Bush's Iraq Strategy for 2007

A fter all the study groups and reports, an electoral repudiation of a failed war, months of deliberation, and hundreds of thousands dead, the Bush administration policy debate boils down to this: choosing between genocide against Sunni Arabs—a strategy known as the “80 percent solution”—or fomenting a second civil war, this one a Shia-on-Shia death match. Or perhaps both. 

The new White House strategy begins with the “surge” option. To try to fend off defeat, the Bush administration has decided to send up to 30,000 more troops. The criticism of this, from the media to the military to politicians, is that Bush has not tied any military escalation to a broader political strategy (see the New York Times December 21 editorial, “Rudderless in Iraq”). 

In the case of the media, they have ignored their own reporting. The Bush administration has a strategy that has been in the works for months, even if it is muddled and mad. The secret memo from National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, published by the New York Times in November, reveals that the White House is trying to isolate Muqtada al-Sadr, a pillar of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government. As Hadley explains, the Bush administration wants to reshuffle Maliki’s coalition so he no longer needs the support of 30 assembly members loyal to Sadr. Afraid this might cause Iraqi security forces to fracture and lead “to major Shia disturbances in southern Iraq,” Hadley recommends that the United States “provide Maliki with additional forces of some kind,” the rationale for the surge. 

Hadley wrote this memo on November 8 and the plan is now being put into play. On the one hand is the political component: Sadr’s forces shut out in the National Assembly; on the other the U.S. military would try to wipe out Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia. There is also talk of an economic component, a jobs program to give the legions of unemployed something to do other than attack Americans, but it smacks of too little, too late after the reconstruction debacle. 

Joining in the political and military campaigns against the Sadrists would be a Shia party that has an alliance of convenience with the Bush administration, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and its militia, the Badr Brigade. This is where the prospect of a second civil war becomes very real. The Bush strategy is to foment an intra-Shia conflict to try to regain the upper hand. As both the Badr Brigade and Mahdi Army are enmeshed with various Iraqi police forces, the security forces would splinter, leading to Shia-on-Shia warfare throughout southern Iraq. 

Because SCIRI has been scheming to form a Shia “super-region” in southern Iraq, the combination of political and military infighting among the Shia could deliver a death blow to the country. It would split into three warring ethnic regions, sparking a regional conflagration as neighboring states move in to stake their claims and exert influence. 

Only a few observers have picked up on this possibility and the terrifying consequences. No shrinking violet, Reuel Marc Gerecht, an ex-CIA officer and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, warned in a December 21 New York Times op-ed: “Any violent struggle between the Mahdi Army and Supreme Council could provoke anarchy throughout the entire Arab Shiite zone, including Iraq’s holy cities and the oil-rich south. As bad as things seem now, such Shiite strife could impoverish all of Arab Iraq, dropping the non-Kurdish regions to an Afghan-like subsistence level. In such a situation, we would likely see the hyper-radicalization of the Shiites, who have already become more militant owing to the tenacity and barbarism of the Sunni insurgency. In addition, whatever fraternal and nationalist bonds remain among moderate Sunni and Shiite Arabs would probably disappear in a Shiite-versus-Shiite bloodbath.”

One reason military commanders have opposed adding troops is because the military is at the breaking point. Some want to cut the combat force in Iraq by one-third, according to retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who told the Army Times in November, “The Army, particularly the National Guard, is on the verge of breaking because the effort is vastly under-resourced and cannot be sustained for long.” Privately, military officials have derided the surge option. Commanders weren’t even considering such a move in November. The Washington Post explained “that a boost of 20,000 infantry troops—five or six brigades—would do little to change the nature of the insurgency or the sectarian strife.” 

