Nir Rosen - Aftermath

Most interlocutors I dealt with from the military and National Security Council agreed that Odierno was neither a visionary nor a strategist. “Petraeus is an A who hires A-pluses,” one American intelligence analyst dealing with Iraq told me. “Odierno is a B who hires Cs.” Petraeus also had the star power to handpick whomever he wanted, which led to the creation of a coterie of West Point graduates and within that a smaller group of graduates from West Point’s social sciences department. Petraeus made COIN the universal policy, and thanks to his status he was able to sell an increase in troops to the American people and Congress despite their growing antiwar mood.

Though the surge was Baghdad-oriented, the increased troop numbers also allowed the Americans to operate in the “belts” that surrounded the city. Odierno’s role in the belts was a key element. He took the concept of the surge and decided where to put troops. “He is not a bright guy, and he didn’t have bright guys around him, but he figured out how to fight the battle of Baghdad,” one insider told me. If Doug Ollivant and others at First Cav were the architects of the surge, Odierno was the builder, the operational realizer. Morgado served in Balad, north of Baghdad, between July and November 2007. “Al Qaeda in Iraq had freedom of maneuver in the belts,” he explained. “This gave them unlimited opportunities to marshal resources in the hinterlands, use multiple avenues to infiltrate supplies and weapons into Baghdad, and conduct attacks. Al Qaeda, with this latitude, was free to conduct attacks on Shiites and act as an accelerant for retribution by the Mahdi Army or other Shiites.

“While U.S. and Iraqi forces kept the Shiites under control in Baghdad, U.S.-led efforts in the belts kept the Sunnis/Al Qaeda off-balance. Both efforts depended on the other, but the belts clearly supported the efforts within Baghdad. I thought it was critical for U.S. forces to lead in the belts. We stood up the Sons of Iraq and brought the Sunnis into the ‘good guy’ side of the ledger. I don’t think this was feasible or desirable by a Maliki-led effort. His solution to the Sunni problem would have been ‘Kill them all’ and only would have exacerbated the problem. Though the Sons of Iraq pose a political problem now and in the future, these are much better conditions.”

Balad is a Shiite-dominated town surrounded by rural Sunni communities. By the time Morgado arrived in Balad, the Mahdi Army had been largely put down, while most Sunnis within the town had been chased out or killed. Morgado’s principal threat remained Al Qaeda in Iraq and associated groups. “We were tight along the Salahaddin/Diyala fault line,” he said. “Their lines of communication ran from Samarra and Anbar in the west, from Baquba in the east, and Mosul to the north. In turn, they would use the Balad area to stage attacks in Baghdad/Taji area in the south.”

The first Sons of Iraq group was “stood up” in Balad in August 2007. Morgado’s battalion cultivated six of these groups, putting about 200 individuals on the payroll. “They were extremely effective. Once these groups stood up, Al Qaeda went after them hard, but they remained resilient. With largely Sons of Iraq influence, we began capturing or killing every major high-value target we had, and attacks in our zone decreased dramatically. It was clear with the Sons of Iraq that part of their motivation was monetary, but largely they were tired of the violence. Their allegiance with Al Qaeda only brought them death and instability. By working with us, they realized they could stabilize the community. Knowing that we were providing support to these groups, monetarily and operationally, gave them a lot of confidence.”

When Bush announced his surge in January 2007, I thought it was too late for the Americans to make a difference. I had spent four years writing about the oppressive nature of the American occupation, and I didn’t see how enlarging it could make things better. General Petraeus himself asserted that military gains would be ephemeral if Iraq’s factions did not reach political deals. It seemed as if more troops might only provoke further resistance, or if not, that a few thousand more troops couldn’t possibly halt the civil war and affect the situation in Iraq strategically. But the addition of more American troops also forced other armed factions in Iraq to change their plans and actions.

According to Lieutenant Colonel Miska, the introduction of combat outposts, smaller bases inside neighborhoods, and joint security stations where Americans lived and worked with Iraqi security forces allowed the Americans to integrate the Iraqi army, Iraqi police, and U.S. forces into an overall security plan. “We were commuting to work, but an insurgent lives among the people, so you must do it too,” he told me. “We started doing this in Ghazaliya before the surge. Ghazaliya was a killing field. The Mahdi Army was attacking from Shula and the north, Al Qaeda was attacking from the south. The first combat outpost we put in was on the sectarian fault line between the two sides. We set it up with the Iraqi army, and within a week some stores opened up, people came in. We were there in a sustained presence and wouldn’t leave them. It helped set up Sons of Iraq; people realized Americans could be an ally.”

Miska said that the Sons of Iraq were originally organized to fill a gap in local security, predominantly because the local police would not provide security to the Sunni population areas. During the surge, the Americans started placing combat outposts (COPs) and joint security stations ( JSSs) along the sectarian fault lines and right in the Sunni areas because the need was greatest there. “Al Qaeda held the Sunni population hostage in neighborhoods like Amriya, where the flagpole of Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia was planted,” he said. “I think part of the reason the Sons of Iraq came to us in Amriya and Ghazaliya was that they saw the Americans were committed to protecting the Sunni people. Nobody else had a stake in the game—not the police, not the Iraqi army or the Iraqi government.”

More than the surge itself, the declaration of the surge forced armed factions in Iraq to change their calculations. Sunni militias who resented Al Qaeda or were already in conflict realized that the Americans were no longer aiding the “Iranians” whom Sunnis saw as their fundamental enemy. Instead they saw the Americans acting to limit Iranian influence. They saw that the Americans would back them against Al Qaeda and would not abandon them, as they had previously done with Sunni collaborators. Controlling the Anbar province and cutting it off from Sunni strongholds in western Baghdad denied Al Qaeda some of its strategic depth and access to its hinterland. This weakened it and allowed Sunni groups opposed to Al Qaeda to take advantage of the opening. These Sunni groups might have been more skeptical of the Americans had they not seen the success of their Anbari brethren, who began collaborating with Americans against Al Qaeda groups in the summer of 2006 and helped turn one of the most dangerous parts of Iraq into one of the least violent.

There had always been infighting between Sunni resistance groups, but they tried to minimize these publicly to maintain the appearance of a united front. Al Qaeda tried to Iraqify itself after the death of Zarqawi, with Iraqis as its official leaders, controlling the Mujahideen Advisory Council. The increased sectarian violence and aggressive Shiite push forced Sunni groups to rally together and work with Al Qaeda. But Al Qaeda members acted like gang leaders, terrorizing local populations more than fighting the occupier. Local religious, tribal, and traditional leaders, as well as educated elites, were either killed, co-opted, or expelled. Often the population followed them out, turning areas into ghost towns.