Iraq Surge 2.0?

As the US military ramps up the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, some pundits suggest the need for a new Surge policy like that of 2007 which helped stabilize an Iraq torn by civil war. Indeed, the first Surge allowed Coalition troops to effectively target and degrade the capabilities of al Qaeda in Iraq/Islamic State of Iraq insurgents, however we should take a close look at exactly why the first Surge worked before using it as a template for future policy. This piece looks at the 2007 Surge in context of a military intervention into an ongoing civil war.

The conflict in Iraq marked its third year with increasing bloodshed as civil society devolved into warring sectarian divisions. By June 2006 Iraq had become “a nation of many wars, with the US in the middle.”[1] As the bloody summer hastened into an equally bloody autumn, pretenses faded and American analysts began to admit Iraq was rapidly devolving into civil war. The conflict had changed into “a struggle between Sunni and Shi’a extremists . . . seeking to create or protect enclaves, divert economic resources, or impose their own respective political and religious agendas.”[2] In January 2007 the US launched the Petraeus doctrine, a new counterinsurgency-based strategy dubbed in the media as “the Surge.” By the end of 2008, violence in Iraq greatly subsided, settling into a lasting simmer instead of diving deeper into civil war.

Was the Surge successful? Why did previous doctrine fail to control the violence? This paper seeks to answer these questions by evaluating the Surge as a military intervention into a civil war. I argue the focus on counterinsurgency strategy allowed preexisting social trends to fully develop, however the doctrine was not the sole reason for the reduction in violence post-2008. This paper looks at characteristics of civil wars, how they end, and the effects of interventions on duration of civil wars, in comparison with the doctrinal tenets of the Surge.

Setting the Stage: Post-Invasion to Operation Together Forward

Although roundly chastised when suggested in 2007, the Surge has become known as the “saving grace” of the conflict in Iraq. Proponents often argue that the influx of troops combined with a focus on counterinsurgency doctrine allowed Coalition forces to bring the escalating violence under control. While certainly factors, such claims overlook other vital characteristics of the Surge doctrine, missing important aspects of the strategy that should be considered before attempting to transplant Surge-style doctrine to other conflicts (as happened in Afghanistan in 2009).

One of the most important factors is the nature of socio-political events in Iraq from 2006 to 2007. By June 2006 Iraqi society was torn asunder as a full-scale ethno-religious intrastate war raged between competing factions. The Coalition presence propped up a weak government.

US strategic doctrine post-invasion focused on “transition and disengagement:”[3] limit casualties by distancing troops from Iraqis while relying on training proxy security forces. The doctrine was implemented due to political dissention in Washington DC rather than realistic goals driven by the social environment. A low-level Sunni anti-occupation insurgency emerged in 2004. The primarily urban guerrilla struggle gained traction following the 2005 Iraqi elections as Shiites filled the majority of government, triggering Sunni fears of political repression while foreign jihadists insinuated themselves with rural Sunni tribes. Intrastate violence escalated through 2006 as political factions emerged with competing ideologies, and competing “defense forces.”

On February 22, 2006 a suicide bomb destroyed the al-Askri Mosque in Samarra, regarded as the third holiest site by Shi’a Muslims. The bombing was calculated by al Qaeda extremists to broaden sectarian divisions by instigating a militant Shiite backlash thus forcing Sunnis closer to al Qaeda for protection. The strategy worked: over 600 Sunni bodies were found in the streets of Baghdad between the bombing and the end of March, many executed after being brutally tortured.[4] The Shiite government became a sectarian combatant,[5] denying services or suppressing Sunnis, and supporting pseudo-official death squads or Shiite militias like the Badr Brigades and Mutada al-Sadr’s Jaysh al-Mahdi.[6]

