Been spending a lot of time blogging about Afghanistan, thought it was time to look at what’s happening in Iraq. The impetus for me was press reports of increasing numbers of insurgent attacks against Iraqi citizens and the continued inability of Iraq to set up a functioning government in the aftermath of the March elections. My concern is simply this: Are the gains of “The Surge” operations being reversed and is Iraq falling back into a cycle of sectarian violence?
In addition to the reports of increased violence an October 16th article in the New York Times stated: “Members of the United States-allied Awakening Councils have quit or been dismissed from their positions in significant numbers in recent month…Although there are no firm figures, security and political officials say hundreds of the well disciplined fighters…appear to have rejoined Al Qaeda…Beyond that, officials say that even many of the Awakening fighters still on the Iraqi government payroll, possibly thousands of them, covertly aid the insurgency.”
In an earlier blog, I mentioned that those of us sitting on the side lines need to be very careful when commenting on ongoing military operations since we don’t have access to all of the information the on scene commanders are using to make decisions. One thing the Wikileaks scandal highlighted was the shear volume of data put out by military intelligence analysts. Because the analysis done by most military intelligence analysts is classified, there is a huge amount of data not available to commentators unless they’re working for one of the government associated think tanks. The other interesting thing about the scandal was there were no surprises. Reporters and commentators who were able to either visit the war zones or interview senior national security advisors were able to paint a fairly accurate picture of the highs and lows of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. There was no evidence the government was either hiding information or being dishonest in reporting results of the conflict.
That said, on November 4th I participated in an informative Department of Defense sponsored bloggers round table with Brigadier General Jeffrey Buchanan, the Director of Strategic Effects, United States Forces- Iraq. General Buchanan began by giving the three major tasks of U.S. forces for Operation New Dawn:
– Train, assist and equip Iraqi security forces
– Conduct partnered counterterrorism operations
– Support and protect UN and U.S. civilian workers involved in building civil capacity
When asked about the recent violence, Buchanan emphasized he did not want to make light of the casualties but overall levels of violence are about 10% of what they had been in the past. He remarked: “Al Qaeda in Iraq has never changed its goal to overthrow the Iraqi government. And they continue to try to drive a wedge between the Iraqi people and their government and the security forces…They remain a threat, and they remain dangerous. But their capabilities have been significantly degraded over the past year; in particular, the past about eight months, the U.S. Forces-Iraq and Iraqi security forces working together have had a significant effect on Al Qaeda’s networks.”
I asked the General if the problems the Iraqis were having standing up their government had any impact on that part of the government directing the Iraqi security forces. He answered he had, “the utmost confidence in their abilities and we’ve seen no change in their posture or how they’re operating…they continue to man their posts. They continue to be increasingly capable in planning for, coordinating and conducting complex operations…even at the low tactical level, the Iraqi security forces continue to perform well. Just this last week, they found and cleared 42 improvised explosive devices…and discovered 35 caches, some with more than 400 different types of munitions in them.”
I also asked him to elaborate on how our forces were interacting and operating with the Iraqi forces. Buchanan replied that most of the U.S. forces were in an advisory capacity working at Iraqi headquarters. They help with “planning, conducting operations. We accompany them on operations…and have the capability for providing…everything from intelligence, support from a drone or medical evacuation helicopters.”
The General indicated for counterterrorism operations, “we tend to operate much more in a direct fashion…all of these operations are based on an Iraqi warrant, decided on and promulgated by an Iraqi judge.”
Think this is a good place to conclude. Its obvious Al Qaeda is trying for a comeback now that the U.S. is turning over operations to the Iraqi Security forces. It’s also obvious that the remaining U.S. forces and the Iraqi security force are working very hard to prevent that from happening. As always my views are my own.
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