US-Iraqi interaction

• The US not only failed to properly assess the growth of the insurgency during 2003 but also failed to react by failing to treat the new Iraqi military it was creating as equals by restructuring its force goals, training, and equipment efforts. The end-result of this process is a growing asymmetry and inoperability between US and Iraqi forces as the insurgency continued to grow. While US training teams and military commanders have steadily improved efforts to better organize and train Iraqi forces so that they can defend themselves, as a general rule the US has focused on manpower numbers and then left their Iraqi counterparts to twist in the wind.

• The serious nature of this problem was made all too clear when one considers far less serious equipment shortfalls for US ground forces, most notably the issue of armor on the Humvees that first began to attract media attention in December 2004. The resulting debate on armor for US forces, however, failed to ask what equipment had been provided to the Iraqi military despite the fact that they had been even more of a target for insurgents than US troops since the summer of 2003.

The Nature of the Insurgency

• The insurgent threat inside Iraq remains all too real and has evolved in response to changes in tactics by both Iraqi and US forces. Iraq today faces a wide range of threats and it is still far from clear whether the US and the new Iraqi government will be able to decisively defeat the insurgency.

• There is not a single face to the insurgency but rather a wide mix of active and potential threats, the most lethal of which has been those coming from Sunni Islamists that seem determined to instigate a civil war.

• Among the Sunni insurgents, there are a wide range of Iraqi and foreign groups along secular and religious lines. There are Baathists, Sunni nationalists, Sunni Islamists, groups loyal to the external al-Qaeda leadership, and some foreign volunteers which appear to be looking more to kill Americans or achieve martyrdom than any defined political goals. Tribal and clan elements play a key role in the insurgency at a local level and there are definite indications of division between the some Baathists and some of the al-Qaeda groups. Some of the Sunni nationalists are willing to consider negotiating with the new government while most of the Islamists are not, leading to violence between the various factions on the subject. Some Sunni nationalists have even begun killing foreign Islamists since November 2004 on the grounds that they've killed too many innocent Iraqis.

• While divided, there is the constant threat that the Sunni Arabs will succeed in provoking a full-scale civil war. Towards that end, they have stepped up attacks on Shi'ites and Kurds since the elections in an effort to block efforts at including Sunnis in government by goading the Shi'ites and Kurds into reprisals that will prevent the achievement of a stable national government. The success of the elections has forced Islamists to shift tactics and it is clear they will do everything in their power to prevent Sunni Arabs from joining the government, blocking the drafting of the constitution, and the elections scheduled for the end of 2005.

• There is also a risks of factional fighting amongst the Iraqi Shi'ites along secular/religious lines on how religious the character of the new Iraqi state should be. Advocates of velayet-e-faqih like Muqtada al-Sadr raise the risk of renewed Shi'ite tensions while ethnic tensions between Arabs and Kurds have long been a source of concern in Kirkuk and present serious problems in Mosul.

• Iraq's neighbors have conflicting interests in Iraq and also play a role the insurgency. Syria has supported and tolerated Sunni Islamist transit across its borders while Iran has supported both the Iraqi Shi'ites and ending "American encirclement" along its borders. Turkey wants to make sure that Iraq's Kurds do not become an inspiration to its own Kurdish population, while Jordan and the Gulf states fear the emergence of a "Shi'ite crescent" of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.

Uncertainty and Patterns in the Insurgency

• Complex insurgencies can play out for years or even decades, making it easy for either side to periodically "claim victory" and far more difficult for either side to make such claims real or valid.

• The Iraqi government claims in early 2005 that 16 of Iraq's 18 provinces were secure was simply untrue. There is security in 10-12 of the country's 18 provinces and the US won significant victories in An Najaf in September and Fallujah in November 2004 that may have led to this over-optimistic assessment, but even with these gains the insurgency was still not defeated or unable to mount attacks in Shi'ite or Kurdish areas.

• Despite coalition success at preventing insurgent attacks on polling places during the election they were still unable to prevent a new wave of terrorism from surfacing after the election.