The extra troops would all be combat troops. Even though there are 140,000 U.S. troops currently in Iraq, only 50,000 are combat troops, amounting to 15 brigades. There is a tacit acknowledgement that the Pentagon thinks 50,000 more combat troops are required. But that possibility “is virtually off the table…mainly for logistics reasons.” Finding itself short of troops, the Bush administration is considering “deploying 20,000 additional American troops or more, at least temporarily…as a leading option” ( NYT , December 20, 2006). The fact that the numbers being discussed are far less than the military’s estimated need indicates why the surge is a political strategy, not a military one. 

Even 50,000 more troops would be too few, however. The historical rule of thumb is a ratio of 50 civilians to 1 soldier in occupations, which General Eric Shinkesi, other officers, and many military analysts argued for prior to the war. Of course these numbers assumed a benign occupation as in post-war Japan or Kosovo. In the case of a counterinsurgency, leaving aside the civil war, then “the United States and its allies in Iraq would need at least 500,000 and perhaps more than 1 million troops, military experts say.” 

Thus adding 20,000 troops would be a drop in Baghdad’s bucket, the locus of any surge. The troops would complement the current force of 15,000 U.S. soldiers in Baghdad. Going by the historical yardstick, if the United States really wanted to secure the capital, a city of 6.5 million, it would probably require 200,000 to 300,000 troops—more than all U.S. and foreign troops already in Iraq. 

Even going by the four-year-old Iraq War standards, the plan is severely inadequate. At the beginning of the occupation, in mid-May 2003, the U.S. had 25,000 troops in Baghdad, and Donald Rumsfeld had just dispatched an additional “15,000 troops from the 1st Armored Division and hundreds of military police” to Baghdad because of the poor security situation ( Washington Post , May 16 and 18, 2003). 

Thus, if 20,000 troops are added in 2007 to a Baghdad rife with a sophisticated insurgency and teeming with sectarian death squads, the troop level will still be less than the U.S. military deployment in the capital before the insurgency even began. Never mind about Al Anbar where a secret Marine report concluded last summer that the “United States has lost in Anbar.” The situation is so grim that the Marines need an extra division—more than 15,000 troops—in spite of 30,000 U.S. soldiers, marines, and sailors already there (the ratio of Iraqis to U.S. troops in Anbar is already under 50 to 1). 

As for why the White House is “latching on to the surge idea,” the Joint Chiefs think it’s “because of limited alternatives.” They argue it will be counter-productive because “a modest surge could lead to more attacks by al-Qaeda, provide more targets for Sunni insurgents, and fuel the jihadist appeal for more foreign fighters to flock to Iraq.” As for Shia militias, they “may simply melt back into society during a U.S. surge and wait until the troops are withdrawn—then reemerge.” 

The Pentagon is right to worry that an escalation will backfire. Since U.S. troops were deployed in August to the front lines in Baghdad, casualties have risen sharply to the highest level of the whole war. They’ve also failed to protect civilians, with massive ethnic cleansing reshaping Baghdad. Five or even ten more combat brigades won’t change the situation. 

So why pursue a doomed strategy? Because withdrawal is the only other option. While withdrawal is the only way to keep Iraq intact—stripped of U.S. protection the Shia parties would have to reach a political solution with Sunni insurgents—the Bush administration would have to abandon its project to remake the Middle East. It would no longer have a large central base to pursue interventions against Iran or Syria. Kuwait, which has turned over the northern part of its country to the U.S. Army, would be of no use in this regard. 

Surge Plans 

T hus, the next stage is escalation, which has been a constant of U.S. policy in Iraq. But it leaves the question, what will these extra troops do? Many plans have been put forth:

• Concentrate on fighting the Sunni-led insurgency. As mentioned, Anbar alone could swallow up all the extra troops with no evidence that they would have an effect. More than 40 percent of U.S. combat deaths take place in Anbar (see www. icasualties.org/oif), and more troops may just mean more targets. Even if pressured in Anbar, resistance groups could easily shift operations to Baghdad and at least four other provinces where insurgents have a strong base and wait out the surge. 
• Deploy the troops in Baghdad neighborhoods to stop the ethnic cleansing. “American troops would take up new positions in 23 mixed Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods to better protect the population.” One problem, as Kosovo shows, is that troops would have to remain for a generation or longer to allow for sectarian divides to be bridged. A bigger problem is that by the time troops are deployed, the communal cleansing may be completed. At least ten mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad have already been turned exclusively Shia at gunpoint. 
• Step up training of Iraqi troops. This strategy has wide appeal, not because it will work, but because many Americans crave an honorable retreat. They believe that somehow sectarian, corrupt, ill-trained, poorly equipped Iraqi forces can defeat the insurgency and halt the civil war where the most powerful military ever has failed. Even if the Pentagon triples the advisors to 15,000, as the ISG recommends, it won’t matter. Some trainers say “that all the U.S. military is doing is training and arming Iraqis to fight a looming civil war,” such as in Diyala Province north of Baghdad. Others worry “that the training of the current Iraqi army—at U.S.-operated camps—is spreading skills that are turned against U.S. forces.” The spread of sniper tactics among insurgents accounts for much of the increase in U.S. casualties. Even if trained, most Iraqi troops desert. By one account “75% of Iraqi soldiers don’t show up for duty.” The root problem is that capable security forces depend upon a functional state and Iraq’s has no writ beyond the Green Zone. 
• Crush the Mahdi Army. This is the likeliest option. While the Bush administration will probably try all the above, one of its policy constants is its desire to eliminate Sadr and his militia. Last spring, the White House blocked Ibrahim al-Jaafari from serving a second time as prime minister. Bush “doesn’t want, doesn’t support, doesn’t accept” him as prime minister because he felt “Mr. Jaafari will do little to rein in Mr. Sadr” ( NYT , March  29 and 30, 2006). Maliki was then pushed into the role because he was “independent” of the various factions, that is, seen as willing to do U.S. bidding. The move backfired because Maliki still needed Sadr’s parliamentary bloc to rule. 

This brings us back to the White House’s strategy review. It could be the “80 percent solution” or it could be stoking a Shia-on-Shia conflict. (The 80 percent solution refers to the percentage of Iraqis who are either Shia Arabs or Kurds.) According to the Washington Post , which detailed the White House debate, the policy would entail the United States abandoning “reconciliation efforts with Sunni insurgents and instead give priority to Shiites and Kurds.” Bringing an end to reconciliation efforts would mean “U.S. troops would be fighting the symptoms of Sunni insurgency without any prospect of getting at the causes behind it—notably the marginalization of the once-powerful minority.” 

In other words, the United States would back the sectarian war against Sunni Arabs, a prescription for mass murder approaching genocide. In three major Iraq cities—Baghdad, Kirkuk, and Mosul—the war involves the use of Kurdish and Shia-based security forces against Sunni Arabs in general. The same is true for scores of smaller cities and towns in areas where the resistance is active. With U.S. troops bent on defeating a broad-based Sunni resistance, combined with massive ethnic cleansing by Kurdish and Shia forces and widespread death squad activity, the Sunni Arabs as an ethno-religious community in Iraq would be wiped out. 

The only thing giving the White House pause is fear that other Sunni-majority states, particularly Jordan and Saudi Arabia, would weigh in on the side of their Iraqi brethren. 

The other strategy is to complement a stepped-up military campaign against Sadr’s forces with an attempt to isolate him politically. This would likely spark an inter-Shia civil war and the break-up of Iraq. This option is already in the works with the White House trying to break apart the ruling Shia coalition and form a new government (so much for elections). The key Iraqi players are not politicians but Shia clerics: Sadr, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

Enemy Number One 

S CIRI has emerged as a key U.S. ally in Iraq, which is ironic as it was set up by Iran in 1982 during the Iran-Iraq war. SCIRI was a member of the U.S.-sponsored Iraqi Opposition Coordinating Committee formed prior to the March 2003 invasion. It served on the U.S.-selected Iraq Governing Council and has supported the occupation for the most part (and relies on it for protection). 

