The run-up to the Iraqi elections on 30 January has been accompanied by widespread suggestions the United States is considering a progressive military withdrawal from the country. In media and think-tanks as well as among policy-makers, exit strategies are being discussed as if the immediate aftermath of the election will provide an opportunity for US forces to escape their Iraqi predicament.
At the same time, these forces and their Iraqi allies are making quite extraordinary efforts to curb the insurgency over the election period. A recent example is the report by a spokesperson of the Iraqi administration on 24 January that its security forces had captured a key technical aide to Musab al-Zarqawi, along with one of the elusive insurgent leaders propagandists. Sami Mohammad Ali Said al-Jaaf was described as a top bomb-maker whose arrest so close to the election suggested that counter-insurgency actions were proving successful. In fact, both men were detained two weeks ago, and the news released only as the election drew near.
Meanwhile, American forces have embarked on a further stringent counter-insurgency programme (see Thom Shanker, U.S. force stepped up in Iraq for election, International Herald Tribune, 25 January 2005). This programme has three main components: a sharp increase in the detention of suspected insurgents (around 2,500 have been seized in January 2005), the emplacement of large reserves of fuel and munitions (to minimise the need for military convoys over the election weekend), and the redeployment of large numbers of support and logistics troops to routine security tasks, including street patrols.
These measures supplement others extensive curfews, control of motor vehicles and closure of borders introduced by the Iyad Allawi regime. Even this combination has not prevented continuing attacks, as events in recent days including a series of assaults and car bombs around the towns of Baquba and Riyadh, and the US helicopter crash near Rutbah that killed thirty-one marines indicate.
In any case, the military and security operations designed to suppress insurgent action during the election leave open the wider question of whether the insurgency is being brought under control. To help answer it, three factors are relevant: the level of violence in Iraq, reconstruction problems, and Pentagon plans for long-term troop deployment in the country.
No exit
First, the current intensity and the underlying dynamic of the insurgency do not suggest that the Allawi regime and its United States and coalition allies are making significant progress in defeating it. A recent analysis by Tom Lasseter and Jonathan S. Landay (Iraq Insurgency Growing Larger, More Effective, Knight Ridder Newspapers, 23 January 2005) reports a number of trends working against the coalition forces.
In the past twenty months, United States combat deaths have risen from an average of 17 a month to 82 a month, and combat injuries from 142 to 808. Attacks on US coalition forces, averaging 735 in November 2003, rose to 2,300 a month by the end of 2004 although even that figure was exceeded during the assault on Fallujah in November.
Second, the economic and political reconstruction of Iraq continues to be handicapped by delays caused by sabotage and failures of institutional reform. For three months, electricity generation has been below the levels provided to Iraqis before the March-April 2003 war, and oil production remains well below pre-war levels.
Moreover, it is true that some previously conflict-ridden parts of the country, such as Najaf and Baghdads Sadr City district, are calmer than in 2004; but a remarkable feature of these areas is that administrative functions have been taken over by local Iraqis, often with virtually no reference to central government. Many urban centres are operating as sovereign units, often with their own paramilitary forces who maintain a semblance of order, tolerating official police forces while wielding ultimate control.
One consequence for US forces is that when they mount an operation to counter insurgents in a particular town or city, they are unable to take control in other than a nominal manner. Most insurgents simply move elsewhere, and those who remain are radicalised by the damage done in artillery and bombing raids. When US forces move on to other areas, the insurgents return.
Third, recent indications confirm that the US army is planning to retain its current force levels in Iraq for the next two years (see Bradley Graham, Army Plans To Keep Iraq Troop Level Through 06, Washington Post, 25 January 2005). There are around 150,000 American troops in Iraq and perhaps 30,000 more in neighbouring Kuwait. The other 20,000 troops in Iraq are drawn from the separate US marine corps and some air force units. There are no indications that these are going to be decreased.
The US army is planning to put even greater emphasis on training Iraqi security forces to take over numerous roles, but the capabilities of the various Iraqi paramilitary and police units have systematically fallen below coalition expectations. There are also repeated indications that newly-trained units are frequently infiltrated by insurgents and their sympathisers, making the task of the coalitions training units formidably difficult.
It is probable that the very slow pace of Nato involvement in training Iraqi forces is due not just to the reluctance of some member-states but to a recognition, never admitted in public, that the whole operation is fraught with difficulties.
A strategy too far
Taken together, these three factors strongly indicate that any American exit strategy is simply not feasible. They also reveal the contradiction within which the United States is locked. It cannot consider withdrawing from Iraq completely the country and its energy resources are far too important for that. Yet it clearly wishes to disengage from the insurgency while remaining in overall control of security. The baleful result is a strategy too far.
In this context, it is probable that the 30 January election will make very little difference at all to the dire security situation in much of Iraq.