DIA director Vice Admiral Jacoby summarized the state of the insurgency in February 2005 as follows in February 2005:

• Being able to carry out 60 attacks a day, 80% of them occurring in Sunni-dominated central Iraq. Coalition forces and the Iraqi government remains the primary target. Polls show confidence in the Iraqi government remains high in Shi'ite and Kurdish areas but low in Sunni areas. A lack of Sunni participation in the Iraqi elections remains low.

• While large majorities of all Iraqi groups oppose attacks on the new Iraqi government and military forces, confidence in the coalition is low, with most Iraqis viewing them as occupiers and a major cause of the insurgency.

• Baathists make up the core of insurgency in concert with Sunni Arab groups, collaborating and providing guidance and funding across family, tribal, religious, and social lines with some coordination between Shi'ite and Sunni insurgent groups.

• Shi'ite insurgents led by Muqtada al-Sadr seem to be training, rearming, and reorganizing following their defeat in An Najaf last September and it seems al-Sadr is keeping his options open either to join the Iraqi political process or to launch another rebellion.

• Al-Qaeda forces under the command of Abu Musab Zarqawi are responsible for most of the major attacks. While al-Qaeda accounts for only a fraction of the overall US casualties, the strategic and symbolic nature of their attacks gives them a disporportionate impact. Some of these al-Qaeda fighters are augmented by foreign volunteers from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Iran who make up the majority of foreign fighters.

• Jacoby's assessment was a clear overview as of February 2005 but did not anticipate the wave of Sunni extremism that followed the lull after the Iraqi elections in a deliberate effort to provoke a civil war. Senior US officials claimed in March that the insurgency was losing ground after the election, with the insurgents only launching 10 attacks a day, 5 of which resulted in US or Iraqi casualties.

• In February 2005 Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers told the Senate Armed Service Committee that classified estimates on the size of the insurgency were not static and that the insurgents possessed only the limited ability to mount 50-60 attacks a day. General Casey stated in March 2005 that the level of violence had dropped significantly since the Iraqi elections and General Myers stated that the number of attacks had dropped to 40-50 a day, a view echoed by Iraqi Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib and British Lt. General Sir John Kiszeley.

These US, Iraqi, and British claims may well be true but they were unfortunately not supported with detail and transparency - the US has stopped providing detailed unclassified information on insurgent attacks or their locations during the summer of 2004. What US official sources do state is that prior to the Iraqi election:

• 40-60 towns outside the Sunni Triangle and Anbar province had been subject to weekly attack since August 2004, with Mosul sufferring 4-13 attacks every week and the Basra municipal area has suffering 7.

After the Iraqi election:

• Attacks on US soldiers have fallen to 40-50 a day, 1/2 the level of a year ago, while 1/2 of all insurgent attacks now cause no damage or loss of life.

• Such estimates reflect US and British reporting on the insurgency, which make it difficult for outside analysts to examine its intensity and predict trends since US and Iraqi government counts do not include all attacks, attempted attacks, minor incidents, sabotage, and criminal activity, which the Iraqi defense and interior ministries ceased producing any meaningful data on after the transfer of sovereignty.

• Declassified DIA and MNF-I work reflect atypical cyclical variations that are common in modern insurgencies in terms of both the number of attacks and US casualties. Other reporting led to the belief that insurgent activity had surged before the election and then temporarily eased back rather than actually diminishing. An internal US army analysis in April 2005 noted an apparent shift in focus to more vulnerable non-US targets rather than an actual drop in the number of attacks. A study by the CIA's National Intelligence Council leaked to Newsweekconcluded that the US had too many conflicting sources and methods of analysis that no conclusion could be reached as to whether or not the insurgents were being defeated.

• DIA figures are skewed in favor of attacks on coalition forces and undercount attacks on Iraqi officials, police, military, and civilians. MNF and MNSTC-I do keep track of Iraqi casualties but do not release data for political reasons. Both counts tend under-estimate the amount of sabotage but even these counts revealed a clear shift away from US to Iraqi targets following the election. Even these statistics however, make it clear that there was a the major resurgence in April and May 2005 as the new Iraqi government completed its selection process.

