IRAQ: SECURITY UPDATE

Cordesman Discusses June 3-12 Visit to Iraq; Security, Force Development

June 24, 2005

The Center for Strategic and International Studies

Anthony Cordesman CSIS Arleigh Burke Chair in Strategy

Moderator:

Patrick Cronin CSIS Director of Studies

Patrick Cronin: Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. My name is Patrick Cronin. I'm the Director of Studies here at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. We're in a relatively small space this morning and I hope people will be able to find room, and I know they're setting up some more chairs. This meeting is obviously on the record. It's meant to be an opportunity to hear an updated assessment on the security situation in Iraq from one of the foremost experts not just on Iraq but somebody who has spent decades understanding U.S. military and security policy, Middle East policy, and who has now just returned from yet another important field trip where he's been able to talk to combat commanders in the field; he's been able to talk to soldiers, to Iraqis, and get a fresh, first-hand update. We are all eager to hear this assessment from Dr. Anthony Cordesman who is our Arleigh Burke Chair for Strategy. He's held many senior positions inside the government in Defense and Energy and he is a man who's written prolifically on some of these issues. His latest report is maybe in draft form, but it has I think been distributed this morning, an update on the evolving insurgency in Iraq. So without further ado it's a great pleasure to introduce Tony Cordesman. Anthony Cordesman: Thank you very much Patrick, and ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for coming. What I'd like to do is make some brief remarks about Iraq and open things up to your questions. I also during this trip had to deal with a number of energy problems and with issues relating to Iranian proliferation, so if you wish to expand the range of questions afterwards, I'm happy to do so, but the real focus that I would like to have this morning is on Iraq. Let me begin with the fact that we face as a nation an extraordinarily difficult set of choices. The real issue is in a war where there are very high risks of failure, is it worth going on? Is it worth staying the course and paying the costs of what it will take to at least have a reasonable chance at success? I have been going to Iraq since 1971. I have been going to the Middle East since the early '60s. My personal answer would be yes. In human terms we are talking about some 27 million people, and they have suffered under one repressive regime after another since at least the fall of the monarchy. They are a people who saw Saddam Hussein basically bankrupt -- investment in the civil side of the Iraqi society in 1983 -- long before the Gulf War and long before sanctions; and who have suffered from repression and from an economic crisis ever since. The fact is that whatever we might or might not have done, we did it, and in the course we unleashed forces in Iraq which have been suppressed since the Ottoman Empire. There were ethnic and sectarian differences in the country that could tear it apart when I first visited Iraq in 1971. I know there are many Iraqis who sincerely believe that these differences were minor, but frankly, to an outside observer they were apparent within a matter of days of visiting the country. Throughout the Iran-Iraq War, a war that tended to push Iraqis together, no one could go into the field without seeing the discrimination against Kurds and Shiites in Iraqi military units, even at a time when the government was seeking to preserve unity. That discrimination was far, far more apparent in the field in Shiite areas and certainly in Kurdish areas. Once we broke the system, as was the case in the former Yugoslavia, we created the structure that could lead to civil war, and that civil war would be bloody, costly and prevent progress. We imposed a war without planning stability operations and we were slow to make them work and we were much slower to make them effective. Many of Iraq's failures are the result of our strategic failure to go from effective war planning to having any meaningful plan for nationbuilding once Saddam fell, and with that comes moral and ethical responsibility. If you visit Iraq today, while there are many areas, many provinces where there is considerable stability, at least ten, and in four more the level of insurgency is limited, the fact is that there is crime and insecurity on both a personal and economic level throughout all of Iraq, and much of that is a result of our actions. And if you can ignore these factors, let me also remind you that Iraq is centered in an area with 60 percent of the world's proven oil reserves and 40 percent of its gas, and in very narrow, selfish strategic terms, what happens in Iraq will affect the global economy, our economy, and every job in this country for years to come. More than that, there is the real issue of what is going to happen in a region if we see this devolve into a conflict between Sunni and Shiite, if we see effectively Islamists extremists appear to have defeated the United States in Iraq. And any sudden withdrawal could, in fact must have that impact. It will be seen as a major victory for precisely the kind of extremism which has caused a clash within a civilization and one which is probably far more dangerous than fantasies of clashes between civilizations. Having said that, I do not want to minimize the risks. People in Iraq, whether they are Americans or Iraqis, do not talk about the certainty of victory. No one talks about the insurgency being over, being defeated, or in some period of crisis. I did not meet any American, any other member of the Coalition or any member of the Iraqi government which did not see this insurgency as going on for at least two to three more years, and probably in some form lasting much longer. The fact is that this is a country with no proven political experience, whose leaders are learning on the job to be politicians, to govern, to deal with the divisions in their society. Iraq is five to ten years of instability, regardless of the military outcome. It is a country which will require some $5 to $7 billion dollars in U.S. expenditures per month for at least several more years. In the best possible case thousands more Americans and Coalition partners are going to be killed and wounded, and tens of thousands of Iraqis. And if you ask me to assign odds I would say 50/50 under the best circumstances, simply because none of us have any basis for assigning odds. No one is an expert on Iraq. It is changing far too quickly for the people there, for Iraqis to say that they can predict the future. But I did see real progress, and that is one of the messages that I would really give this morning. Part of that was progress at the political level. I found Iraq's new political leaders to be generally very impressive, more capable than their predecessors in critical areas like the Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior, addressing the issues they need to face and understanding the need to be inclusive and the very real risk of civil conflict. In visiting Iraqi military, security and police units I saw the core of a structure which over a year or a year and a half can become effective, can achieve very serious mission capabilities, and while it will probably not eliminate the need for coalition support in that time, could given full support and time, allow steady and significant reductions in our presence. I saw also, however, two other problems. I did not see progress in aid and I did not see progress in economics. This has tended to be the forgotten dimension of the war in Iraq. But the fact is that while there were many people in individual project areas in Iraq making a truly major contribution and often at considerable personal risk, I saw no picture that the United States has a meaningful plan for using the aid money it is providing in Iraq, that the system has improved or become more efficient, that it has become more secure and less corrupt, and that we have any idea of what as a nation we are doing to solve the economic and security problems of Iraqis. Furthermore, in talking to Iraqis, again and again I was struck by the fact that the kind of messages we give as a nation have never addressed the fundamental issue of whether we really are going to leave Iraq. The conspiracy theories about taking Iraqi oil or dominating the Iraqi economy; the conspiracy theories about American bases. We have said many things about Iraq, but they have largely been addressed to American audiences, not to Iraqis. We have not as a nation, and the President has not as a leader, addressed the concerns that the Iraqi people have and that divide Iraqis and Americans and still lead to so many concerns. Let me make just a few further points about each of these areas. It is quite clear that the insurgency has changed radically since January. Whatever the positive impact of the elections are, it has created a new structure of targeting on the part of the Islamist extremist groups that are the most dangerous and the most violent elements. They are seeking to provoke civil war. They are seeking to take the fault lines in Iraq and by attacking Shiite and Kurdish targets, often in forms which are extraordinarily violent and border on atrocities, to create a situation where they hope they can provoke Shiites and Kurds into responding in ways which will make an inclusive government impossible. That targeting now is far more important than the kind of targeting that has existed in the past against American targets. We can deal with our own force protection. The real question is whether the Iraqis can deal with these political challenges. Let me make two points here that are far too easy to forget. Iraq has already had good constitutions. The idea that a constitution somehow is going to solve major problems is one that needs a great deal more thought in the United States because the real issues here are two-fold. They are how to share power not simply between ethnic factions, but between those who have a secular approach to Iraq and those who have a religious approach; and they are how to divide up money. Because ultimately in the near term it is oil revenues and only oil revenues which will be the basic stimulus for development and which will keep this country going. That is a constitutional set of issues which go beyond rhetoric, but they are extraordinarily difficult to solve. The other is what we mean by democracy. Let me remind you of your high school civics lessons. There is no one here who lives in a democracy. There is no functioning democracy in the world. We all live in a republic bound by rule of law and human rights and that is a critical issue in Iraq because good as many of the new leaders are, they have no political experience. They have in general never governed or administered a large-scale structure. People are being pushed into roles that they have very little practical ability to perform. There are no real political parties and as a result there is a tendency to move toward service politics or special interests or ethnic or sectarian parties. Only a few as yet understand the need to have national political parties, so elections and constitutions are going to play out not as solutions but as forums in which all of the divisions and problems in Iraq surface, and this is going to take years to change and it will present the risk of failure. The most reassuring thing I saw was what the developments are in Iraqi military, security and police forces, but let me say something that I think gets often lost to those of you who do not have practical experience. Creating military forces is not like building cars or manufacturing china. Once you have trained and equipped manpower, and that is still very much something in process, you then have to create effective combat units. You have to train leaders. You have to establish unit integrity. You have to establish personal loyalties within those units. That process is beginning. It is beginning late. It was really only in February that we began to provide the kind of advisory teams in the combat units which can help give them leaders and help deal with the transition to unit capability and integrity. It is not going to be some sudden transition to success. About 40 percent of the army; about 30 percent of the police forces now have organized combat units. Forget about total manpower. It is irrelevant. There is nothing you can say about total manning that matters. All you can discuss is what units can go into the field and perform given missions. To date there is a handful of units that can operate with some degree of independence, but there is a significant and growing number of units which can perform other duties. This process is moving quickly enough so that by late this year or mid 2006 it can, I think, seriously reduce our need to be in Iraq. We are talking tens of thousands of men and women, however -- not exit strategies. We are not talking calendars or timetables. We are talking about reductions which occur as Iraqi units come on-line. I would have to say that anyone who calls for a timetable is part of the problem and not part of the solution. We can't predict when these units will be ready. We will not force them into readiness with artificial deadlines, and we cannot establish goals or levels which are meaningful until we have much more data on what Iraqi forces can and cannot do. A calendar, a timetable, an exit strategy at this point in time will seriously aid the insurgents and perhaps raise the odds of failure to the point where they trigger defeat. We may be forced into exiting by political problems in Iraq. We may be forced into it by civil conflict. But an exit strategy rather than a success strategy is not going to produce anything but serious issues. A word about the aid and economy. There are areas of progress but many