In the week after the relatively trouble-free vote on the Iraqi constitution on 15 October, United States military sources were making positive claims that military as well as political developments in Iraq were taking a favourable turn. They cited the effects of multiple military assaults on towns in northwest Iraq as seriously disrupting the movements of insurgents, leading to a decrease in attacks on US personnel and in the number of bombs being detonated.
As so often, these reports were followed almost at once by a major incident in Baghdad, when two coordinated explosions opened up a route for a much larger bomb to target the compound containing hotels used by western journalists. The 24 October bombs killed at least seventeen people and wounded many more, but they also showed that determined insurgents could penetrate even strongly guarded areas in the city.
If you find Paul Rogerss weekly column on global security valuable, please consider supporting openDemocracy by sending us a donation so that we can continue our work and keep it free for all
This attack was followed on 26 October by small-arms and roadside-bomb attacks in the Baghdad vicinity that killed three US soldiers. These incidents come in the week when the figure of American troops killed in Iraq has passed the symbolic 2,000 mark. October has been particularly costly, with an average of more than twenty soldiers dying and fifty being seriously injured each week.
More generally, since the start of the war in March 2003, 15,220 US troops have been wounded in combat, including 7,100 who have not been able to return to duty; many of these have been left with permanent disabilities. The overall toll is even larger; more than 25,000 troops have been evacuated to the United States for all types of medical treatment, including mental illness.
The high level of casualties and the nature of the asymmetric conflict in Iraq helps explain many of the actions of the US military and why the insurgency is proving to be so persistent. The US army is, for the most part, trained for conventional wars against similarly armed opponents. Its special forces may have been geared for low-intensity urban warfare, but most of the regular troops in Iraq have had to undergo rapid training to try and prepare them for thoroughly unexpected circumstances.
These soldiers now find themselves in an environment where every street could have a roadside bomb, where mortar attacks come without warning, where snipers operate, where suicide bombers can appear to come from nowhere and where insurgents disappear back into crowded neighbourhoods. In such circumstances, with comrades getting killed or maimed without any warning, the end result is a thoroughly jittery and frustrated infantry living on adrenalin and with no end in sight. Moreover, this is a war that was expected to last a few short weeks. Instead, it is stretching on for years and is steadily losing public support back home.
The argument of force
The result of these pressures is the emergence of three trends that may to an extent be found in most wars but are amplified by the specific circumstances of the conflict in Iraq.
The first is that the United States military has developed a "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude that leads to many civilian casualties. When a single sniper attacks a patrol, the response will be immediate, massive retaliation by machine-guns and cannons against the presumed location. Thousands of rounds may be fired in a few minutes. The effect on buildings and even neighbourhoods can be extreme, leaving sullen survivors along with the dead and wounded, and even more opposition to the presence of the occupying troops.
The second trend is that the US is using helicopter gunships and strike aircraft to deliver much more powerful ordnance against presumed centres of insurgency. This was seen most clearly in Fallujah in April and November 2004, when many thousands of buildings were damaged or destroyed in just a few days; but it has since been repeated in many other towns and cities. From an American perspective this may seem an obvious response to dangerous, concealed insurgents posing great risks to their troops, but the overwhelming firepower the US can employ is not the advantage it may appear.
The cost of the USs assaults are scarcely reported in western media, but they are broadcast widely by regional satellite news channels and even more via the web. Their effect is often both to increase bitterness within Iraq and anti-American (and anti-British) sentiment across the middle east.
A single cluster of incidents exemplifies the problem. On 17 October, five US soldiers died in a roadside bombing near Ramadi in western Iraq. A day later, an F-15 strike aircraft targeted a group of people gathered near one of the wrecked vehicles, bombed the site and killed twenty-five people. Several witnesses quoted by Associated Press said they were civilians (including eighteen children), either standing by the wrecked vehicle or scavenging for materials not insurgents placing another bomb, as US sources alleged.
Whatever the truth of these events and twenty-five insurgents placing a bomb is not very plausible many in Iraq and beyond will believe that this was yet another instance of the US militarys excessive use of force.
The third trend is perhaps the most worrying: evidence of persistent and widespread harassment and torture of prisoners in Iraq. The abuse at Abu Ghraib may have dominated the headlines and inspired several investigations, but a long, painstaking report from Human Rights Watch suggests that they are only part of a much wider pattern of systematic violations.
The numerous interviews with military personnel revealed to Human Rights Watch a widespread pattern of abuse that frequently constitutes "stress relief" for many American soldiers. By beating up detainees, they are able to relieve the tensions caused by the bitter war they are waging. Such behaviour is not limited to one or two centres but appears to be endemic across many US military units, including some with reputations for efficiency and discipline.
In addition to his weekly openDemocracy column, Paul Rogers writes an international security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group; for details, click here
A collection of Paul Rogerss Oxford Research Group briefings, Iraq and the War on Terror: Twelve Months of Insurgency, 2004-05 is published by IB Tauris (October 2005)
The boomerang effect
These three trends shoot first, massive firepower and systematic prisoner abuse stem from a conflict that is as unexpected as it is persistent. They also reveal more of the reality of what is happening in Iraq than the optimistic pronouncements from some quarters after the referendum. Together they suggest that this is an insurgency in which the methods being used by the occupiers are deeply counterproductive.
Moreover, in a revival of a practice widely used in Vietnam, the US military is once again publicising "body counts" figures for insurgents killed in military operations (see Bradley Graham, "Enemy Body Counts Revived", Washington Post, 24 October 2005). This is becoming a feature of news reports of assaults on towns and villages, but the triumphalist note that it conveys can also work to cast doubt on claims of strategic progress.
General George Casey, for example, declared that US forces had killed or captured 15,000 insurgents in 2004. If the common estimate of an active insurgency force of 20-30,000 is anywhere near accurate, this implies that the insurgency should be rapidly losing momentum. The fact that this is clearly not the case means either that the figures are wrong or the insurgency can gain new recruits at least as fast as it loses them.
The credibility of US military leaders has not yet reached the depths of the closing years of the Vietnam war, though the Bush administrations refusal to change policy in Iraq creates the real risk that this could happen in the coming months. If a policy shift ever does come, the return of the discredited Vietnam-era "body-count syndrome" as the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq reaches 2,004 could be seen as an early indicator that behind George W Bushs confident declarations lies increasing desperation.
