Redstate

By Mark I Comments (7) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

For all the hand wringing, well intentioned and not, going on in official Washington and in the blogosphere these days over the state of affairs in Iraq, it amazes me that more time is not spent comparing the effort there to America’s other successful overthrow of a dangerous and despotic Muslim government in the Middle East. Anyone looking for the way forward in Iraq could do a lot worse than looking to the east and charting a course similar to that of the effort in Afghanistan.

At their beginnings, the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns look surprisingly similar. In Afghanistan, the United States’ military effort consisted largely of supplying support, logistical, tactical, and advisory, to the Northern Alliance. In doing so, America came down on one side of a long running civil war. There was no such organized resistance to Saddam Hussein in Iraq, so the effort there required a more conventional invasion and takeover. Despite this difference in tactics at the outset, the result in both campaigns was the rapid overthrow of the government, and the establishment of a provisional authority. In both cases, organized resistance to the vanquishing forces more or less melted away while the new authorities set up shop. At this point the two successful campaigns diverge on different paths.

It is my contention that the situation in Iraq would be vastly improved if a model more along the lines of the Afghan success story were put into place there. To demonstrate this, I must first compare and contrast, admittedly with a great deal of simplification, the histories of the two campaigns beginning with the fall of the capitals.

Read on…

Kabul fell to Northern Alliance forces on November 13, 2001, a mere 37 days after the onset of US participation in Afghanistan’s conflict. By December 5, 2001, less than one month later, Afghan political leaders meeting in Bonn, Germany, had agreed on the structure of a transitional administration and had appointed the well respected Hamid Karzai as chairman of its governing council. Even as fighting still raged in Kandahar, Herat, and the mountains of Tora Bora, the Afghans, with the support of the United States and the international community, were taking responsibility for their country.

In Iraq, however, Afghanistan’s experience was not followed. Baghdad officially fell to US forces on April 9, 2003, an even more rapid 20 days after the initiation of hostilities. Rather than establishing a transitional administration in Iraq, as had been successfully done in Afghanistan, the entity that assumed control in Iraq was an arm of the US government. This may not have been an altogether unhappy event however, as the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) was to be led by Lt. General Jay Garner (ret.). Many forget because his tenure was so short, but General Garner, in his brief stint as head of ORHA and later the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) agitated for turning control over to Iraqis as soon as practicable through elections. Had this advice been followed, Iraq’s trajectory would have looked much more like Afghanistan’s. Iraqis would have been given direct responsibility for the future direction of the country. Instead, Gen. Garner was replaced by L. Paul Bremer as head of the CPA less than one month after its creation. Bremer has been blamed for making many mistakes during his tenure which lasted until June 28, 2004. However, as his appointment represents the abandoning of the Afghan model, I see his very appointment as the major mistake of the post-hostility period.

Among the most talked about mistakes attributed to Bremer is the disbanding of the Iraqi army. This singular act on the part of the CPA has been cited as the beginning of the downward spiral of violence that has befallen Iraq. In reality, the Iraqi army disbanded itself. Most of its rank and file units had no stomach for fighting the most powerful military on Earth, much less to defend the honor, wealth, and life of the brutal dictator in their charge. The advance to Baghdad was met by pockets of stiff resistance; while Saddam was still firmly in control of the apparatuses of punishment. But when the enemy reached the gates of Baghdad, and the handwriting of Saddam’s fate was on the wall, most units stopped fighting and went home. It is unclear whether Iraqi army units would have served under the command of American generals and helped to provide security in Baghdad and elsewhere. But it is clear that the loss of between 350,000 and 500,000 trained troops to the alleyways and byways of Iraq helped to create the security vacuum that the United States and Iraq have been struggling to put a lid on ever since.

In Afghanistan, after Karzai took control of the interim administration, a traditional and customary meeting of tribal leaders and elders, known as a Loya Jirga was convened. This meeting was vital in that it is the time honored Afghan method of conferring legitimacy on rulers and for settling momentous questions. The Loya Jirga appointed Karzai to be the interim president of the Afghan Transitional Administration. With the imprimatur of leading Afghan religious, political, and tribal figures stamped on his administration, Karzai began the process of drafting an Afghan constitution, incorporating democratic principles, and preparing to stand for election as the first President of what was to become the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

One early criticism of Karzai and of the progress in Afghanistan was that the transitional administration, and later the newly elected national government, had little control outside of the capital, Kabul, which was under the direct control of Northern Alliance and US forces. But this fact, I believe, served as a focal point for the populace and conferred a sense of inevitability that the central government would eventually assert itself. Early on, the government was present in the outlying provinces, but the influence of local warlords was said to carry more weight. Today, the central government has extended its authority to more areas of the country, and the preponderance of resistance is found in the Kandahar area, traditional seat of the Taliban. The overwhelming majority of the country is in line with Kabul, not in rebellion to it. Kabul itself is pacified, especially when compared to Baghdad.

