4 GIs Killed; at least 64 Iraqis Killed
Massive Bomb Near Mosul
Ed Wong of the New York Times reports on increasing American and Iraqi dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, given that he has not reversed the slide into worse and worse security.
We historians don't approve of great man theories of history, and I don't think the main problem is Maliki. He very decisively sent the 10th Army Division down to Basra to impose security when the city was slipping into faction fighting late last spring. What I heard was that the army manned checkpoints for a while, but took fire and eventually wasn't so visible. Is that Maliki's fault?
(There was a firefight between British forces and the Mahdi Army on Tuesday in Basra, in which Habib Jasim al-`Ibadi, a Sadrist leader, was killed, and a British soldier was wounded. Thereafter, guerrillas launched mortar attacks on the Iranian and British consulates. On Tuesday, DPA reports, Iraqi police began implementing a new security program in Basra, beginning by arresting 130 persons. )
And, how come Iraq only has one armored division, and how come its army only has 78 old Hungarian tanks? How can you control Iraq with lightly armed and poorly trained infantry? Saddam had 8,000 tanks at his height.
And, nobody can get elected prime minister in today's Iraq except by getting the support of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Sadr Movement, both of which have militias. So then how can the PM crack down on the paramilitaries that brought him to power, with an army that doesn't seem willing or able to take them on? (The Wong article depicts the Iraqi army and police as eager to take on the militias and just waiting for the order, but I fear that on the basis of what happened in Basra, I don't buy it.)
The bipartisan Iraq Study Group also said that the Iraqi government must act quickly and decisively to prevent the crisis from deteriorating.
So, I fear I think that the American officials in Baghdad are trying to make Maliki a scapegoat and take the spotlight off their own failures. They are the ones with the tanks and helicopter gunships and trained troops, and they haven't been able to restore security. How can Maliki?
Speaking of the Mahdi Army militia, AP says that it is now using children against US troops in Sadr City.
Upset members of parliament demanded Tuesday that the ministers of defense and the interior explain what practical steps were being taken to stem the tide of faith-based killings. Over two hundred bodies have been found in Iraq in the past week by my count.
Reuters reports 65 killed or announced dead in civil war violence in Iraq on Tuesday, including 4 US troops. AP reports another 3 bodies found in Baghdad, for a total of at least 68.
AFP reports that 4 US soldiers were announced killed by Iraqi guerrillas on Tuesday:
'A soldier with the 89th Military Police brigade was killed and two others wounded when their vehicle was struck on Tuesday by a suicide car bomb in the northern city of Mosul.
In Baghdad, a soldier died when his vehicle struck a roadside bomb in northeast Baghdad while shortly afterwards another was killed by small arms in north-central Baghdad, both on Sunday. '
Reuters reports 61 other deaths in Iraq on Tuesday. In addition, AP reported that 3 bodies were found in Baghdad, for a total of at least 64 Iraqis and 4 Americans dead. The biggest attacks were these:
MOSUL - A car bomb followed by a suicide blast killed 18 people and wounded 11 in Sherqat, a town near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Tuesday, police said.
BAGHDAD - Mortars slammed into residential homes in southern Baghdad, killing 10 people and wounding 20, an Interior Ministry source said. A police source gave an initial toll of two people killed and 19 wounded, adding the numbers could change.
BAQUBA - Gunmen killed 11 people across Baquba, north of Baghdad, including a former army officer and his wife, police said.
MAHMUDIYA - A total of 11 bodies, with bullet holes and signs of torture, were found in different areas in the town of Mahmudiya, 30 km (20 miles) south of Baghdad, police said. '
Former Israeli special ops personnel had contracts in 2004 to train Kurdish peshmerga to guard the airport at Irbil. The way the report is worded, this sounds like a private company contract where some personnel happened to be Israel.
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said that the Middle East could not bear the problems that would ensue from a break-up of Iraq. He said that if the country did move further toward a breakdown in security, Turkey would protect the Iraqi Kurds.
