Prelude to a Quagmire
The addition of 450 new U.S. military trainers to Iraq is the next
step down a slippery slope.
By Barry R. Posen
June 19, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "FP"
- President Barack Obama said last week
that the U.S. effort to train the Iraqi military to better fight the
Islamic State has suffered not from an insufficiency of training
capacity, but of trainees. Three days later, he ordered the
deployment of 450 additional military trainers to Iraq. This new
infusion of talent is accompanied by a subtle change in rhetoric:
The new trainers will do more than train; they will advise, plan,
integrate, and support. In short, these troops will be intimately
involved with organizing and commanding defensive and offensive
operations by the Iraqi Army. And that appears to be the first step
down a slippery slope that could embroil the U.S. military in Iraq
for years and years to come.
U.S. leaders often repeat that the overall goal in Iraq is to
“ultimately defeat” the Islamic State. If they are serious and hope
to go on the offensive soon, then the measures they have adopted so
far are clearly inadequate — and the most recent steps are unlikely
to tip the scales. The Iraqi Army barely exists. Officers and troops
seem prone to confusion at best, panic at worst. Few Sunni Arab
soldiers remain in regular Army units, rendering them unfit for
security duties in Sunni-majority areas. Meanwhile, the Islamic
State’s rampage continues: In mid-May, they took the city of Ramadi,
Anbar province’s capital, from government forces.
In the hopes of truly turning the tide, the United States has taken
virtual ownership of the campaigns to eject the Islamic State from
Ramadi, the rest of Anbar province, and ultimately Mosul, Iraq’s
second-largest city, which the jihadis took a year ago. The
incentives facing U.S. commanders and politicians are leading them
ever closer to direct combat. If these assaults begin with U.S.
ownership, they must end with U.S. victory. If they fail to unseat
the Islamic State from these areas, it will be a political
embarrassment at home and abroad. Critics of the administration’s
policy will trumpet the loss of U.S. credibility. Shiite politicians
in Iraq will use it as proof that Iran is a more reliable ally. And
Islamic State leaders will celebrate their victory over the United
States.
Clearly, there are strong incentives for the United States to add
sufficient combat power to these campaigns to secure victory. If
U.S. forces plan, resource, and command these campaigns, then they
will be tempted to do other things, as well. In 2010-2011, the last
time the Iraqi Army demonstrated any real competence — as suggested
by both their low casualties and the general decline of civilian
deaths across the country — each of its battalions typically had a
dozen U.S. advisors, and large U.S. combat formations backstopped
most major Iraqi Army units. Iraqi fire support is poor, so U.S.
forces will not only need to provide air support, as they are doing
now, but they will need to provide attack helicopters and artillery,
too.
Retaking cities like Ramadi and Mosul could also require dangerous
urban combat. To win in these cities, it will be necessary to attach
U.S. forces to Iraqi units to direct air support from drones and
aircraft, and to coordinate artillery and attack helicopter strikes,
as well. Given the chaotic nature of urban fighting, and the dubious
cohesion of Iraqi combat units, one suspects that for every advisory
and targeting team, there will be at least a U.S. infantry squad
providing security. And given that in urban combat events can always
take a fast turn for the worse, a quick reaction force to pull these
U.S. troops out of trouble will also be on call. Finally, if Iraqi
ground forces get hung up by the kind of well-prepared urban defense
the Islamic State has demonstrated in past battles, the U.S. forces
will wish to have an even more capable tactical reserve, ready to
commit to the fight.
All together, this means that before you know it, the U.S. force
will get pretty large, probably one U.S. brigade combat team, 10,000
soldiers with support, to backstop every four or five Iraqi
brigades, even if the plan still calls for Iraqi infantry to lead
the house-to-house, building-to-building fighting. When the United
States fought its last big solo urban fight in Anbar province, in
Fallujah in 2004, the Marines who did the bulk of the fighting
suffered high numbers of dead and wounded. The recent battle for
Tikrit provides little reassurance: It was immensely costly and
destructive, with hundreds killed on both sides. Yet it was also
indecisive, as many Islamic State fighters escaped. Battles for
Ramadi and Mosul, both larger cities, would likely prove even
harder.
Even if U.S. forces can assure that Ramadi, Anbar province, and
Mosul are returned to the Iraqi government’s control, the hard work
won’t be over. Then the task will turn to consolidation and
stabilization. Some citizens in these areas support the Islamic
State, and they will likely go underground and continue to fight,
while others simply will not welcome the Iraqi central government
back with open arms. As many as 100,000 troops and police may
ultimately be required to secure the Sunni Arab majority regions of
Iraq. Shiite-dominated security forces would either be ineffectual
in these areas, or worse, vengeful and destructive, as demonstrated
by their recent behavior after the re-conquest of Tikrit.
The United States cannot afford the Iraqi military and police
failing to stabilize the Sunni heartland. This would create still
more jihadi recruits and associate the United States with police
state tactics, thus rendering the whole liberation project and the
costs associated with it counterproductive and politically
embarrassing at home and abroad. Washington hopes to train Sunni
forces to restore and maintain order, but they are starting from
almost nothing: The Iraqi security forces are dangerously sectarian
and incompetent. To ensure that order is maintained, and more Sunnis
are not alienated, some U.S. forces will need to be involved in
stabilization efforts, advising and monitoring Iraqi security
forces, providing the intelligence necessary to suppress insurgents,
and giving precision fire support that assures tactical success with
low collateral damage. Ironically, the more territory that is
wrested from the Islamic State’s control, the greater the demands
for additional U.S. forces will be. And these forces will need to
stay for the foreseeable future. It would not be a surprise if those
U.S. troops sent to help eject the Islamic State from major cities
and towns needed to remain to prevent the Islamic State’s return.
The president and his advisors are probably aware that they are on
the slippery slope. They hope that the Islamic State will be
defeated by a reinvigorated, multi-sectarian Iraqi Army, backed by
limited and selective use of U.S. air power. But if this new
security force cannot be built — and experience suggests that it
cannot — the United States will be faced with two choices: It can
follow the path traced above, a path that leads the United States
back into direct participation in conventional combat in Iraq, as
well as open-ended stabilization operations. Or the president can
admit that all this talk of ultimately defeating the Islamic State
is exactly that — talk. Instead, the United States will have to
settle for containment, which can be achieved at bargain prices,
with a low U.S. profile.