In a nutshell, the Bush administration is trying to cobble together its satraps in Iraq—the Kurds, SCIRI, and a Sunni party (the Iraqi Islamic Party)—to create a majority that will back the U.S. in crushing Sadr. 

The LA Times detailed the overall plan: “strong support has coalesced in the Pentagon behind a military plan to ‘double down’ in the country with a…major combat offensive against Muqtada Sadr…a possible renewed offensive in the Sunni stronghold of Al Anbar province, a large Iraqi jobs program and a proposal for a long-term increase in the size of the (U.S.) military.” Such a strategy “would be a gamble,” however, as first “U.S. Embassy officials would have to help usher into power a new coalition in Baghdad that was willing to confront the militias.” 

This was why Bush held high-profile meetings in Washington with two Iraqi politicians in early December. The Washington Post reported that Bush met with Hakim on December 4 to hedge his Administration’s “gamble on the weak Maliki government. Bush also met with Iraq’s Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party.” 

The strategy moved forward in mid-December when “A group of politicians made up of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds said…that it was seeking to form an alliance that could shift Iraq’s balance of power.” Locked out were representatives of Sadr, “a sign that the group may want to politically isolate the powerful Shiite preacher.” 

The plan outlined in the secret Hadley memo can be seen taking shape in all these actions. 

As for the military end, Bob Killebrew, a defense strategist, said that launching a second war would be a joint U.S.-Iraqi campaign: “Our conventional forces, not advisors, will have to team with the Iraqi army and neutralize the Mahdi army and the other militias.” 

Not all militias would be targeted, however. The military campaign would pit SCIRI’s Badr Brigade against Sadr’s Mahdi Army. In the Washington Post , reporter Sudarshan Raghavan wrote, “in the view of the Bush administration, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim is a moderate and Moqtada al-Sadr is an extremist” even though “they both lead militias that are widely alleged to run death squads.” “Moderate,” of course, is a term of approval reserved for collaborators, such as SCIRI or the Iraqi Islamic Party, while the Sadrists are “extremists” because they have used street protests, armed uprisings, and national politicking to try to oust the occupiers. In fact Sadr’s allies have managed to get 131 Assembly members, almost half the body, to sign on to a petition “demanding a timetable for U.S. withdrawal.” 

It’s no coincidence then that the Mahdi Army, which is active in Baghdad and in Shia areas to the south, is now enemy number one. Conveniently,  U.S. estimates of its strength have grown dramatically. Whereas the Mahdi Army’s strength was put at less than 10,000 in 2005, new reports put the number of fighters at 60,000 (AP, December 8, 2006). 

Badr operates death squads under the banner of special police commandos. Beginning in 2004, U.S. forces organized, trained, and equipped the police commandos, drawing from former Hussein-era security forces to create a neo-Baathist militia and death squad that would hunt Sunni insurgents. Under the Iraq government that took power in April 2005, Bayan Jabr, a former high-ranking commander in the Badr Brigade, took control of the commandos as head of the Interior Ministry. Jabr ousted Sunni personnel in the commandos, putting in place up to 3,000 Badr militiamen and they quickly began a reign of terror against Sunnis in general. (For details see Tom Lasseter and the late Yasser Salihee of Knight Ridder, Solomon Moore of the LA Times , and Ken Silverstein’s “The Minister of Civil War” in August 2006 Harper’s Magazine .) 

Since the outbreak of the all-out civil war last February, Badr has faded into the background. One AP report claims, “Unlike Iraq’s other major Shiite militia, the rival Mahdi Army of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the Badr Brigade is known to be better organized, more disciplined and secretive. These qualities have largely spared Badr the unwanted media attention the Mahdi Army attracts, as well as the attention of U.S. officials who often cite the Mahdi Army when they talk about the need to disband militias in Iraq” (AP, December 2, 2006). 