I can't figure out whether that is an overture or a threat.
posted by Juan Cole @ 9/20/2006 12:30:00 AM
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22 Comments:
"I can't figure out whether that is an overture or a threat."
I can't figure out if that is sincere or sarcasm.
Most Kurds live in Turkey. Most land where there is a Kurdish majority is in Turkey. It is geopolitically unimaginable for there to be a Kurdish state with no Turkish territory.
A Kurdish state is not a joke. Steps towards Kurdish independence are an incredible threat to Turkey. An independent Kurdistan guarantees that Turkey will not make it through this century intact. This may be the biggest threat Turkey has ever faced.
Americans be damned, Turkey will crush the Kurds before it allows Kurdistan to happen. No nation is as threatened by Kurdistan or by what is happening in Iraq as Turkey. I'm sure Turkey thinks Iraq's Kurds have already gone too far. By now serious plans must be being discussed in Turkey to eliminate by force, any possibility of there ever being a Kurdistan broken out of Iraq. For example, Turkey will not allow Kurdistan to get Kirkuk.
The United States is really in over its head in Iraq. Full withdrawal in three months is a far better policy for US interests than staying the course. That way Turkey will not suddenly and violently swing against the US and the US can resume trying to contain Iran from the Gulf. The best of the bad options, from a purely US strategic point of view, is a public commitment made now to fully leave in one or two years. The US would calm down the anti-US forces in Iraq and the region and might be able to salvage some slither of influence (not much) in Iraq.
I wonder if the Kurds will survive that "protection". I also wonder how long it will take for the "slice and dice" wounds left by callous colonialism to heal. Probably, aproximatly forever.
Turkey would protect the Iraqi Kurds
Sounds like a not too thinly veiled threat. I think the Kurds know exactly what Turkish protection is like.
"We historians don't approve of great man theories of history"
Sorry, I couldn't let this one pass, but I thought that great men had tremendous impact on history. I don't know about theories, but surely men such as Ceasar, Jesus, Muhammad, Hitler, Roosevelt, Mao and unfortunately even George W. have made a dramatic impact on history. Obviously these men do not control history, but we are living in a world shaped by the wake of their actions. Do you not think that the players in this great drama can affect the outcome?
"He said that if the country did move further toward a breakdown in security, Turkey would protect the Iraqi Kurds."
When Gul said "protect," I think he was using the Mafia's definition of the word.
Your comments are rhetorical:
And, how come Iraq only has one armored division, and how come its army only has 78 old Hungarian tanks? How can you control Iraq with lightly armed and poorly trained infantry? Saddam had 8,000 tanks at his height.
But the entire idea behind this enterprise is to build a Japan in the Middle East. It won't work, of course.
Despite some friendly email on the topic, I still remain unclear on Professor Cole's fascination with tanks and armor as a means of controlling an insurgency. Perhaps it's just my experience with them, but they just seem to be larger targets. Even the theory of "controlling" an insurgency is a very "American" one, with roots in 2G warfare that proved so successful in, say, Vietnam. The key to dealing with an insurgency is to drain the "sea the guerillas swim in," to borrow part of Mao's metaphor. You need to convince the people that security and order come from support of the State, not from support (tacit or otherwise) of the insurgents. This is incredibly difficult to do when those trying to create security are an occupying army, doubly difficult when the occupiers are Americans, a nation noted for its linguistic and cultural deafness.
The best order, of course, comes from inside a social group rather than being imposed from outside. Encouragement and protection of mosques, markets, and minority groups are ways of achieving that order, and such does not come from tanks. Iraq would be better off with trained and disciplined light infantry units (what we call police here - and if you think your neighborhood cop isn't essentially light infantry, you probably need to look at definitions, rather than PR, more closely :-) loyal to the State, rather than to tribes/sects/outside interests...in other words, essentially the model that the Sunnis used to run the place for years. At this point in history, though, I have no idea where you'd come up with such a struture and organization that didn't appear to have ties to the Americans, and thus not be perceived as legitmate to the social group as a whole.