of them are a matter of profiteering, of money coming into very small sectors of the Iraqi economy out of the aid process, out of freeing up the trade structure. For the vast majority of Iraqis what they see is insecurity and unemployment, and in the leading areas in the insurgency like the Sunni areas, the unemployment for young men is between 40 and 60 percent, and I would ask any American how stable our society would be under these circumstances, and how angry and violent young Americans might be under similar conditions. I don't know how we fix this, but one thing I am certain of. There is too much corruption, there is too much inefficiency, there is too much waste in the present process. That money should go to Iraqis. It should be run by Iraqis. It should be allocated by Iraqis. We need to get U.S. bureaucrats and U.S. contractors and more than that, foreign contractors, out of the process. That does not mean we should not have tools to ensure that Iraqi projects require vetting as condition for the aid, that there be accounting, that we do everything possible to reduce corruption, but the U.S. trying to manage 30 years of command cleptocracy, a failed agricultural sector, a lack of a financial sector, an economy dependent on failed state industries with outside contractors with no experience dealing with these issues, who cannot speak the language and cannot move in the country, have such obvious implications for failure that it is time to think about what we were doing. Then the last point I would make. I have the horrible feeling that Americans, particularly administration, thinks it has given the right message to the Iraqis. The problem is, it doesn't seem to listen to them. We need to very clearly say what our commitments are, why we are providing military assistance. We need to explain we are creating effective Iraqi forces. We need to state quite clearly that when Iraq is ready, we will not have bases and we will not maintain a presence and that we are not seeking our strategic advantage. And we need to explain as part of the changes in the economic aid process that we are turning this money over to the Iraqis, that there will be no effort to give special advantages to American oil companies or contractors or to play a role in the Iraqi economy which is determined by anything other than moral forces, market forces which in this case oddly enough are the same. If we can do that, I think we have a very real chance of success. If we fail in these areas, the odds are simply too close to face anything other than defeat. With that, let me open things for questions. Patrick Cronin: Tony, thank you very much. Let me just say that this has been a very balanced, insightful, informed set of remarks on Iraq and the floor is open. I wonder if I could just start with the first question and ask you about the insurgency, though. How would you evaluate the military attempts at trying to break the back of the insurgency? And conversely, there's been a question about the ability of these insurgent groups to surge as they move toward this next election toward the constitution. How do you think about the capacity of the insurgency to even get worse and to grow in size and effectiveness? Anthony Cordesman: Well, first let me say I don't think anyone is trying at this point to break the back of the insurgency. We are conducting operations to limit the insurgency while we create Iraqi forces. The kind of operations we had in Al Anbar are essentially sweeps. They weaken and undercut the insurgency, they deprive it of stable sanctuaries, but the insurgents can always move, they can disburse. These are not sweeps that somehow produce decisive victories. The same is true of Operation Lightning in the greater Baghdad area. It accomplished a great deal to improve the climate of security on a temporary basis. It demonstrated that the Iraqi forces in the Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Defense can deal with these kinds of missions where they don't need the heavy armor they lack, and it showed they can run their own operations and command centers. But at the end of it the impact is temporary at most and the insurgents can come back. The key issues if you're going to break the back of the insurgency are essentially to find an inclusive way that will persuade large numbers of additional Sunnis to join the government; to participate in the political and security process. To paraphrase Mao Zedong, you are depriving the insurgents of the sea that they can swim in with security. No matter what happens, we will face and do face ongoing problems with foreign insurgents and foreign volunteers which are being recruited, where the rate of suicide bombings and violent bombings, car bombings and other attacks is not being affected by our operations because the target has moved to soft targets which are largely Iraqi, and we as yet do not have Iraqi forces with more than a minimal number of protected vehicles or anything like the weapons necessary to protect themselves. That is something which will happen over the coming months. So anyone who talks about breaking the back of the insurgency is frankly fundamentally either misreading the situation or misportraying it deliberately. It is not happening and that is not the goal of our military operations in the region to date. Can we do it over time? Yes. But that depends more and more on bringing Iraqi units successfully on line and it will not happen for six to nine to twelve months with any decisiveness. Question: [Bill Breer.] Tony, is there any evidence of a the development of a political program among the insurgents? Anthony Cordesman: That's a very good question, Bill. I think among some of the insurgents, particularly Sunni insurgents, there is because negotiations are going on both rather noisily and publicly and quietly with Sunni Iraqis and with the government. Obviously those political issues do not affect the sort of former regime groups which to some extent have a sanctuary in Syria. The problem is that when you talk about political agendas, like many such groups they have a clear agenda of blocking the creation of an effective government, of preventing any kind of security or stability, but beyond that when you read through what they're saying, it is remarkably difficult to find any evidence from these people of what the program is. When we talk about Neo Salafi religious extremists, the program unfortunately is all too clear, it's messianic. It is essentially that you are going to use these types of attacks to defeat secularism, to defeat the West, and create an idealized form of puritanical Sunni Islam. That has absolutely no practical ability to be achieved in a country like Iraq where the majority are Shiites, and Kurds are basically seen as marginal at best by these groups relative to Arabs and pure Sunni Islamists. But the fact that goal basically sets no limits on what can happen when you attack Shiites or groups that do not agree with you religiously gives