The Probability of Insurgency amid the U.S. Presence in Iraq

Transcription

1 The Probability of Insurgency amid the U.S. Presence in Iraq Mark Kukis In March of 2003, about three weeks before invading U.S. forces overran Baghdad, more than sixty men gathered quietly in farmhouse on the southern outskirts of the capital. They came from many different walks of life and ranged in age. But three important things drew them together. All were Sunnis. All had spent time in jail as political prisoners under Saddam Hussein. And all were committed to forming an armed rebellion to confront the American presence in Iraq once the old regime was finished. The purpose of the meeting was to come up with a plan, basically, on how to organize the resistance, said one participant. The first thing we decided was to reach out to all the Sunni officers in the regime and urge them not to fight the Americans. It was no use to see them die for Saddam Hussein. We would need them for our cause. During the days and weeks that followed, the men who met in the farmhouse began forming some of the first cells of fighters for the burgeoning insurgency. The organizers stashed weapons, recruited and collected money. One important source of revenue came from gangs who led much of the looting that followed the fall of Baghdad in April. Insurgent leaders went to the heads of looting gangs and demanded half of their take for the cause. In return the insurgents vowed to leave the gangs alone once on the streets in arms. By the time U.S. forces were establishing themselves in newly created Green Zone, dozens and perhaps hundreds of insurgents were already moving to strike their opening blows. The Bush administration memorably predicted a liberator s welcome in Iraq on the eve of the invasion. White House officials dismissed early signs of a resistance movement as the last, desperate acts of former regime members. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld characterized Iraqi insurgents in the early days of the occupation as Ba athist dead enders. This notion of a relatively peaceful stay in Iraq for U.S. forces became laughable by early 2004, after a series of calamitous political decisions by the Coalition Provisional Authority under L. Paul Bremer created legions of would be insurgents. Without a doubt the disbanding of the Iraqi army and an overzealous purge of Ba athists from the government greatly swelled the ranks of resistance fighters in the timeframe. At the same time the inability of occupation authorities to mollify political anger among Iraq s Shi ite factions gave rise to multiple militia movements who came to find common cause, for a while, with the Sunni insurgents eager to foment rebellion. But 1

2 could things have gone differently? Was there ever reason to hope that U.S. forces could occupy Iraq without drawing relentless insurgent attacks? The glimpses we have of the early workings of the insurgency suggest the answer is no. So does a statistical look at levels of insurgent activity in the timeframe, a period when the U.S. presence temporarily enjoyed political conditions comparable to what the most hopeful proponents of the U.S. enterprise in Iraq foresaw in early The question of whether the occupation could have faced far less resistance bears heavily on the emerging historical understanding of the U.S. endeavor in Iraq and its legacy, which is still very much up for debate. Specifically, the likelihood of an insurgency in Iraq is at the center of an unresolved question about whether the Bush administration s planning for the invasion and occupation of Iraq was sound. In the reigning interpretation currently of the saga, a narrative advanced by President Bush himself in interviews given for the 2008 book Dead Certain by Robert Draper, Bremer bungled his tenure as head of the CPA, disbanding the Iraqi army without White House consent and generally allowing the security situation in Iraq to deteriorate during his watch. Importantly, Bremer has publically denied acting without White House authority in disbanding the Iraqi army. Whatever the truth of the conflicting accounts, the Bush administration s implicit assertion in this version of events suggests that invasion and occupation strategy was solid. It was the poor execution of the occupation early on, so the argument goes, that led ultimately to the unraveling of Iraq. Determining a highly probable, and seeable, prospect of insurgency undercuts the prevailing historical interpretation of U.S. action in Iraq and its legacy. In 2002, when the Bush administration was developing plans for Iraq in earnest, there was little reason to believe that a huge contingent of U.S. forces would be left unmolested as they occupied the heart of the Middle East. The bombing attacks targeting U.S. forces in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, in 1996 and Aden, Yemen, in 2000 at the very least suggested that a sizable U.S. military footprint in Iraq would likely draw intense hostility not to mention the inimical political mood pervading the Middle East generally following Osama bin Laden s 2001 attacks and the U.S. response in Afghanistan. Even in the most ideal conditions U.S. forces appeared certain to face a significant insurgency, one able to withstand even the most dedicated counter insurgency campaign. And conditions under Bremer were less than ideal, to say the least. Data on the insurgency and its growth in this time period are both distorted because of political upheaval driven by the CPA and incomplete due to the interregnum. However, the yearlong period from mid 2009 to mid 2010 offers a model of sorts, and enough publically available data on the insurgency exists 2

