Debunking the Dominant Iraq Narrative

I've occasionally blogged about the power of "the surge" narrative. Both the Bush administration, for obvious reasons, and the Obama administration (because of Afghanistan) have a strong political interest in embracing the alleged success in Iraq.

Time magazine intern Nate Rawlings, formerly of the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division and now a student at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, returned briefly to Iraq last fall and addressed this powerful framing of events. The following analysis appeared just before the November 2010 elections, though Iraq was NOT a significant issue in the campaign:

RAWLINGS: According to the American narrative, enlightened U.S. military commanders co-opted the insurgents, persuading them to point their guns away from us and toward al-Qaeda. But the story is told differently here: Sheik Abdel Jabbar al-Feydawi, leader of the Albu Fahed tribe, rallied his people against al-Qaeda because the terrorists murdered his brother. He did it with little assistance from the Americans and took none of their reconstruction money.

What is perhaps most interesting about this is that Rawlings is not really debunking "the surge" narrative related to increasing manpower. Rather, he is challenging the Anbar Awakening and, at least indirectly, the effectiveness of U.S. COIN strategy.


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Did "the Surge" really fail?

Did the surge save Iraq? A lot of security and foreign policy experts have attempted to answer that question -- and they provide an assortment of answers.

A unique team of scholars from UCLA has published their latest research that directly challenges the standard political narrative about the effectiveness of "the surge" in Iraq:

By tracking the amount of light emitted by Baghdad neighborhoods at night, a team of UCLA geographers has uncovered fresh evidence that last year's U.S. troop surge in Iraq may not have been as effective at improving security as some U.S. officials have maintained.

Night light in neighborhoods populated primarily by embattled Sunni residents declined dramatically just before the February 2007 surge and never returned, suggesting that ethnic cleansing by rival Shiites may have been largely responsible for the decrease in violence for which the U.S. military has claimed credit, the team reports in a new study based on publicly available satellite imagery.

"Essentially, our interpretation is that violence has declined in Baghdad because of intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the surge was beginning," said lead author John Agnew, a UCLA professor of geography and authority on ethnic conflict. "By the launch of the surge, many of the targets of conflict had either been killed or fled the country, and they turned off the lights when they left."

Professor Agnew, the president of the American Association of Geographers, the leading professional organization in geography, specifically targets claims made by General Petraeus (and his supproters) about the efficacy of the military strategy:

"The surge really seems to have been a case of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted," Agnew said...

In addition to casting doubt on the efficacy of the surge in general, the study calls into question the success of a specific strategy of the surge, namely separating neighborhoods of rival sectarian groups by erecting concrete blast walls between them. The differences in light signatures had already started to appear by the time American troops began erecting the walls under General David Petraeus's direction, the researchers found.

"The U.S. military was sealing off neighborhoods that were no longer really active ribbons of violence, largely because the Shiites were victorious in killing large numbers of Sunnis or driving them out of the city all together," Agnew said. "The large portion of the refugees from Iraq who went during this period to Jordan and Syria are from these neighborhoods."

Incidentally, data presented last fall by the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq, headed by General James L. Jones, would seem to confirm the geographers' conclusions.

As I argued last year, the authors find that ethnic cleansing -- as well as internal displacement -- seems to explain the reduction in violence in Baghdad:

The night-light signature in four other large Iraqi cities — Kirkuk, Mosul, Tikrit and Karbala — held steady or increased between the spring of 2006 and the winter of 2007, the UCLA team found. None of these cities were targets of the surge.

Baghdad's decreases were centered in the southwestern Sunni strongholds of East and West Rashid, where the light signature dropped 57 percent and 80 percent, respectively, during the same period.

By contrast, the night-light signature in the notoriously impoverished, Shiite-dominated Sadr City remained constant, as it did in the American-dominated Green Zone. Light actually increased in Shiite-dominated New Baghdad, the researchers found.

Until just before the surge, the night-light signature of Baghdad had been steadily increasing overall, they report in "Baghdad Nights: Evaluating the U.S. Military 'Surge' Using Night Light Signatures."

