Sometimes focusing on bottom lines can do more to disguise reality than to help explain it. The politics of what Maliki, Obama, and McCain are saying about US troop withdrawals in Iraq may well be a case in point.
No one can predict where Iraq will be in 16 months. At the same time, Maliki, like every Iraqi politician, has good reason to take a stand that seems to pledge to end the US "occupation" of Iraq. ABC and other polls have shown that most Iraqis have long wanted the USA to leave as soon as possible. With the exception of most Kurds, the US invasion has been increasingly unpopular, and polls show that many Iraqis feel that US troop movements, checkpoints, and other signs of military presence are as much a source of day-to-day violence as the actions of militias and other threats.
Everything hinges, however, on the progress being made in developing Iraqi security forces, and on future US and Iraqi cooperation in sustaining that progress. As a new CSIS report shows (title and web address), this cooperation is the most important single element in allowing the US to reduce and finally withdraw its forces, and in allowing Iraq to work out its own destiny with some degree of security and stability.
The Iraqi Politics of US Withdrawals
Americans see US troop withdrawals with one set of values: the cost in blood, the cost in dollars, the impact on the all volunteer force structure, limits on US action in Afghanistan and other contingencies versus stability in the Gulf, limiting Iranian influence, ensuring Iraq’s future stability, and security a region that is critical in terms of world oil prices and a global economy.
Iraqis have another. They may be deeply divided, but this does not prevent them from being intensely nationalistic in terms of an occupation and the presence of foreign forces. The vast majority of Iraqis want US forces out of Iraq as soon as this is practical, Iraqi forces can take over the mission, and Iraq has made progress in terms of political accommodation. Arab Sunnis never saw the US invasion as justified, and Arab Shi’ite opinion has become increasingly less favorable.
As a recent CSIS report shows (title and web address), Arab Iraqis want the US out at least as much as most Americans want to have US troops leave. Only Kurdish popular opinion shows any indication of wanting US forces to stay, and giving the US any form of permanent bases. Many Iraqis also see the US occupation as the source of constant friction and as an active threat. Checkpoints, convoy protection, raids, arrests, and the other day-to-day realities of US operations have that impact.
The same polls have shown that Iraqis have put an unrealistic and growing confidence in the army and police force over roughly the last two years. Now, most Iraqis -- and probably Maliki and those around him -- see the "victories" in Anbar, Basra, Sadr City, Amarah, and Ninewah as largely Iraqi, and as sharply reducing the future need for US forces. Like Americans, they do not think about how much Iraq may still need aid in training, embedded advisors, or key enablers like help from US forces in logistics, support, tactical transport, air support, artillery support, armor, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (IS&R). Few Iraqis or Americans understand the limits that have led the Iraqi Minister of Defense to warn that Iraqi forces will not be fully ready to assume the counterinsurgency and internal security mission until 2012, and that it will take much longer for Iraqi forces to defend and deter against neighbors like Iran.
Iraqi politicians have their own priorities. Maliki is suddenly the "strong man," and has emerged with a new image as a national leader. The Shi’ite coalition has fragmented, and all of Iraq’s political factions face local/provincial elections late this year and national elections in 2009. If Maliki is to lead – and retain office – he needs to forge popular support from both within the Shi'ite coalition and from Iraq as a whole.
Maliki also needs to reinforce his role as a leader and prepare to campaign at a time when Shi'ite politics are increasingly divisive, and where the Iraqi people and media not only pay limited attention to the weaknesses in the ISF, but rarely understand the full security situation and openly discuss the risks of new internal violence.
Few Iraqis understand the extent to which Al Qa'ida in Iraq has been forced to disperse, rather than totally defeated, and few understand the threat still posed by a Sadr militia that stood down rather than fought. Few really want to think about the challenge of a major Arab-Kurdish clash, new Sunni-Shi'ite clashes, or intra Shi'ite and intra Sunni violence. Iraqis have still not come to grips with how to manage the security and stability of mixed areas like Baghdad, and the existence of nearly 5 million refugees and displaced Iraqis out of a population of some 28 million.
