Sources of Counter-Surge

The Basic Surge Idea: According to Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the new ground commander in Iraq, the plan for the upcoming operations of American and Iraqi forces in Bagdad will be to target the Shiite militias as well as the neighborhoods that host Sunni insurgents. By July or August, he expects to have established military control over Baghdad at which point it would seem that civilian economic and political reconstruction would take higher priority.

The idea would be to clear extremist Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents out of Baghdad, then hold them through civilian reconstruction. Odierno think the overall project would take two to three years.

Sounds relatively simple doesn't it?

Unfortunately, Odierno and the American command make the mistaken assumption that American military power is stronger than the Iraqi resistance. Ultimately, this is not the case. Gen. Odierno is confident American troops can defeat both the Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias in battle and force them far enough underground than they are no longer able to operate in the open. However, there are many reasons to think that the Iraqi resistance can either pick the American occupiers to death or engage in their own kind of counter-surge. Either way, the Iraqis may turn out to be the stronger force. Drawing from a June 19 post to my "Caric Comment" blog, I ouline some reasons for thinking this below.

1. Religious/Ethnic Fervor. The first and most important reason is the escalating religious sectarianism of both the Shiite and Sunni populations. Outside Kurdish controlled areas, Iraq is a much more religiously motivated society than it was before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the intensity of sectarian passion on both the Sunni and Shiite sides has made much of the country into an ethnic and religious tinderbox. The power of Muslim sectarianism in Iraqi society can be seen in the explosion of violence after the Samarra bombing in March. When new American troops come into Baghdad, they will only be seeking to control the outcomes of heightened sectarianism in death squad killings and other violence. They won't have any impact on the intensified religiosity and sectarian communal solidarity itself.

The first potential challenge would most likely come from the Shiite community. If the U. S. seeks to destroy the Mahdi Army and it's political, military, and social service apparatus, they could be faced with a general revolt by the Shiite population, especially the people in the Sadr City slum. If that's the case, then the first result of the American surge will have been a major escalation of the popular insurgency and American troops would have to put down the revolt before they sought to establish order.

If the Shiite population does not revolt, there is the likelihood that the Mahdi Army apparatus would fragment (in the same way that the Sunni insurgency fragmented) with small groups of Shiites making it their business to pick off American troops through bomb attacks, small arms fire, and a mortar here and there. While seeking to suppress the low level attacks, the American military command would have to be very wary of not doing anything to spark a large-scale Shiite uprising through indiscriminate killings, targeting the wrong people, and the like. They would also have to worry about not sparking widespread civil disobedience campaigns.

2. Hostility to Occupation. A second source for mutating crises is the hostility of the Iraqi Arab population to the occupation. From the grieving relatives of those killed by the occupation armies, to teen-agers cheering the destruction of American vehicles, to Prime Minister Maliki complaining about the frequent murders of Iraqi civilians, the occupation long ago wore out its welcome with the host Iraqi population. Another 7,500 to 20,000 busy American troops is going to frustrate the Iraqi population much further. Given that Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias are thoroughly embedded in Baghdad neighborhoods, clearing out the militias might mean having to conquer and occupy the whole populations of the neighborhoods in question. That would only make local residents even more disposed to house the insurgents, volunteer for suicide attacks, provide warnings for American troops, and the like.

3. Ineffective Government. The third reason for the relative strength of the insurgency is the relative weakness of the Iraqi government. The inexperience of Iraqi politicians with governing makes the infiltration of the government by insurgents and sectarian militias easy, corruption an appealing first choice, compromise extremely difficult, and concerted action apparently impossible. Needless to say, the Iraqi government has not been able to exercise control over the hostile Sunni population. However, it doesn't seem to exercise any kind of legitimate authority over its Shiite constituents or its own personnel either. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is speaking a lot of brave words about punishing military units that don't report to Bagdad for surge operations, but it seems doubtful that Maliki and Iraqi generals can count on Shiite soldiers to suppress (rather than join) the Shiite militias. The Iraqi government is an especially flimsy paper tiger.

4. The Bush administration. Finally, there is the lack of effort by the Bush administration. It would be a lot easier for the Americans to deal with the problems of Baghdad if people in Baghdad had 24 hours of electricity, readily available gas, and stable employment. There is talk of doubling the money for economic reconstruction, but that will probably be a drop in the bucket. Ultimately, the Bush administration is not strong enough to change any of the economic conditions that contribute to continually escalating violence in Iraq.

As a result, the likely outcome of the surge is the same as the drug war in the United States. Like the DEA and the police in the United States, the American military will be very active, exercise a lot of ingenuity, and round up a lot of bad guys. However, because the American military does not have the power to dampen religious sectarianism, overcome hostility to the occupation, or strengthen the Iraqi government, American generals will find themselves in a situation where small incidents can morph into large-scale surges in violence that render the whole operation futile. It's very difficult to see the surge as being anything but another failure.