This is not entirely true, however. Prominent U.S. officials have helped cover up Badr’s role in torture and execution. For instance, Steven Casteel, who as a veteran of America’s dirty wars in Latin America brought his propaganda techniques to bear in Iraq, blamed the murders on “insurgents posing as police,” claiming, “The small numbers that we’ve investigated we’ve found to be either rumor or innuendo” (Knight-Ridder, June 28, 2005). Then in February 2006, after months of detailed reports of Badr-run death squads and secret torture chambers, the U.S. general in charge of all police training dismissed these allegations out of hand. As the BBC put it, Major General Joseph Peterson “said he was convinced Iraqui Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, a member of SCIRI, had no knowledge of or involvement in the death squads. ‘Who are these guys? That’s what the minister is trying to find out,’ he said” (BBC, February 16, 2006). 

In this light, the fighting between Badr and Mahdi is not just about clashes between opposing militias, but also about a U.S. strategy to back one side in the sectarian war. Starting in the summer of 2005, entire cities in southern Iraq have been wracked by days-long street battles between the two militias. Since August of 2006, similar battles in five cities have seen the two militias clash in fights that drew in their allied security forces. In the city of Diwaniyah, in Qadisiyah province, battles took place three separate times in a six-week period starting in late August. All three involved U.S. forces backing Badr-controlled security forces—including police commandos in at least two instances—against Mahdi fighters. 

Analyst and historian Juan Cole described the first battles as “militia-on-militia violence” in which up to 81 people died. Cole explained that Badr “has infiltrated the police and security” in Qadisiyah province, “where the ruling party is the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.” Meanwhile, “the Sadr movement has spread like wildfire in the south and is offering a challenge to the local political structures.” 

According to AFP, U.S. forces intervened in the fighting, dropping a 500-pound bomb on an “enemy position.” On his website, Cole wrote, “My own guess is that it took local Badr Corps (infiltrated into Diwaniyah police and security forces), Badr Corps Special Police Commandos, Iraqi army soldiers, and a U.S. 500 pound bomb to produce an outcome where ragtag militiamen were fought to a standstill.” In a separate article on Salon, Cole added that by bombing a Mahdi Army position, the United States “was essentially also backing the local SCIRI government.” 

Then in September in the same city, “a joint Iraqi and American patrol raided one of Mr. Sadr’s offices, leading to a three-hour exchange of gunfire between militia forces and Iraqi police commandos.” On October 8, “American and Iraqi troops fought a fierce battle on Sunday with [Mahdi] militants in the southern city of Diwaniya.” 

Less than two weeks later, fierce battles erupted in the Amara, a city of 250,000 near the border with Iran. Almost 200 people were wounded or killed in gunfights between Mahdi and Badr. Some 2,300 Iraqi troops who were rushed to the city “were being helped by police commandos.” At the same time, clashes between the two militias took place in two other southern towns. Then in Samawa, in late December, more open warfare occurred between Mahdi forces and local police aligned with SCIRI. (For more on U.S.-backed militias see   Z Magazine , December 2006 “Militias and Civil War.”) 

The proliferation of these militia-on-militia battles is ominous because it shows how the loyalties of the Iraqi security units lie with political and ethnic sects, not the Iraqi state. By throwing its force behind Badr against the Mahdi Army, the United States is showing that it isn’t hesitant about stoking the sectarian warfare for its own ends. 

The final aspect, a U.S. military campaign against the Mahdi Army, is also underway. Since the apparent abduction of a U.S. Army soldier in late October, U.S. forces and Iraqi units have conducted 57 operations, mostly in Shia neighborhoods controlled by the Mahdi Army. While the Pentagon claims to be looking for the missing soldier, “Nasir Saidi, a Sadr legislator, accused U.S. and Iraqi troops of using the search for the missing U.S. soldier as a pretext to strike his movement” ( LA Times , December 8, 2006). 

