War Without Victory in Iraq

With all due respect to George W. Bush and John McCain, the Republican candidate succeeding him, there will be no victory dance around Iraq before the American election in November. In the course of a little over five years of bloody combat and cruel disillusionment, the commanders of the U.S. Army have learned to be prudent. Even in this stage of a conflict far from over, but of which the intensity has diminished, and even despite incontestable successes that his strategy, reinforced by a good dose of luck, was able to produce on the ground, General David L. Petraeus refuses to pronounce the fatal word: “I don’t know that we’ll ever be able to talk about ‘victory’ in Iraq,” he’s repeated over and over these last few days.

After nineteen months as the supreme commander in Iraq, the general, called “the repairman,” is off to patch up another ailing mission of war begun by America in Afghanistan. Named commander of CentCom, the general command of all of the American forces in the Middle East and in Asia, he passed the baton of leadership in Iraq on September 16 to his second-in-command, General Raymond Odierno.

Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense, asserted the “entrance” of America into the “end game” in Iraq, and presented Petraeus as the “hero of the hour,” who has “played a historic role.” It’s not clear that the individual concerned, more modest, fully agreed with this assessment. “We’ve made significant progress, yes,” he confided in the BBC before his departure, “but these gains are fragile and reversible, and our work here is far from done.”

Progress is felt by everyone on the ground. Between mid-2005 and the beginning of 2007, between two and three thousand Iraqi civilians were killed each month in the two wars, linked and simultaneous, that bathed the country in blood. Less than 500 victims per month this year. Today, the first war—the revolt of the Sunni minority (20% of the population) against the foreign invasion—is practically over. The American forces and their Iraqi allies, who recorded up to 3000 attacks a week in 2005 and 2006, counted “only” 800 in Fall 2007, less than 400 this year. Numerous armed groups made up of lost soldiers from the old regime, demobilized and deprived of resources by the first American proconsul in Bagdad by April 2003, have dissolved. Some have been reintegrated into the new “national forces,” which count more than half a million men, army and police included.

The second war, a civil one, that a few thousand fundamentalists affiliated with Al-Qaeda in Iraq tried and succeeded in unleashing with major murderous strikes against the Shiite majority (60% of the population), is not over. More than sixty people were recently killed in a series of suicide attacks. Their power to kill has been reduced, notes Petraeus, “but they can still strike.” Especially since, contrary to what the Washington propaganda claimed, almost all of these jihadists are Iraqis. The offensive begun a few months ago in Northern Iraq against what Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki calls “ these last concentrations of terrorists” continues, with ups and downs.

But there is no doubt that the great majority of Sunnis, who also lost what was called the “Battle of Bagdad” for the control of the neighborhoods of the capitol—three quarters of which are currently dominated by Shiites, no longer support them. Beginning in the tribal Al-Anbar province in the Winter of 2006, the “awakening” of the Sunni tribes, exasperated by the crimes and jihadist pretensions to take over everything, has progressively extended to all of the areas in which they live.

“NOTHING IS RESOLVED YET”

Petraeus’ stroke of genius was to “exploit the opportunity” created by this revolt, to keep it up and to spread it. Today, 109000 militia, baptized “The Sons of Iraq,” mostly Sunnis, often ex-rebels, are paid 300 dollars a month by the Pentagon to fight Al-Qaeda and to maintain order in their districts, including Bagdad. In Washington, there will be discussion for some time to come about whether it was the surge, the “effort” of the army, suddenly reinforced by 30,000 men beginning in the Spring of 2007 to bring the total number up 165,000 soldiers, that improved the security situation.

Let’s say, like General Odierno, that “without the reinforcements,” it’s not certain that the “Sunni awakening” would have spread as quickly or with such strength. People could also bet whether, without this “awakening,” without Petraeus’ new tactic, which consisted in obliging soldiers to live night and day amid Iraqi civilians in troubled regions—before him, they returned to their bases at nightfall—the 30,000 reinforcements would have changed anything. Revealed in the beginning of September by Bob Woodward, of the Washington Post, the very secret campaign of assassinations and targeted kidnappings, conducted since 2007 by special units allowed to use “unprecedented” means, would have permitted the army “to kill hundreds and hundreds of key people on the other side in this conflict.”

Finally, and Petraeus admits it readily, the surprise ceasefire of the country’s most powerful Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army, ordered in the Summer of 2007 by its founder, the radical anti-American preacher, Moqtada Al-Sadr, also played an “important” role in improving the situation. In reprisal to Al-Qaeda’s anti-Shiite barbarities, the Mahdi Army delivered daily massacres of Sunni civilians. “To delegitimize it among Shiites,” Nouri Al-Maliki explaines, “it was necessary to handle the Al-Qaeda terrorists the right way.” Which was done. Now, under pressure from Tehran, which also supports the current government in Bagdad, Moqtafa Al-Sadr, in refuge in Qom, is ordering the transformation of his militia into a “social and cultural” movement.

The war in Iraq is reaching a turning point. The one in Afghanistan, too, but in the other direction. Neither Petraeus nor his successor wants to begin pulling away from the first in order to benefit the second. Only eight thousand soldiers will be repatriated from Iraq between now and February 2009. 146,000 will stay in place until the next order. Why? “Because nothing is resolved yet,” says the General, “because the reconciliation within Iraq is not yet firmly rooted, because political decisions might yet be taken which would reignite conflict.”