None of these possible threats to Iraq's current progress now seem probable enough to force a close study of what will happen if the US withdraws too quickly. Yet, all remain possible factors that could require higher US troop levels, as could any Iranian efforts to exploit an emerging power vacuum. The Challenges in Creating Effective Iraqi Security Forces
Where most Iraqis and Americans – and most in the region – do agree is that it would be far better for Iraqi security forces to take over all aspects of Iraqi security – domestic and foreign – as soon as possible. The fact is, however, that a great deal of US reporting has exaggerated how quickly Iraqi forces will be ready for US forces to be limited to a role of strategic overwatch, support, and then fully withdrawn.
As the attached report shows, reporting by the US Department of Defense and the General Accountability Office has provided a great deal of useful data on both the level of progress in the ISF and the fact that it will take several more years for it to be fully ready. This reporting sometimes exaggerates success, but it also describes in detail what additional steps are needed to develop Iraq’s Army, Navy, and Air Forces, and just how serious the problems are in the police and other forces subordinate to the Ministry of the Interior.
However, few Iraqis outside the Iraqi forces – and many within –understand the limits to how quickly Iraq’s forces can move forward. There also several areas where US reporting has consistently been misleading, if not dishonest.
One such area is US reporting on the transfer of Provinces or Governorates to the ISF. The history of the maps and descriptions of such transfers in US reporting has steadily exaggerated Iraqi readiness and capability. Such data may be formally correct in stating that we made an official transfer, but there are now several years of reporting that do not properly address the degree to which the ISF in these provinces was not ready to take over the military mission involved, much less the police and rule of law mission.
The March 2008 quarterly report by the Department of Defense even held up Basra as a model of transition just a month before the battle there. It stated that, ". . . the decrease in violence in Basra Province that continues to be maintained effectively by the Iraqi Army and Police. Iraqi forces in Basra have demonstrated their capability to provide an Iraqi solution to provincial security challenges."
The most misleading, and politically dangerous, data have been the charts and figures on Iraqi force readiness. This reporting lumps together battalion elements which really can operate on their own with limited US "enablers," units with some degree of independent capability that require a level of US support that will take more than a year to eliminate, and units dependent on US embeds and partner units. Furthermore, the convoluted Iraqi chain of command results in even competent units being used poorly, as seen in the confusion of the first days of the offensive in Basra.
There are other areas where unclassified reporting on the ISF raises deeply troubling questions about how far Iraq has actually come. The first lies in the summary data on manpower, and the lack of matching data on equipment. It is deeply disturbing that the US and Iraq still seem to be unable to provide reporting based on manpower actually present on an average day-to-day basis versus various categories of trained and equipped, authorized, etc. The same is true of equipment actually operational in units versus authorized to be in those units.
It is unclear whether US reporting on "trained and equipped" even mean what it says. The title is now edited to "trained" in the State Department Weekly Status report. A recent edition of this report also states that the regular military forces have had 235,963 trained, although no one knows how many are still in service, but that the total regular military have 190,652 assigned, which is 108% of the 177,224 authorized.
The narrative in the Quarterly Report indicates that the flow of trained manpower into properly equipped units involves two very different processes: training, and then the actual equipping of units; and that equipment often lags training. More broadly, manpower reporting needs to be clearly separated from progress in equipment and facilitization. Supporting an effective force development plan will increasingly require a clear common Iraqi and US picture of the trends in both equipment and facilitization, as well as continued Congressional and Administration support for FMS over the years to come. It will also be another key element in showing both Americans and Iraqis why a continued US presence and basing rights may be necessary for some time to come.
The data on the police and other forces in the Ministry of Interior are even worse. Even the broad trends in this aspect of force development are unclear from public US reporting and testimony on this part of the ISF development effort. It does not provide a useful description of where such force are going, the current level of real world progress, the key challenges involved, and probable conditions-based time lines.
Take one simple example: The manpower data reported by the State Department (June 11, 2008) show that 174,837 police have been "trained" but gives no picture of how many are still actually in service. A total of 289,106 are said to be assigned – but "numbers are based upon GOI payroll data and do not reflect present for duty totals" and one can only guess at how many have actually been vetted and trained.
More broadly, the key issue is what level of policing, and supporting criminal justice and rule of law activity, is actually taking place in the field. The influence of the central Iraqi government is still very limited in some areas, and the loyalty of many police units to the Iraqi government is questionable at best. There is no clear indication of what provinces, cities, and districts are felt to have effective policing or local security – either in dealing with insurgents and militias or in creating an effective force to deal with crime.