US strategy continued to emphasis handing control to the Parliament and empowering Iraqi Security Forces– the very death squads ethnically cleansing Baghdad neighborhoods. “President Bush’s commitment to making a “success” of the current government will increasingly amount to siding with the Shiites,” wrote one critic.[7] Feeling pressed backs against a wall, Sunnis pushed back with violence. Coalition commanders recognized the situation was out of control yet three years of failed doctrine and wavering domestic political support left many officers feeling powerless. The US and Government of Iraq launched Operation Together Forward in June 2006 in an attempt to quell the violence. Coalition troops and Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) flooded the streets of Baghdad, but ultimately failed to accomplish their goals. Instead, violence in Baghdad rose by forty-four percent. By 2007, Iraq was the most dangerous place in the world.[8]

Civil Wars

Due to the decentralized nature of control, non-state armed opposition groups, and civil-support relationships, the majority of civil wars are fought as “irregular, or guerrilla” wars.[9] This is important to recognize for interventions, as the people a foreign power seeks to influence are also key actors in the conflict support mechanism.

Contrary to conventional wars, civil wars display a triangular relationship between the combatants and civil populous who are crucial for providing support for combatants to continue fighting. Military action between combatants is generally light, however there is considerable engagement between combatants and civilians.[10] Each group of combatants seeks to protect their own civilian support networks while attempting to disrupt those of their opponents; the key to defeating the opponent’s military forces is to control or eliminate their civilian support.[11] In order to simultaneously guard one’s own support and separate the opposition’s support, combatants tend to take military action to segregate the civil population, which also makes targeting appropriate civilians easier. When a society fractures along sociological lines, this ingroup/outgroup separation can lead to atrocities such as ethnic cleansing.

Civilian support for combatants is often allocated on a sociological basis as conflict exasperates preordained social cleavages and new social groups begin to form from the remains of the former society. Preexisting conflicts shape the initial preferences as ingroup and outgroup identity forms,[12] but group identities are reinforced by both friendly and enemy actions as the struggle progresses. Each act of aggression against a group by a perceived outsider reinforces the identity while perceived defection by insiders must be severely punished (often more harshly than enemies) to prevent group disintegration and loss of civilian support. Although material and non-material benefits shape civilian decisions to join or support a belligerent group, individual survival becomes priority as violence escalates.[13]

Naturally, this group identity structure hinders intergroup communication and fosters a zero-sum state for resource allocation: any resources not obtained by friendly supporters represent resources of the enemy. In this light it is better to destroy resources than to allow them to fall into enemy possession. Denying access to fixed resources such as critical infrastructure (electrical stations, water pumps, hospitals, schools, bridges, etc) often takes the form of destroying the resource, or rendering it inoperable in the short term. When resources in question are population-centric, atrocities are used to forcibly remove the population.

At any given time during a civil war, combatants face the choice of quitting, thus ending hostilities, or continuing to fight. Factors playing into the decision on both sides represent the overall utility (benefit compared to cost). For a group to cease fighting, the utility of continuing the conflict must be less than the utility of ending hostilities however, civil wars are often waged from the perspective of protecting social identity groups. Ending fighting may result in destruction of the group, whether via transformed identity or physical atrocity. This is complicated by the fact that the belligerents exist in the same national territory and lack home territory to retreat, neutral ground, or security after laying down arms. Anti-government forces ceasing to fight face the prospect of organized state retaliation or political marginalization, while government forces may lose the political power and protection of state institutions. No one wants to give up their arms while the enemy is still capable to fighting.

How Civil Wars End

Recognition of how civil wars come to resolution should be factored into intervention policies. Civil wars generally end with decisive military action. Once one side has soundly defeated the other militarily so that the balance of power is no longer questioned, the utility of fighting is less than that of brokering a ceasefire. Forty-five percent of twentieth century civil wars historically ended in decisive victories by government forces, compared to resounding victories by opposition groups in thirty-five percent of cases. Only twenty-five percent of civil wars ended in a negotiated truce based on military stalemate.[14]

Stalemates are achieved once both sides have exhausted their support capacities and will to fight without achieving a drastic change in parity.[15] Stalemates rarely lead to negotiated compromises if potential military solutions appear to remain valid in the future. Instead, the stalemate serves a time to reorganize and rebuild support networks, buying momentary peace at the cost of longer-term stability. Foreign interventions should remain aware that enforcing such naturally unstable truces will not result in valid permanent territorial agreements.[16] In terms of ethnic cleansing, outside powers cannot halt the atrocities without establishing permanent territorial lines all parties agree to uphold.[17]

