The Redhunter

I saw many achievements and an equal number of obstacles during 11 days touring the American brigades spread across central and northern Iraq. (I was traveling in the company of my friend and fellow author Bing West at the invitation of General David Petraeus.) In broad strokes, the picture that emerged was of an Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) organization that is on the run but not yet fully eliminated. AQI has been largely chased out of the capital and its southern and northern belts, but the terrorists have taken refuge in the rural areas of Diyala, Salahaddin, and Ninewa provinces, where, as part of a new operation called Phantom Phoenix, American and Iraqi troops are starting to root them out. ...

As we drove the streets of west Mosul in a Humvee, I saw IED-scarred roads flooded from broken water mains--something I had last seen in Ramadi in April 2007. In many areas, shops were closed and no people were visible on the streets.
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My bleak impressions of northern Iraq were reinforced the next day while visiting Bayji, site of an important oil refinery in Salahaddin province. There are too few American and Iraqi troops stationed here to control a city with a population of 140,000, and it shows.
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A  good deal of work obviously remains to be done before northern Iraq is pacified--the region now accounts for 61 percent of all attacks in Iraq (Baghdad Province is second with 17 percent). But even here you find pockets of normality. We were told that Tal Afar, which had been occupied by the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in 2005-06, remains relatively stable. We saw for ourselves the resounding success in Kirkuk, a city made up of Kurds and Sunni Arabs. While Bayji has been hit with nine major VBIEDs (vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices) in the past two months, Kirkuk has gone four months without any successful such attacks. The Kirkuk marketplace is bustling and full of Iraqi police. The vibe here was as friendly as it had been hostile in Bayji. No one shot at us. The highlight of my visit was buying a small mountain of delicious baklava for less than $5 from a friendly storekeeper.

The security situation is just as good in western Iraq. Anbar Province, the scene of the heaviest fighting from 2003 to 2007, has become so quiet that Marines are complaining of boredom and their inability to earn combat action ribbons. The transformation in the southern Baghdad belt is less complete but in many cases just as dramatic....

Similar sentiments were expressed in the Dora district of western Baghdad. A predominantly Sunni neighborhood, Dora had been the scene of heavy fighting in 2006, which turned it into a ghost town. The American-led offensive of 2007 produced a dramatic turnaround. Concrete walls were erected to limit access to the neighborhood while American and Iraqi security forces, working out of small bases, confronted the militants. The cumulative impact of such steps has been dramatic: Multi-National Division-Baghdad calculates that 75 percent of the capital is now under control, up from just 8 percent a year ago.
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Many factors account for the dramatic turnaround. First was the willingness of President Bush to commit more American forces to what was widely deemed a lost cause. Just as important was General David Petraeus's decision to switch the U.S. mission from handing off authority willy-nilly to the Iraqis in favor of trying to secure the safety of the Iraqi population--a basic tenet of counterinsurgency strategy that had never been implemented on a large-scale in Iraq. This meant moving many U.S. soldiers off giant forward operating bases into smaller joint security stations and combat outposts where they could work closely with Iraqi security forces to gain the confidence of the population. Iraqis in turn responded by ratting out the terrorists hiding in plain sight.

But while this growing success would not have been possible absent the American role, it also could not have occurred were it not for the willingness of tens of thousands of Iraqis to come forward and take up arms against extremists, both Sunni and Shia. The Iraqi Security Forces, particularly the army, have grown in size and effectiveness over the past year. In much of southern Iraq, they are the ones maintaining order: imperfectly to be sure, but with only minimal help from coalition forces.

But even more important than the Iraqi Security Forces has been the role played by what American commanders call Concerned Local Citizens (CLCs)--mainly though not exclusively Sunnis who have banded together to chase insurgents out of their neighborhoods. This process, known as the Awakening (sahwa in Arabic), started in Anbar Province in September 2006 and has since spread across all the Sunni areas of Iraq and even into parts of the largely Shiite south. There are more than 80,000 CLCs--with 70,000 of them on the American payroll earning an average of $300 a month: a good wage in Iraq. They enhance not only security but also economic activity.
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Many of the CLC members are former insurgents themselves who made a conscious decision to switch sides, and coalition forces have received few reports of any going back to fighting the government. The success of the CLCs may be judged from the fact that they have themselves become a top target for AQI....

