Nir Rosen - Aftermath

“I am a Sunni. I’m sure that 80 percent of Shiites are not satisfied with the United Iraqi Alliance. I have Iraqi friends from Sadr City—they visited me with presents, they cried for the good old days when we were all together. The politicians are the reason for this problem, whether they are Sunnis or Shiites. Neither the Sunnis in the government represent us and help us, nor did the Shiites in the government help the Shiite population. People got tired from the situation. They want to breathe and go out freely. Two bombs exploded by my house targeting me, planted by Al Qaeda to kill me. I was transferred to an American hospital and had operations and survived. One of my sons was burned, and the other was injured.”

After I last saw him, Abul Abed began to seek alliances with other Awakening men in preparation for the upcoming provincial elections. This attempt to become legitimate might have been his undoing. In April a bomb targeting Abul Abed in Amriya wounded him, and he went to Jordan for medical treatment. In June 2008 while he was at a reconciliation conference in Sweden, his house in Iraq was raided on the suspicion that he had been involved in sixty murders or abductions. He never returned to Iraq, settling in Jordan instead. Al Qaeda’s predictions that the Awakening leaders would be disposed of after they served their purpose were proven correct, he said. Abul Abed blamed the Islamic Party, with whom he had a longstanding feud (as Um Omar’s husband could attest). Abu Ibrahim, Abul Abed’s former close aide, took over for him and was perceived by many as a stooge for the Iraqi army who arrested anybody who opposed him.

“I am aware that Abul Abed is in Jordan,” Kuehl told me. “I have had contact with him from time to time and am concerned about his safety as well as that of his family. I am hoping that he will be able to come to the U.S. at some point under refugee status. I do not know the details of why he had to leave. I am pretty sure it was politically motivated.”

Staff Sergeant Joe Hartman had expected Abul Abed to rise in Iraqi politics. “I never thought that he would be betrayed. However, after reading some of the reports about his disrespect for current political leaders when they tried to visit with him, it seems to me that any political savvy he once had was corrupted by the tough military work he performed in Amriya. I can’t imagine anyone remaining unaffected after having to defeat such a ruthless enemy as Al Qaeda, all the time still being persecuted by the Iraqi army for his past. He must have slept with one eye open every night. I hope he finds some peace.”

AMRIYA WOULD BECOME a battleground again, but this time it involved senior U.S. officers, long after they served in Iraq, who quarreled over the efficacy of the surge doctrine. Lieut. Col. Gian Gentile, who preceded Kuehl and went on to teach at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, became the most strident and outspoken voice within the military decrying the cult of counterinsurgency.

Gentile admitted that violence in Amriya had dropped precipitously starting in July 2007. “But the primary condition for that lowering of violence in Amriya was the deal cut with Abed and the SOIs,” he maintained. “Was Dale Kuehl instrumental in that role? Yes, most certainly he was. Might another battalion commander less savvy to the area have missed that opportunity? Sure. But did the opportunity arise because Dale and his battalion were doing things in terms of COIN tactics and methods that were fundamentally different than mine? No. The COPs [combat outposts] didn’t go into Amriya until after the deal had been cut.”

Kuehl was unwilling to criticize Gentile publicly, but he believed that his time in Amriya during the surge did involve new and innovative tactics that led to success. “In general they were doing COIN operations,” he said of Gentile and his men, “but we did change some things based on training and lessons learned that were pretty standard throughout the Army during our preparation, [placing a] heavy emphasis on COIN. Some of the criticism Gian has received is a bit unfair. He and his men were not hiding out on the FOB [Forward Operating Base], and they were patrolling every day. However, Gian’s assertion that we did nothing different is false. He cites a lieutenant in my battalion who says that we had not really changed anything. At the platoon level, it may not have been much different, but I think it was different at the battalion and brigade level.”

The two men had admirers and detractors. I spoke to one captain who served under both in Amriya. He described Gentile as “an intelligent, thoughtful, and caring leader who lost a lot of soldiers and took each of their deaths very, very personally. He was a pleasure to work for, and in the short time I worked for him, for two months, he took the time to mentor me. Unlike many of our senior leaders, he actually had some useful knowledge to pass on. I believe that his current arguments hold merit, but I wish he would quit responding to everything like it was an ad hominem. I truly believe he took his command so personally that he feels underlying guilt for the deaths of his soldiers, and this is the manifestation. He takes it personal now and is poor at conveying his beliefs, which is sad. Violence didn’t go down under Kuehl until the SOI. May 2007 was the most violent month in the war in that area, as I recall. Gentile and Kuehl both kept lines of communication open with the extremists and local insurgents. Gentile was more conventional when I got there, but it was a conventional high-kinetic fight. He understood the concept of COIN, but the timing and resources weren’t there to execute it.”

This captain told me that Kuehl was “an arrogant though intelligent ass” who “did not understand the fight until late, if at all. He was very, very concerned that any misstep by Abul Abed’s guys would have ramifications on his career . . . not its effects on his soldiers, Iraqis, or the outcome of the war. He was able to act dispassionately and rationally despite all of the losses his unit faced because he did not care about his men. I also believe that General Petraeus understood his sector better than he Kuehl did . . . he probably spent more time there.”

On the other hand, Capt. Brendan Gallagher told me, “That is an extremely harsh and unfair criticism of Lieutenant Colonel Kuehl. I am not sure who said it, but I can verify it is 100 percent false. I can say with absolute confidence that Lieutenant Colonel Kuehl cared extremely deeply for each and every soldier in 1-5 Cav. I have nothing but positive things to say about him. I think in combat he was willing to accept certain risks in order to achieve success, which is what any good commander must do. If you take zero risks, you hunker down your forces in extreme force-protection mode, then you will not succeed in this kind of war. Consider for a moment: if you follow the bunker mentality to its logical conclusion, then you might as well not even leave the FOB at all—or better yet, never even deploy to Iraq in the first place. That way you are guaranteed not to incur any casualties. However, you also are guaranteed not to accomplish any of your strategic objectives. I think this marks perhaps the most important way in which we blazed a new path in Amriya. We were willing to take calculated risks into unchartered waters in order to make progress. Secretary of Defense [Robert] Gates said it best himself: we cannot kill or capture our way to victory. If we focus only on killing the enemy and force protection as our overriding objectives, then we effectively ignore history and disavow counterinsurgency doctrine. Dismounted patrols, the establishment of COPs, getting out on the ground and gaining the trust of average Iraqis—all these things involve inherent risk. But if we take prudent steps to mitigate each risk, we stand the best chance of success. Compare the security situation in Amriya when we departed [in January ‘08] to the security conditions previously. The results speak for themselves.”