"If the surge had truly 'worked,' we would expect to see a steady increase in night-light output over time, as electrical infrastructure continued to be repaired and restored, with little discrimination across neighborhoods," said co-author Thomas Gillespie, an associate professor of geography at UCLA. "Instead, we found that the night-light signature diminished in only in certain neighborhoods, and the pattern appears to be associated with ethno-sectarian violence and neighborhood ethnic cleansing."

Incidentally, the study authors apparently controlled for Baghdad's weak electrical power grid.


Hat tip: Mark Thoma.

Here's the academic citation for the Agnew article: Agnew J, Gillespie T W, Gonzalez J, Min B, 2008, "Baghdad nights: evaluating the US military ‘surge’ using nighttime light signatures" Environment and Planning A 40(10) 2285 – 2295


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The Iraq narrative

Influential right-leaning blogger Engram repeatedly provides his readers with a coherent narrative that supports continued war in Iraq. He writes that the violence in Iraq is triggered by AQI's suicide bombers. They attack civilians in an attempt to spark civil war -- convincing the US to leave and thus creating an opportunity for AQI to create a caliphate. In his view, Iraq is not suffering a civil war and the surge was purely about fighting AQI, not about making time for political progress. If the US exits Iraq, Engram is convinced that AQI will escalate its suicide bomber campaign.

It's a powerful narrative and potentially useful for John McCain in the fall. In fact, he often writes as if this is McCain's view of the war.

Allow me to quote from one of Engram's most recent posts. First, he claims that the surge was not designed to allow political progress in Iraq -- and that political progress in Iraq is virtually irrelevant. Rather, he says that the

standard mental maneuver on the left...is to adopt the assumption that all of these gains are temporary unless the Iraqis show some fast political progress...Political progress would "presumably address the tensions underlying the violence"? I don't think so...even if every last political benchmark were achieved, we'd still have a big fight on our hands, and our simple choice is to win that fight (the John McCain option) or to immediately surrender (the Barack Obama option). There is no other choice, unfortunately, and all the political progress in the world is not going to change that fact.

Engram repeatedly denies that Iraq is suffering a civil war.

Indeed, Engram's other much-repeated point is that Al Qaeda of Iraq is responsible for the violence in Iraq:

[AQI is] the terrorist organization that is most responsible for violence in Iraq....the first step towards achieving a better understanding of what is happening in Iraq is to realize that your much-cherished "civil war" scenario is all wrong and always has been. You can appreciate how wrong it is by considering the simple fact that, now, Americans, Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds are all working against some un-namable foe in Iraq. Once you finally name that foe, you will then be in a position to rethink the widely accepted notion that its all about political progress in Iraq.

Obviously, this is a remarkably coherent and seemingly persuasive narrative.

What do the American military leaders say about Engram's thesis? Though he frequently quotes them, I'm not so sure they would agree with him.

Commander Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno just returned from Iraq, where he was day-to-day commander of military operations in Iraq. The following material is from his March 4 press briefing at the Pentagon:

I returned about two weeks ago. As you know, we were focused for 15 months in Iraq on improving the security situation, which allowed a window of opportunity for economic development, improved governance and enhancement of the Iraqi security forces...

The situation in Iraq is now largely a communal struggle for power and resources. Both intra-Shi'a, intra-Sunni competition as well as external influences are at the center of issues facing the government of Iraq...

We can likely make some more progress in security, but the focus must shift to jobs and economic opportunity, making strides in governance both nationally and, just as important, locally, and a continued bettering of the Iraqi security forces, bolstering both their capacity and their ability to conduct independent operations.

Hmmm. Odierno's "communal struggle for power and resources" sounds a lot like a civil war, doesn't it? And progress now depends upon economic and political (governance) progress?

What about AQI's role and the source of violence in Iraq?

Here are some additional remarks Odierno made to a reporter in an interview the same week:

"In order to have another significant decline [in violence], it is going to take economic progress, governance progress, and I think that's the next step," the former commander, Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, said in an interview Wednesday at his Fort Hood headquarters...

Odierno said that about half of the attacks currently being carried out against American and Iraqi forces and civilians were conducted by Shiite militant groups.

Odierno does attribute the remaining violence to AQI, but Engram's claim is wildly off the mark.