American commanders who work closely with them rave about the effectiveness of the CLCs. Their main concern is the opposite of the one so often heard in Washington: Instead of worrying about what the CLCs will do if they remain in business, they worry about what they will do if they go out of business.
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American commanders also worry about the performance, or the lack thereof, of the Iraqi government. The theory behind the surge is that a reduction in violence would make possible political reconciliation. There is some evidence of this occurring, especially at the local level. But at the national level the record is spotty.
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American diplomatic and military officials have an increasingly low opinion of Maliki. They argue, as do many Iraqis, that he has not been able to overcome the paranoid, conspiratorial habits he developed as an exile plotting against Saddam Hussein.
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An even more profound cause for hope is that the Americans are finding so many effective partners--Iraqis who are willing to risk their necks to fight with the coalition against extremists, both Shiite and Sunni. Some of these men are members of the CLCs. Others are part of the Iraqi army, which in many areas is undertaking the same kind of civil-affairs work as the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps.
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... the United States has a real chance to secure a historic victory in Iraq--one that would deal a heavy blow to Sunni and Shiite extremists alike. But only if we don't pull out too many forces too soon, whether motivated by the illusion that we have already won or the delusion that we can never win. The reality is that we are winning but that the war is far from over. We need to make a long-term commitment to prevent Iraq from sliding back into the kind of civil war that began to erupt in 2006. As Abbas put it, "It's very important for your forces to stay here and kick the bad people out." His views were echoed by Abu Abed, a leader of the CLCs in the Ameriya neighborhood of Baghdad. "If coalition forces left it would be a disaster. All of us would get killed," he told us.

There is much of importance here. First, Boot makes clear that we are succeeding not just because we sent more troops, but because of a change in strategy. Second, despite so much of what you read, Iraqis are in fact stepping up to the plate, at least at the local level. Yes the national government remains disfunctional. Too many here are home are using this as an excuse to pull out. Third, the Concerned Citizens Councils seem to me a true Hearts and Minds strategy in action. Fourth, we are winning but haven't won. All could be lost if we withdraw prematurely (this is also made clear by MG Fil, see link below). It seems to me that we've come this far and are indeed now making progress, so we need to see it through.

Military Briefings

Iraq Briefing - 22 Jan 2008 - Operation Iron Harvest: Maj.Gen. Mark Hertling, Commander of Multi-National Division-North. AOR includes the cities of Balad, Kirkuk, Tikrit, Mosul, and Samarra.

Iraq Briefing - 17 January 2008 - LTG Ray Odierno: Lt.Gen Odierno commands Multi-National Corps - Iraq, and the divisional commanders (major generals) report to him. Odierno is responsible for day-to-day operations in Iraq, and he reports to Gen Petraeus. As part of normal rotations, LTG Odierno will be replaced sometime this month by Lt. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin.

Iraq Briefing - 09 January 2008 - Operation Phantom Phoenix Major General Kevin Bergner, Multi-National Force-Iraq spokesman, and Major General Mark Hertling, commander of Multi-National Division-North. MG Hertling's AOR includes the cities of Balad, Kirkuk, Tikrit, Mosul, and Samarra.

The December General Barry McCaffrey Report on Iraq. McCaffrey is retired, so it's not an official Pentagon briefing.

Iraq Briefing 17 December 2007: Major General Joseph Fil, Commanding General of Multi-National Division-Baghdad and First Cavalry Division. Their AOR is the city of Baghdad. (MG Fil and the 1st Cav has since been rotated back home, and taking their place is the 4th Infantry Division, commanded by MG Jeff Hammond.)

Iraq Briefing 10 December 2007: Maj. Gen. Walter Gaskin, Commanding General, U.S. Marine Corps, of Multinational Force West, II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward). MG Gaskins AOR includes the cities of Ar Ramadi and Fallujah.