Counterterrorism Blog

This morning, I posted a comprehensive report about my time in Iraq at Bill Roggio's web site The Fourth Rail. Roggio's media company, Public Multimedia Inc., provided support and assistance for my embedded reporting. An excerpt:

The Strategy: Virtually all the U.S. officials with whom I spoke feel that American strategy now boils down to a single goal: strategic disengagement. That is, the U.S. wants to strengthen the Iraqi government to the point that it is self-sustaining enough that the country will not collapse into chaos as U.S. troops are brought back home. It's unclear how long this will take. One Army staff sergeant who has worked closely with the Iraqi army and police thinks that "several years" is the best estimate. (The Iraqi forces will be discussed further below.) A U.S. official told me that in the past, the line was always that the U.S. was "six months" away from turning the country over to the Iraqis. This was detrimental to overall planning, because strategy was geared toward maximizing results over the six-month period before the handover would allegedly take place. Now the military's plans are more long-term: they are trying to look at what will be best for Iraq several years down the line, and placing less emphasis on when the U.S. commitment expires.

U.S. strategy is not just military in nature. Rather, it is designed to eliminate some of the underlying conditions that sap the average Iraqi's faith in the country's civil society. For example, in the districts that 2-32 patrols -- Yarmouk and Hateen -- there are four lines of operation: security, governance, economy, and essential services. According to Major Brynt Parmeter, who works at the brigade level, the overall goals are to reduce sectarian fighting, increase the Iraqi security forces' capabilities, and improve local government to empower it to provide the services that Iraqis need. The Iraqis lack a number of essential services. Right now the U.S. focus is on food centers, financial institutions, fuel, and medical needs -- but the Iraqis are also lacking in trash collection, reliable sewers, electricity, and other services. The effect of the lack of essential services on Iraqis should not be underestimated. Gas cost 5 cents a liter under Saddam Hussein; now the official price has skyrocketed to about 70 cents a liter. But in practice it is far higher than that: according to Lieutenant Patrick Henson, there is only one government-run gas station in the Yarmouk district. When the long lines around the station are coupled with security concerns, it should come as no surprise that many Iraqis buy their gas from the black market, where prices can reach $2 a liter. In other words, Iraqis may be paying more for their gas than Americans -- and the average Iraqi income is substantially lower than the average American income.

The Surge: Multiple military sources stated that my patrols with 2-32 provided a snapshot of the fruits of the surge. One of the surge's stated goals was to stabilize Baghdad. In Yarmouk, the surge functioned just as military leadership hoped. I spoke with a large number of soldiers in 2-32 about the state of Yarmouk when they arrived, and all of them painted the same picture: the soldiers would routinely find corpses and there were a large number of IEDs and VBIEDs (vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices). On one dangerous road that the U.S. military calls Whitesnake (other Baghdad road names form a virtual tribute to Eighties bands), there was only one checkpoint. There are now three, and the Iraqi army presence makes it harder for insurgents to plant IEDs.

Multiple sources informed me that since 2-32 moved to Yarmouk as part of the surge, a lot of residents who had previously left have moved back, and a number of stores have opened up. Also, residents have given American soldiers intelligence tips that have resulted in valuable arrests. Although light arms fire targeted the Humvee I rode in during one of the patrols that I went on, my time in Yarmouk (which included sitting in on interviews with residents about the security situation that they faced) painted a picture of a district that is about as safe as a Baghdad district can be at this point. There are two key questions moving forward. First, can this improvement be maintained, or will Yarmouk return to being perilous when the surge ends? And second, as places like Yarmouk are handed over to the Iraqi security forces, will the security situation deteriorate?

You can read the entire report here. My sincere thanks to The Counterterrorism Foundation and Public Multimedia Inc. for supporting my embed. I would also like to thank the servicemen of the 2nd Battalion, 32nd Field Artillery, with which I embedded (I'm now at the Baghdad International Airport, waiting for a flight back to Kuwait -- so the embedded portion of my trip is finished). 2-32 is a truly outstanding group of individuals. Look for more dispatches about my time in Iraq on the CT Blog over the next few days.