My Anbar Question

One element of the data that seems unambiguous is that you have many further attacks against American troops happening in Anbar province. This is related, clearly, to new partnerships between American forces and non-AQI insurgent groups in Anbar. Still, that leaves an open question as to the precise source of the reduction in violence. My sense is that surge-lovers would like us to believe that most of the pre-Awakening Anbar attacks were mounted by AQI and that the recent reduction in Iraq is a result of US-insurgent cooperation against AQI succeeding.

An alternative interpretation, however, is that AQI was always responsible for only a minority of attacks and that the reduction has happened because, in essence, we've started paying insurgent groups to stop attacking us. Now, either way, it's good news that fewer American soldiers are being attacked, but, obviously, we could also stop insurgent attacks by just not being in Iraq at all.

Comments

Here's an idea: having an invading army in your country makes people fucking crazy and inspires people to violence when they perhaps wouldn't otherwise. There are sectarians who want to kill each other in Iraq, and whether or not we're there, they'll probably be killing each other. But I think people really underestimate the degree to which the presence of a foreign army contributes to an overall culture of violence and abnormality.

Posted by Freddie | September 11, 2007 10:36 AM

I don't have a regional breakdown, but it's been consistently reported that attacks on US forces have been overwhelmingly committed by local insurgents. AQI and other "foreign fighters" predominate in car bombings and spectacular attacks on soft civilian targets, but tend to avoid direct confrontation with coalition troops.

Posted by Ginger Yellow | September 11, 2007 10:38 AM

"many fewer attacks," from context?

Anyway, it seems pretty clear that the Administration has all sorts of reasons to cook the books to exaggerate AQI's presence, so your explanation sounds plausible.

Posted by Matt Weiner | September 11, 2007 10:38 AM

If the Sunni tribes are now fighting the AGI forces in Anbar, where are the captured AQI members? Are they handing them over to the US forces? Do they have their own prison system? Do they just shoot them? If so, where are all the dead foreign fighters? Did they have papers showing where they were from? Where were they from?

I have lots of Anbar questions.

Posted by Th | September 11, 2007 10:38 AM

"but, obviously, we could also stop insurgent attacks by just not being in Iraq at all."

Ah, no, we can only quite obviously stop insurgent attacks on US by not being in Iraq at all. But most insurgent attacks aren't on us, they're on Iraqis.

The question is, of course, whether the insurgents are attacking Iraqis because of our presence, or are attacking Iraqis because they want to convince Iraqis that the only way to not be attacked is to put the insurgents in power.

The latter is not implausible.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | September 11, 2007 10:40 AM

Ah, no, we can only quite obviously stop insurgent attacks on US by not being in Iraq at all. But most insurgent attacks aren't on us, they're on Iraqis.

I think it's clear that he's referring to insurgent attacks on the United States. I think also that, by definition, an insurgency must operate against either a standing local government or a occupying power. Mere sectarian violence doesn't meet the definition of an insurgency.

Posted by Freddie | September 11, 2007 10:44 AM

According to MNF-Iraq, the vast majority of enemy-initiated attacks are against coalition forces.

Data is on page 18 of the GAO report.

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d071195.pdf

Most everyone, including the military, says that AQI is at least 90-95% Iraqi nowadays.

Posted by tequila | September 11, 2007 10:54 AM

Yes, Tilghman says and some military sources confirm that AQI is a small factor in Iraq violence. (www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0710.tilghman.html)

The rest can be deduced.

Posted by Guy in Jersey | September 11, 2007 10:56 AM

According to MNF-Iraq, the vast majority of enemy-initiated attacks are against coalition forces.

What defines an "enemy-initiated attack"?

Posted by Freddie | September 11, 2007 11:27 AM

All this is body-counts. Remember body-counts? They were the 'metric' that a previous generation of conservative fools used to measure victory. In this present bullshit war they avoided using body-counts, even ridiculed the very idea. Now, here they go again.

Everything you need to know about counter insurgency: If you are measuring bodies you are losing. If you are using artillery and airstikes you are losing. If the majority of a nation wants you gone and finds attacking you justified you have lost.

Everything else is bullshit. The game is over. The question is how many Americans will die and American treasure will be spent for the pride of a conservative commander in chief.

Remember Nixon's reason for pouring out our blood and treasure in Indochina? "I AM NOT going to be the first American President to lose a war." But he was. Now Dubya is the second.

Posted by JohnMcC | September 11, 2007 12:37 PM

Remember: The amount the war is costing us is equal to about two or three times the amount of Iraq's GDP. We could easily and cheaply buy them off - pay them not to attack us.

Posted by dogfacegeorge | September 11, 2007 1:06 PM

How much would we have had to pay Saddam and his sons to leave Iraq? Think a $billion would have done it? A Russian general involved in Afghanistan was quoted somewhere (I don't remember)upon our invasion of that country that we could not defeat the Afghans, but we could buy them.

Posted by Th | September 11, 2007 1:34 PM

Look, AQI is a distraction. The actual fighting is between Sunni and Shia. It's not that the Sunni insurgents have changed sides in Anbar, for money or any other reason. It's the U.S. that has changed sides, from supporting the Shia-dominated central government to supporting the Sunnis. So naturally they've stopped shooting at us.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | September 11, 2007 1:55 PM

All this is body-counts. Remember body-counts? They were the 'metric' that a previous generation of conservative fools used to measure victory. In this present bullshit war they avoided using body-counts, even ridiculed the very idea. Now, here they go again.