Civil wars rarely end in powersharing deals, and then only in cases where the opposing factions were not highly fractionalized.[18] Typically the timeframe required to clarify the military positions of such groups lasted well above the average length of most twentieth century civil wars, stretching between ten to fifteen years, at great cost to the population.[19] Powersharing agreements were successful when power was divided based on their relative military strength and battlefield position at the end of the war, and all such agreements required a neutral third party to ensure security while combatants demobilize.[20]

Intervening in Civil Wars

Outside intervention into civil wars is a form of conflict management. Often, the outside power seeks to prevent the escalation of hostilities, stop atrocities, and prevent the spread of conflict to other states or regions. In order to achieve their goals outside powers must manipulate the utility of fighting to incentivize peace negotiations, often attempting to convince the parties to negotiate on positions likely to develop regardless of continued fighting: continued hostilities presents too low a payoff for investment.[21] All parties must come to this conclusion at the same time, which presents balancing problems for outsider powers.

The use of force by an intervening power has no noticeable bearing on whether a conflict will end.[22] This presents a marked departure from conventional doctrine that supported weight of fire in kinetic actions, and helps to explain why early US intervention policies did little to abate the civil war. As one exhausted officer lamented: “I can kill and kill all day long and it won’t do anything other than create more terrorists.”[23]

From a survey of 150 civil wars, interventions alone do not reduce the duration of conflict, in fact outside intervention of any type often increases the length of the conflict[24] by changing the utility factors belligerents use to determine the relative worth of fighting. Timing of the intervention does not appear to significantly influence the duration of the war. Biased support does tend to increase the duration of the conflict, but not significantly longer than the increase caused by neutral intervention.[25] If the conflict attracts opposing interventions then the chance of belligerents ending hostilities approaches zero as outsiders channel support into their respective proxies.

Based on this survey there appears no strategies that shorten the conflict. The policy implications of this are remarkable: if the objective is to shorten the duration of a civil war, then no military intervention will be resoundingly effective, whether it supports one party or remains neutral.[26] This does not necessarily make the case against interventions. Rather, if military interventions are most likely to occur when rivals are too closely matched for decisive victory, then it would be militarily sound to support the strongest side regardless of legitimacy, as Betts argues.[27]

The Petraeus Doctrine

The 2007 Surge represented a return to classic counterinsurgency strategy and population-centric doctrine. The Baghdad Security Plan featured four main principles: protect the people, forge genuine partnerships with local leaders, co-opt destabilizing elements to create operational space, and kill/capture the remaining extremists that could not be co-opted.

The doctrine’s focus on civilians as the main target of military efforts is important as it aims at the core of an insurgent’s support. Insurgents can blend in with the population and hide, but the people cannot. Rather than filter through the population hunting for the insurgent, the military focuses on providing security and stability which will eventually cause the insurgent to reveal themselves out of desperation, or move on to a more pliable population.[28]

Effecting protection of the people is partially accomplished by creating space. Military forces initially create space through their presence and operations, but as insurgent support wanes the space grows. Troops were pushed out of centralized bases into smaller neighborhood facilities shared with Iraqi Army and police. This allowed Coalition troops to mentor and monitor the ISFs while bolstering the overall numbers of troops in cities and providing an “Iraqi face” to population engagements.[29]

Co-opting wavering insurgents and supporters is accomplished through a variety of means including providing legitimate institutions, public services, political empowerment, and economic incentives. These are accomplished by forging genuine partnerships with local leadership and communities.

The doctrine reassessed the use of force by Coalition troops, implementing new rules of engagement and restrictions on indiscriminate force. Population-centric doctrine relies heavily on intelligence collection from local sources. As security is established and partnerships that ensure commitment are established, locals will begin to provide intelligence leading to insurgent networks. In order to build trust, Coalition forces needed to rely less on kinetic operations, overwhelming firepower, and aerial bombs which caused an immense amount of collateral damage.[30] Surgical accuracy and pin-point, intelligence driven raids took the place of indiscriminate weapons and mass-arrests.