3 from this period to give a reasonable sense of what a more natural resistance to the U.S. presence in Iraq might have looked like. U.S. forces withdrew from cities, villages and other locales in Iraq nationwide June 30, The counter insurgency offensive begun in 2007 that included the deployment of an additional 30,000 soldiers and Marines across Iraq, the so called surge, had come to an end. The surge forces were headed home, and the remaining U.S. military presence had a moment to pause before beginning the planning of a full withdrawal by A widely publicized agreement between the United States and Iraq forged in 2008 called for all U.S. forces to leave Iraq totally by the end of There were many doubts among Iraqis as to whether the United States would make good on its promise to go. But the political scene for the first time had at least a believable prospect of U.S. withdrawal in the middle distance, a development that should have sapped some strength from the ranks of the resistance fighters. The insurgency was of course never monolithic. Many factions arose among Sunni and Shi ite communities alike, and they waged guerrilla war against U.S. forces and their allies for varying reasons while sometimes fighting among each other at the same time. But in mid 2009 occupation oppositionists also seemed to pause amid the absence of U.S. forces on the streets. Sectarian violence dropped dramatically, in part because massive dislocations and thousands of killings had largely homogenized areas violently contested over the past two years. There was a sense that the two sides of Iraq s sectarian conflict had, for the time being, punched themselves out. Both still angrily eyed the remaining U.S. military presence, even in its relatively passive, diminishing stance. But if there were ever a moment when armed occupation haters could stand down, this was it. A stable government was in place. Dominated by Shi ites, the Iraqi government nonetheless had tentative cooperation from thousands of Sunni tribesman known as the Awakening. Genuinely inclusive parliamentary elections were coming in March Sunni factions previously unwilling to participate in elections were looking to get involved, brightening the political picture considerably. The main wellspring of Shi ite anger toward the U.S. presence, cleric Moqtada al Sadr, was maintaining a unilaterally declared cease fire, leaving his vast militia, the Mahdi Army, mostly idle. Nearly 50,000 Iraqis accused of insurgent activity sat in jail. All of these factors led many armed oppositionists to abandon their fight, as evidenced by the visible decline in violence generally around Iraq. Many others did not, though. A sizable insurgency driven by Sunni and Shi ite guerrillas working separately continued steadily from mid 2009 to mid 2010 and beyond. Publically 3

4 available statistics on security measures from December of 2009 offer a snapshot of insurgent activity for the period. Security forces found and seized roughly seventy five weapons caches that month. Yet insurgents still managed to plant no less than a hundred bombs and IEDs, and more than a dozen rockets and mortars sailed into the Green Zone and other bases around Iraq at the same time. At least 10 foreign fighters, probably more, crossed illegally into Iraq to join the ranks of the insurgency. And the monthly flow of outsiders into Iraq would double in the months ahead. This, I believe, was as good as it was ever going to be for U.S. forces in Iraq; the insurgency had reached an irreducible minimum. The placement monthly of dozens of bombs and IEDs, plus regular rocket and mortar fire at U.S. targets, reflected a baseline insurgent movement numbering thousands of active and passive supporters who could not be deterred or dissuaded by any means available to U.S. forces save renewing counter insurgency offensives. Local security forces even with robust U.S. backing and welling strength of their own were unable to really quell the insurgency at this level. Resistance fighters unleashed bloodshed in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities at will during this period and still do. To be sure, using this timeframe as a model for ideal conditions for U.S. forces in Iraq has limitations and flaws. Militant Sunni and Shi ite resistance networks as of 2009 had six years of experience, which undoubtedly endowed them with greater strength and capabilities than they had when initially squaring off with U.S. forces. But losses those networks suffered through members being killed or jailed surely counterbalanced any enhanced strength in large measure. Comparing the political scene from 2003 to 2009 poses a problem too. The timeframe had far fewer episodes of political upheaval that could have buoyed the insurgency, yet one major factor certainly did. The lingering question of whether U.S. forces would indeed fully withdrawal or leave behind a sizable contingent, unresolved until the fall of 2011, complicated the picture for the entire period. Some of the insurgent activity during this time stemmed from anger over the prospect of U.S. forces remaining. Signature attacks from al Sadr s followers, rockets fired from Sadr City into the Green Zone, seemed to be political messages aimed at reminding U.S. forces that staying past 2011 meant open conflict with the Mahdi Army. But such attacks were the least of the violence directed at the U.S. presence then. Mostly attacks involved bombs and IEDs clearly placed by Sunni militants, whose core members never really cared about the political dynamics surrounding the U.S. presence in Iraq. The resistance organizers who met at the farmhouse south of Baghdad in 2003 launched themselves into a confrontation with U.S. forces long before any controversial CPA decisions, and they likely would 4

5 have kept up their fight regardless of occupation policies. The U.S. presence alone was enough to justify insurgent violence among a sizable element Iraqi society. No policies put forward by U.S. leaders could have swayed such men, a reality seeable to anyone who examined the prospect of a U.S. occupation of Iraq closely. Mark Kukis covered the war in Iraq has a correspondent for Time magazine from 2006 to He is the author of Voices from Iraq: A People s History, (Columbia University Press, 2011) and currently a PhD student in American history and international relations at Boston University. 5