There also is no clear indication of the extent to which police units have effective advisory teams and embeds, can be tied to a working criminal justice and jail system, and are supported by effective government presence and services. Other nation building exercises have indicated, however, that training output is largely irrelevant unless it is tied to clear measures of effective policing, and that police statistics are largely meaningless unless policy is supported by a working criminal justice/jail system.
The end result has been something of a self-inflicted wound. For more than two years members of Congress and various media commentators either come to distrust official US reporting because of such problems or have come to make impossible demands for the rapid transfer of combat roles to Iraqi forces. These problems now deeply color the US presidential campaign.
A similar trend now seems to be emerging in Iraqi perceptions, where the lack of transparency in reporting real world progress seems to be leading Iraqi political figures to assume that the ISF is far more independent than it really is. Iraq's politicians normally pay only limited attention to the details of just how far the Iraqi security forces have come, or how far they have to go, and often are more interested in the politics of promotion, spending, and sectarian/ethnic politics than effectiveness. Maliki and those around him may or may not understand just how dependent Iraq's forces remain on US air support, mobility, logistics, and intelligence, as well as US embeds and training teams. Both the US and Iraqis have tended to exaggerate the progress in Iraqi force development, and downplay the level of continuing dependence.
Virtually every major official timeline for ISF development in the last several years has been overly optimistic. The ISF still faces a number of major problems and uncertainties:
• Iraqi Police Force: In contrast to the limited successes in training the Iraqi Army, much of the Coalition police training effort has been a failure. While manpower levels in the IP are difficult to ascertain with accuracy, it is clear that a large proportion of IPs in Iraq did not receive Coalition training or equipment. Many IPs are hired locally by Provincial or local government officials. These officials themselves are often of dubious loyalty to the central government of Iraq, and the IPs they hire are likewise often of questionable loyalty. The percentage of IPs hired outside of the Coalition-sponsored train and equip program appears to be growing. Attempts to free IP units from local influence have largely failed, and MNSTC-I seems to have accepted de-facto local control of MOI forces for the time being.
Official reporting on the MOI and the IP in particular is extremely misleading. It is unclear what MNF-I’s current goals are for developing various elements of the police. It is also unclear how the new provincial powers law, and coming provincial elections, will affect the police force, how local and central elements will influence the force, and even how large the force will be in its end state. Official reporting on the manning, equipping, and training of the IP remains highly inaccurate.
• Slow Progress in the Local Rule of Law: There has been some progress at the highest levels in establishing courts and some rule of law. Yet the central government lacks an effective presence in many areas, and the criminal justice and courts system is unable to support the police. The IP needs effective governance and a functioning court system to back it up. The establishment of reliable and impartial courts has been extremely slow, and this has seriously harmed the development of effective MOI forces at the local level. There is little official reporting on Iraq’s jails, the availability of defendants to find counsel, the status of due process, and the role of religious and tribal courts. Furthermore, it is entirely unclear how all of these elements will interact, both at the central and local level.
• National Police: Until 2007, the National Police (NP) acted largely as a Shi’ite force within the MOI, and were responsible for much sectarian violence against Sunnis. Far from being a central-government run nationwide police force, they more often resembled a government funded tool of sectarian intimidation. MNF-I instituted a massive reform program in the NP in 2007. This ongoing program has clearly had some positive outcomes, and has reduced the previous Shi’ite dominance of the force and resulted in the firing of a huge number of the NP’s senior commanders. Many elements still, however, present problems, and it remains to be seen whether the reform program can make the NP a truly non-sectarian force.
• Sons of Iraq: This large mostly Sunni and tribal force is supposed to be temporary, and the ultimate destination of the over 100,000 men in these units is a major uncertainty. While MNSTC-I believes that 20-25% of the Sons of Iraq will be absorbed into the ISF , progress has been slow in this area. What will become of the other 75-80% of these heavily armed men, accustomed to their relatively high salaries, is also a major concern. Unless jobs and economic opportunities are found for the entire force, and Sunnis and mixed tribal groups come to trust in government help and funding, the gains this force has made will be lost and many elements could become hostile to the central government.
• Political and militia influence in the ISF: The “competition among ethnic and sectarian communities” that Gen. Petraeus believes is at the heart of conflict in Iraq includes the struggle for control of the MOD and MOI. Several major political parties, and their respective militias, have gained partial control over many GOI ministries. The MOI and MOD are no exception.
