New US Strategy to "Safeguard and Secure" Iraq?

As retired Army General Jack Keane has prominently stated, the post invasion strategies for the war in Iraq have failed. The first strategy, that of capturing or killing Al-Qaeda and anti-government insurgents did not work, and the subsequent strategy of transitioning the fight over to the woefully unprepared Iraqis has failed even worse. During this transition, the level of Iraqi civil violence has increased exponentially.

The Iraq Study Group failed to offer any real world alternatives and the three main strategies as they are discussed in the media today are too superficial to succeed. Rapid US withdrawal, the increased embedding of US trainers, or hoping that Iraq’s neighbors can settle the issue, are all doomed to short sighted failure.

Now some pundits in the media are calling for a shift in our strategy to one of "safeguarding and securing" the Iraqis. They believe that we can buy the Iraqis enough time to establish their own political response to the insurgency. Having said all this, we must not go too far into this "political" direction and forget that it is still a war, with very real enemies that require a military—or more appropriately—a paramilitary component.

The next strategy in Iraq must certainly provide for safety and security, but at the same time it must include efforts to establish justice and equality. This means that Iraq must have a reliable and police force and supporting judicial system. Police forces also happen to be one of the best sources for potential counterinsurgent forces. Nobody can manage an insurgency better than local cops that have a stake in their communities. Foreign military forces and even Iraqis from other parts of the country simply do not have the family and friendship ties necessary to really understand what is going on in the local area.

Herein lays the dilemma. The Iraqi National Police as an institution is broken. The police are believed to be heavily infiltrated by sectarian extremists who use their access to police information and resources as a means to actively and violently promote their causes. At the very least, they can look the other way as independent militias for which they have sympathies do the dirty work for them.

A viable alternative to the police is to rely upon local "home guard units" to provide security and operate as counterinsurgents, but the recent history of militias in Iraq is as bad as or worse than that of the police.

We face a choice. It is not an easy one, but it must be made. We can either rebuild the Iraqi National Police from scratch while the US army provides the bulk of the safety and security, or we can train up local home guard units during that time. Simultaneously, we can refit and prepare the Iraqi army for its real mission—protecting Iraqi sovereignty and national security from external threats.

In the end, since Iraq will always need reliable police forces, the US should focus its strategy on providing security while a new National Police force is recruited, trained, equipped, and deployed. These new and modern police need to be better paid, respect Human Rights, tolerate diversity, promote equality, and protect the rights of the accused. They need national direction from a better organized Ministry of the Interior and the support of a functional judicial system.

This can be done much more easily than one might think. All of the training facilities are available as we speak in the US and abroad. Subject matter experts are available from the US Departments of Justice, State, and Defense. An initial corps of police professionals can be created at the FBI academy, for example, or some other large metropolitan police training center in the world. This initial group can then be deployed as leaders throughout Iraq who have consistent training, similar equipment and operating principles, and the support of US and other allied police and military advisors. They can spearhead the transition to Iraqi provided safety and security while being advised by professional counterinsurgents that are embedded with them full time.

Getting the police out of the environment might be a challenge since these men will want to protect their families in Iraq, but by working with local leaders we should be able to find the initial group willing to take the risk. While they train abroad in a safe environment, we can continue upgrading the Iraqi National Police Training Center and the police senior leadership. The same can be done to create better Ministries of the Interior, Justice, Finance, and others.

This first cohort of newly professionalized Iraqi police must be integrated in terms of Shiite, Sunni, and Kurd. Some of these officers will be cadre at the Iraqi Police Academy. Others must get back into their hometowns patrolling and interacting with the locals from all backgrounds to create the networks we need to better deal with the insurgents. As more and more professional police are generated the security load will naturally shift off of the US forces, but US forces will be in Iraq for a number of years yet.

Purely from the police perspective, this implies that the US and the world must provide adequate advisors and resources to reorganize and even create the supporting Interior Ministry and judicial branches required to make the system work. Providing the resources, time, security, and personnel for a strategy like this would turn the US expenditures in Iraq into a long term investment rather than an unrecoverable short term expense.

Contrary to popular belief, an operational plan to support this strategy can be developed with meaningful, manageable, and measurable milestones. Most surprising of all, a rough timeline for completion of this mission can be estimated as well, though it may run as long as a decade with some level of US forces on the ground. Publishing, monitoring, and managing to this plan and timeline pose no threat to Iraqi security and offer no real advantage to the enemy either, but would go a long way toward building credibility and generating support for the plan in the US, Iraq, and elsewhere.

If safety, security, and justice become more predominant in Iraq, and the Iraqi government works to keep it that way, international development, employment, and prosperity will follow.

