslim insurgents and left the Mehdi Army largely alone, apart from a short-lived battle in Najaf in 2005. But the new strategy outlined by Bush identified sectarian violence as being at the centre of the conflict and that means tackling Shia gunmen as well as Sunnis.
This third attempt to pacify Baghdad will take some of the lessons of the model established in the remote northern town of Talafar, where Colonel HR McMaster established relative calm after months of ugly sectarian violence. Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, being questioned by a senate committee on Thursday, cited Talafar as a model of success, as has Bush.
Colonel McMaster cut off the town in 2005, denying access to outside fighters, and then worked through district after district. Unlike in the rest of the country, McMaster’s troops stayed, instead of taking control and leaving, allowing insurgents to return.
While Baghdad is too big to be cut off in the way Talafar was, the plan is to seal off districts of the capital, clearing out insurgents and remaining in place. These would be turned into ”gated communities”, with entry controlled by gates and security staff. The American hope is that the sense of security created in these safe zones will spread to other neighbourhoods.
At least one army brigade scheduled to go to Iraq, the 2nd brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division, has begun moving in from Kuwait and will be in place in the capital in weeks. Four other brigades based in the United States are to deploy earlier than planned.
The 17 500 new troops heading for the capital will go into these areas alongside Iraqi army units. At least initially, the focus will be on nine sectors, one of which is Sadr City. This approach marks a change from the existing one in which US soldiers are based primarily in huge fortified positions round the capital.
The British military put forward a counter-insurgency plan in 2005 that contained some elements of the new strategy but, to the dismay of US officers on the ground in Iraq, it was rejected by the then defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.
A senior US military source involved in the discussions about the new strategy, while welcoming the decision to tackle the Shia death squads and militia, expressed doubts about its feasibility. ”It might have worked in 2004 or 2005, but it is probably too late now,” he said.
Other officers, both American and British, are sceptical about whether the Iraqi army, which is riddled with sectarianism, is capable of confronting the Shia militia.
Based on the McMaster model, the new deployment of troops to Baghdad will adopt a seven-point plan, starting by sealing off neighbourhoods using barriers such as the river Tigris, major roads and checkpoints. The soldiers would then move into districts and seek to disarm the militias and other fighters. The third step would be to create small posts in the neighbourhoods rather than retreating at night to base. One of the mistakes after 2003 was the way the US diplomats, administrators and army based themselves in the Green Zone and at the airport, cut off from the population.
According to the Los Angeles Times, point four would be to have checkpoints in an attempt to prevent fighters moving in and restricting those already inside. Residents would be issued with ID badges and entry into and from the zone would be logged. The fifth step would be to create an accurate census of those in the neighbourhood. Step six would be, if violence subsides, to try to create job programmes and provide other municipal services. The final step would be to try to expand this to neighbouring areas.
Hot pursuit?
A passage in the Bush speech that caused a stir among US and foreign observers threatened possible action against alleged infiltration routes across the Syrian and Iranian borders, seen by some as presaging a wider conflict. ”Succeeding in Iraq,” Bush said, ”also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilising the region in the face of extremist challenges”.
Syria and Iran, he went on,”are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We’ll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq”.
Some analysts viewed the remarks as a thinly veiled threat to conduct ”hot pursuit” operations across Iraq’s borders with Iran and Syria. ”There is an ominous element here,” said William Arkin of the Washington Post. ”When the president pledged to ‘seek out and destroy the networks supporting our enemies in Iraq’, to me that means the threat of strikes on targets in those two countries.”
British officials, however, played down that interpretation. They made it clear that the Blair government’s policy now is to engage in what they called a ”more intense dialogue” with the two countries, rather than in potentially hugely provocative military operations.
Intelligence has shown that weapons have been smuggled across borders with Iraq. Special forces, including more than 300 SAS troops, are operating throughout Iraq, frequently engaged in joint operations with American special forces. Such troops could be used to mount more discreet cross-border operations than helicopter gunships or Hercules aircraft of the kind the US used to target suspected Islamist extremists in Somalia this week.
UK defence officials suggested yesterday that they believed ”hot pursuit” operations would be a lost cause at best as far as Iraq’s long border with Iran was concerned. One described it as ”bandit country, almost unpoliceable”. Britain is particularly concerned about the prospect of cross-border operations into Iran because its troops, just across the border in south and south-eastern Iraq, would be exposed to any Iranian response.
Role of Iraqi forces
Bush said Iraqi troops would play the central role in pacifying their capital, deploying an army brigade to each of Baghdad’s nine districts, a total of about 20 000 soldiers under a new commander and two deputies. They would fight alongside a similar number of Iraqis from the national police force. US reinforcements would be ”embedded” in Iraqi units, providing guidance and support while stiffening their resolve under fire. ”Our troops will have a well-defined mission: to help Iraqis clear and secure neighbourhoods, to help them protect the local population, and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs,” he said.
Americans have heard similar promises before. Operations ”Forward Together” and ”Forward Together II” last summer also envisaged Iraqi forces taking the lead in Baghdad. However, only two of the six battalions that the Iraqi government promised actually turned up. The difference this time will be the far greater commitment of US troops, allowing them to have a presence in every Iraqi brigade, and the ultimatum the president appeared to deliver to the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki.
”I have made it clear to the prime minister and Iraq’s other leaders that America’s commitment is not open-ended,” the president said, addressing a central theme of US public anxiety. ”If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people — and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people.”
The unanswered question is whether the Bush White House would go so far as to withdraw its own support and troops if it was dissatisfied with the Maliki government. In the wake of this new gamble, Maliki’s fate is in George Bush’s hands, and vice versa.
Can the surge be sustained?
Bush will not be sending in fresh troops into the fray. He has hardly any combat units in reserve. Instead the surge will be achieved by making some already exhausted brigades stay on in Iraq months after their normal tours are over, and speeding up the deployment of others who were due to arrive later this year.
However, this logistical trick cannot be sustained indefinitely. Even before Wednesday’s presidential announcement, the army and marine corps had been complaining they were overstretched. The outgoing head of Central Command, General John Abizaid, told Congress recently that troop levels could be increased by 20 000 or so temporarily but ”the ability to sustain that commitment is simply not something we have right now with the size of the army and the marine corps”.
In order to win the generals’ compliance, Gates on Thursday announced a 92 000 increase in the strength of the army and marines. But experienced combat brigades cannot be produced overnight, and the combination of extended combat tours with shorter rest periods in between is already taking its toll on troops and their families. One in five Iraq veterans is coming home with serious mental health problems.
As the war drags on it is also proving harder to persuade soldiers and marines to re-enlist when their service is over. The wear and tear is not only felt by the soldiers and marines. Sand and intensive use has also worn down equipment, to the extent that two thirds of army combat units have been declared not ready to fight.
If the surge Bush has ordered is to be sustained more than a few months, National Guard units, maintained by the states rather than the federal government, will also be called on to do more. But its commanders are saying they are critically underequipped, and any more deployments would require a break with current Pentagon policy limiting the deployment of National Guard units to one 24-month tour every five years.
That would mean America’s deepening involvement in Iraq would be sorely felt in every corner of the country. – Guardian Unlimited Â