• Independent counts of Iraqi police casualties show that 1,300 were killed between the fall of Saddam Hussein to December 2004, but with an increase in insurgent activity since the election 109 were killed in January, 103 in February, 200 in March, 200 in April, and 110 in the first week of May - a total of 1,200 killed during the first 6 months of 2005 that raised doubts about a lack of activity on the part of the insurgents. While the Iraqi Ministry of Defense has been reluctant to release casualty data it did announce that 85 soldiers were killed in May compared with 40 in April, an increase of 75%. The Ministry of Health reports that 434 Iraqi civilians were killed in May compared with 131 in April.

• The number of car bombings inside Iraq rose from 65 in February to 135 in April and from 30-40 attacks per day in February to 70 by late April and early May. The intensity of attacks has also increased with more and more suicide bombings conducted by Saudi Arabians, Syrians, Libyans, and Sudanese infiltrating across the Syrian border. The number of attacks using suicide bombers has risen from 25% in February to more than 50% in April, with a total of 69 suicide bombings in April 2005 alone, more than the total number from the period of the fall of Saddam Hussein to the previous month. By May that number had risen to 90 suicide bombings, the majority of which were responsible for the nearly 750 casualties that month.

• While the insurgents have focused more on Iraqi than US targets, the number of attacks on MNF-I forces rose from 40 in March to 55 in April. While still far below the 130 attacks per day prior to the elections there is no reason to take heart from this increase. However, only 146 US troops were killed from February to April 2005, down nearly 2/3 from the 315 killed during the previous three months.

• The major surge in insurgent activity seems to have been timed with the formation of the new government on April 28. In the week that followed, insurgents staged 10 major suicide bombings and more than 35 other attacks that killed more 270 Iraqi civilians, with Ansar al-Sunnah killing more than 60 in a car bombing against the Kurdish city of Irbil. For the first time, car bombings accounted for more than 50% of the insurgent attacks. 80 bodies were also found floating in the Tigris, 19 in a soccer stadium, and 14 in a Baghdad trash dump.

• These attacks prompted US officers and officials to suspect that the insurgents were lashing out because they had taken heavy casualties and were getting desperate and to claim that car bombings perpetrated by al-Qaeda and its allies had little meaning since they alienated the Iraqi people and were largely carried out by foreigners rather than by Iraqi Sunnis. There is not enough available data to prove or disprove such arguments, but they were made during a period when the US mounted a major military operation along the Euphrates from Haditha to the Syrian border as well as a secondary operations in the area south and west of Baghdad. These operations were repeatedly followed up on as insurgents frequently dispersed under pressure and because both the US and Iraqi forces lacked the necessary manpower to secure high threat areas as well as that the Iraqi government was unable to follow up military operations with civic action programs and tactical teams necessary to establish governance.

• By the early summer of 2005, the US was capturing or killing 1,600-3,000 insurgents every month without having an appreciable effect on halting the attacks on Iraqi government or security targets. There were 21 car bombings in Baghdad alone during the first 2 weeks of May compared with 25 during the entirety of 2005. The attack average per day for June was ~70 a day.

• Insurgents also continued attacks to disrupt water and petroleum supplies, indicating that there was a sophisticated plan in place to convince residents that the government could not provide basic services for its people. Because of the expertise involved, experts believe that former Baathist officials either in the new government or within the insurgency are providing a large pool of sabotage skills to the enemy.

• Because of this upswing in attacks since the elections, senior US officials such as General Abizaid delivered far more cautious briefings in May than they had in February, stating that while the level of attacks have decreased the lethality involved had increased.

• Muqtada al-Sadr has remained inactive against US forces since his defeat in September 2004, though he has set about rebuilding his organization and supported anti-US demonstrations in the wake of the elections.

Limits to the Insurgency

• Iraq is not dealing with a national insurgency and the overwhelming majority of Kurds and Shi'ites have never taken an active role in supporting or enabling it. It is unquestionably driven by the Sunni Arabs who make up 15-20% of the nation's total population and only 6-8% actually live in areas that can be regarded as hostile to both the US and the new Iraqi government. The total area where the insurgency dominated at its height did not encompass more than 6-9% of the total Iraqi population.