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Victory in Iraq is Still an Option

In recent letters to the editor, national media outlets, political forums, and opinion editorials we at www.WinTheGWOT.org have felt like voices crying out in the wilderness with respect to the current situation in Iraq and what might be done about it. We tried in vain to get directly involved with the Iraq Study Group and waited expectantly for its report—all the while wondering if the ISG might actually produce a new and workable strategy for success in the war. Unfortunately, no new good ideas came from the ISG, and arguably they produced one or two very bad ideas.

Even the unmistakably clear message from the American people during the mid-term elections has only resulted in what appears to be a more open minded Bush Administration. The departure of Donald Rumsfeld is very appropriate and Secretary Gates is a good choice to succeed him, but recent polls indicate that the American people have lost all faith in the Bush Administration as far as the war is concerned. They favor pulling out as soon as possible and expect the incoming Democratic legislature to influence positive changes with respect to Iraq.

Our then candidates gave a wide range of confused and conflicting pre-election answers to questions about the war. Many of them avoided speaking on this critical topic like the plague, so we at WinTheGWOT fear that placing any hope in this new legislature to develop an actual strategy for success in Iraq is as misguided as thinking that the ISG would. It is obvious that political answers and compromises here at home do not produce practical and workable war time solutions.

Instead of a bi-partisan approach to solving the current challenge in Iraq, we need a non-partisan approach by independent military, counter-terrorism, counterinsurgency, and foreign socio-political subject matter experts. This approach should start with the premise that victory in Iraq is still possible, and that failure there will cost the US and the world tremendously more than the cost of staying will.

We define victory in Iraq is as a united country with a stable representative form of government with cities and neighborhoods that enjoy an environment of law and order and the potential for economic prosperity. Ethnic and religious diversity is tolerated and Human Rights and the rights of the accused are monitored and adhered to. Corruption is actively prosecuted and business and government policies are transparent and open to scrutiny.

The alternative, as so eloquently describe by Dr. Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute implies that the US would end up pulling its troops out of Iraq—likely under fire the entire way. Worse yet, the exit would be seen by our enemies as a victory and embolden them further. Worst of all, those people who currently rely upon the US for their safety and security would become the immediate victims of factional and ethnic attacks.

Like Dr. Kagan, we can think of no greater threat to the institutions of the US military than asking them to withdraw under fire, and then watch as the ensuing bloodbath kills and brutally displaces hundreds of thousands of people they were protecting.

Neighboring countries with majority Sunni populations are not likely to sit by and watch as that group is overwhelmed by Shiite death squads and the war would likely erupt into a regional conflict with global implications. Not the least of which would be the necessity to redeploy US combat troops back into the region.

Continued deployment of US forces today is costly in terms of life and resources, and presents a significant strain on our forces, but that strain is exacerbated by the fact that even our troops on the ground see futility in what the strategy they follow today. The three alternatives currently debated by politicians and the media are likely to fail, but changing to a more appropriate strategy—even though it requires more US troops in the near term would actually be a reduced strain on the morale and spirit of our forces if what they are doing creates tangible improvement on the ground in Iraq.

Morale, spirit, hope—whatever we call it means everything to both the Iraqis and the US troops.

The three options currently debated that we believe would fail are 1) immediate withdrawal, which will lead to the chaos described above, 2) an increased number of embedded trainers, which will do nothing to curb violence and might precipitate an increase in attacks. Furthermore, putting US troops in the Iraqi units and not leaving enough forces to both protect them and carryout other independent security operations will fail to change the overall environment, and 3) simply hoping that Iraq’s neighbors can somehow solve what is essentially an internal Iraqi dispute. We must use diplomacy with them to get them to discourage continued violence and decrease any arms or other support crossing their borders, but that is about all we can expect. Nonetheless, they all have a positive stake in a stable, prosperous, and peaceful Iraq.

We at WinTheGWOT have advocated a change in US strategy that Dr. Kagan eloquently states in recent discussions: "We must change our focus from training Iraqi soldiers to securing the Iraqi population and containing the rising violence. Securing the population has never been the primary mission of the U.S. military effort in Iraq, and now it must become the first priority."
This does not imply that we stop training—rather we emphasize that safety and security is paramount. From this, all other aspects of civil society can advance. Iraq has vast oil resources and plenty of reconstruction and development opportunities that can be financed through the sale of oil on the world market. These projects would re-employ large numbers of Iraqis who are currently out of work and express their frustration through support or active participation in anti-government and anti-US activities.

As we have stated repeatedly, this is the essence of the "long war" in Iraq. It will require that US and coalition troops remain in Iraq in some form for another decade, but a more peaceful and secure outcome is much more likely than what we see today, given the current strategy. If we had started the proposed strategy at the start of the "post invasion" phase in Iraq, we would be well on our way to a successful outcome.

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Frederick W. Kagan’s interim report from which we quote was presented at the American Enterprise Institutes discussion "Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success" on December 14, 2006. The full report will be issued in January 2007.

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