Assorted Notes on Iraq

My AUSA News for January 2007 has a report on testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Here are some interesting (to me) bits:

1. Partitioning Iraq is a bad idea. The Sunni part would not survive and would provide a haven for al Qaeda. The Shia part would be dominated by Iran.

2. General Abizaid felt we were making progress in Iraq until the February 2006 Samarra bombing that ushered in high levels of sectarian violence.

3. The key to Iraq is making progress in controlling Baghdad. More Iraqi troops are needed and the Iraqi government must get behind an effort to control the capital.

4. We have three more brigades in Iraq now than we planned to have back in the spring. We can't sustain our commitment with the Army and Marines at their current strength.

5. Troop withdrawals are not in order. Embedding US troops with Iraqi troops down to company level is our current plan.

6. There are an estimated 10,000 Sunni insurgents and 1,300 foreign fighters in Iraq.

On number 1, I agree partition is a bad idea. I don't agree that a Shia rump state would naturally be dominated by Iran. I don't agree that a Sunni state would automatically fail. I think Sunni Arabs the world over would send money. It could survive as a Palestinian Authority Two and provide plenty of new grievances for the Sunni Arab world to fixate on. Although I guess I have a pretty low standard of what counts as a state "succeeding." If it teeters along well enough to harm our interests, I guess I count that as a state.

On two, I agree. We'd beaten the insurgents back and were on a good path to victory until the whole new sectarian violence stage that began after February 2006 stymied our efforts. We've yet to come up with an adequate solution to this new problem. But don't let it obscure the fact that we beat the old problems and are working on a new problem.

On three, this makes sense, and early last year I noted the budding problem with Baghdad security. But I don't think this is a "we must make progress in the next six months" problem. We need to succeed here. If the next six months don't provide success, we need to think about trying something else. Fight the war until victory.

On four, I don't see how we sustain a surge of new troops. Past surges were largely done with troop rotation overlaps.

On five, our troops are still needed as a shield for the Iraqi government. Embedding troops should help the Iraqis stand up their own forces faster.

On six, this is interesting. I'd noted one past mention of 10,000 Sunni (Arab) insurgents and wondered where it came from. Given that for the last couple years (at least) the estimate has been 20,000 insurgents, I think this highlights that we have indeed beaten the Sunni-based insurgents. They still fight, obviously, so I don't mean they are eliminated. But they cannot seize the government and are weaker relative to the government as time goes on. And weaker by half, to boot.

I do wonder how this number is estimated. So I won't say they are half as strong just based on the difficulty of counting the enemy.

And the 1,300 foreign terrorists seems higher than the past. When the enemy was estimated at 20,000, foreign jihadis were estimated at a few percent, so there are more foreigners now, it appears. Maybe double than a couple years ago.

The last bit on insurgent strength is the most interesting. I hope to find more on it.