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May 21, 2004
More Stratfor Iraq analysis
Posted by Jon Henke
I've already blogged on this Stratfor analysis of the current situation in Iraq, but I couldn't get to all of it. More important bits now.
 Unlike many, we expected extended resistance in Iraq, although we did not expect the complexity of the guerrilla war that emerged. Moreover, we understood that the invasion would generate hostility toward the United States within the Islamic world, but we felt this would be compensated by dramatic shifts in the behavior of governments in the region. All of this has happened.
Even if the majority of Iraqis welcomed our intervention, I would suggest that anybody who did not know we would experience ongoing internal resistance in Iraq wasn't paying attention. Aside from any ambitions new leaders might have, what in the world did we expect the supporters and employees of the deposed regime would do? They can hardly be expected to rejoin civil society without dire consequences. How does one transition from "operative in Saddam's Intelligence Agency" to "friendly guy next door"?
Answer: They don't. They keep fighting, because they can never go back. And Stratfor sees this as an impossible obstacle to democratization....
Under the best of circumstances, this was not something the United States had the resources to achieve. Iraq is a complex and multi-layered society with many competing interests. The idea that the United States would be able to effectively preside over this society, shepherding it to democracy, was difficult to conceive even in the best of circumstances. Under the circumstances that began to emerge only days after the fall of Baghdad, it was an unachievable goal and an impossible mission. The creation of a viable democracy in the midst of a civil war, even if Iraqi society were amenable to copying American institutions, was an impossibility. The one thing that should have been learned in Vietnam was that the evolution of political institutions in the midst of a sustained guerrilla war is impossible.
This, I suppose, is what we will find out over the next few years. Whether democracy can come into existence in the face of resistance by the minority. I suspect we'll see one of two outcomes: the Iraqi people will unite against the insurgents, or they will unite around a strongman. Neither is unacceptably damaging to US interests, but unity against the insurgents is far preferable.
Here's a longer excerpt, laying out the two problems this presented the US military....
This miscalculation drew the U.S. Army into the two types of warfare for which it is least suited.
First, it drew the Army into the cities, where the work of reconstruction -- physical and political -- had to be carried out. Having dismantled Iraqi military and police institutions, the Army found itself in the role of policing the cities. This would have been difficult enough had there not been a guerrilla war. With a guerrilla war -- much of it concentrated in heavily urbanized areas and the roads connecting cities -- the Army found itself trapped in low-intensity urban warfare in which its technical advantages dissolved and the political consequences of successful counterattacks outweighed the value of defeating the guerrillas. Destroying three blocks of Baghdad to take out a guerrilla squad made military sense, but no political sense. The Army could neither act effectively nor withdraw.
Second, the Army was lured into counterinsurgency warfare. No subject has been studied more extensively by the U.S. Army, and no subject remains as opaque. The guerrilla seeks to embed himself among the general population. Distinguishing him is virtually impossible, particularly for a 20-year-old soldier or Marine who speaks not a word of the language nor understands the social cues that might guide him. In this circumstance, the soldier is simply a target, a casualty waiting to happen.
The usual solution is to raise an indigenous force to fight the guerrillas. The problem is that the most eager recruits for this force are the guerrillas themselves: They not only get great intelligence, but weapons, ammunition and three square meals a day. Sometimes, pre-existing militias are used, via a political arrangement. But these militias have very different agendas than those of the occupying force, and frequently maneuver the occupier into doing their job for them. I would note that this is the reason I've generally opposed any significant increase in troop level in Iraq. We're not suffering from a manpower disadvantage - or, really, any disadvantage that can be solved by throwing more firepower at the problem - we suffer from the inability to do anything productive with the force we already have. The troops we already have are sufficient to quell uprisings over 100 insurgents, and deal with small squads of insurgent gunmen. 100 US troops can kill 10 gunmen just as effectively as can 200 US troops. But 200 troops are 100 more targets for those gunmen. The problem is not the power we can apply, but the problem of when and how to do it.
So, Stratfor regards the insurgency as an unsolvable problem. Their recommendation?
The United States must recall its original mission, which was to occupy Iraq in order to prosecute the war against al Qaeda. If that mission is remembered, and the mission creep of reshaping Iraq forgotten, some obvious strategic solutions re-emerge. The first, and most important, is that the United States has no national interest in the nature of Iraqi government or society. Except for not supporting al Qaeda, Iraq's government does not matter. Since the Iraqi Shia have an inherent aversion to Wahabbi al Qaeda, the political path on that is fairly clear.
The United States now cannot withdraw from Iraq. We can wonder about the wisdom of the invasion, but a withdrawal under pressure would be used by al Qaeda and radical Islamists as demonstration of their core point: that the United States is inherently weak and, like the Soviet Union, ripe for defeat. Having gone in, withdrawal in the near term is not an option.
That does not mean U.S. forces must be positioned in and near urban areas. There is a major repositioning under way to reduce the size of the U.S. presence in the cities, but there is, nevertheless, a more fundamental shift to be made. The United States undertook responsibility for security in Iraq after its invasion. It cannot carry out this mission. Therefore, it has to abandon the mission. Some might argue this would leave a vacuum. We would argue there already is a vacuum, filled only with American and coalition targets. It is not a question of creating anarchy; anarchy already exists. It is a question of whether the United States wishes to lose soldiers in an anarchic situation.
The geography of Iraq provides a solution.
Click here to see Potential U.S. Basing Locations
http://www.stratfor.com/iraq_map.neo
The bulk of Iraq's population lives in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys. To the south and west of the Euphrates River, there is a vast and relatively uninhabited region of Iraq -- not very hospitable, but with less shooting than on the other side. The western half of Iraq borders Saudi Arabia and Syria, two of the countries about which the United States harbors the most concern. A withdrawal from the river basins would allow the United States to carry out its primary mission -- maintaining regional pressure -- without engaging in an impossible war.
Moreover, in the Kurdish regions of the northeast, where U.S. Special Forces have operated for a very long time, U.S. forces could be based -- and supplied -- in order to maintain a presence on the Iranian border.
Iraq should then be encouraged to develop a Shiite-dominated government, the best guarantor against al Qaeda and the greatest incentive for the Iranians not to destabilize the situation. The fate of the Sunnis will rest in the deal they can negotiate with the Shia and Kurds -- and, as they say, that is their problem.
The United States could supply the forces in western and southern Iraq from Kuwait, without the fear that convoy routes would be cut in urban areas. In the relatively uninhabited regions, distinguishing guerrillas from rocks would be somewhat easier than distinguishing them from innocent bystanders. The force could, if it chose, execute a broad crescent around Iraq, touching all the borders but not the populations.
The Iraqi government might demand at some point that the United States withdraw, but they would have no way to impose their demand, as they would if U.S. forces could continue to be picked off with improvised explosive devices and sniper fire. The geographical move would help to insulate U.S. forces from even this demand, assuming political arrangements could not be made.
Certainly the land is inhospitable, and serious engineering and logistical efforts would be required to accommodate basing for large numbers of troops. However, large numbers of troops might not be necessary -- and the engineering and logistical problems certainly will not make headlines around the world.
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