I'm guessing Engram would counter that the "communal" violence merely reflects the success of AQI's strategy. The ethnic groups wouldn't be killing each other if it weren't for AQI's suicide bombers. Actually, however, Odierno blames Iran for the Shiite mischief and says that AQI is fairly weak right now. The Shiite state of Iran is certainly NOT sympathetic to Sunni al Qaeda.

Oh, Odierno also says that it will be impossible to root out AQI completely.

they will always be there at some level. But what you want them to be, you want them to get to a point where they become almost a nonentity

Odierno notes that AQI is already so desperate recruiting suicide bombers in Iraq that they had to use two women with Down's syndrome -- and the bombs were remotely detonated. They weren't even suicide bombers!

I've previously noted research demonstrating that suicide terrorism is motivated by foreign occupation and the evidence from past campaigns suggests that it stops when the occupation ends.


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At the Duck

Lately, at the Duck of Minerva, I have blogged the following:

November 20, "The decline in Iraqi violence" which explains why "the surge" may not explain the recent decline in violence in Iraq.

Tuesday, November 13: I blogged "Breathe easier, DC and NYC," which is about the (un)reality of so-called "suitcase nukes."

Saturday, November 10: "Is neoconservatism still vibrant?" The title speaks for itself.

Thanks for reading.


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Duck

Over at the Duck, today, I posted "Where'd you hide the body?" about the decline in civilian death rates in Iraq. About 2 million people have fled their homes this year -- 1.2 million of those are reportedly from Baghdad -- so, where's the good news, exactly? While it is true that those who fled are not dead, it is NOT necessarily true that they were saved by the success of the surge.

Also noteworthy: a former student sent me a link to an interesting photoblog called Life Goes on in Tehran. The photographer is someone who used to live in California, but now lives in Tehran. Check out the great images -- and envy the ready availability of pomegranates.


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The debate about the surge

Red S Tater is back (see comments here) and has issued a "challenge" for me to revise my comments about the report General Petraeus delivered to Congress a couple of weeks ago.

Red is touting a blog post by "Professor Engram," which purports to show that civilian violence in Iraq is down since the surge began. In other words, Petraeus is right and the surge is working.

Specifically, Red claims that Engram

"refuted the moveon.org claim and analysis completely. You DO agree with the moveon.org ad in terms of it's claim that the "books were cooked"..?" I could be wrong but it seems like that was your basic take over at Minerva a while back.

At first I was going to ignore Red since I've said nothing about MoveOn and I did not specifically argue that the books were cooked. Mostly mindless "discussions" involving people calling each other names are not of much interest to me.

Nonetheless, I looked at Red's link and readily noticed that Professor Engram doesn't address, let alone refute, most of my specific comments.

Yes, Engram compares the summer decline in violence 2007 to the same time period in 2006, but where is the data for 2005 or 2004 or 2003? Using only the data Engram highlights, it is clear that the August 2007 violence is now down to roughly the level of January through April 2006. This very strongly suggests that civilian violence in Iraq remains very high and that the surge will have no meaningful long-term effect. After all, the surge is about to end for lack of troops and the goal was not merely to return the violence to an already high level.

Moreover, I would add that nobody who looks at this kind of evidence focuses too much attention on a single data outlier. What if August 2007 proves to be a genuine anomaly? There are going to be peaks and valleys in the casualty data over a period of years. Generally, Iraq continues to be an unsafe place to live (only Sudan ranks below Iraq on the failed state index).

Engram says nothing about refugees. Iraq's population is about 27.5 million; yet, over 100,000 people are apparently fleeing Iraq per month. Over a one year period, that's over 4% of the population. We would expect nearly 100 fewer monthly dead civilians in Iraq just from a reduced population base.

Past ethnic cleansing has also likely contributed to the decline in violence. The potential victims have segregated themselves.

And, of course, none of the body count data addresses the social issue I highlighted in my critique. Most Iraqis think it is OK to kill American troops -- and the number saying that has increased significantly since the surge started. Counterinsurgency cannot succeed in that context.