Political developments ancillary to the doctrine helped shape the change of course in Iraq. In the January 2007 speech introducing the Surge, President Bush renewed American commitment to the Iraqi government, then proved it by authorizing five brigades of additional troops transferred into theater. The message was not lost on the Iraqi public– the US chose to side with the Shiite government. Sunni leaders began to question the utility of continued fighting in the face of the unified Shiite militia, government, and Coalition. American leaders did little to clarify the boundaries of their support ( even as Coalition troops fought against Shiite militias and worked feverishly to stop the ethnic cleansing and death squad executions). As troops spread into the cities to live among Iraqis of all ethnicities, the first Sunni sheikhs took advantage of the security buffer to begin reconciliation.

Analysis: Gauging the Effectiveness of the Surge

Measuring the success of military interventions can be difficult if goals are not clearly articulated. In the January 2007 address, President Bush stated that the doctrine change was needed “to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population, and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security”. The additional 20,000 troops certainly assisted with security, but how can security be tangibly measured?

Bodycounts and SIGACTs are two indicators of relative security. Bodycounts alone are no indication of success in a military campaign, but within the context of civil war a simple comparison of civilian deaths at different times can show relative rates of hostility. SIGACTs, significant actions, are military incidents such as ambushes and artillery attacks. SIGACTs can be used as a general indication of enemy activity at a given time. Comparing these two indicators with the influx of Coalition troops will provide clues about the effectiveness of the Surge.

According to the impartial Iraq Body Count database, post-invasion civilian deaths averaged 12,000 to 17,000 between 2004 and 2005, increasing as the insurgency and Shiite militias grew in strength and organization (the designation “civilian” simply indicates the individual was not reported as a member of uniformed security forces or anti-occupation insurgency. It does not necessarily indicate an individual’s sectarian or militia affiliation). Civilian deaths in 2006 spiked to 31,000. By 2008 the number of civilians killed fell to 7,800, and 4,700 by 2009.[31]

During the 2006-2008 Surge period, seventy-four percent of civilian deaths were attributed to unknown perpetrators (not Coalition forces, ISF, or anti-occupation insurgents), one-third of which extra-judicial executions.[32] The sectarian killings were particularly indiscriminate, especially suicide bombers, killing an average of nineteen civilians per attack.

The 2008-2009 post-Surge year saw civilian deaths drop in half from 10,000 to 5,000. Monthly deaths at the hands of unknown perpetrators in January 2006 peaked at 1,500, rising to 3,000 in July. By January 2008, the rate had fallen to 850, and 370 in 2009.

Death toll of civilians due to unknown perpetrators is useful to evaluate the impact of non-state actors during the civil war. The death rate of civilians during key years correlates with the predicted results if the Surge accomplished the goal of providing security and protecting the population.

Correlation does not indicate causation, and a review of the SIGACTs between 2006 and 2008 raise doubts. SIGACTs reported in 2006 peaked near 60,000, rising to 68,000 in 2007, before falling to 22,000 in 2008.[33] The decrease in incidents is significant, however it lags behind troop deployments by nearly six months. This might indicate that the additional troops alone did not produce the security, or that their presence took time to affect a target area. It might also indicate that the Surge policies were more effective than troop deployments, or the data may represent an unknown event.

The data becomes more clear when evaluating the rate of SIGACTs compared to troop movements. SIGACTs fell in sixteen out of eighteen provinces, regardless of troop allocations.[34] Many provinces saw a decline in reports as troops were redeployed elsewhere, which is counterintuitive.

Metrics provide mixed indicators for success, however several other trends should also be considered.