it a very clear political ideology and one which is remarkably dangerous because there are no practical limits to the level of attacks or violence that you can justify with this ideology. Question: [inaudible] Cary with Bloomberg News Mr. Cordesman, when you were in Iraq did you sense any divisions between say the State Department figures who are running things from inside the green zone and the military planners about how to proceed forward now? Do you sense that kind of division here in Washington as well? Anthony Cordesman: I never detected unity in Washington in 40 years. [Laughter]. But more seriously, I think the heritage of civil/military relations in Iraq has improved tremendously. It is no secret that we were paralyzed for something like a year by divisions between Ambassador Bremer and General Sanchez. Civil/military relations were terrible. At this point in time the real problem is I think more than anything else, everybody is constantly putting out fires. There simply isn't time often to get all of the coordination that would be desirable. But having been both a guest of the military and a guest of the State Department and a guest, I guess, of both, I was impressed by the fact that the people actually there are generally working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week under remarkably difficult circumstances, and to the extent there's stovepiping or a lack of coordination it's not because of the uniform or the fact you're dressed in mufti. It is simply because for those people there is so much to do and so much strain. And necessarily, there are divisions by region. Iraq cannot be dealt with in any homogenous form. People in the field often simply have a lot of problems coordinating back with the commands, whether they're in the green zone civilians or military. Question: Dr. Cordesman, Randy Nemo at Tochu International. The President is probably going to make a speech to the nation on Tuesday night and a lot of people have said that one way for him to try and galvanize support would be to indicate a center of gravity for post-conflict operations in Iraq. You've talked about a lot of things. Security, politics and governance, reconstruction, and socioeconomic issues, the oil industry. Can you basically offer some free advice to the administration about what is that center of gravity? If the President wanted to sort of focus the American people's attention on one thing where the U.S. could make a forceful intervention, to make a sea change in the situation, where is that center of gravity? Anthony Cordesman: The endless search for simplicity in Washington is one of the reasons we get ourselves into so much trouble in terms of public policy. When you have a really complex problem you'd better have a really complex solution. What would I really say? It is time to stop talking down to the American people, to stop talking down to the American Congress. It is to say that this is a very high-risk situation which is going to require years of further U.S. commitment and U.S. sacrifice. It is to address the fundamental elements in each of these areas, that the administration actually has a plan, and one that not only is a message to us but to the Iraqis and the others outside. And it is to follow it up with sustained, detailed explanations. I am not a fan of dumbing down, and centers of gravity are one of these horrible terms which when you look back at it historically, every time anybody identifies a center of gravity they usually make the problem worse. Question: Eugene Foley, The National Consultant, Washington, D.C. Who do you hold responsible for the failure to anticipate the insurgency other than the President? Anthony Cordesman: I think in all honesty we don't have any models here. I did, as one of countless numbers of advisors to the interagency process before the war, see many people discuss these risks. But I don't think it's any one person who is responsible for ignoring them. What we did see was a transition in January before the war from what was an interagency approach to deal with these issues to one which was dominated ideologically by a relatively narrow range of neocons. They were wrong in virtually every aspect of their perceptions of Iraq. They were wrong in economics, wrong in politics, wrong in how we would be perceived, and they were coupled with people who frankly saw nationbuilding and stability operations as an irritating luxury which interfered with the smooth efficiency of our conventional warfare capability. But quite frankly, trying to focus on a few individuals is really I think a mistake. The fact is first, as a nation we were not ready to perform the mission. We were focused on conventional warfighting. Second, for ideological reasons we did not let a weak and divided interagency structure function to the extent it could. And third, our military thinking was still focused primarily on the narrow aspects of warfighting rather than the grand strategic reality that if you can't win the peace it doesn't much matter what you do in winning the war. Question: My name is Mike Miasaba. My question is about the sources of weapons, explosive and money for domestic insurgents. I don't think those resources are unlimited and therefore if the supply of those resources is limited or cut off, domestic insurgents will not be able to continue the fighting. So my question again is where do these resources come from for domestic insurgents? Anthony Cordesman: You have to understand that this is a country which was involved in an arms race from the early '70s to the fall of Saddam Hussein and where the only restraints were what happened after 1991. There were some 900 or more arms depots in Iraq when Saddam fell. Unless you have actually visited a place like Tazi, you cannot imagine the immense inventories of weapons. Unless you have seen how many of these depots were scattered throughout the country, flown over them in a helicopter, you have no idea of how many they were. And above all, of how thorough the looting was in the days immediately following the fall of Saddam Hussein. I see again and again the statement that we should not have disbanded the army, and the fact is, it was irrelevant. It was gone two weeks before that disbandment occurred. More than that, all you have to do is look at those sites from a helicopter or visit them on the ground to see -- they were looted once, looted again, and looted furthermore, and those arms are scattered throughout the country. That's why most of the smuggling coming into Iraq is not weapons or arms, although a few systems have come in from places like Syria, like advanced sniper rifles, night vision goggles, and other devices. But the basic threat, car bombs and IEDs, suicide bombs, literally, there are countless tons of those munitions scattered throughout the country and it is at the point where any sane Iraqi has at least one gun simply out of self-protection and a few tend to stockpile weapons rather arbitrarily, simply out of concern