In victory's direction: where we're headed in Iraq, and why we must arrive

National Review, Sept 15, 2008 by Bing West

IN July, five American soldiers died in action in Iraq. That's the lowest number since the war began in March of 2003. A prudent leader, Gen. David Petraeus has warned his commanders not to claim success yet. Nonetheless, in traveling around the country in early August at Petraeus's invitation, I found the progress on the military front to be remarkable. It was my 15th trip to Iraq in six years, and after the hard fighting I had witnessed in the past, the contrast was striking. That raises three questions: How did the war turn around? What are the current conditions? And where do we go from here?

In the spring of 2003, the United States quickly won control of Iraq from Saddam Hussein. Afterwards, however, it failed to prevent the growth of diverse insurgent forces. By 2004 most of the Sunni population from Baghdad west to the Syrian border and north to Mosul supported, or at least tolerated, resistance cells and Qaeda-led terrorists in their midst. The U.S. responded by cracking down, and its operations were rough enough to antagonize the Sunni population, even though it avoided the draconian restrictions that armies have historically employed to control populations. By the end of 2004, the U.S. was thinking about getting out.

The U.S. military settled on a mission of handing off the war to newly formed Iraqi-army battalions. Unfortunately, these battalions weren't up to the task, and they received no leadership from two successive governments that were inept and sectarian, having been elected from lists supported by the block vote of the Shiite majority. By the spring of 2006, the coalition was losing on the two major fronts that accounted for most of the fighting. In Anbar Province, to the west, the extremist Sunni al-Qaeda in Iraq controlled the population; in Baghdad, to the east, death squads drawn from the Shiite militias and the police were driving out the Sunnis, while al-Qaeda's suicide bombings continued. The situation was grim, and to those back home in America, it seemed destined to keep getting worse.

In fact, conditions were ripe for a turnaround. In the fall of 2006, tribal leaders on the western front (Anbar) turned against al-Qaeda. Back in 2004, the same tribes had welcomed al-Qaeda, with its stirring call to jihad. Anbar, it was then thought, would be the last province to be pacified, if it ever was. But that judgment didn't factor in a staffing policy that turned out to be enormously important: The Marines were sending the same battalions back to the same cities on seven-month tours.

Over the years, the Americans and Iraqis grew to know one another, and Marine tactics improved as they became familiar with the area and its people. The Marines did their best to keep the peace with small foot patrols as the population went through a cycle of opposing them (2004), resenting them (2005), and finally seeking their protection (2006) after experiencing al-Qaeda's rule. Like Robespierre in 1793, al-Qaeda had turned into a terror machine after seizing power.

The key to the turnaround on the western front was a strategy of partnership between local leaders and U.S. officers. Insurgencies grow from the bottom up; they must be defeated by turning the population against the rebels village by village, city by city. No general, no matter how brilliant, can accomplish this by maneuvering his army. Instead, the army and the police must spread out and remain among the population.

Outside the cities, the distances between the farmlands were so huge that Qaeda operatives could move freely. The Sunni tribes, however, under the remarkable leadership of Sheik Abu Risa Sattar, gradually united in rebellion against al-Qaeda. The locals knew who the extremists were; the Americans brought the hammer. After the tribes, now aligned with the Americans, had been successful in killing some Qaeda members, the bulk of the Sunni population joined with them. Al-Qaeda, whose mobility depended upon cars, couldn't move inside the cities where police checkpoints were improving, and couldn't hide in the countryside, where tribal posses were pursuing them. By the fall of 2006, similar local partnerships had sprung up across the west--in the cities of al-Qaim, Haditha, Ramadi, and even truculent Fallujah. The war in the west had turned before President Bush announced his surge strategy in January of 2007.

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When Petraeus took command in February 2007, he was impressed to see that thousands of Sunnis, many of them ex-resistance fighters, had joined tribal auxiliaries and the police in Anbar to oppose their former allies. He authorized U.S. commanders to recruit and pay similar irregular forces across Iraq. Al-Qaeda fled, Shiite death-squad attacks ceased, and a further benefit was that these partnerships placed Americans in daily contact with local leaders, who told them about poor services. In turn, the Americans pressured the Iraqi government to respond to local needs.

The turnaround on the eastern front--around Baghdad--followed in 2007. The same sorts of partnership emerged, shaped by three decisions at the top. First, President Bush sent a "surge" of 30,000 troops, mainly to control Baghdad. Second, their commander, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, chose to deploy most of them in belts around the capital to crush al-Qaeda. Third, inside Baghdad, Petraeus moved his soldiers off their large bases and into neighborhoods, especially along the fault lines where Sunnis were being driven out or where al-Qaeda was in control.