Sunni Stalemate

Since civil wars generally don’t end in stalemates unless both sides believe they cannot benefit from continued fighting, is it possible that the Sunni rapprochement was a trend that began prior to the Surge? By 2006 many Sunni leaders may have realized they were losing the war. Anti-occupation fighting, anti-Shi’a militias, and AQI extremists took a heavy toll on the minority population. Ethnic cleansing pushed most of the Sunnis out of Baghdad while AQI brutalized rural tribes. As early as 2005 Sunni leaders sought cooperation with Coalition forces to ensure their security, forging four different pacts between commanders in Anbar province. Although the stand-alone programs were not successful, the concept would be quickly renewed as Coalition troops pushed into neighborhoods during the Surge.[35]

The Awakening, as tribes that turned away from sectarian and extremist violence were called, represented a means of not only securing protection, but of insinuating Sunnis back into government via low level sponsored militia programs. Contracts for the militia members were negotiated through tribal leaders rather than individuals. Although some criticized the program as bribing enemies to peace, the tribal leaders appeared to be brokering a ceasefire for increased political agency. In return the coalition received intelligence from former insurgents

Shiite Shakedown

Government consolidation in late 2006 was empowered by President Bush’s commitment to the Maliki regime, as well as swelling ranks of ISFs from earlier recruiting programs under the previous doctrine. With his position secure, Maliki was free to being a crackdown on the Shiite militias the government previous relied on to maintain power. The ISF crackdown chased al Sadr to Iran, where foreign sponsors concerned about regional spillover convinced him to broker a six-month ceasefire. As the Sunni Awakening drained the anti-occupation forces, Coalition troops began to focus on the remaining fighters. The sudden loss of political support, marginalization by government, and surging Coalition troops resulted in a sudden stalemate for Shiite militias.[36] The JAM accepted the ceasefire rather than become the focus of Coalition troops.

Community Engagement to Enclaves

In 2006 Baghdad accounted for fifty percent of the violence in Iraq. Ethnic cleansing succeeded in segregating the city into sectarian districts, and Sunnis were being pushed out, creating swathes of empty space between neighborhoods. When the Surge troops began to deploy throughout the city, they often established outposts on the edges of sectarian separation. Building the joint outposts and police stations created de facto walls between the rival sects, making it extremely difficult to conduct large ethnic cleansing attacks. To enhance population security, many units installed barriers and walls stretching from their outposts throughout the community, creating sectarian enclaves. The buildup of barriers guarded by Coalition troops changed the utility of ethnic cleansing, especially as much of the city was already polarized.

Conclusion

The Petraeus Doctrine’s true strength was in the shift of focus toward a counterinsurgency strategy that targeted the support networks of sectarian militias by co-opting former insurgents into cooperation with the Coalition and Government of Iraq. The community engagement policy allowed the Coalition to take advantage of Sunni disenchantment with al Qaeda, while the extra troops and ISF mentorship provided the insulation needed to allow the Sunni Awakening to blossom. By 2008 nearly 80,000 former insurgents and militia fighters joined the government payroll as community defense organizations under the control of influential Sunni leaders. The turnaround in 2007 was not a direct result of the Surge, however the policies in place supporting the Surge allowed the Coalition to take advantage of the break in hostilities to refocus efforts on the extremists while building political cooperation amongst the disgruntled parties.

The success of the Surge as a military intervention was the result of a series of factors converging at the right moment in time, with the right people in positions to make the most of events. The lessons from this case reinforce application of counterinsurgency doctrines, community engagement in irregular warfare, flexibility to shift focus to meet developments in the threat environment, and making the commitment to take sides.

 

Works Cited

Betts, Richard. “The Delusion of Impartial Intervention.” Foreign Affairs 73.6 (1994): 20-30. electronic. March 2014.

Biddle, Stephen, Jeffery A. Friedman and Jacob N. Shapiro. “Testing the Surge: Why Did Voilence Decline in Iraq in 2007?” International Security 37.1 (2012): 10-45. electronic.

Biddle, Stephen, Jeffery A. Friedman and Stephan Long. “Civil War Intervention and the Problem of Iraq.” International Studies Quarterly (2012): 85-90. electronic. March 2014.

Fearon, James. “Iraq’s Civil War.” Foreign Affairs 86.2 (2007): 2-15. electronic. March 2014.

Frayer, Lauren. “Top U.S. Colonel Puts Theories to Test.” 26 March 2007. The Washington Post. Associated Press. electronic. March 2014. <www.washingtonpost.com>.