One has to look at the big picture, Red. There's no evidence that the surge is winning the "hearts and minds" of Iraqis. There's been almost no genuine political progress in Iraq and even the American generals say that the insurgency won't be defeated militarily. The civil war has to end politically.


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Petraeus

I posted my initial thoughts about General Petraeus's testimony over at the Duck.

Locally, you might hear me on WFPL (89.3 FM) in the next day or so.

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Iraq: more cracks in the coalition

While I've often noted the withdrawal of nation-states from the so-called "coalition of the willing," this post is about Republican Senators who are now expressing much stronger frustration with the Iraq war. Senator Voinovich of Ohio, for example, recently called for gradual troop withdrawal.

However, this post focuses on the views of Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), a widely respected foreign policy voice. On June 25, Lugar delivered a speech on the Senate floor that has received a fair amount of press coverage. These sentences were in his opening paragraph:

In my judgment, our course in Iraq has lost contact with our vital national security interests in the Middle East and beyond. Our continuing absorption with military activities in Iraq is limiting our diplomatic assertiveness there and elsewhere in the world. The prospects that the current “surge” strategy will succeed in the way originally envisioned by the President are very limited within the short period framed by our own domestic political debate.

If you read the speech, it is quite clear that Lugar has not joined the anti-war movement. He does not call for rapid withdrawal. However, he is quite skeptical about "the surge" and wants the U.S. to pursue an alternative plan that would require fewer troops:

I believe that we do have viable options that could strengthen our position in the Middle East, and reduce the prospect of terrorism, regional war, and other calamities. But seizing these opportunities will require the President to downsize the U.S. military’s role in Iraq and place much more emphasis on diplomatic and economic options. It will also require members of Congress to be receptive to overtures by the President to construct a new policy outside the binary choice of surge versus withdrawal.

Lugar foresees continuing sectarian factionalism in Iraq, a stressed US military and a domestic debate that is likely to become increasingly partisan as 2008 elections approach.

That means that the US has a narrow window in 2007 to come up with a bipartisan plan for Iraq that would focus on vital interests. His argument is grounded in realism (he approvingly mentions Henry Kissinger's views on Iraq). Lugar:

The risk for decision-makers is that after a long struggle in Iraq, accompanied by a contentious political process at home, we begin to see Iraq as a set piece -- as an end in itself, distinct from the broader interests that we meant to protect. We risk becoming fixated on artificial notions of achieving victory or avoiding defeat, when these ill-defined concepts have little relevance to our operations in Iraq. What is important is not the precise configuration of the Iraqi government or the achievement of specific benchmarks, but rather how Iraq impacts our geostrategic situation in the Middle East and beyond.

The U.S., says Lugar, cannot rest its Middle East policy on building a "stable, democratic, pluralist society in Iraq."

Lugar's sober assessment focuses on top priorities: preventing Iraq from becoming a terror safe haven, preventing Iraqi sectarian violence from sparking regional war, preventing Iranian domination of the region, and limiting the loss of U.S. credibility.

Lugar would lean heaving on the Iraq Study Group as a starting point, but notes that he would downsize and re-deploy US forces to more sustainable positions -- like Kuwait or other states, Kurdish territory, or non-urban areas of Iraq. The force remaining in Iraq would be "residual." Lugar would even downsize the large new American embassy in Iraq. Though he does not say it, such a move would send a strong anti-imperial signal throughout the world.

This changed strategy would take more than six months to accomplish and would necessarily be accompanied by a diplomatic offensive on many fronts. Note that Lugar has been calling for more diplomacy for at least 3 years. The Arab-Israeli conflict receives some attention near the end of Lugar's address, as does the need to reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil.

Let's hope the White House is listening.


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May Day, again

Today, on the fourth anniversary of "mission accomplished," President Bush vetoed the congressional bill that linked Iraq war funding to a troop withdrawal timetable.

The President used strong words to explain his opposition to the bill:

I believe setting a deadline for withdrawal would demoralize the Iraqi people, would encourage killers across the broader Middle East, and send a signal that America will not keep its commitments. Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure

Just like last week, the President claimed that "the surge" is working well. I recently blogged about that over on the Duck of Minerva.

Incidentally, this was Bush's second veto during his 6+ years in the White House.


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