for their families. We're not going to disarm them, not quickly, and they're not going to run out, at least for several years. Question: Al Millican, affiliated with Washington Independent Writers. Are you in agreement with the saying that any suicide bombing, murdering terrorist is not a real Muslim? Even if you don't agree, don't you think that those in the war on terror who are making that claim have an obligation, a responsibility, a duty, to not treat any detained enemy combatant as a sincere devout Muslim? It appears to me that the way terrorists and suspected terrorists are being dealt with is not convincing the world that these murderers are not real Muslims. It seems like particularly to the Muslim world, we are treating these enemy combatants like serious Muslims, and Muslims are believing what we do, not what we say. Anthony Cordesman: First let me remind you of the last 2,000 years of the history of Christianity. When it comes down to sheer violence, viciousness, and the ability to be mutually self-destructive, I wonder how many of the Christians responsible for those actions over the years would now be described as non-Christian? The fact is that religion always has a remarkably dark side and the more that it is secularized or brought into secular society the darker it tends to be. This is a current within Islam just as violence has been a major current within Christianity. It's had atrocities and human actions which all of us I suspect regret. I don't think we can simply dismiss this as being non-Islamic. There is an argument that has to occur within Islam itself. These are currents in Islam just as they are currents in every religion and unless people address this head-on, and some are beginning to do so, it is not enough to simply say they're not religious. The other problem here, quite frankly, is that many of the people involved in this are often young men, recruited quickly, thrown into the front with almost no real preparation, people who can't be identified as anything other than people caught up by an increasingly more sophisticated recruiting process. And whatever they may think, to the extent they actually have articulated what it is they think they're doing, it is not enough to have religious arguments. You are going to have to deal with that process separately. Question: Yannas Papesceau from the Embassy of Romania. Mr. Cordesman, yesterday [inaudible] talked about a strategy of putting pressure on the Iraqi political leaders by threatening a U.S. review of policy. Do you think this is just a round-about way of talking about a withdrawal? Or would the President be wise to heed this advice? Anthony Cordesman: I would certainly, if I were the President, listen to Senator Levin. As the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee he would be somebody I would take extraordinarily seriously. I find often, however, that a lot of the suggestions are suggestions which when you try to figure out they'd actually be implemented become really difficult. We've already had Secretary Rice go to Iraq to talk about inclusiveness. We've had Bob Zoelleck go there. We've had Donald Rumsfeld. Believe me, on a day to day basis, the embassy and the military cooperate in giving that message and it extends from creating national, not sectarian or ethnic forces, to try and constantly train people in putting restraint on how we conduct the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism campaign and to push for more efficient ministries, more efficient governance. I wish that we had frankly a stronger civilian component in Iraq. One of the great problems we have is we have some very brave young men and women, some very young brave middle aged men and women, and a lot of retirees, but one of the things, and this goes back to a question that was raised earlier that is very clear, far too many of these people are contract people, far too many of them are having to sign up again and again. Many cannot take leave because there isn't a replacement, and there are two reasons for that. One is a lack of courage and risk-taking in the career Foreign Service which I find dismaying. As somebody who grew up during the Cold War, the current emphasis on security raises real questions about the need for fundamental changes in the service. The other is when you talk about pressure, the number of people in NGO groups, the number of people who are from other agencies than State which simply are not present to sustain a lot of the political efforts and aid efforts that are needed. One example would be the Department of Homeland Security which was all set before its current director came in to provide significant support to the police programs and then the moment the leadership changed, people under him took advantage of it to basically stop much of the program. We do not see a coherent interagency effort here in the U.S. that matches the one that's going on in Iraq. Question: Jim Symington, an attorney here, former congressman. Do you think that the importance of victory, however defined, in this conflict would justify a draft? In other words, and do you think -- not that Congress would ever belly up to that -- but if it did would that have an impact on the morale of the insurgents? Anthony Cordesman: The answer is two-fold. First, no, I don't think it justifies it and it basically is because I believe today a draft would be largely irrelevant. What we really need are skilled career professional soldiers fully committed to the mission. No matter how you structured a draft you wouldn't get the skill levels, you wouldn't have the retention so they could deal with these missions and motivation would be a truly major issue. That is coupled with the fact that the technology of modern warfare doesn't lend itself to people with 18-24 months experience. You might be able to argue these people could perform all kinds of service functions we now use contractors to do, but why they'd be more efficient or less expensive escapes me. But more than that, no matter what happened, by the time you actually got a draft working and you got any momentum behind it, one way or another we will have lost or won. It will simply be far too late, even if you could do it politically to be relevant. I think the truth, honestly, is if we're going to do anything meaningful it means paying the cost of recruiting enough additional professionals so that the people in the regular services and National Guard are not constantly forced into rotation to the point where you break the force simply because people have no gap in which to have a life or career between deployments. Now some of the changes that General Schoomaker and others are making in the Army points out ways we could do this without major increases in manpower, but a draft is definitely the wrong answer, and it's the wrong answer because even if you could do it politically it would not have military value. Question: Carl Osgood with Executive Intelligence Review. A lot of talk about all