This is highly misleading.

In Vietnam the metric was ENEMY body-counts, with INCREASING numbers been seen as progress - "We are killing more and more of them every month and eventually there wont be any left".

These are CIVILIAN body counts, where DECREASING numbers are seen as progress - "Fewer people are dying every month and eventually the violence will be over".

You can, of course, argue about the merits of the "new body count" methodology. Frankly, I'm not sure its what REALLY counts either - however it is MUCH more justifiable, in a counter-insurgency, than the simple counts of enemy dead used during vietnam. Equating them as simply "body counts" obscures the serious differences between them.

Posted by r4d20 | September 11, 2007 2:31 PM

Brett: "Ah, no, we can only quite obviously stop insurgent attacks on US by not being in Iraq at all. But most insurgent attacks aren't on us, they're on Iraqis."

Item #1006 in the we-we-must-stay-in-Iraq-forever file.

Posted by Barry | September 11, 2007 5:25 PM

No, equating body counts is perfectly valid.

Because in Iraq, and Afghanistan, just as in Vietnam, the "bodies" are mostly civilians. They are all lumped together as "insurgents" once they're dead - to avoid US troops being arrested as war criminals.

Unfortunately this has two effects:

1) The actual number of insurgents is undercounted - this was a serious problem in Vietnam and indeed is a serious problem in Iraq.

2) All the relatives of the slain "insurgents" BECOME or SUPPORT the REAL insurgents. The polls have established this to be true in Iraq, with 60-80% of Iraqis (depending on the specific poll) supporting attacks on US troops.

Any insurgency with this kind of support is guaranteed to win.

Whether the Sunni faction of this insurgency is going to win over the Shia factions is an entirely different issue, not relevant to the US military outcome. The US military absolutely cannot win in Iraq in any military sense of eliminating the insurgents of either the Sunni or Shia side - and probably not even the Al Qaeda faction.

The point of the poster's comment was that the US military claimed not to "do body counts" - until it was necessary to claim reduced "sectarian body counts" to show "progress" - because they couldn't show increased "insurgent body counts" to show "progress". So they went with "lower US body counts" - which proved to be a lie.

In fact, all the "body counts" have basically proved to be a lie. The sectarian deaths continue - they are only reduced in Baghdad because there are fewer Sunni to kill there. They remain high elsewhere - even including in the south of Iraq where at least two Shia factions are fighting each other. The US military deaths are higher. The "Al Qaeda" body counts don't exist because nobody knows how many there really are and there is no evidence that the Anbar tribes are actually DOING anything about AQI other than taking money from the US military and CLAIMING to be doing something.

The poster who stated that everybody was looking at this backwards - that you can't reduce the violence without a political reconciliation - is exactly correct. In this situation, the violence is secondary. It is the leaders of the factions who must reconcile.

They can reconcile regardless of the attitudes of their followers - in most, if not all cases (al-Sadr appears to have breakaway factions in his organization). They can reconcile regardless of the level of violence they are controlling.

But if they do not WANT to reconcile - which is the case here - it's not happening. So the violence will continue.

Of course, the Iraqi tradition of revenge is involved here. A certain degree of violence - possibly very high by Western standards - would continue even if the leaders of the factions DID reconcile. However, the leaders could restrain their organizations AS organizations if a deal were to be struck.

The deal simply isn't going to be struck because there is no motivation to do so. The Shia have the upper hand, the Sunnis don't. Until some sort of equilibrium in relative power is achieved, the violence will continue.

This is the idea behind the US military trying to "switch sides" and support more Sunnis than Shia. But that can't work because the US can't be seen to be directly supporting the minority faction against the majority of the country. All that does is make both sides angry at the US (that is, more angry than they already are!)

Also, the US has no "credibility" in that process, because sooner or later they will be forced to leave and that will render the power balance out of whack again.

About the only thing the US could possibly do to force the Iraqi factions to sit down and talk would be to threaten to nuke Baghdad AND Basra AND the main Sunni cities AND the holy sites in Iraq.

Which of course isn't a feasible notion.

There IS NO way that I can see for the violence to be reduced or eliminated short of a complete wiping out or ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from Iraq.

Unless the two factions just decide that it's too costly to keep fighting and that some sort of accommodation HAS to be made. In other words, exhaustion on both sides.

It could take years for that exhaustion to emerge.

Therefore there IS NO political solution short of exhaustion setting in.

Therefore there will be no reduction in violence or a successful government in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

And the presence of the US can only aggravate the situation and eventually force both sides to attack the US forces, conceivably resulting in an actual LOSS of US forces in Iraq or MUCH higher casualties and expense to keep US forces there.

Therefore, only a complete withdrawal of US troops makes any sense. And it has to be COMPLETE - no leaving behind "trainers" or "anti-terrorist teams" or any of that nonsense. No leaving behind ANY US troops in Iraq except possibly in the Kurdish north. (And what would they do there? Attack the Kurds attacking the Turks? The Iranians? I think not.)

After what the US has done in Iraq, ANY US citizen in Iraq is a target - nothing more or less.

Iraq will be a "no-go" zone for US citizens for the next twenty years or longer (unless your organization has bribed BOTH sides to let you live - and even then you'd better have guards since some independent character will kill you.)

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | September 12, 2007 12:02 AM