But that's just my two cents worth.
I didn't read the Wong article as saying that the police are eager to take on the militia.
=Brig. Gen. Dana J. H. Pittard, assigned to help train Iraqi police and army units, said Iraqi Army commanders, who usually have fewer sectarian loyalties than the police, were ready to take on the militias but had not gotten approval from the government.=
I can't imagine what kind of "protection" Turkey might offer the Kurds -- though perhaps now that the Kurds have received a "taste of freedom" from the United States, their Turkish protectors might also receive a "taste of freedom" by gobbling up Iraqi Kurdistan. Then Iran could acquire a "taste of freedom" by asserting protective hegemony over Southern Iraq. As for Baghdad, of course, the new moat will ensure that the city's residents have no choice but to linger about, tasting freedom as the United States protects itself from the "suiciders" and "Islamofascists" how would no doubt be riding the DC Metro if Bush and Company weren't chasing them through the streets.
The NYT piece this morning seems to be a continuation of the "nice little government you've got there..." atmospherics we saw in the LA Times "a strongman might be better..." piece the other day. The question is what exactly has triggered this right at the present time. I offer my proposed explanation at http://arablinks.blogspot.com
"Lawhobbit" says
Despite some friendly email on the topic, I still remain unclear on Professor Cole's fascination with tanks and armor as a means of controlling an insurgency.
Second the motion!
To add one further argument for the negative: if armor and air power really work in an antiguerilla context, that can not be because of who is operating them. There is a lot of both out there already, and yet anti-insurgency does not seem to be progressing very well. A superhawk might argue, coherently if not necessarily soundly, that there is simply not enough fancy firepower in total, but Prof. Cole is no superhawk.
What's he thinking of, then? Maybe of Vietnam, where at the end the other side brought in the tanks and Dr. Kissinger could not do anything about it but vamoose ingloriously. Nobody in sight (or operational Panzer distance) is going to do the enemies of the Green Zone that kind favor, however.
Alternatively, JC may not be thinking militarily at all, and this fascination of his is a matter of vicarious national pride -- something like "If the Bushies really thought al-Maliki and the gang are sovereign and independent and all that good stuff, why, they'd supply 'em with tanks and helicopters and jet fighters like every self-respecting modern state ought to possess."
That is not automatically a ridiculous idea, since it is more or less where Uncle Sam stands vis-a-vis an "ally" like General Mubarak, but on the other hand, the patriotic colonels and generals of the Levant and elsewhere take a professional interest in such whizbangs that the civilian Green Zone pols may not share. (Do we know whether M. al-Maliki actually asked for that sort of thing and got turned down flat by Sultan Zalmay?)
Happy days.
the AngloAmericans and, to some extent many Iraqi citizens themselves are not seeking "a great man." Rather, in my opinion the consensus has become desirous of a strong-man : “a magistrate acceptable to the de facto Ruling, yet antagonistic Militias, approved by the Occupation authority ~ invested with sweeping (approaching, perhaps, absolute) power to rule overall this fractured, nascent State ~ in times of emergency.”
At this point, were the AngloAmericans to simply say, "This Is Not Working," and is unacceptable, thus: dissolve the silly, so-called "democratic" structures that now exist; appoint a Governor-General; recognize that Martial Law + Sharia = mode d'emploi; and rule both the occupiers and the occupied by executive fiat...
...in my opinion, that would "constitute" an improvement over chaos, apparent.
unfortunately, the Americans have proven themselves incompetent; the British, unable to direct the Americans, their kapital; and, the Iraqis have been both polarized and infantalized.
(if we perceive this "news" alluding to "the effectiveness of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki" to be a trial balloon ~ it will be interesting to see just What do JAMES BAKER, et al, have in mind ;-)
Bush made like he was lancing a boil when he was actually blowing up a dam. All the water whisperers in the world can't talk that flood into going back upstream.