the foreign fighters in Iraq. What I'm wondering about is how important is the insurgency as a training ground for these people to go out elsewhere in Central Asia or Africa or wherever to carry out acts of violence or fight in other wars? Anthony Cordesman: That's a very good question and I can say having talked to people in the countries around Iraq and people in the counter- intelligence or in the intelligence and security services, they are all very concerned about the aftermath of Iraq and what happens when these young men come back. It is important to note, however, that while we talk about Iraq as the only focus, there are a lot of other campaigns going on in Central Asia, the Middle East, and to some extent South Asia. It is totally misleading to see Iraq as somehow the focus of these training efforts and this is the only part of the problem. In terms of sheer numbers, the highest estimates I've seen of such insurgents would be a relatively small fraction of the overall number of people in places like Chechnya, various Central Asian groups, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and so on, who are acquiring training and experience. Let me make another point here, too. These young men are being recruited on a very diverse basis. Talking to both Iraqi and U.S. officials, they cite many of them as coming from North Africa which is an interesting shift. The Sudan is a major source of recruiting. So is Syria. So is Central Asia. Saudi Arabia is concerned about the number of young men that have gone in, but it seems to be actually that the Gulf countries are not providing more than relatively limited numbers of the total insurgent groups. So when they do go back they're going to go back to a lot of countries. Whether at the end of it they are core groups that replace the present leadership of areas, groups like al-Qaida, I don't know, but I certainly don't think that they are going to be prepared to smoothly reintegrate into their nations and societies. Question: Dr. Cordesman, could you please tell us about any Iranian influences you experienced while you were in your recent visit to Iraq? In terms of defending Shias or supplying Shia insurgents. Anthony Cordesman: As one Iranian put it to me, we are neighbors and we will be here long after you are gone. [Laughter]. I think there are two answers to your question. One, is Iran deeply concerned about what happens? Yes, it is. Are there Iranians in Iraq? Yes. That is true in significant numbers. Have they sought to influence the Shiite parties in Iraq? Yes. I think it is in general true, however, that the mainstream of Iranian intervention has been to push them towards inclusion, it has been to push them to wait. There has been no Iranian push to suddenly have America leave. We are in many ways serving their strategic interests. And while I have met some Iraqi officials who talk in a very different sense about large numbers of Iranian infiltrators, I have never heard that from anyone in the Iraqi military forces or security services. I have not heard it from U.S. officers serving in the field. I have not heard it from the people shaping the border police and creating security posts there. Their focus is almost solely on the West and particularly on Syria at this point in time. That doesn't mean that we may not have Syria's future problems. It doesn't mean that Iran has any cohesive approach to this. My experience with Iran is somewhat similar to that in Syria. Even if the government didn't want it to happen, there will always be intelligence groups and hardliners which are going to operate on their own and in ways which are much more provocative or extreme. But in a broad sense I did not see that and I didn't find anyone who did. Question: I'm Richard England. I'm a supporter of CSIS and I live in Washington. I'd like you to comment on what you think the situation will look like one or two years from now. Please don't base this on what you want to happen. What do you predict the situation will be like a year or two from now? Anthony Cordesman: Since I spent about 25 minutes describing why it isn't predictable -- [Laughter]. I think one of the real problems here is to accept uncertainty. You all have seen these decision trees about possible scenarios, and the fact is in one to two years those decision trees can take you to failure or success with about the same probability. What are the real benchmarks? They are first, whether the Iraqi government can, whether it is through the constitution, the elections or any other means, remain inclusive and succeed in getting significant numbers of additional Sunnis to participate in the government and in the security forces. So far the odds of that in one to two years seem to be reasonable, but we're talking about say a 60 percent probability versus a 40 percent probability of failure. It is a high risk issue. In one to two years if we persist in supporting the creation of effective Iraqi military forces, police forces and security forces, and remember that the police here are at least as important as the military in day to day security, then I think you will see considerable stability in a great deal of Iraq. There will probably still be odd areas of problems in some of the mixed cities. Al Anbar will still to some extent be the wild west. But if you can establish broad security in most of Iraq that is enough, I think, to really move forward on a stable basis. What I cannot predict and honestly address is whether we can somehow get away from a focus on the military dimension and honestly address the economic and aid dimension. That failure to me is such a high risk that it is at least as dangerous in terms of the one to two year outcome as failing to deal with the insurgency. Patrick Cronin: That's a perfect opening for Charlie Flickner who knows a great deal about foreign aid and Congress. Question: Mr. Cordesman, I'm going to take up your challenge to address those two issues that you just mentioned that haven't been discussed much today. Could you elaborate on your observations on the use of contractors, on the failure of the $18 billion plus the Iraqi oil money to be used effectively? Last Saturday I had a two year veteran aid, mid-level guy, good friend, come over. He talked about the Sweetwater Canal, a lot of work in the south in terms of clean water, restoration and so on that isn't discussed, though he would agree with you in general. But as the State Department sets up this new office under Carlos Pasquale to do construction, post-conflict stabilization, reconstruction, what lessons from Iraq could they learn? And specifically between the hard and soft areas in Iraq, between infrastructure and some of the democracy and training programs, are any of them working better than others? And how does the Bill Taylor effort, the attempt in Baghdad to manage appropriated funds, has it worked? How could it be improved? And how would you make the transition to -- Anthony Cordesman: We're down to 45 minutes of