A number of recent tragedies in Iraq, involving the killing both of Iraqi civilians and American and British troops, have retrospectively revealed some important planning failures before the outset of the military campaign to overthrow Saddam Husseins regime. When the gunfire ceased and heavy armoured columns had finally captured Iraqs vital organs, keeping the peace in a dysfunctional state turned out to be a rather more complicated affair.
What were the essential objectives of the coalition forces? They are best summarised in Tony Blairs message to the Iraqi people on 17 March 2003 which promised peace, prosperity, freedom, good governance and international respect. These conditions were to be achieved by a swift and targeted military campaign, and then by restructuring programmes that would involve Iraqis at every level.
The war-fighting phase of the campaign to overthrow Saddams regime lived up to the allies promises but the stabilisation process that now underwrites Iraqs transformation to a new statehood is in trouble, due to failures of conceptual thinking, coalition building and anticipation of practical problems. Any assessment of the military units that are keeping the peace at street level cannot be separated from the problems of their wider strategic environment.
The military occupation was faced with a multifaceted activity that involved its commanders in politics, and the management of civil resources right down to street level. In principle, a successful stabilisation process would rely on international and regional support at the strategic level and a highly developed local intelligence system, as well as structures to coordinate a host of simultaneous internal security, humanitarian and state building activities.
But in Iraq, many of these preconditions are still missing because, at a grand strategic level, political figures in Washington were unable or unwilling to organise them before the start of hostilities. These failures have as usual been visited on the poor bloody infantry, the men and women in uniform at street level, who are holding the show together until political leaders acknowledge and rectify these problems.
Planning failures: from war to post-war
Three immediate planning failures became apparent in the post-war period. They relate to force levels, international cooperation, and the nature of regime change itself.
Force levels
In the war-fighting phase, opposition forces were defeated thanks to the destabilising impact of the coalition forces speed, targeting precision and constant use of surprise. By this means, coalition forces avoided the problems of force-on-force attrition battle which would require much larger numbers to satisfy a troops to tasks costing process.
However, when operations changed from war-fighting to keeping the peace, this approach could no longer be applied. Coalition forces in the populated areas were suddenly required to act as policemen as well as war-fighters. But effects-based-warfare has nothing to offer policemen faced by a large compliant population that above all needs reassurance and protection.
So in the keeping-the-peace phase, the mathematics of troops to tasks reasserted themselves and, given the minimalist intervention forces in Iraq, the shortfall left the states population, infrastructure and cultural treasures largely unprotected as the coalition transferred from one phase to the other. Manpower shortages are now becoming an increasing problem as the likelihood of operating in a hostile environment seems to be increasing.
International cooperation
The second planning failure was not to create an international environment to support the Iraqi transformation process in the short term and state-survival in the long term. Political pressures limited the period for an attack, leaving no time to bring the full weight of diplomacy and economics to bear on creating a more favourable international climate. A stronger group of concerned nations at the start would have encouraged support from the UN Security Council, the European Union, and regional authorities.
Without a Security Council resolution, Iraqs oil, capital and export economy cannot be freed from embargo. The absence of support also impacts directly on the coalition troops in every Iraqi city who are striving to protect a transition process that has no legal authority in the wider international and regional community.
Economic revival at street level also awaits the green light of international approval. As Carl Bildt has pointed out, it is much harder to enforce a transition process that does not result from an international agreement. It will inevitably lack even the cooperation of neighbouring states, who are currently not obliged to act against local factions based within their borders, who are trying to sabotage it.
The nature of regime change
The third and most visible planning failure was the inability to anticipate the conditions in which regime change would take place. Saddam Husseins control turned out to be pervasive, penetrating every sector of society. Without his authority or support it was impossible to succeed in any walk of life. As a result, all Iraqi structures and institutions were dominated by his loyal supporters including the armed forces, every government department, law, police, media, fire services, schools, hospitals, commerce, the performing arts, and social and religious leaders.
The plan for regime change has not so far revealed how the executive structures in each of these vital organs are to be successfully replaced, either in the short term or as part of any future state. Nor is there a roadmap by which to transform a society which has relied for so long on the devices of dictatorship, to a free market democracy where decisions result from a participative process.
For years Iraq has been a top-down society. The population is now begging for instructions which liberal-minded coalition leaders are reluctant to give. After the seizure of the urban areas by coalition troops, the removal of the regimes executives left chaos in every sector of the Iraqi state. But their temporary reinstatement led to outrage among crowds which were then dispersed, sometimes by violent methods.
The failure to promulgate a carefully researched and widely authorised plan for regime change put the coalition forces on the streets into a reactive posture. After the war-fighting phase coalition troops, as the custodians of public safety under the Geneva Convention, were constantly wrong-footed, first by widespread looting and then by failures of essential services and shortages of critical supplies.
