Just under a decade ago (September 2005) the United States Army in coordination with the Iraqi Army scored a much needed tactical victory. They cleared the Iraqi city of Tal Afar of Al-Qaeda terrorists killing and capturing many of them. And they briefly secured it. At the time it was lauded by Washington with then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice forward it as a general strategy which could win the Iraq War. She dubbed it, “Clear, hold and build.”

The idea being that the U.S. military could clear most of Iraqi areas of insurgents, help the new Iraqi government secure it, garner the trust of local populations and help them re-build their communities and homes. In Tal Afar that only worked for a brief time. The Department of State encapsulated the feeling of the time when it described the situation there as follows,

‘Terrorists who once exercised brutal control over every aspect of the city have been killed, captured, driven out, or put on the run. Children are going to school, electricity and water service are restored throughout the city, and the police force better reflects the ethnic and religious diversity of the communities they patrol. Markets are opening, buildings are going up, and homes are being repaired.’

Unfortunately today Tal Afar, situated in Nineveh, is, along with the major metropolis of Mosul, still under the grip of the Islamic State (ISIS, Daesh) group. Daesh are even worse than their Al-Qaeda predecessors who tried to subjugate Tal Afar nearly a decade ago.

Indeed it wasn’t in Nineveh Province but Anbar Province where the U.S. claimed its strategy for securing Iraq was working. When General David Petraeus paid off many of the Sunni tribesmen and guaranteed to help them fight Al-Qaeda forces in their midst during the 2006-08 period of the Iraq War.

That was also lauded at the time. Unfortunately we see that in both Nineveh and Anbar the jiahdis, now in the form of the much more sinister form of Daesh, have come back with a vengeance. And they have eviscerated any tincture of progress in both those provinces and still remain entrenched in them. The U.S. no longer has 160,000 combat troops on the ground with which to help in operations against Daesh. It wants to maneuver something like a repeat of the aforementioned ‘Anbar Awakening’ against Daesh. The U.S. administration presently appears set to send a few hundred more training advisers to Iraq to assist the Iraqi Army and the Sunni tribesmen force Daesh out of Anbar. However the Iraqi Army has had few successes on the battlefield against Daesh as their recent setback in Ramadi aptly demonstrated. And Shia militias, many of whom backed by Iran, are replacing their role and taking the forefront in the battle against Daesh there. They are fighting under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU’s) which is a relatively thin veneer over what amounts to extremely limited, even largely non-existent, Iraqi government command-and-control (Iraq’s poor Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has very fine lines to walk in other to maneuver the many disparate elements amassed in the fight against Daesh in a desirable direction). Nevertheless, the Sunni tribesmen of Anbar recognize that as a force on the ground these forces are likely their best, perhaps only, chance of forcibly uprooting Daesh from their land. And once the Shia militias do it in coordination with them and they are gradually trained and armed to re-consolidate control over their land and their homes the day after Daesh is removed by force.

I know the ‘clear, hold and build’ strategy has dubious prospects given its aforementioned record but, nevertheless, a strategy resembling something like that could work given the fact it is carried out primarily by Iraqis. One of the mistakes the former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki made, in my view, was not integrating these tribesmen under a broader security auspices. That rendered many of them, unfortunately, helpless when it came to mounting a sufficient resistance campaign against Daesh as it usurped their lands and subjugated them under its completely ruthless and tyrannical rule.

Let’s hope these mistakes and shortcomings of the past are not repeated and that the plethora of Iraqi groups fighting Daesh work in tandem for what is good for the future of Iraq as a whole.

The post Clear, Hold and Build: An Old Strategy With Dubious Prospects appeared first on Baghdad Invest.

Don't be shellfish...

Last year Israeli journalist and filmmaker Itai Anghel traveled to both Syria and Iraq. There he showed us the Kurds of Iraq and Syria who are fighting the notorious Islamic State group (Daesh) and also some of the members of Daesh they had succeeded in taking prisoner. Anghel filmed these prisoners recounting the grotesque atrocities they had carried out on innocent people. One explained, without displaying even a slight tincture of compunction nor remorse, how, when cutting the head off one of his victims, he purposely made sure the knife he “used was blunt so he’d suffer more.”

Anghel’s documentary then points out something quite chilling in its ending. These prisoners, these ruthless mass-murdering sadists, could be released and return to committing more atrocities in a future prisoner swap. A truly horrifying thought to even begin contemplating.

One was reminded of those parts of that documentary when reading Aki Peritz’s piece in Slate which discussed the implications of the fact that the Shi’ite militias which drove Daesh out of Tikrit in April did not take any of their enemies prisoner. Peritz deduces from this that these Shi’ite militias are likely killing all of the enemy forces and argues that such a merciless approach against a merciless enemy is destined to prolong the war and increase the number of atrocities unnecessarily for the numerous reasons which he outlines.

It has also been argued widely, including by this scribbler, that it would be better if Daesh were removed from the Sunni-majority Iraqi provinces, of Anbar and Nineveh respectively, by the secular military state force that is the Iraqi Army. Which, while predominantly Shi’ite (which is simply the case since Iraq, after all, is a Shia-majority country), isn’t an exclusively Shi’ite sectarian fighting force like, say, the Katiab Hizbollah or the Badr Organization and other such armed paramilitary groups presently fighting under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Units.

One thought it was wise, and very responsible and sober-minded, of Ayatollah Ali Sistani to call upon Iraq’s Shia to join the state military and security forces to help combat Daesh, not these sectarian militia forces. However, as we saw in Mosul last June and Anbar’s provincial capital Ramadi in recent days (a defeat which Vox correctly dubbed Daesh’s “biggest victory in Iraq in almost a year”), the Iraqi Army and security forces have proven to be largely inefficient when it comes to thoroughly combating Daesh. As one police colonel who fled Daesh’s recent takeover of Ramadi told The Guardian, “The army don’t have the fighting spirit. They were waiting for ISIS to attack. They are poorly equipped comparing to ISIS. We are fighting with guns and pistols while ISIS have Humvees and IED’s and suicide bombers.”

The Shia militias however do not readily retreat and are committed to either killing their enemy or being killed by them in battle. They may be ruthless but they are capable and determined fighters. They may be the only military forces on the ground in Iraq who can, in the coming days, and possibly weeks, force Daesh out of Ramadi and subsequently take the lead in digging them out of the rest of Anbar also.

But can the Iraqi government convince Sunni tribal elements in Anbar that these militias have their best interests at heart and are there simply in order to help them recuperate control over their homeland?

Many of those Sunni tribesmen were, remember, disallowed entry into the security forces under the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Hundreds of whom, poorly armed and organized, have been murdered by Daesh in recent months.

Furthermore, how would the Americans respond? Would Washington go along with backing Shi’ite militias which are very close to Iran? Which is, of course, a country that is unwelcome in the anti-Daesh coalition U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry assembled last year. Remember during the fight for Tikrit last April those Shia militias withdrew in protest after the United States began bombing Daesh there. A clear indication of their reluctance to work with, or be seen working with, the U.S., even if it is only to defeat a common enemy.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has had to play a delicate balancing act in recent months. The Shia militias are suspicious of the United States and wish to fight this fight on their own and on their own terms. But at the same time Abadi does not want to alienate the United States.

So you see, the solution to the ongoing crisis and turmoil in Anbar is going to be anything but a simple one for Iraq to overcome.

The post What’s Next for Anbar? appeared first on Baghdad Invest.

Don't be shellfish...