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America's New War in Iraq
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| LiquidX |
I found this article as I was browsing through Time.com. I feel sadden for what troops are really going through, and their families.
| quote: | Thursday, Jun. 19, 2003
America's New War in Iraq
Having made short shrift of Saddam's once-feared army, U.S. forces now face the more complex and frustrating challenge of a guerilla insurgency
By TONY KARON
The mercury hits 110 degrees most days in Baghdad now, but for occupying U.S. forces the political-military climate may be even hotter. Thursday's mortar and rocket attacks that killed one American and a number of Iraqis were a continuation of a daily drumbeat of hit-and-run attacks. Although U.S. officials have reported killing more than 100 fighters and arresting hundreds of suspects in raids this week on a suspected training camp and during searches of villages in Iraq's Baath party heartland, America has suffered an average of a soldier killed in combat every other day since President Bush on May 1 declared an end to hostilities in Iraq. The situation is getting so bad that Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on Wednesday told legislators on Capitol Hill that the U.S. now faces what he termed a "guerrilla war" in Iraq.
Though Iraq is mess right now, the U.S. does have a significant trump card in the country's divided political geography — a situation for which the Bush administration can thank the French (and the British). Iraq, like most of the nation-states conjured up with pencil and ruler on mapping tables in European capitals during the colonial era, comprises three distinct and often hostile ethnic groups. The Europeans did this to make such entities easier to rule from the outside and hobble their ability to unite against the colonial authorities. And the same dynamic may help the Americans.
So far, the armed rebellion against the U.S.-led occupation is confined to the Sunni Muslim population in the capital and to the north — the 15 percent of Iraqis who have governed the country from its creation after World War I until the arrival of the Third Infantry Division in Baghdad. Even the most stridently anti-American leaders of the country's Shiite majority have condemned the Sunni insurgency, denouncing it as "premature" and urging their followers instead to press peacefully for an early U.S. departure. As much as they chafe against the idea of a long-term U.S. occupation, the Shiites are unlikely to make common cause with a rebellion by the same Baathists that had routinely butchered previous Shiite uprisings. Without the support of the Shiites and the Kurds, the rebellion has a decidedly low ceiling — it can harass the U.S. forces and make their stay uncomfortable and costly, but it is unlikely ever to muster the national challenge that confronted the U.S. in Vietnam. And coalition commanders are hoping that the early capture or elimination of Saddam Hussein and other core Baathist leaders will speed the collapse of the resistance.
Guerillas in their midst
Still, while the U.S. military is a war-fighting machine without rival or peer, it doesn't do occupation very well. It fights and wins wars, but typically prefers to leave winning the peace to others — the Brits and other European and South Asian nations who have specialized in peacekeeping. The Pentagon recently even announced the closure of the peacekeeping institute at the Army War College.
Iraq, however, is right now neither a war nor a peacekeeping mission; it's a counterinsurgency operation — a low-intensity conflict requiring a delicate combination of combat, policing and civil affairs operations designed to isolate guerrilla forces from the civilian population in which they shelter, and then eliminate them. The remnants of Saddam's regime know they can never muster the firepower to beat an overwhelmingly superior occupying force. Instead they rely on stealth, speed and mobility to carry out hit and run attacks designed to stretch and demoralize their enemy and his supporters, and avoid concentrating their forces which makes them easy pickings for their enemy's vastly superior firepower. If, indeed, the Baathists took heavy losses at a training camp last weekend, the lesson they will likely learn from the experience is to further disperse their forces.
The hard road ahead
Counterinsurgency is always a tough fight for the occupying army no matter how great its advantages in technology and firepower — as the Israeli experience in the West Bank and Gaza and even the current U.S. operations in Afghanistan testify. The enemy keeps on coming. And confronting a determined enemy sheltering in a supportive, or at least permissive, civilian population requires that the occupying power deploy thousands more troops than the guerrilla formations. Their efforts to identify and eliminate enemy combatants hiding among civilians inevitably result in mistakes and miscalculations that alienate the local population, even generating sympathy for the guerrillas. The U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq has opted for large-scale sweeps, involving upward of 1,000 troops and air power, through territory in which anti-American forces are believed to be hiding. And while these sometimes yield handfuls of enemy combatants, in both places reports from the ground suggest they also rouse considerable local hostility. Which is exactly what the insurgents hope to achieve.
