The most recent articles in this series have pointed to the problems facing US troops in Iraq as they meet unexpected resistance, and have also highlighted their continuing problems in Afghanistan. Events of the past week indicate that the dilemmas confronting American forces in both countries are much more substantial than are being reported in most parts of the media.
Afghanistan: a campaign unwon
In Afghanistan, there has been a persistent attempt by the authorities to claim that any major incidents of conflict have been the result of the activities of remnants of the Taliban. In view of current developments, if these are indeed merely remnants then any significant regrouping would surely make for the onset of a full-scale war.
Last week there was a major engagement between government forces and Taliban militia near the south-eastern town of Spin Boldak, which ended with forty Taliban being killed. This was followed by the suicide bombing in Kabul on 7 June that killed four German soldiers from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and an Afghan boy, and injured forty other people (including twenty-nine Germans).
The Afghan authorities believe that these and many other incidents are carried out by guerrillas who cross into Afghanistan from Pakistan, and then slip back across the border. This may seem reassuring in that it effectively puts the blame on the authorities in Pakistan; but it does not fit with what is actually happening within Afghanistan.
This can be seen from the way in which the de-mining work that is so crucial to reconstruction has had to be abandoned in many parts of the country because of threats from Taliban and other forces. More generally, the formation of an Afghan National Army is painfully slow, with UN officials warning of the need to escape from the current dominance of the army by ethnic Tajik forces, who dominated the National Alliance which entered Kabul in November 2001. This dominance is one of the reasons why the army is failing to secure the loyalty of many people in Afghanistan.
The attack on the ISAF troops is particularly troublesome as this contingent has made a genuine contribution to the notable improvements in living conditions in Kabul. If the United States had been willing to see it extended to other parts of the country in 2002, then some of the current tensions might have eased. Instead, the ISAF itself is now being seen as part of a foreign occupation, along with the much larger force of some 10,000 US troops. The US troops are combat forces engaged in continuing operations against the Taliban, whereas ISAF is far more orientated to peacekeeping. If ISAF is now a target of armed action, then its core task of peacekeeping will become much more problematic.
Iraq: the new order in trouble
The security problems of US forces in Iraq are much greater even than in Afghanistan, although some perspective is necessary here. In Baghdad and several other cities, there is a slow but discernible improvement in basic public services and in the availability of food and fuel. In the major Shia city of Karbala, in southern Iraq, relations with US occupying forces have improved in the past few weeks, against expectations.
In other provinces the situation is quite different, and across the country as a whole there are systemic problems of collapsed health facilities, rampant unemployment and lawlessness.
There is considerable low-level armed action against American personnel. On 1 May, just under three weeks after the capture of Baghdad, President Bush declared the war in Iraq to be effectively over. In the month that followed there were eighty-five attacks on US forces and around thirty US troops died.
According to the Washington Post, attacks on US troops are actually growing, not diminishing, in intensity. Moreover, the perpetrators are not just lawless elements released from prison by the old regime in a pre-war amnesty. As the Washington Post (10 June) puts it:
Almost every day, well-organized groups of assailants using assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars are ambushing U.S. Army convoys, patrols, checkpoints, garrisons and public offices used by troops to interact with the local population.
Nor are these attacks limited to former Baath centres of power such as Tikrit, north of Baghdad, or Fallujah to its west. It is certainly true that Fallujah has been a major centre of unrest, not least in the wake of the incidents in April when US forces killed fifteen demonstrators and injured dozens more. The US now maintains a force of 3,000 well-armed troops in Fallujah alone, but these forces came under attack every day in the seven days up to 9 June.
Moreover, recent attacks on US forces have stretched across metropolitan Baghdad itself and large areas of central and north-western Iraq. One attack on 8 June was at al-Qaim, close to the Syrian border, and another two days later which killed a US paratrooper was in Baghdad itself.
The predominant view of the US military is that organised groups loyal to the Saddam regime are moving from district to district, engaging in hit-and-run attacks on US units in such a manner as to avoid major combat where they would be at a severe disadvantage.
The word often used to describe these groups is remnants of the old regime, a usage that echoes the characterisation of those Taliban remnants that are increasingly active eighteen months after the Afghanistan war was won. Yet their overall effect is to make it almost impossible for the US troops in Iraq to concentrate on the pressing problems of maintaining public order.
The extent of these problems is illustrated by an attack on 7 June on a building in Tikrit used by US soldiers involved in civil assistance. The attack commenced with small arms fire from several well-protected positions in neighbouring structures. These probed the defences of the building, and were followed by a volley of several rocket-propelled fragmentation grenades aimed at the part of the building which the US troops normally used as a rest room.
Although no US troops were killed in this attack, it shows evidence of knowledge about how the Americans were organised, as well as substantial preparation for the attack itself. Moreover, it coincided with another attack on a group of US Military Police nearby, in which one soldier was killed.
One effect of the attack has been to greatly increase the level of protection provided for military locations in towns such as Tikrit, turning them into miniature fortresses. This, in turn, serves to heighten the impression that the United States is engaged in an out-and-out military occupation, at least of this part of Iraq.
The effect of the pattern of assaults is also to make the US troops hugely more edgy and concerned for their own safety. One consequence is their greater readiness to operate aggressive road blocks, detain suspects, repeat forceful searches of private houses and other suspect locations, and use deadly force that sometimes kills bystanders. All of this is likely to increase the enmity of Iraqis towards the US military.
Perhaps the most serious development of this deteriorating security situation is that some parts of the US military now believe that those Iraqi elements opposed to the US, who were dispersed and fragmented in the immediate aftermath of the war, are now beginning to establish themselves as organised guerrilla movements.
If, as seems likely, these are becoming both well-armed and able to attract the support of significant parts of the civil population across much of Iraq, then the idea that the US is dealing with remnants that are in principle going to be easy to suppress or contain is frankly a myth. Instead, a long-term military campaign is in prospect.
This is illustrated by the sheer size of the military operation against Iraqi resistance that started on 9 June. The operation, is aimed at disrupting and controlling systematic resistance centred on the towns of Thuluiya and Balad, 70 kilometres north of Baghdad. It has stretched over several days and involved over 3,000 troops supported by helicopters, AC-130 gunships, F-15 fighters, armoured vehicles and patrol boats.
The area concerned is a peninsula formed by a bend in the river Tigris. It is only about 50 square kilometres in area, yet a brigade-size force has had to be deployed to pacify it. In the first day of the operation, four Iraqis were killed and 375 were detained, but the heavily-armed US forces met resistance and ten of their own troops were wounded.
If this is an indication of what is to come, six weeks after the war is over, then it augurs an outcome in Iraq that is very different to the widespread welcome for liberating US forces that both they and their political masters seem to have envisaged.