Furthermore, a decade of international experience in transitions of power, from Cambodia to South Africa and in many former communist states, shows that a programme for reconciliation was an essential part of the process. But in Iraq, except for the list of regime leaders famously publicised as a pack of cards, there appear to be no formal arrangements to deal with a criminally involved host of lesser functionaries, or to pardon them.
Without international agreement, the status of a legal process under which they could be indicted, is still unresolved. So when the war-fighting was over, the burden of rectifying these potentially hazardous planning failures fell, as is usually the case, onto the troops at the lowest level.
On the post-war frontline
On the street, the immediate problem for individual soldiers was that the adrenaline surge which carried them through the encounter battle was over. The transition-period in Iraq began during the payback time when exhaustion and minor illness diminished manpower and unit effectiveness. The replacement of units and individual commanders has reduced this end-of-term feeling. Nevertheless the majority of troops, who have been there since the beginning, face the next chapter of developments with a sense of anti-climax and a depleted problem-solving energy.
The transition from war-fighting to internal security follows a well-rehearsed logic that is more surprising to the civil observer than to the professional soldier. After the fast-moving and sometimes violent encounter battle the frontline units occupied the key areas, maintaining control from static locations. Ostensibly their task has been to ensure a sufficient degree of public and personal security, within their area of responsibility, for the civil processes of transition to be conducted safely.
The hidden problems of this apparently undemanding role are that during the initial period of their occupation they also take responsibility for a population on the edge of survival, without leaders, viable civil institutions or sufficient amenities to support it. As with the initial occupation of Kosovo and Kabul, the intervening military forces are, for the first few weeks, the only visible representatives of the coalition and the buck stops with them.
In this vacuum, incoming coalition forces have to be all things to all people. Within the area of responsibility, the unit commander has to solve immediate humanitarian problems in the absence of the international agencies, restore the essential amenities to support an urban population, and in the short term take responsibility for the communities living in the area.
This has required coalition forces to protect Baath minorities from retribution as well as maintaining law and order. Important decisions have had to be taken on the street about the record and suitability of local figures who have emerged to represent their communities; some turn out to be Baath gangsters, others promulgate ideologies equally repugnant to Washington.
The sudden role change dictates a sudden transfiguration of tactics, attitude and body language. The clarifying certainties of war-fighting, the overwhelming use of firepower and the multiplying advantages of technology, air-cover and area weapons are largely removed. Internal security tasks are manpower-intensive, and influenced by principles that are antithetical to war-fighting. Intensive firepower is supplanted by the principle of minimum use of force which, in the British case, is accountable so that the soldier who uses lethal force without justification can be indicted under military or civil law.
Military success needs strategic planning
General Mike Jacksons risk-benefit approach for gaining the initiative in the urban areas of Kosovo has validity in Iraq. The population cannot be persuaded to support the transition process from helicopters or armoured vehicles. This is achieved by the presence of troops walking calmly through the streets, behaving in a firm and friendly manner, wearing berets and with the muzzles of their weapons pointing towards the ground.
But in Northern Ireland, Kosovo and Kabul, this approach is only viable when it is employed alongside good intelligence. The ambushes and attacks which killed six British military policemen (RMP) on 24 June indicated that troops were being deployed into situations without the benefit of effective local intelligence. A better system may take years to achieve and in the meantime troops will have to move in greater strength to protect themselves against future surprises.
General Jacksons risk-benefit approach is nevertheless the best technique to restore security and raise popular support for a functioning civil society. But in the present context of Iraq, it raises problems of structure, manpower and logistics. The armoured troops who led the advance across the desert are not attitudinally ready to work successfully with a civil population or configured to patrol the streets on foot.
The consequence of a role change of this magnitude is a similarly intensive change of capabilities at the cutting edge of the force, including a heightened awareness of the importance of local activities, intelligence and the need to preserve and record evidence.
More specifically the majority of infantry units are not equipped to take on a violent crowd and make a graduated response before resorting to the use of lethal force. In their armoured role, tanks and reconnaissance vehicle crews carry a personal weapon scale that assumes they will live and fight from their vehicles. In an urban security role, they lack the scale of rifles with night sights, portable radios and soft-skinned vehicles to take to the streets in small groups.
Similarly, the manpower configuration for effects-based-warfare does not provide sufficient police, interpreters, political advisers, intelligence staff, G5 staff or ordnance disposal to cope with day-to-day events. The combat supply system successfully supported an extended advance in contact across the desert; but now the coalition has different needs. Professional soldiers will soon improvise their comfort, fresh food and better accommodation, but as the weeks turn to months their needs will become more demanding and sophisticated.
US and British forces are professional; provided they can make the necessary changes of attitude at command level, they will adapt swiftly to new circumstances. Very little in their logistic wish list cannot be provided by the resources of a powerful home-based support system.
But military formations, no matter how professional, cannot on their own solve the problems of the Iraqi transition of power and the emergence of a new state. The consequences of fundamental planning omissions have now become obstacles to success.