JAM, ISCI/Badr, Daawa, Kurdish groups, Fadilah, Sunni Awakening groups, and a host of smaller groups all vie for control of the various parts of the ISF. In many areas, such as Basra and much of southern Iraq, the Coalition had effectively ceded control of security and local government to these parties. JAM influence over the IP and elements of the IA were exposed in the desertions of ISF personnel during the fighting in Basra in March, 2008.
The MOI is heavily influenced by Shiite parties. At the center, control of the Ministry itself is largely balanced between ISCI and Daawa. Kurdish parties also exert some influence. The JAM exerts varying but significant levels of control at the local level, particularly in the south and in the NP.
The MOD is less influenced by these parties than the MOI, but still faces serious issues. The heavy Coalition presence at all levels of the MOD has helped to contain sectarianism somewhat, as has the presence of so many Sunni officers. Sadly, much of the truly impressive progress the ISF has made in the last 5 years will be rendered moot if its personnel are not loyal to the GOI.
• Intelligence: Iraq’s intelligence apparatus remains divided between a CIA-supported ‘official’ agency (the Iraqi National Intelligence Service or INIS) and a Shi’ite-run agency (under the auspices of the minister of state for national security, Shirwan al-Waely). The levels of competition or cooperation between these agencies remain unclear.
• Provincial Powers Law: The balance of power between the central and provincial governments remains undecided. How the power shifts between the provinces and Baghdad will affect the ISF is unclear. These issues are further compounded by unrealistic reporting on the transfer of security responsibilities by province, when the Iraqi forces are clearly unready to take over the mission.
• Equipment and Logistics: The ISF has made significant progress in the areas of logistics and equipping forces in the field. While the battles of Basra, Sadr City, and Mosul cannot honestly be called military victories for the ISF, they can be seen as testaments to the improved logistics capacity of the ISF. However, many units, especially in the IP, remain critically short of equipment. The IA still lacks armor. While its independence is increasing, the ISF remains dependant on Coalition support, particularly during combat operations.
What Needs to Be Done
The best possible way to resolve these problems is to develop a common Iraqi-US "conditions-based" plan for creating a truly independent Iraqi military. This plan should clearly link US withdrawals not only to success against Al Qa’ida and Sadr, and progress in political accommodation, but to ensure that Iraq will get forces that that can deal with foreign threats, and that both sides work together to create the fastest possible conditions for cutting US forces, making a transition to "strategic overwatch," and then full US withdrawal. There is an urgent need for more than just greater objectivity in status reporting. There is a need for a clear conditions-based plan for Iraqi force expansion. Both Americans and Iraqis need a realistic picture of how to move towards future success.
Both sides may also be ready to move forward in developing such an effort. Most US and Iraqi politicians are talking about US combat brigade team reductions and not total force reductions. They don't rule out advisers, keeping an air presence, maintaining intelligence teams, or keeping some kind of US combat presence under different hats and in more restricted roles and missions -- a shift to what General Petraeus called "strategic overwatch" in setting his goals for post-surge cuts in US forces. For both Iraqi and US leaders and publics, having the US maintain 5,000-10,000 US forces in roles other than direct land combat for several years after US combat brigade teams are gone remains a possibility, although one neither country has yet openly addressed.
There also is a need for pragmatism on both sides. “Conditions based” means accepting the fact that both US and Iraqi leaders have to respond to the facts on the ground as they actually evolve. If things continue to go steadily "right," Iraqi and US politicians will have to face a debate over the kind of US presence that will clearly be under Iraqi control, will not challenge Iraqi sovereignty, and will not lead to major costs to the US in blood, dollars, or strain on US forces. In fact, the US will be far more popular in Iraq and the region if it appears to respond to Iraqi deadlines and not to impose its own.
If things go wrong, Iraqi and US politicians have to realize that it will then not matter whether today's deadlines are 16 months (end June 2010), or the 2012-2013 period that Senator McCain has sometimes mentioned. These are the kind of campaign/political promises that don't have to be kept if events intervene, and there is a viable alternative for slowing withdrawal or crisis-driven needs for US military action. No one is going to blame either a US President or an Iraqi Prime Minister for reacting to events and changes in the situation as long as the action they take is driven by need and seems likely to succeed. Pragmatism is far more important than keeping campaign promises.
This does not mean political gamesmanship is not important. It clearly is and sound bites and images dominate today's politics. Gamesmanship, however, is scarcely a binding promise or strategy for any candidate and official -- American or Iraqi.
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