Planning for failure in Iraq

The more the United States fights in Iraq, the worse things seem to become.

The past two weeks have seen intense, multiple assaults by many thousands of US troops and Iraqi security forces on towns and cities in northwest Iraq that are seen to be centres of rebellion as well as being staging posts for insurgents coming from outside the country – with little evidence of success in controlling the insurgency.

In the city of Tal Afar, for example, the US has used helicopter gunships, strike aircraft and tanks in the largest assault since Fallujah in November 2004. But as US troops moved on to another presumed stronghold, Haditha, their commanders acknowledged that most of the insurgents reported to be in Tal Afar had made their escape through a sophisticated network of tunnels. The expectation had been that insurgents’ resistance to US assault would expose them to overwhelming US firepower; in practice, they chose once more to respond on their own and not the coalition’s terms.

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The series of devastating attacks elsewhere in Iraq in the past two days are equally significant. A group of insurgents wearing army uniforms driving military-type vehicles descended on the town of Taji, north of Baghdad, in the early hours of 14 September, "arrested" seventeen people in their homes, took them in handcuffs to the town square and executed them.

In Baghdad itself later that day, a large car-bomb exploded in a poor Shi'a district among labourers who had gathered in Oruba Square for work; early reports suggested at least 112 people were killed and 160 injured. At least nine other bombs exploded around the city, some targeting civilians and others hitting US and Iraqi security forces. On 15 September, an attack on an elite Iraqi police convoy killed twenty, including five civilians.

The Oruba Square massacre appears to be an example of deliberate sectarian incitement; many smaller such incidents are happening on a daily basis. Most of them are unreported in the western media; the difficulties western reporters face in moving around the country, and the determination of US and Iraqi officials to minimise the extent of the insecurity, mean that there is little external appreciation of the scale of the problems emerging in Iraq. The instability extends to the British-controlled area in Basra and its surrounding region, which has seen a marked deterioration in security in recent months in what had been presented as a zone of comparative peace.

A question of trust

As sectarian conflict takes the country closer to civil war, and as evolving militia forces (some backed by the United States) further inflame a dangerously unstable environment, the issue of the transfer of authority from US troops to Iraqi personnel gains increasing prominence.

The Iraqi president Jalal Talabani suggested in a Washington Post interview on 13 September that the United States might be able to withdraw 50,000 troops, a third of the total, by the end of 2005. Within hours, he was "clarifying" his remarks in a joint press conference with George W Bush by refusing to endorse any such timetable.

The confusion reflects more than a problem of presentation. It is essential for the two leaders to present a positive “spin” on developments in Iraq, yet it is also proving impossible for them to prevent a further deterioration in security in Iraq.

A key factor here is that the refusal of the Bush administration to provide modern equipment to the new Iraqi army acts against the capacity of the Iraqis to handle the insurgency on their own. The US is simply not transferring items like battle-tanks, helicopter gunships, strike aircraft or even up-to-date communications equipment to the Iraqi armed forces. Even the provision of armoured personnel carriers to replace un-armoured pick-ups and flat-bed trucks is far behind schedule; the first 100 armoured Humvees for the Iraqi army may not arrive before November (see Craig S Smith, "U.S. Wary of Supplying Heavy Weapons to Iraq", International Herald Tribune, 28 August 2005).

The stated reason is the slow pace of training (an admission that even in "best-case" circumstances, Iraqi control is not anticipated for some years); the unofficial reason is that the Bush administration is aware that any equipment transferred could easily be turned against the Americans themselves.

The definite if unobtrusive establishment of at least four “semi-permanent” US bases – each capable of holding 18,000 troops – is a further indication of the US’s degree of trust in its putative Iraqi allies.

The rise of the militias

A major trend in Iraq in recent months is the increasing prominence of militias linked to political parties. The Kurdish militias in Mosul and elsewhere in the north, and Shi’a militias in Basra and the south, have seized official security functions and proceeded to act with impunity – though often in collusion with the nominal national government, and in ways that are tacitly accepted by the United States and its remaining coalition partners (see Anthony Shadid and Steve Fainaru, "Militias on the Rise across Iraq", Washington Post, 21 August 2005).

These extend from formal policing functions to abductions, detention without trial and summary executions by death-squads. They are aimed at political opponents from within the militia’s own communities, or – now routinely – at (Arab) Sunni Iraqis.

Much of the western media focuses on Sunni atrocities against Shi’a Iraqis, and the last two days of attacks in and around Baghdad are evidence enough of the scale of the phenomenon – as is the declaration of “all-out war” against Iraqi Shi’a by militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

At the same time, violence from the active Kurdish and Shi’a militias often has the tacit approval of the Iraqi government and the US authorities.

It has been revealed, moreover, that Kurdish political parties in northern Iraq have built at least five detention centres across the region to hold Arab Sunni, Turcoman and other prisoners from minority communities whom their militias have abducted from around Mosul.

A new United Nations report released offers both confirmation and condemnation of this trend (see Mussab al-Khairalla, "UN Raises Alarm on Death Squads and Torture in Iraq", Reuters, 8 September 2005). It points to repeated instances of death-squad activity, including actions by groups linked to the ministry of the interior; many accounts of torture at police stations; and the summary detention of many thousands of people, mostly Sunni Iraqis, either by the Iraqi authorities or by American forces.

Do the US forces and their Iraqi government associates see these unofficial yet sanctioned militias as almost a necessary development in Iraq’s transition from insurgency to civil war?

If the question seems too bald, the argument is being made in circles close to “establishment” defence thinking. An assessment in Defense News, the Washington-based weekly with a worldwide circulation, cites specialists in the middle east and the United States and concludes: "Iraq's long-feared civil war is escalating and will engulf the entire country unless ethnic leaders take drastic steps" (see Riad Kahwaji, "Things Are Getting Worse By the Day", Defense News, 5 September 2005).

Perhaps its most perceptive comment comes from Qassem Jaafar, a Qatar-based analyst:

"I believe some U.S. officials have started entertaining the idea of dividing Iraq on ethnic and sectarian lines to ensure stability and facilitate their exit after establishing some military bases in the oil-rich Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. In this case Washington would blame the Sunnis and other neighbouring states like Iran and Syria for the break-up of the country."

In addition to his weekly openDemocracy column, Paul Rogers writes an international security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group; for details, click here

This is a variant of what has become known as Washington’s "Plan B" for Iraq, discussed in previous columns in this series (see, for example, “Thinking the unthinkable”, 30 June 2005): a US military withdrawal to Iraq’s oil-rich regions, leaving the cities to fend for themselves. As long-term bases are built and as government-favoured militias take control of large parts of Iraq, the plan seems to be moving from the Pentagon war-room to Iraqi heartlands.

This projection is far removed from the official United States view that it is creating conditions for a transfer to a stable, peaceful and above all friendly state. But it does at least retain the requirement that lies at the centre of Washington's Iraq policy – the need to ensure control of oil reserves in Iraq together with a robust presence in the wider region.