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During March and much of April 2005, numerous United States sources declared that progress was at last being made in Iraq, that the insurgency was in decline and that there was even a prospect of early troop withdrawals. In the past week, this rhetoric has notably changed in an alarmist direction and one that reflects more accurately Iraqi realities as explored in the last three columns in this series.
The chair of the US joint chiefs of staff, General Richard Myers, says that there are still fifty-sixty insurgent attacks a day, that the insurgency is at a similar level to that of a year ago, and that the insurgents are proving remarkably resilient. Since April 2004 was particularly violent, and included the first siege of Fallujah, Meyers admission seems especially significant.
What is happening in Iraq now clearly runs directly counter to the expectations that Januarys elections would be a turning-point away from insurgency and towards democracy. Before evaluating the current level of violence, it is useful to recall the precedents for the American optimism of the past two months.
Rhetoric and reality
The euphoria following the termination of Saddam Husseins regime in April 2003 was quickly followed by President Bushs bullish Declaration of victory on 1 May under a banner trumpeting Mission Accomplished on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. In what initially seems an unrelated event, a British army private, Johnson Beharry, was awarded the Victoria Cross (Britains highest military honour) for two acts of great bravery that took place a month apart during fighting in Iraq.
The connection is that both Johnson Beharrys acts of bravery took place in southern Iraq, a part of the country supposedly well away from the main focus of the developing insurgency and the first took place on the very day George W Bush made his triumphal speech.
Beharrys award is a stark reminder that violence against coalition forces was becoming embedded even soon after the United States announced victory. Since then, American and British officials have, on at least five major occasions, reiterated claims that the trends were in their favour:
▪ in July 2003, coalition sources heralded news of the killing of Qusay and Uday Hussein near Mosul as a prelude to a decline in insurgency morale
▪ in November 2003, they disseminated reports that the insurgency was rooted in a handful of extended families, most now known to the military
▪ in December 2003, the capture of Saddam Hussein was predicted to mark a terminal phase in the insurgency
▪ in June 2004, the appointment of the interim Iyad Allawi regime was seen as an indicator that the insurgency was in retreat
▪ in January 2005, Iraqs national elections were welcomed as the elections were expected to have a profound effect.
In fact, the insurgency had continued to gather pace throughout this period, and after an initial period of relative calm following the elections, has now returned to full strength.
In November 2004, United States strategists and officials employed a further weapon in their rhetorical armoury: locating the heart of the insurgency in a defined area of Iraq (the Sunni triangle) and a particular city, Fallujah. The second assault on that city, expected to crush the core elements of resistance, has instead proved a disaster. The human impacts, and the problems facing even limited attempts at reconstruction, are enormous (see Dahr Jamail & Jonathan Steele, This is our Fallujah, Guardian, 27 April 2005).
The costs of war
The insurgency continues unabated. On 22 April, a Mi-8 helicopter was shot down, with six US security contractors among the eleven people killed. The number of regular US forces killed has been declining, but the intensity of attacks and the resultant injuries have been very high: from 5-26 April, 463 US military personnel were injured, 65 of them seriously.
There continue to be many bombings and shootings that leave scores of Iraqi civilians dead and wounded. The Iraq Body Count (IBC) group, with its cautious and careful methodology, now assesses the civilian toll at 21-24,000, the great majority being the result of coalition activities. IBC uses only reliable press reports, though it is widely recognised that many deaths go unreported, even in the Iraqi media. Independent analysts suspect the full civilian death toll is closer to 40,000.
Paul Rogers writes a monthly global security briefing for the Oxford Research Group. For details, click here
What lies behind the renewed insurgent activity? It may partly, as earlier columns in this series have suggested, derive from a regroupment after the intense US military clampdown around the January elections. The relatively limited numbers of US troops in the country meant that this effort simply could not be maintained for any length of time.
In the pre-war phase, the senior US army general Eric Shinseki said that maintaining control of Iraq after regime termination would require several hundred thousand troops. The defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, scornfully dismissed him. Shinseki has been proved right.
Washington faces an even more ominous recent development in Iraq, reported by Ellen Knickmeyer (see Insurgent Violence Escalates In Iraq, Washington Post, 24 April 2005). Across the country the internal Iraqi security forces, especially the police, are systematically failing:
Soldiers and police across much of Iraq have fallen into inaction. The defense and interior ministries are run by interim chiefs slated for replacement. Initiatives by Iraqi forces against the insurgents have all but ceased. The insurgency has found new hideouts, gathering points and recruiting areas in western and central Iraq, and in eastern Iraq along the Tigris river, as well as in other locations.
Knickmeyers comprehensive picture, drawing on reports from Iraqi journalists, depicts systematic setbacks for Iraqi and United States forces. In Husaybah, a town near the Syrian border, an Iraqi army unit formerly 400-strong has dwindled to a few dozen troops taking refuge in a factory outside the town for their own protection. This is part of a broader pattern, says Knickmeyer: In city after city and town after town, security forces who had signed up to secure Iraq and replace U.S. forces appear to have abandoned posts or taken refuge inside them for fear of attacks.
No end in sight
The political stalemate in Iraq, despite the election of a national assembly and formal agreement over a new government, may also have contributed to the renewed impact of the insurgency. Despite very strong pressure from the US, Iraqi politicians have found it impossible to form a viable administration, even though its sole responsibility is to prepare a new constitution, before handing over to a successor government by the end of 2005.
The proposal of a cabinet by prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari on 27 April 2005 may help to counter the sense of political directionlessness that permeates much of Iraq, but another event on the same day is more ominous: the assassination of a long-time political activist and member of the national assembly, Lamia Abed Khadouri outside her home in Baghdad.
Even if al-Jaafaris decision helps to overcome the current political impasse, would clear leadership from an Iraqi government have an impact on the insurgency? Three factors suggest otherwise. First, the insurgents are almost certainly using the political hiatus to regroup and extend their influence. Second, the pronounced tendency of the US military to use heavy force far beyond the ruined city of Fallujah continues to produce bitter reactions that fuel support for the insurgents.
Third, and perhaps most significant, is that the Iraqi security forces simply do not have the competence or the commitment to exercise any control over the insurgency. During the recent and short-lived lull, most commentators have forgotten what some of the most professional US military analysts (such as Anthony Cordesman) have consistently argued: that training effective Iraqi security forces will take not months, but years.
To these three points a fourth can be added: the widespread recognition in Iraq that the country is effectively a client state of Washington and in the context of the present construction of permanent US bases will be for many years to come. In these circumstances, the United States is attempting to oversee the creation of Iraqi security forces answerable to a government that is widely seen as dependent on the US, and not the Iraqi people, for its legitimacy.
The United States is in a bind in Iraq, and current evidence suggests that its predicament may be prolonged.