When the US says it wants Milaki to make "hard nosed" decisions, it means that the elected government should go to war with large factions of Iraqi society - with eager US air support no doubt. If the secular Iraqi generals are eager to do it, it might mean that the generals have a coup in mind. The central governmant is hardly something to die for.
Professor Cole opined:
"So, I fear I think that the American officials in Baghdad are trying to make Maliki a scapegoat and take the spotlight off their own failures. They are the ones with the tanks and helicopter gunships and trained troops, and they haven't been able to restore security. How can Maliki?"
That question would be "extensible". Note that the U.S. and the "Coalition of the Coerced" invaded Afghanistan because the taliban "wouldn't" turn over Osama bin-Laden. The assumption is that they could, even if they had wanted to.
Now, years have gone by, and even with all the Special Ops military personnel running all over the hinterlands of Afghanistan... With all the surveillance time monitoring anybody, anywhere who might have anything to do with him, ... Satellites scouring the Afghan/Waziri/Paki border continuously, and we can't seem to find him.
If the greatest military and spying forces on the face of the earth can't find him, by what sick rationalizaton did America in 2001 expect the taliban, denigrated by Americans almost universally as backward "ragheads", to find him, and simply... turn... him... in...?
It would do well to pause and consider that we also illegally invaded Afghanistan, also a NATION that never did anything to the U.S. as well as Iraq. Afghanistan couldn't prevent Osama's actions without offending certain elements of the U.S. intelligence apparatus. That changed somewhat AFTER al-Qaeda attacked us on September 11, and then it was too late. No one was going to find him. But we went ahead and destroyed Afghanistan anyway. Like a child might break a toy when it gets angry.
He would have been easier to find when he was recruiting mercenaries for the Kosovo Liberation Army, and NATO's Commander at the time, Wesley Clark, was indirectly his superior, circa 1997, when al-Qaeda had already bomed the WTC once on February 26, 1993.
No wonder Wesley Clark gave his war crimes tribunal testimony in secret. Especcially when he was a presidential candidate.
It would have looked bad.... very bad.
In defense of armor:
The point is not the exact weapons alotment of the Iraqi army. The point is that there are missions that the current military deems important that the Iraqi army will never be able to carry out alone.
If the United States believes armor is not necessary, why pay to maintain it in Iraq? Why not ship it back to the US?
If the United States believes armor is necessary, why is it withheld from the Iraqis?
If the United States was serious about leaving when Iraq "stands up" then it would be preparing Iraqis to operate alone the missions the US generals consider necessary now.
The question of armor is less a question of anti-insurgency tactics than a question of what are the US' real intentions.
Also, nobody in Iraq wants to defeat the insurgents. The aim is to fold the insurgents into Iraq's political structure.
The problem is that as much as the Sunnis do not trust that the Shiites will keep any bargain that is made, the US presence adds the additional problem that the Sunnis do not trust the Americans to restrain themselves from imposing a coup.
And as much as the Shiites fear a Sunni-led coup, the US presence adds an additional fear, just as valid or more, of a pro-US coup.
A key element in allowing Iraqi elements to come to a resolution is an understanding that the US will not be able to render all negotiations moot by installing Chalabi to be an unpopular Mubarak-like strongman.
The US refuses to do that. Which gets back to armor.
If the US insists on a monopoly on armor then the US insists that whatever party it favors has the power to at least make a serious attempt at a coup.
If the US really believes armor is not necessary then it is simple, get the armor the hell out of Iraq. The presence of armor under US control is an additional aggravating factor.
Otherwise, it is a problem that this armor will not be given to the Iraqis.
Let's see ... an Iraqi strongman that actually pursued Iraqi's TRUE interests ipso facto would be wholy supportive of defeating the occupation and ALL efforts to chain Iraq to the IMF and eliminate its economic sovereignty. Needless to say, this is the polar opposite of Cheney's plan.
