Iraqi Force Development and the Challenge of Civil War

Center for Strategic and International Studies Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy 1800 K Street, N.W. • Suite 400 • Washington, DC 20006 Phone: 1 (202) 775-3270 • Fax: 1 (202) 457-8746 Web: http://www.csis.org/burke Iraqi Force Development and the Challenge of Civil War: The Critical Problems The US Must Address if Iraqi Forces Are to Do the Job Anthony Cordesman Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy With the Assistance of Adam Mausner Revised, May 10, 2007 Cordesman: Iraqi Force Development 5/10/07 Page ii Executive Summary Iraq has moved far beyond a Sunni Islamist or Ba’ath-driven insurgency. It is already in a state of limited civil war, and may well be escalating to the level of a major civil conflict. What began as a small resistance movement centered on loyalists to the Ba’ath and Saddam Hussein has expanded to include neo-Salafi Sunni terrorism, a broadly based Sunni insurgency, and now a series of broader sectarian and ethnic conflicts. The current combination of Sunni Neo-Salafi extremist insurgency, Sunni Arab versus Shi’ite Arab sectarian conflict, Shi’ite versus Shi’ite power struggles, and Arab versus Kurdish ethnic conflict could easily cause the collapse of the current political structure. In the best case, it could lead to a Shi’ite or Shi’ite-Kurdish dominated government, with strong local centers of power, and an ongoing fight with Iraq’s Sunnis. In the worst case, it could escalate to the break up of the country, far more serious ethnic and sectarian conflict, or violent paralysis. It has already led to widespread ethnic cleansing in urban areas by militias and death squads of all three major ethnic and religious groups. If Iraq is to avoid a split and full-blown civil war, it must do far more than create effective Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). No such effort can succeed without an integrated strategy to forge a lasting political compromise between its key factions: Arab-Shi’ite, Arab Sunni, and Kurd – while protecting other minorities. Political conciliation must also address such critical issues as federalism and the relative powers of the central and regional governments, the role of religion in politics and law, control over petroleum resources and export revenues, the definition of human rights, and a host of other issues. Anticipate, Learn and Change versus Persist, React and Be Defeated From the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 to the present, the US has failed to implement a realistic and properly self-critical approach to policies and actions in Iraq. It is unclear that it could have succeeded under the best of circumstance, but one of its most critical failures has been to consistently deny the fact it was pursuing a high-risk effort in nation building and stability operations that could easily fail. In practice, the US neither did an adequate job of anticipating the problems it had to solve nor rapidly adapted to the emerging realities in Iraq. Its national security leadership became a self-inflicted wound, and the US lurched from delayed response to response, always reacting too slowly and in a state of quasi-denial. One key problem was the failure to properly estimate the nature of the violence in Iraq; its steadily more complex nature, and the rate at which it would grow more intense. These broad problems in the US conceptual approach to Iraq, and in the strategy and practice of nation building and stability operations, have had a major impact on the development of Iraqi forces. The Multinational Security Transition Command- Iraq (MNSTC-I) has had to make at least three major adaptations to its plans to develop Iraqi Security Forces during 2004-2007. Most notably, the assumption that the ISF would face a declining level of violence over time had to be changed to assume that they would have to overmatch their enemies at a constant level of violence. As of the spring of 2007, MNSTC-I was actively in the process of conducting “In-Stride Assessment of the Iraqi Security Forces” to determine what adaptations must be made in the second half of 2007 and beyond. A similar assessment in 2006 led directly to Prime Minister Maliki’s decision to increase the size of the Iraqi Army and to fund it through Foreign Military Cordesman: Iraqi Force Development 5/10/07 Page iii Sales. That funding has been incorporated in the current FMS account and is being used to grow the force. Nevertheless, the US never developed an effective overall strategy for dealing with political conciliation, the development of all elements of Iraqi forces, improving the quality of Iraqi governance, and economic aid and development. The end result was to increase security problems, and the pressure on Iraqi forces, in ways that help bring Iraqi to the edge of large-scale civil war. The new strategy to stabilize Iraq that the US announced in the fall of 2005 was no more credible than its predecessors. It was based on an exaggerated estimate of political success, an almost deliberately false exaggeration of the success of the economic aid effort, unrealistic estimates of progress in developing the ISF, and inadequate efforts to develop effective governance and the rule of law. As a result, the US government, its national security decision makers, and its intelligence community underestimated the threat Iraqi Army forces would face, underestimated the problems in developing effective Iraqi police forces, and called for an unrealistically rapid transfer of responsibility to Iraqi Security Forces. Real progress was being made in developing the ISF, but a combination of political pressure in Washington and failure to admit the growing level of violence in Iraq called for more progress than was possible as well as inadequate resources. This situation was further complicated by Iraqi political problems and decisions. The MNF-I and MNSTC-I had to deal with two interim governments and elected government after 2005 that forced US and other Coalition advisors to try to temper efforts by senior Iraqi civilian and military leaders to take even great responsibility and control over the development of the ISF before it was ready. The US military has operated under pressure from both Washington and Baghdad, and one senior MNSTC-I officer described US efforts in dealing with the Iraqi Army as follows in late April 2007: We have never strayed from the principle of a standardized training curriculum for both new Iraqi units and individual replacements despite great pressure to do so from our Iraqi counterparts. Nor have we rushed Iraqi units into battle. In fact, the addition of transition teams to tactical units in March 2005 was intended to ensure we had a valid, reasonable understanding of their capabilities… It is worth noting that more than 3,500 Iraqi soldiers and 4,500 Iraqi Policemen have been killed in action in the past two years. Another 18,000 have been wounded in action. Iraq’s security ministries as well as military and police leaders are taking “ownership” of their country’s security problems to the extent we have thus far allowed them to.” The twin impact of the pressures from the US and Iraqi governments were all too clear in the efforts to improve security in Baghdad in 2006. Iraq forces were not ready for the task, and the Iraqi government proved unable or unwilling to deal effectively with the Shi’ite militias that had become as serious a problem as the Sunni insurgents. Later efforts to strengthen the Iraqi effort with more US advisors and limited numbers of US troops proved equally ineffective. The US and ISF found themselves fighting battles in Baghdad, and in other areas with a high level of Sunni insurgent activity, where they could “win” at the tactical level, but not defeat or eliminate any armed faction, could not “hold” areas in ways that provided lasting security, and could not “build” in providing either effective government services or conditions that allowed economic progress and development. Cordesman: Iraqi Force Development 5/10/07 Page iv The Need for Comprehensive Action and Strategy The new “surge” strategy to secure Baghdad that President Bush announced in January 2007 will provide a much large US military contingent, more Iraqi forces, and a new approach to strengthening the role of the Iraqi police. Real success, however, depends on providing a far higher degree of security for a city with well over five million people and much broader political conciliation among Iraq’s warring factions. It is far from clear whether it will prove possible to secure the greater Baghdad area, and the ring cities around it, with the US and Iraqi resources available. Success may also require a level of patience and persistence that the US political climate could make impossible, particularly if a sustained effort is needed well into 2008. Iraqi progress in conciliation is uncertain at best, and may also move too slowly to be acceptable to the Congress and American people. Once again, the US may be demanding too much, too soon, and trying to force the pace in ways which increase the already serious risk of failure. What is clear is that the US cannot secure either Baghdad or Iraq without effective Iraqi security forces and this includes both the Army and Police. At the same time, no strategy that hinges solely on the successful development of the ISF can succeed. Iraq must establish both effective governance and a rule of law; not simply deploy effective military, security, and police forces. Legitimacy does not consist of determining how governments are chosen, but in how well they serve the day-to-day needs of their peoples.

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