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The Defense Department counted 87 attacks per day on U.S. forces in August - the worst monthly average since Bush's flight-suited visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003. Preliminary analysis of the July and August numbers also suggests that U.S. troops are being attacked across a wider area of Iraq than ever before. ... Another ominous sign is the growing number of towns that U.S. troops simply avoid."
It's Worse Than You Think
By Scott Johnson and Babak Dehghanpisheh
Newsweek
Monday September 20 2004 Issue
As Americans debate Vietnam, the U.S. death toll tops 1,000 in Iraq. And
the insurgents are still getting stronger.
Iraqis don't shock easily these days, but eyewitnesses could only blink in
disbelief as they recounted last Tuesday's broad-daylight kidnappings in central
Baghdad. At about 5 in the afternoon, on a quiet side street outside the Ibn
Haitham hospital, a gang armed with pistols, AK-47s and pump-action shotguns
raided a small house used by three Italian aid groups. The gunmen, none of them
wearing masks, took orders from a smooth-shaven man in a gray suit; they called
him "sir." When they drove off, the gunmen had four hostages: two
local NGO employees - one of them a woman who was dragged out of the house by
her headscarf - and two 29-year-old Italians, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta,
both members of the antiwar group A Bridge to Baghdad. The whole job took less
than 10 minutes. Not a shot was fired. About 15 minutes afterward, an American
Humvee convoy passed hardly a block away - headed in the opposite direction.
Sixteen months after the war's supposed end, Iraq's insurgency is spreading.
Each successful demand by kidnappers has spawned more hostage-takings - to make
Philippine troops go home, to stop Turkish truckers from hauling supplies into
Iraq, to extort fat ransom payments from Kuwaitis. The few relief groups that
remain in Iraq are talking seriously about leaving. U.S. forces have effectively
ceded entire cities to the insurgents, and much of the country elsewhere is a
battleground. Last week the total number of U.S. war dead in Iraq passed the
1,000 mark, reaching 1,007 by the end of Saturday.
U.S. forces are working frantically to train Iraqis for the thankless job of
maintaining public order. The aim is to boost Iraqi security forces from 95,000
to 200,000 by sometime next year. Then, using a mixture of force and diplomacy,
the Americans plan to retake cities and install credible local forces. That's
the hope, anyway. But the quality of new recruits is debatable. During recent
street demonstrations in Najaf, police opened fire on crowds, killing and
injuring dozens. The insurgents, meanwhile, are recruiting, too. Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once referred to America's foes in Iraq as
"dead-enders," then the Pentagon maintained they probably numbered
5,000, and now senior military officials talk about "dozens of regional
cells" that could call upon as many as 20,000 fighters.
Yet U.S. officials publicly insist that Iraq will somehow hold national
elections before the end of January. The appointed council currently acting as
Iraq's government under interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is to be replaced by
an elected constitutional assembly - if the vote takes place. "I presume
the election will be delayed," says the Iraqi Interior Ministry's chief
spokesman, Sabah Kadhim. A senior Iraqi official sees no chance of January
elections: "I'm convinced that it's not going to happen. It's just not
realistic. How is it going to happen?" Some Iraqis worry that America will
stick to its schedule despite all obstacles. "The Americans have created a
series of fictional dates and events in order to delude themselves," says
Ghassan Atiyya, director of the independent Iraq Foundation for Development and
Democracy, who recently met with Allawi and American representatives to discuss
the January agenda. "Badly prepared elections, rather than healing wounds,
will open them."
America has its own Election Day to worry about. For U.S. troops in Iraq, one
especially sore point is the stateside public's obsession with the candidates'
decades-old military service. "Stop talking about Vietnam," says one
U.S. official who has spent time in the Sunni Triangle. "People should be
debating this war, not that one." His point was not that America ought to
walk away from Iraq. Hardly any U.S. personnel would call that a sane
suggestion. But there's widespread agreement that Washington needs to rethink
its objectives, and quickly. "We're dealing with a population that hovers
between bare tolerance and outright hostility," says a senior U.S. diplomat
in Baghdad. "This idea of a functioning democracy here is crazy. We thought
that there would be a reprieve after sovereignty, but all hell is breaking
loose."
It's not only that U.S. casualty figures keep climbing. American counterinsurgency experts are noticing some disturbing trends in those statistics. The Defense Department counted 87 attacks per day on U.S. forces in August - the worst monthly average since Bush's flight-suited visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003. Preliminary analysis of the July and August numbers also suggests that U.S. troops are being attacked across a wider area of Iraq than ever before. And the number of gunshot casualties apparently took a huge jump in August. Until then, explosive devices and shrapnel were the primary cause of combat injuries, typical of a "phase two" insurgency, where sudden ambushes are the rule. (Phase one is the recruitment phase, with most actions confined to sabotage. That's how things started in Iraq.) Bullet wounds would mean the insurgents are standing and fighting - a step up to phase three.
Another ominous sign is the growing number of towns that U.S. troops simply
avoid. A senior Defense official objects to calling them "no-go
areas." "We could go into them any time we wanted," he argues.
The preferred term is "insurgent enclaves." They're spreading.
Counterinsurgency experts call it the "inkblot strategy": take control
of several towns or villages and expand outward until the areas merge. The first
city lost to the insurgents was Fallujah, in April. Now the list includes the
Sunni Triangle cities of Ar Ramadi, Baqubah and Samarra, where power shifted
back and forth between the insurgents and American-backed leaders last week.
"There is no security force there [in Fallujah], no local government,"
says a senior U.S. military official in Baghdad. "We would get attacked
constantly. Forget about it."
U.S. military planners only wish they could. "What we see is a classic
progression," says Andrew Krepinevich, author of the highly respected study
"The Army and Vietnam." "What we also see is that the U.S.
military is not trained or organized to fight insurgencies. That was the
deliberate choice after Vietnam. Now we look to be paying the price."
Americans aren't safe even on the outskirts of a city like Fallujah. Early last
week a suicide bomber rammed his vehicle into two U.S. Humvees nine miles north
of town on the four-lane concrete bypass called Highway 10. Seven Americans
died. It was one of the deadliest blows against U.S. forces since June, when
Iraqis formally resumed control of their government.
As much as ordinary Iraqis may hate the insurgents, they blame the Americans for
creating the whole mess. Three months ago Iraqi troops and U.S.-dominated
"multinational forces" pulled out of Samarra, and insurgents took over
the place immediately. "The day the MNF left, people celebrated in the
streets," says Kadhim, the Interior spokesman. "But that same day,
vans arrived in town and started shooting. They came from Fallujah and other
places and they started blowing up houses." Local elders begged Allawi's
government to send help. "The leaders of the tribes come to see us and they
say, 'Really, we are scared, we don't like these people'," Kadhim
continues. "But we just don't have the forces at the moment to help
them." Last week negotiators reached a tentative peace deal, but it's not
likely to survive long. The Iraqi National Guard is the only homegrown security
force that people respect, and all available ING personnel are deployed
elsewhere.
Will Iraq's troubles get even worse? "The insurgency can certainly sustain
what it's doing for a while," says a senior U.S. military official. Many
educated Iraqis aren't waiting to find out. Applicants mobbed the courtyard of
the Baghdad passport office last week, desperate for a chance to escape. Police
fired shots in the air, trying to control the crowd. "Every day there is
shooting, gunfire, people killed, headaches for lack of sleep," said Huda
Hussein, 34, a Ph.D. in computer science who has spent the past year and a half
looking for work. "I want to go to a calm place for a while." It's too
bad for Iraq - and for America - that the insurgents don't share that wish.