"Most Kurds live in Turkey. Most land where there is a Kurdish majority is in Turkey. It is geopolitically unimaginable for there to be a Kurdish state with no Turkish territory." Hmm... Most jews live outside of Palestine, yet there is no Zionist state with Eurasian or American territory; and like it, most Kurds would likely continue to live outside a formal Kurdistan. Indeed, Kurdistan's existence would likely bring peace to that region of Turkey.
But any chance for peace must start with drastic changes in US Imperial policy. And for that to happen, the current administration must be impeached, convicted and removed from office--only more war and agony will result if this does not happen.
The Kurds are running adds on cable TV right now. I ask Tom what he thought about it and he allowed as how we shouldn't get involved with it until they say what they're worth. I agree.
I never had a Kurd yet and until they put a price on'um I can live with and acceptable shipping and handling it'll stay that way.
Little miss muffett sat on her tuffett eating Kurds and some other stuff so I guess they're something you eat. They're serving them up at the white house as best I understand it. Texans don't eat all that well, never know what's in them burritos for sure so I'll pass on Kurds. Sounds too much like spoiled milk anyhow.
What does people so poor all they got to eat is Kurds have to do with free elections? I guess they're so poor they can't afford to buy a government like us. We got the best one money can buy. Things are making more sense all the time.
Re Armour, the proposed size of these forces is just 137,000. They would have no tanks at all were it not for the surprise Hungarian gift in November last year. In fact, Prof Cole is slightly mistaken in saying the Army contains one armoured division. It contains one mechanised div with one armoured brigade.
First off, the Americans themselves wouldn't dream of fighting insurgents without tanks, howitzers, attack helicopters and even jet fighter-bombers. So it's a little disingenuous to claim that for Iraqis, these aren't counterinsurgency weapons.
Secondly, armour is not just about tanks, but also about IED survivability. If you add together all the armoured vehicles in the Iraqi Army and all those on order, you'll find it's only enough to put fewer than a quarter of them behind any kind of armour, and much of that will be welded-armour Humvees and the disastrously bad Polish Dzik-3s.
The Bush narrative is that Americans will stand up Iraqi security forces then leave.
That means two things.
A) Americans are currently absorbing 70% of all bomb attacks in Iraq, while Iraqi security forces are absorbing 20%, and most of these are directed against the police. If the Americans left, the weight of this IED campaign would fall squarely on the unprotected Iraqi Army. Considering that they're already taking higher casualties than US soldiers from far fewer bombs, the uptick could be horrendous.
B) Secondly, if the US really does leave (as if), according to Bush himself the evil surrounding states will try to crush this nascent beacon of democracy.
Yet Iraq is supposed to defend itself with 9 weak infantry and one obsolete mechanised division? Iran mustered 280 armoured, mechanised and infantry divisions for its Operation Khaibar offensive in 1984.
Conclusion: There's something very fishy going on here.
"And, how come Iraq only has one armored division, and how come its army only has 78 old Hungarian tanks?"
Because of the likelihood that at some point in the future, the weaponry supplied to the Iraqi armed forces may end up being used against US forces there. So, when they turn against their occupiers, better that they don't have Abrams tanks.
I forgot to mention, the Iraqi army has no artillery, almost no mortars, no attack helicopters, no combat aircraft of any kind (although the US is building large airfields for SOMEONE), no drones, no medevac capability, and no central military intelligence.
http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_pubs/task,view/id,3293/type,1/
Nor is it working towards any of these things except, maybe a little bit, the last two.
How much effort has the US really put into this?
*The New Iraqi Army, as envisioned in the CENTCOM phase IV plan (the original postwar plan) was to be just 40-50,000 strong.
*By the end of 2004, the New Iraqi Army, Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, and Iraqi National Guard had received a total of 600 radios.
*All of Iraq's tracked AFVs came from countries other than the US: Hungary, Greece, Jordan, UAE.
*The US brought home 7000 Humvees this year rather than give them to the NIA.
http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=106532&ran=143785
*One of their main vehicles, the DZIK-3, costs just $166,000 each, one-twentieth the cost of a Bradley. Yet Iraqi and American officers say it's not even worth this. It was part of a whole load of junk bought from Poland and Pakistan as part of a scam.