Hicks, Madelyn Hsiao-Rei, et al. “Violent Deaths of Iraqi Civilians 2003-2008: Analysis by Perpetrator, Weapon, Time, and Location.” PloS Medicine 8.2 (2011). electronic. <plosmedicine.org>.

Iraq Body Count. Database. March 2014. March 2014. <www.iraqbodycount.org>.

Kalyvas, Stathis. “The Logic of Violence in Civil War.” (2000). electronic. March 2014. <yale.edu>.

Kilcullen, David. The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One . New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2009. electronic. March 2014.

Metz, Steven. “Learning From Iraq: Counterinsurgency in American Strategy.” (2007): 50-56. electronic. March 2014. <strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil>.

Regan, Patrick. “Third-Party Interventions and the Duration of Intrastate Conflicts.” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 46.1 (2002): 55-73. March 2014.

Schwartz, Anthony. “Iraq’s Militias: the True Threat to Coalition Success in Iraq.” (2007): 51-66. electronic. March 2014. <strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil>.

Thiel, Joshua. “Statistical Irrelevance of American SIGACT Data: Iraq Surge Analysis Reveals Reality.” April 2011. Small Wars Journal. Ed. Joyce Hogan. electronic. March 2014. <www.smallwarsjournal.com>.

Walters, Barbara. Four Things We Know About How Civil Wars End (and what that tells us about Syria). 13 October 2013. March 2014. <www.politicalviolenceataglance.org>.

[1] Metz, Steven. “Learning From Iraq: Counterinsurgency in American Strategy.” (2007): 54. electronic. March    2014. <strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil>.

[2] Ibid. p. 54.

[3] Kilcullen, David. The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One . New York: Oxford   University Press, USA, 2009. electronic. March 2014. p. 153.

[4] Kilcullen, p. 146.

[5] Fearon, James. “Iraq’s Civil War.” Foreign Affairs 86.2 (2007): 3. electronic. March 2014.

[6] Kilcullen, p. 126.

[7] Fearon, p. 3.

[8] Kilcullen, p. 157

[9] Kalyvas, Stathis. “The Logic of Violence in Civil War.” (2000): 5. electronic. March 2014. <yale.edu>.

[10] Kalyvas, p. 5.

[11] Ibid, p. 6.

[12] Ibid, p. 6.

[13] Ibid, p. 7.

[14] Walters, Barbara. Four Things We Know About How Civil Wars End (and what that tells us about Syria). 13             October 2013. March 2014. <www.politicalviolenceataglance.org>.

[15] Betts, Richard. “The Delusion of Impartial Intervention.” Foreign Affairs 73.6 (1994): 22. electronic. March    2014.

[16] Ibid, 22.

[17] Ibid, 22.

[18] Ibid. 24

[19] Walters.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Regan, Patrick. “Third-Party Interventions and the Duration of Intrastate Conflicts.” The Journal of Conflict                Resolution 46.1 (2002): 59. March 2014.

[22] Regan, p. 72.

[23] Frayer, 2007.

[24] Regan, p. 71.

[25] Ibid, p. 72.

[26] Ibid, p. 72.

[27] Betts, p. 33.

[28] Kilcullen, p. 153.

[29] Ibid, p. 153.

[30] http://www.iraqbodycount.org

[31] http://www.iraqbodycount.org

[32] Hicks, Madelyn Hsiao-Rei, et al. “Violent Deaths of Iraqi Civilians 2003-2008: Analysis by Perpetrator,        Weapon, Time, and Location.” PloS Medicine 8.2 (2011). electronic. <plosmedicine.org>.

[33] Thiel, Joshua. “Statistical Irrelevance of American SIGACT Data: Iraq Surge Analysis Reveals Reality.” April 2011. Small Wars Journal. Ed. Joyce Hogan. electronic. March 2014. <www.smallwarsjournal.com>.

[34] Theil, 2011.

[35] Biddle, et al, p. 18.

[36] Schwartz, Anthony. “Iraq’s Militias: the True Threat to Coalition Success in Iraq.” (2007): 5. electronic. March 2014. <strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil>.