reply. [Laughter]. Question: Any one of those. Anthony Cordesman: I think what you see right now, unfortunately, is a group of often very dedicated people making individual projects work. But if you look at Iraq by sector or service, it isn't working, partly because the successes are often highly localized, partly because there isn't security, partly because the individual projects aren't tied to a realistic assessment of what the national requirement is and how you can get there. One recommendation is for future aid projects, don't use Russian standards of performance. [Laughter]. It isn't the number of things you begin that counts. It isn't the amount of money you throw at the problem. It isn't the number of buildings you complete. You have to look at what actually survives and works once you put money into it. You have to have measures of effectiveness in things like electricity, water or sewers, or education or health which measure ongoing capability. In my opinion, frankly, if AID was any kind of private corporation the CEO would have been driven out years ago. I find nothing in these weekly status reports which provides an honest or meaningful picture of what it is we're accomplishing, and one of the most critical ways of fixing things is to have honest systems that measure what the requirement is and then measure whether you're actually meeting it -- rather than a weekly success story by individual area or project. When you violate virtually every rule of management and reporting, the fixes in some ways are obvious. But I think the other answer that you find is first, why should American corporations know how to fix a command economy? Why should they be able to operate in a command economy even if there was something approaching significant levels of security? What do we know about reforming cleptocracies based on the market system for all its failures? And if the goal is to move money to Iraqis, both for short term stability and for change, why don't we put them in charge of the basic planning and execution, having set reasonable standards as to the validity of the projects and measuring the fact that they are properly executed? And having seen different efforts by different organizations in places like Cambodia, or what has happened in the Balkans, this is not a unique problem. Throwing money at international organizations is not generally much more effective than throwing money at the U.S. because they really don't know what they're doing and they can't solve sectoral or macroeconomic problems. That is something we need to admit if we are going to get things done in Iraq or we're going to get them done anywhere else. Question: Dr. Cordesman, my name is Drew Brown. I'm with Knight- Ridder. Could you sort of, maybe I missed this, but could you sort of update or assess the efforts to include sort of the Sunni, the people who consider themselves the Sunni nationalists as part of this insurgency, whether they be Ba'athists, whether they be just patriots or whatever, to include them back into the process, and sort of the chances of success of that including elements of the former regime. I guess I'm assuming they want to be part of some sort of new Iraq. Anthony Cordesman: First, there are within the present government many many people who are elements of the former regime, just as there are within the police and the military and so on. The regime was so permeating that if you excluded everyone who had to live with the regime and find some role in it you basically would not have much of an Iraq left. The question is how you broaden it. I think the movement has been divided. Currently the leaders of the Iraqi government have resisted pressure from some of the elements that were elected to carry out further purges. But Sunnis who are in the government and who were tied to the former regime certainly were very frightened of the future when I was in Iraq. It's going to take a lot of courage on the part of Iraq's present political leaders to resist this pressure, particularly when they see the kinds of attacks that are coming from various insurgents. There has been a step-up in negotiations which are not public with various Sunni groups, some of them insurgent groups. How successful those are to date is very uncertain. People have made statements, but they're statements that I can't substantiate. There have also been movements on both sides, movements by various Sunni groups including the Sunni clergy to basically shift back toward participation in the process. One of the most important statements was that Sunnis could and should volunteer for the military, the police and the security services. That came from the largest association of Sunni-Islamic clerics. The motives were mixed, because the goal was to build up Sunni power, not some kind of abstract national effort, but the fact that it occurred is an important shift. The fact that the government went to so much trouble to try to include Sunnis in the constitutional drafting process is another measure of success. There is a lot of discussion going on, still in a very vague sense, about what the next election would be like and how that election could be conducted in ways where everyone would feel it was fair and more inclusive. But to do this in a climate where there are so man memories of the past and there is so much pressure from violence is a very very difficult thing and the risks are high. Question: You've noted the insurgent goal of promoting civil war and we see the Kurds and the Bader Brigade maintaining their cohesiveness. How serious is the prospect that the national security forces may become partisans in any kind of struggle, and in that case what is the risk of American forces having to intervene? I think it is important to note that the Bader Brigade is a very very small force and that whatever it had by way of combat capability was destroyed during some brief clashes in the Iran-Iraq War and never seriously reconstituted, but you can't dismiss it simply because it isn't an effective military force. It does have a broad political base. The Peshmurga are more serious, the Kurdish forces, but they also tend to be concentrated in the north to the extent that they have a separate identity, which to some extent takes them out of the risk of immediate civil conflict. But your question is perfectly valid not so much because these militias are the problem but because if Iraq should divide sharply along Kurdish versus Arab or Sunni versus Shiite lines, I think you would see many of the problems we saw in Lebanon. To go back to what happened after 1982, I was reading report after report from the advisory teams about how we were building up a solid national force in Lebanon. But the minute Lebanon collapsed politically into ethnic and sectarian warfare, the military polarized as well. So there's only so much you can do from the military level. What I think may be different here, however, and what might hold things together better is that many of the Iraqi