*That scam saw the Defence Ministry robbed of $1 billion, almost the entire 2005 defence procurement budget, probably by Americans.
http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds/afx/2005/09/19/afx2230264.html
*Although it's called the New Iraqi Army now, the original plan was to avoid the word 'Army' and call it the New Iraqi Corps. But post-invasion, when Americans encouraged Iraqis to join the NIC, the Iraqis would just start sniggering. Nobody had told poor CENTCOM that 'nic' sounds exactly like the Gulf Arabic slang for 'f%&k'.
OD said, "First off, the Americans themselves wouldn't dream of fighting insurgents without tanks, howitzers, attack helicopters and even jet fighter-bombers. So it's a little disingenuous to claim that for Iraqis, these aren't counterinsurgency weapons."
Which just proves my point. Americans have not had much success with counterinsurgency, and I'm arguing that it's exactly because they wouldn't dream of fighting insurgents without all their big-booming toys. Tanks make for fine tools of intimidation, but some people just don't intimidate worth a darn and see them as very visible signs of occupation, not security.
Counterinsurgency, to succeed, requires eyes and ears on the ground, trust from the population (and who the heck trusts a faceless iron box [or a foreigner with sexy black sunglasses and an assault carbine]). Counterinsurgency is essentially a police operation, and despite the fact that American police are becoming more militarized and we're seeing tanks here, doesn't mean that it's a working idea.
Tanks are also very good for attacking or defending against other 2Generation armies who are invading, but that's not the Iraqi concern right now.
As for IED defense, the best defense is to have the population preferring you to the insurgents such that you're warned ahead of time - or, heck, such that they shoot the IED planters themselves. So, again, it comes back to getting the people on your side and tanks and foreigners don't do that.
It’s useful to distinguish between tanks, which obviously spread public relations disaster wherever they go, and armoured vehicles necessary for the Iraqi army to travel around in bad areas without getting blown up.
They must patrol. Often they have to do so in vehicles. Unless these offer protection you could swiftly run out of soldiers. There are about 1550 bomb attacks a month of one kind or another against soldiers and policemen in Iraq. Most cause no casualties – because most are directed at Americans behind good armour.
Iraqi soldiers will need thousands of APCs and armoured wheeled vehicles to exist safely in a post-American Iraq. They don’t have enough, and what they do have is clearly a grudging afterthought.
A more serious issue, and highly indicative, is the lack of logistical ‘tail’, including intelligence and medical services.
http://www.mfw.us/why-iraq-has-no-army
In this Atlantic Monthly piece a “former high-ranking administration official” says of the New Iraqi Army: "We're building a spearhead, not the whole spear."
But if all the Iraqi Army’s support functions are carried out by Americans, and little is being done to develop their independent ability, then how can America leave?
Moreover, even if the Iraqi light colonial infantry were capable of defeating the insurgency single-handed, it would still be incapable of keeping Iraq together because some of its best units are really PUK and KDP, around Mosul and Kirkuk. So if the Kurds secede and choose to take one or both cities, Baghdad will not only suddenly lose part of its army, it will find it ranged on the other side.
Finally, while we here may disagree, the US government says that Iran is helping insurgents, exporting terror, and bent on expansion. So if America leaves Iraq, it must leave Iraq an army capable of facing Iran. Not to do so is to admit that Iran is not dangerous, not expansionist. And what of Syria? They intervened (admittedly with international support) in a Lebanese civil war similar to Iraq’s, and stayed for nearly 30 years.
Bush knows that this Tonka Toy army, alone, couldn’t face Syria or Iran for one day. So, either Bush believes Syria and Iran aren’t really dangerous, or he doesn’t believe the Iraqi army will be alone because he knows US troops are staying forever. Or he had intended to stay forever, but because of the mess is now trying to get out…and just hasn’t accepted the consequences that his change of plan brings for the Iraqi Army.
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