War Without Victory in Iraq

Whether George W. Bush or John McCain, the Republican candidate for his succession, like it or not there will be no victory dance for Iraq before the elections in November. After a bit more than five years of bloody combat and cruel disillusions, the commanders of the U.S. army have learned prudence. Even at this stage of the conflict, which is far from an end but diminished in intensity, and even in spite of the incontestable success his strategy, along with a good dose of chance, has produced for the country, General David L. Petraeus refuses to pronounce the fatal word: “I do not know if one will ever be able to speak of victory in Iraq” he has repeated in the past few days to all who ask.

 

After nineteen months as supreme commander in Iraq, the general, called “the repairman,” is being sent to patch up the other American state-building mission in Afghanistan. Named the chief of CentCom, the fourth general of all American forces in the Middle-East and Asia, “general intel,” as he’s called by the bureaucrats at the pentagon, transferred the baton of command to his second, General Raymond Odierno.

 

Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, evoked the “entrance” of America “into the end of the party” in Iraq, and presented Petraeus as “the hero of the day, who has played a historic role.” It is not sure that the general, although he’s no more modest than the next, appreciated all of the talk. “We have made a lot of significant progress, yes” he confided in the BBC before his departure, “but all of this is still fragile and reversible, dangers still threaten Iraq.”

 

Everyone feels the progress on the ground. Between mid 2005 and the beginning of 2007, two to three thousand Iraqi civilians were killed each month in the two wars, intricately connected, which have bloodied the country. This year there have been less than 500 victims a month. Today, the first war- the revolt of the Arab Sunni minority (20% of the population) against the foreign invasion- is practically over. The American forces and their Iraqi allies, who recorded about 3,000 attacks per week in 2005 and 2006, have counted no more than 800 in autumn 2007, less than 400 this year. Several armed groups made up of the soldiers of the old regime, demobilized and deprived of resources by the first American proconsul in Baghdad since April 2003, have dissolved. Some of them have been reintegrated into the new “national forces,” which are made up of more than half a million men, including both the army and police.

 

The second war, the civil war, which the few thousand Al-Qaida affiliated “obscurantists” in Iraq successfully endeavored to start with large assassinations against the Shi’ite majority (60% of the population), is not finished. More than 60 people were recently killed in a series of suicide attacks. “Their lethal capacity has been greatly reduced,” notes Petraeus, “but they can still make attacks.” All the more so as, contrary to what the propaganda from Washington pretends, the semi-totality of these jihadists are Iraqis. The offensive launched several months ago in the north of Iraq against what the prime minister, Nouri Al-Maliki, has called “the last concentrations of terrorists” continues, with both successes and failures.

 

But there is no doubt that the great majority of Arab Sunnis, who lost the “battle for Baghdad” for control of the neighborhoods of the capital-at the present dominated by three quarters shi’ites-no longer supports them. What began in the tribal province Al-Anbar in the winter of 2006, the “awakening” of Sunni tribes, exceptional for their crimes and jihadist pretensions to rule all, is gradually extending to all areas.

“Nothing has been fixed yet”

General Petraeus’ stroke of genius was to “exploit the opportunity” posed by this revolt, to extend and maintain. Today, 109,000 militias, called “The Sons of Iraq,” essentially Sunnis, often ex-rebels, are payed 300 dollars a month to struggle against Al-Qaida and to maintain order in their districts, including in Baghdad. There has been much talk in Washington over whether is was the surge “the effort” of the army, reinforced by 30,000 men sent in spring 2007 to increase the total number of troops to 165,000, which improved the security situation.

Let us say, like general Odierno, that “without the reinforcements” it is not certain that the “Sunni awakening” would not have spread as quickly or as powerfully. One can also bet that without this “awakening,” without Petraeus’ new tactics, which have consistently obliged the soldiers to live day and night among the Iraqi civilians in troubled areas–before this they had returned to their bases when the night fell–the 30,000 reinforcements would have changed nothing. Revealed at the beginning of September by Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, the secret campaign of assassinations and targeted removals, conducted since 2007 by special units equipped with techniques “without precedent,” permitted the “elimination of certain activist armies.”

Finally, and “general intel” admits this voluntarily, the surprise cease fire of the most powerful Shi’ite militia in the country, the Mahdi Army, declared in the summer of 2007 by its founder, the anti-American moralist, Moqtada Al-Sadr, has played an equally “important” role in diffusing the situation. In reprisal to the anti-Shiite cruelties of al-Qaida, the Mahdi Army in its turn participated in the massacres of Sunni civilians. “To delegitimize them among the Shiites”, explained Nouri Al-Maliki, “he must take the terrorists from Al-Qaida.” And this was done. At the present, under pressure from Tehran, which also supports the government in place in Baghdad, Moqtada Al-Sadr, a refugee from Qom, has declared the transformation of his militia into a “social and cultural” movement.

The war in Iraq has seen a change. The war in Afghanistan has as well, although in a different sense. Neither Petraeus nor his successor want to abandon the first to benefit the second. Only eight thousand soldiers will return from Iraq in February 2009. 146,000 will remain until a new order. Why? “Because nothing has been fixed,” said the general, “because the Iraqi reconciliation has not taken root, and because the political decisions must still be made, and these decisions could relight conflicts.”