Multiple statements by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki have confirmed his supported for a short timetable for US troops to withdraw from Iraq. Even the spokesman responsible for a clumsy and half-hearted walkback of that timetable went on camera today and reaffirmed that US troops should be gone by 2010.
As Spencer Ackerman notes, this puts John McCain in quite a box. He has to either accept the fact that timetables for withdrawal are not reckless, or defy the will of the Iraqi Prime Minister.
Note that all advocates for a withdrawal timetable – whether Barack Obama or Nouri Al-Maliki – believe there should be flexibility to this timetable and that conditions on the ground should, in some way, govern the speed and nature of that withdrawal. But the key is to get moving now rather than at some indeterminate time in the future.
McCain’s response has been to ignore Maliki’s timetable request and insist that the only reason we are even having this conversation is that he was right about the surge and Obama was wrong to oppose it. According to McCain’s website, “The reduction in violence, political reconciliation, the decimation of al Qaeda in Iraq, and the freedom of the Iraqi people–these are the fruits of the surge strategy that Barack Obama opposed and that John McCain advocated.”
But is that even true? Is the surge the real reason behind the drop in violence in Iraq? The answer is mostly – but not entirely – no.
I’m a historian by trade so I spend a lot of time arguing about historical causes and the roles of various historical actors. My specialty is the 19th century US South and not the modern Middle East. But I have taught courses on Guerrilla Conflict in Comparative Perspective before at Northwestern University and Albion College. Ironically enough, one of the required readings in that class was David Petraeus’ Counterinsurgency Manual, which I held up as one of the most sophisticated studies on modern counterinsurgent strategy. Not surprisingly, I think very highly of General Petraeus and, if I credit the Bush Administration for one thing, it’s putting Petraeus in charge in 2007. But what about the surge itself? Did that make the difference?
To understand this we need to consider what the surge actually did. It was an increase of 30,000 US troops mostly to Baghdad. But it was also a redirection of those troops to outposts closer to the Iraqi community and off US bases. The purpose was to build trust in the Iraqi community and win over the “hearts and minds” of civilians tired of brutal Al Qaeda attacks. Ultimately, with violence down, Iraq’s political leaders would have the space needed to make concessions and build democracy.
But here’s the chronological problem with McCain’s “fruits of the surge” claim: The Sunni Arab community in Anbar Province had already begun to organize against Al Qaeda several months before the surge began and Petraeus arrived in command. The Anbar Awakening resulted from the arrogant claims of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s successor to create an Islamic State of Iraq, which dismissed the old Sunni insurgents as infidels. It imposed draconian social codes on a population that had long supported the more secular, nationalist Sunni insurgency from the beginning. Sunni tribesmen increasingly felt that their own insurgency had been hijacked by outsiders – Jordanians, Libyans, Egyptians, Saudis and others who cared little for Iraqi sovereignty. And so Abu Risha and other tribesmen met secretly with US commanders to get money and weapons to fight off Al Qaeda. The move was a stunning success. By Spring 2007, long before the surge had taken full hold, the Anbar Awakening was bragging that it defeated Al Qaeda in months when the US couldn’t finish the job in years.
Both Iraqi and Americans worked to replicate the Awakening model in urban Baghdad. But here the challenges were different. Baghdad was a heterogenous city and gaining trust would be harder among an internally divided populace. Ironically, the Awakening strategy got an assist from brutal Shi’ite militiamen who ethnically cleansed whole sections of Baghdad. Once mixed neighborhoods now became all-Shi’ite or all-Sunni. Much of the violence in the late spring of 2007 was actually a mix of this militia activity and Al Qaeda attempts to avenge Sunni expellees. But the Sunnis essentially lost Baghdad and many residents fled to Syria. As a result, Petraeus, with his “surged” troops, merely ratified the new geography of Baghdad by constructing massive 16-foot concrete barriers that separated neighborhoods. The purpose was to keep outsiders out of local neighborhoods and discourage militia activity. To police local communities, Petreaus encouraged the creation of neighborhood committees to serve as local security. They could keep a watch on Al Qaeda.