The raids are said to have the blessing of Prime Minister Maliki. Tensions between him and the Sadr loyalists have sharpened after Maliki met with Bush in Jordan on November 30. The bloc of Sadr loyalists in the Assembly along with five cabinet ministers withdrew from the government ( Washington Post , November 30, 2006). The U.S. raids against the Mahdi Army likely played a role in the boycott. Speaking of the operations, “one high-ranking U.S. military commander” said, “We have carte blanche at this point” from the Iraqi government. 

Interestingly, the LA Times reports that the Iraqis assisting in the Baghdad raids are said to be from a U.S.-controlled force known as the “Dirty Iraqi Division.” They are Iraqi special forces, which might be either an overwhelmingly Shia force known as the Iraqi Counterterrorism force, under the control of U.S. Special Forces, or another unit formerly called the 36th Commando Battalion, another U.S.-controlled unit, mainly comprised of fighters from Kurdish militias. 

Double Down 

W ithout getting into the tangled nature of Iraqi politics, the White House plan to reshape the coalition government is meeting resistance from Maliki—who fears being ousted—and Ayatollah Sistani, who is opposed to breaking up the Shia coalition ( NYT , December 12, 2006). A little opposition has never stopped the Bush administration, however. Whatever happens on the political front, it appears committed to employing the surge of U.S. troops and sectarian Iraqi units in a systematic crackdown on the Mahdi Army. 

“Such a confrontation,” Reuel Marc Gerecht argues in the Times , “beyond wrecking Iraq politically, would probably allow the worst elements in the Supreme Council—those who envision a religious dictatorship along the lines of Iran—to become more powerful within the party.” 

With dual civil wars raging in Iraq, SCIRI might seek to form an independent “Shia-stan” in the south, which contains most of Iraq’s working oil fields. A break-up of Iraq would probably result in a broader war as neighboring states moved in to stake their claims. A regional Mideast war would quickly gather momentum, like the Congo war, Africa’s “World War,” where states fear that if they don’t enter the conflict they will lose out to rivals. The Bush administration is aware that its strategy might lead to Iraq’s dissolution and is even preparing for it. A “confidential briefing on possible ‘end states’ in Iraq was prepared by officials under the command of Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarielli…. It suggested the dark vision of a divided nation that haunts the administration” ( NYT , January 2, 2007). 

There is also possibility of a civil war followed by genocide, which Gerecht foresees. “A genocidal Shiite-versus-Sunni conflict in Iraq—a real possibility—would be much more likely after an intra-Shiite war that destroys the traditional social and religious hierarchy that has remained vastly stronger among the Shiites than among Sunni Arabs since the American invasion.” 

The pieces are all falling into place. The ruling Iraqi coalition is increasingly fragile, and the Bush administration is trying to deliver the final blow. Pro-occupation Iraqi parties are maneuvering to put a new government in place. The main target would be the Sadrists, who would be isolated politically. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is stepping up attacks against the Mahdi Army while the U.S.-backed Badr Brigade is also engaged in battles against Mahdi militiamen. 

While it seems crazy that the Bush administration would seek such a course, the wheels are already in motion. It should be remembered that the White House has escalated the war at every critical juncture: from the mass arrests and torture that fueled the initial insurgency in 2003 to the twin assaults on Falluja and Mahdi forces in 2004 to the use of death squads starting in 2005 to the surge coming down the pike. 

With no options remaining other than escalation or withdrawal, the Bush administration is not going to back down and admit defeat even if it’s the only prudent course. For four years it’s gambled with the lives of Iraqis and American soldiers in pursuit of a failed policy. It’s even using gambling terminology to refer to the new strategy. One defense official said the escalation was a “double down” ( LA Times , December 13, 2006). 

In a last desperate bid to regain the upper hand, it’s upping the stakes, which means there is more to lose. It’s gambling that it can win a two-front war against both the Sunni and Shia resistance before Iraq implodes in a Middle Eastern World War. Given the White House’s track record, the odds for success don’t look good.