officers are really nationalists. Whatever their heritage, when you talk to them they even more than many of the civilians who think of themselves as nationalists, think of Iraq as a nation. That was never true of the Lebanese military. So I think there could be a considerably greater resistance to division. But is it possible? Yes. If it does occur seriously, let's face it, if Iraq devolves into civil war, that's an exit strategy. It's also a defeat. Question: My name is Matthew Stone. I'm with Nuclear Threat Initiative. Recently there have been reports of American commanders seeing firefights in the evening not between Coalition forces but what they assume to be between insurgent forces. To what extent is the insurgency a solid, cohesive organization? To what extent is the fracture between Sunnis, former Ba'athists, and foreign Wahabis? Anthony Cordesman: It's never been cohesive. Let me just clarify something. There are almost no Wahabis here. Even the Saudis are Neo Salafi, they're not ideologically tied to anything relating to Wahabi beliefs. They're much more related to what was derived from the extreme elements of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Salafi groups. I think there are clashes. These groups have never been cohesive. There have been incidents between them since they first arose in perhaps the areas where a lot of Sunnis would like to see an end to this. There have been clashes between the Islamist groups and the more mainstream Sunni groups. We don't know of cases of sort of former regime loyalists versus mainstream Sunni groups openly clashing. But you have to be very careful about reports of firefights. When you do something like this you're generally a lot better off just going in and quietly killing the opposition leader rather than getting into a messy kind of firefight, and there are a lot of assassinations, kidnappings, and disappearances. But there are some 35 various Sunni groups, and counting. Some of them have mutual alliances but they also franchise each other. And if anybody said they could draw a wiring diagram of these groups they would either be a visionary or a liar. Question: Nick Balarino, Committee on Government Reform. What locations did you visit in Iraq this last time? What Iraqi military and police units did you go to? And could you describe their command structure, if there is one. Anthony Cordesman: Let me be a little careful here. I went outside the green zone. I did go down to speak for the State Department to Iraqis in Hillah and I spent several days flying to various Iraqi military and training facilities scattered throughout the country. But A, I'm not sure I can remember them all. There are only so many UH-60 flights that you can really put into perspective. And second, there are some aspects of this like the details of Iraqi readiness that I don't think I'd want to discuss. But let me say that in general I think the Iraqi regular military forces have a very well institutionalized force structure and training base. The academies are back in operation; the training programs have gradually become real; specialized training is going on; you have a clear order of battle. You are filing in a ten division force structure. There are now equipment plans for that. You have created an organized set of base support units. There will be three regional and seven local. You're going to bring a war college equivalent, I think the word is defense college, on-line next year, but the staff colleges are actually already operating. When you look at the security forces you see a similar force structure and level of discipline being created -- SWAT teams, commando groups, anti-insurgency elements. Those battalions now are coming on-line. The police, which has been a problem in Iraq since Iraq became a nation is being restructured. There is a systematic vetting and review process. The training programs are actually now in place. The police stations are beginning to be funded on a level where the equipment and facilities will actually be things that can work. This process is still weaker than it is with the military. There are still major problems in the west. The border police, I suspect, are not going to be effective until this insurgency has either won or been defeated, but progress is occurring and it has helped. And the Iraqi national guard is being merged into the army in ways where the Iraqi national guard will over the course of a year or so be not only integrated into the force structure but have the same training, vetting and other procedures as the regular military. So you've gone from one functioning battalion in July 2004 to 81 battalions now. You'll be at over 100 by some point in early 2006 if not earlier. Those battalions will be part of a cohesive, well planned force structure and training system, and they will become, I think, effective but it will not be smooth or universal or something where you do not get desertions or units that break in the process. I think what was particularly impressive to me was to see in the military academies and military schools that we moved away from reliance on Western training methods to having the Iraqis reshape the curriculum. There are now Iraqi instructors in many of them. You have specialized schools which are critical. You're going beyond simply combat people to have the kind of technical training you need. I visited the police academies. I visited the military academies. I went to the training centers for special forces and SWAT teams, and these are not up to American standards. Guess what? But they are now organized, structured and working, and some of the procedures are pretty good. A lot of this is being improvised. It doesn't have the same kind of money we put into the problem, but I think it really is a tribute to the people in the police and military advisory teams, to officers at every rank, obviously General Patreaus is one of them, but there are many others that this really is beginning to work. What we have to understand is, it isn't going to suddenly succeed. It is going to take at least another year to 18 months to achieve critical mass and it's probably going to take two to three years to reach the level where even if there is political inclusion the insurgency is largely defeated. Patrick Cronin: Tony, this has been a tour de force. We don't all have the opportunity to have this kind of extensive field visit and expertise, so the best way to keep up with this complex, evolving insurgency is to read the work of Dr. Cordesman which is accessible mostly through CSIS.org, the web page, either through the books or the papers that he's updating. It may be that Dr. Cordesman has a few more minutes he can linger in the room for people who want to come up individually. I want to thank Laura Wilkerson and our external affairs office for the wonderful job of setting this up on a timely basis, and thank all of you for coming this morning. Thanks so much. Anthony Cordesman: Thanks, indeed. [Applause]. # # # # #