Baghdad was never under complete control, even from the very first days after its fall. Looting was rampant, and although many looted items have been recovered, such as treasured antiquities from the National Museum of Iraq, there has not been a sense of law and order in Baghdad comparable to that of Kabul. I believe, given the Kabul experience, that if a greater effort to secure Baghdad had been made in the months immediately after its capture, Iraq may have been much further along the road to self-sufficiency today. This is not to lay blame at the feet of the US military mind you. For if it is a legitimate criticism of the Afghanistan campaign to say that only the capital was secured after the end of major hostilities, then it must be recognized as a legitimate success in Iraq that almost everywhere outside of the capital and the Sunni triangle has been relatively secure since US forces arrived.

Despite the violence in the capital and surrounding area, Iraqis, like the Afghans before them, elected a transitional authority, wrote and ratified a constitution, and elected a permanent government. Also similar to Afghanistan, Iraqi army and police units are being trained and slowly taking responsibility for security. Iraq is having problems with sectarianism both in the official security forces and among militias which control lawless areas of the capital and certain cities. This sectarianism may be traced to the lack of a Loya Jirga, or a grand council of some other form, during the transition. Iraq’s constitutional convention was marked by factionalism along sectarian lines and brought long simmering sectarian distrust to a boil. Part of the reason for this is that Iraqis were not brought in any meaningful way into the CPA and given direct input and even control over the decisions that would shape the path the country was to follow.

How, then, can the Afghan model be applied to Iraq today? The two major lessons that I believe can be taken out of the Afghan campaign are:

1. To invest responsibility for the security and direction of the country in the hands of agreed upon indigenous leaders as soon as possible after the overthrow of an existing government; and

2. To secure the capital first and build outward to the outlying provinces.

America still has the opportunity to apply both of these lessons to Iraq and perhaps change the direction of the effort there.

First, the United States should continue to train and advise Iraqi army and police units. But the numbers of units so trained should be a decision taken by the Iraqi national and provincial governments. Furthermore, the national and provincial governments should be given complete responsibility for the units’ performance. Iraqi government members should bear the burden of the ability of these well trained forces to establish law and order and quell the violence. Before the mid-term elections, Prime Minister al-Maliki was requesting that control of the security forces be turned over completely to the Iraqi government. He should get his wish and all of the responsibility that comes along with it.

Second, American forces now stationed in relatively peaceful areas of the country should be drawn in to bases around Baghdad. These units should operate in conjunction with, but not under the control of, the Iraqi government forces in the city in a major push to secure the capital. I am not a tactician, but this effort should include: security cordons; visibility patrols, both joint and separate; and targeted raids on known insurgent hideouts. The raids can be, but by no means should they only be, undertaken as a result of intelligence sharing with the Iraqis. The troop presence in Baghdad, both American and Iraqi, must be dramatically increased. As long as the capital is not secured, the perception will be that the entire country is in a state of chaos. Once Baghdad is pacified, resistance in the remainder of the country will dramatically decrease as the inevitability of the Iraqi government’s survival becomes clear.

The political situation in the country should be a concern as well. America should do everything in her power to ensure that Iraq is left with a functioning democratic government of some form. This does not mean that we should make important decisions about the future of the country for the Iraqis. Quite the opposite, we should make clear that the consequences of the decisions Iraq’s leaders make for the future of their country will be theirs to bear. America, in the end, can only point the way toward democracy and perhaps gently push in that direction. If the Iraqis choose to double back and take a different route, so be it, as long as the result is no threat to us or our friends in the region. I suspect, however, that as the level of violence in the country comes down and as the capital is pacified, a single unified democracy, as opposed to a partitioning along sectarian lines, will look to Iraq’s leaders like a more and more appealing end.

Wars are won or lost. There is no third way. There is no honorable stalemate that can be declared. One side or the other must feel defeated or else the whole affair will be fought out again and as many times as it takes until one of them does. Afghanistan and Iraq were both noble adventures undertaken by the United States in reaction to the wounds inflicted on her. To say otherwise is to demonstrate one’s unseriousness on the subject. That Afghanistan has been a greater success than Iraq to date is not much in doubt. The United States has the opportunity to make Iraq in Afghanistan’s image if it has the will. I believe that the public can yet be sold on Iraq despite the results of the mid terms. The Administration has perhaps six months to formulate a new plan and execute it in Iraq. Resolving to follow the Afghanistan model would be a good start.