• General Abizaid has singled out western Baghdad, Anbar, Nineveh, and Salahuddin as the provinces most difficult for the coalition to control, yet even in these four provinces a majority of the population is divided and there are only small pockets that insurgents can actually be said to control.

• Many Iraqi Sunni Arabs do passively support the insurgency, with one February 2005 poll showing that 45% support attacks on coalition forces and only 15% strongly support the coalition. Most of the Sunni Arabs, however, provide only passive support and there are clear signs that even some of those who do oppose the actions of al-Qaeda and other foreign terrorists.

• Since the elections, some formerly hostile Sunnis have been moving towards participation in the new government and political process, believing that the elections they boycotted were so successful at solidifying Shi'ite and Kurdish power that continued isolation would only result in the loss of further wealth and power. 64 Sunni clerics signed a fatwa in April legitimizing Sunni participation in the new military, police, and security forces.

• One of the problems with Iraq is that NGOs, national and international aid organizations, media outlets, and foreign investors generally judge Iraq by its worst areas rather than the 10-12 provinces that are reasonably safe. It is also impossible to predict where new forms of ethnic or sectarian fighting may take place and a combination of crime, corruption, and bureaucratic inertia can paralyze legitimate activities while encouraging profiteering and exploitation. The fact that the central government is also weak and ineffectual at the provincial and local levels keeps the flow of civil and economic aid as well as foreign investment to the more secure regions of the country extremely low. This hurts the government's credibility in establishing its legitimacy and providing incentives to loyal Sunni Arabs in the less secure areas.

The Continuing Threat

• The Iraqi government and the US are likely to face several years of a continuing threat of insurgent attacks in major cities such as Baghdad, Mosul, Karbala, and An Najaf. The Sunni Triangle, the Tigris region, and the area south of Baghdad all continue to be centers of insurgent activity and the continued stability of the Kurdish and Shi'ite areas is by no means certain.

Dan's Comments

It's a pretty sobering analysis and I think does a pretty good job of capturing both the good and the bad of the situation in Iraq to date. One thing that still puzzles me, however, is the reason for the relative lull in the insurgency between February and April. If anything, one would think the insurgents would want to demonstrate that they were still a viable force despite their inability to stop the elections. I don't think that it was them trying to lull us into a false sense of security either given the speed with which various Sunni groups started trying to get their house in order after they saw the United Iraqi Alliance victory at the polls.

One of the things I can't help but take note of is that all through February until the end of April when attacks started spiking up again the US political establishment basically dropped the ball on Iraq. All of the things that are being said now by our politicos could well have been said then and would have looked a great deal less hysterical and grandstanding had they done so. Instead, we (myself included) made the major mistake of shifting away from Iraq to focus on events in the Ukraine, Lebanon, and sorta payed attention to what happened in Kyrgyzstan. I can go on to include the Schiavo controversy and the subsequent issues that came out of that, but my point is that Iraq wasn't really on a lot of people's radar until the body count started to rise again.

And lest anyone think that the situation over in Iraq isn't fluid as far as public perception is concerned, during the early part of that period the main question being pondered by the talking heads was whether or not Bush wasn't right all along when it came to Iraq. Now, 6 months later, it's Vietnam redux and the issue for most of the same people is how we can get ourselves out of this mess without a comparable death toll. I'm not bringing up either of these positions to refute them, but this fluidity seems worth noting when considering public outlook towards the war.

Also, not to tute my (or Bill's) own horn or anything but much of what Cordesman writes here tends to verify the claims that he and I have been making for some time now as far as the role that al-Qaeda plays in terms of creating the body count that makes the Iraqi insurgency such a nasty one to begin with. The definite shift towards car bombings and the upswing in the number of foreign suicide bombers is also worth noting since it seems to corroborate US claims about an al-Qaeda summit in Syria. Whether or not Zarqawi was there it seems that his lieutenants decided that car bombings are the way to go, which is why we now have so many of them exploding in Iraq.