But it was a third force that drove down violence in Baghdad more than anything else. A violent struggle in Najaf and Karbala between supporters of SIIC (Badr Brigade) and Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army convinced Sadr that he needed to reign his men in. The ethnic cleansings in Baghdad encouraged the Mahdi Army to dissolve into local gangs and Sadr knew he had to do something to regain control. So he called a ceasefire on his militia. Within weeks, the violence in Baghdad plummeted. The Sadrites left the streets. The walls separated the neighborhoods. And the local committees had little trouble turning Al Qaeda remnants in to the Iraqi army and the Americans.
From that point on, with Baghdad more secure, the Iraqi army was able to flex its muscles in Diyala and, most dramatically, in Basra after the Sadrite ceasefire broke down.
So, how much of this was a result of the surge? Was all of this the “fruits of the surge” as McCain suggests? The answer is clear: most of the drawdown in violence was a result of the Anbar Awakening and al-Sadr’s ceasefire. The surge certainly helped by providing manpower to build the concrete barriers and help out with the neighborhood committees in Baghdad. But the surge was far from the most important factor. Not surprisingly, Nouri Al-Maliki gave zero credit to the surge for the drop in violence.
But what about the counterfactual: would Iraq have spiraled into anarchy and civil war if not for the surge? As a historian, I HATE counterfactuals. We adhere to a principle known as historical contingency: there are too many other factors that intervene in order to isolate one event as more important than others. Reading history backwards is dangerous. That said, this is politics and not academic history, so I’ll bite. The first question, of course, is if we had begun to draw down troops immediately in January 2007, slogged on as before, or begun negotiations over some kind of withdrawal timetable over two years. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Obama was in charge in 2007 and he chose to begin negotiations to start withdrawal over a two-year timetable. What would have happened in Iraq? My sense is that things would not have gone much differently – as long as Petreaus had been put in charge. Why? Because the Anbar Awakening had already proved its success. Petreaus would have had to support the neighborhood committees in Baghdad with fewer soldiers than he had with the surge. But I see no evidence that he would not have been able to build the concrete walls and support the locals.
Perhaps more importantly, we have to consider the Sadrite side. Some people argue that an early withdrawal would have encouraged various sides to dig in for a full-on civil war. But that, in essence, was what got Sadr in trouble in Karbala and Najaf anyway – and that was without ANY US interference. Sadr found himself in war with the Badr Brigades and was outgunned and outorganized. He also saw his political future in jeopardy as his militia devolved into pure thuggery. He would have called his ceasefire regardless of the US troop presence.
So, the Anbar Awakening (which preceded the surge), the atrocious ethnic cleansing of Baghdad (which occurred in spite of the surge), and the Sadrite ceasefire would all likely have occurred even if the US had begun procedures to withdraw from Iraq.
The major Democratic argument for withdrawal was that it would force the political factions in Iraq to make the concessions necessary to run a sovereign country. They could no longer use us as a crutch. Frankly, I have no idea if this would have worked.
Then there is the question of training the Iraqi army. Petraeus has argued many times that the Iraqi army simply was not ready to do what it did in Basra this year in 2007. But the leading withdrawal plans – including Obama’s – still called for training of the Iraqi army. In fact, they all called for Special Forces to remain in Iraq as well – they could have done the necessary work to support the neighborhood committees.
What’s the upshot of all this? The surge certainly helped restore order in Baghdad, though placing Petraeus in charge probably did more than 30,000 soldiers to change the situation. Still, the surge was only a part of the overall process. John McCain simply cannot argue that Iraq would never have experienced an improvement in security if not for the surge. To argue, as he has, that the “reduction in violence, political reconciliation, the decimation of al Qaeda in Iraq, and the freedom of the Iraqi people – these are the fruits of the surge strategy that Barack Obama opposed and that John McCain advocated” is a gross exaggeration and a distortion of history.