U.S. troops went to Iraq expecting to face dug-in Republican Guard units, eliminate them in an awesome display of firepower, and then head for home. They fought their way to Baghdad with lightning speed and efficiency, but instead of heading for home, many of the approximately 140,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq look set to stay awhile. One of the commanders of their British counterparts told a London newspaper last weekend that they'd likely be in Iraq at least four years. American GIs now find themselves peering through a 110-degree haze at an enemy who is essentially made invisible by the language and cultural barriers separating the troops from the local population. And the survival instinct requires that the soldier treat every crowd as a potentially deadly threat. Thus, for example, the killing of two Iraqis in Baghdad during a protest by former soldiers demanding to be paid, after U.S. officials said the crowd began throwing stones at American soldiers.
For the insurgency to sustain itself and attract new recruits beyond the existing cadre of die-hard Baathists — and, possibly, pockets of Sunni Islamists and disaffected former army officers who have suddenly found themselves with no source of income since the U.S. two weeks ago dissolved the Iraqi army — the U.S. would have to badly botch its efforts to win Iraqi goodwill. But therein lies the rub: Although the U.S. is a long way off from alienating the majority of Iraqis to the extent that they'd consider taking up arms against the world's most powerful military, it has not, thus far, managed to endear the majority of Iraqis to the occupation authority, either. It may be a relatively safe bet, right now, that the U.S. will ultimately prevail in the new phase of conflict in Iraq, but the cost and duration of that victory may be higher than most Americans had been led to expect. |
Sucks eehh.. I see some kind of Vietname feeling here. |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by LiquidX
I found this article as I was browsing through Time.com. I feel sadden for what troops are really going through, and their families.
Sucks eehh.. I see some kind of Vietname feeling here. |
I think there is potential for a vietnam-esque environment as well assuming situations deteriorate into worst case scenarios. I think the way to avoid such a situation would be to set up and expand a police force as rapidly as possible so Iraqis are patrolling Iraqis. Additionally, I think this is a good idea as well to avoid such a situation:
| quote: |
New Iraqi army plans unveiled
Former Iraqi soldiers have demanded payment
The US-led administration in Iraq has announced plans for the creation of a new army for the country.
The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) also said it would make monthly payments to many of those who lost their jobs when former President Saddam Hussein's military machine was disbanded.
Coalition officials had previously said that all former Iraqi soldiers would receive just a single month's severance pay.
Former Iraqi soldiers have taken part in sometimes violent protests against the CPA since they were sacked following their defeat by American-led forces in the Iraq war.
On Monday, an explosion hit a fuel pipeline near Iraq's border with Syria in the second such incident in three days.
A similar blast, which took place on Saturday was caused by sabotage.
'Grotesquely over militarised'
The CPA said recruiting for the new Iraqi Army would begin next week but senior officers who were closely allied to the former Baath regime would be barred from applying.
The new recruits' training will be supervised by a US general.
Within three years, it is hoped that 40,000 soldiers will have been trained and be ready to take up duties. The force will be a tenth of the size of its predecessor.
US troops in Iraq come under almost daily attack
Walter Slocombe, a senior security and defence adviser to the CPA, said Iraq had been "grotesquely over militarised".
He told a news conference: "It is the fact that most people who were in the old army will not be able to continue military careers.
"The old military needed to be formally disbanded so that it could be replaced by a new military organisation and forces suited to a democratic nation.
"This will be a military force, not a police force, not a security guard force.
"They will carry out regular military duties. We expect they will be protecting and defending borders of the country, providing military defence for key installations and protecting key facilities."
Severance pay
The CPA said the first payments to former Iraqi soldiers would begin on 14 July.
Between 200,000 and 250,000 former professional soldiers will receive monthly payments roughly similar to those they received when in work.
Conscripts will get a single one-off compensation payment.
Senior members of the now banned Baath Party will not be eligible for any payment.
The CPA said it would be up to a future Iraqi government whether to continue the payments.
The move comes amid almost daily attacks on occupying US forces in the country.
Dozens of American soldiers have died in gun and rocket-propelled grenade attacks since the war officially ended.
Oil installations whose output has been earmarked to pay for the reconstruction of Iraq have also come under attack.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3013386.stm |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by Vesa
I wonder if any other country agrees to send in peacekeepers if there's an insurgency. |
There was talk of this a while ago ... dunno if it's going forward.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3045981.stm |
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