Is the Surge Working?

In the media, that question is being asked a lot these days, and for those of you planning to break bread with extended family this week, it will likely be among the topics of conversation.

So how can I resist but to throw in my two cents. Consider this post a Ground Truth Guide to one of the most political questions of our day.

First, let's recognize the question for what it is: a partisan test of loyalties. Answer "no" and you must be marching with those antiwar Democrats. Answer "yes" and you're a "pro-war Bush supporter."

Second, the question invites the answerer to snub either (1) the courageous efforts of 175,000 U.S. servicemen and women who are risking their lives in Iraq right now, while we're all enjoying our Tofurkies, OR (2) the legitimate concerns of millions of Americans, Iraqis, and people around the globe -- civilian and military -- who recognize the limits of what a foreign military can achieve in Iraq.

Third, it's the wrong question asked by the wrong people at the wrong time. For starters, it frames Iraq as an all-American domestic political problem with only one possible solution. The Problem: What to do about this thing called I-rak? Solution: send more of our G.I.s! Problem: Darfur? Solution: Send in our boys. Problem: global warming? Solution: da boyz!

Are you seeing the problem? Ending conflict and suffering in Iraq presents a military, diplomatic, humanitarian, economic, and -- most importantly -- peacebuilding challenge. Is the surge working? That question is not about addressing the world's largest population movement and humanitarian crisis today. The UNHCR estimates 4.5 million people have been displaced. Nor is it about the country's 30-50% unemployment rate, which most experts point to as a major contributing factor of Iraq's instability. Reducing all of America's policy options to an either-or question that suggests only military solutions (surge vs. withdrawal) is just plain silly talk. Most Americans are already wising up to that, but it seems our politicians are a little slower.

Now that we have liberated ourselves from that ridiculous question and the obsession of small-minded media outlets to put all of us into neat little ticky tack boxes, it's time to consider what's really happening on-the-ground in Iraq.

Without question, there has been a remarkable improvement in security. Here's an excerpt from today's report by New York Times Baghdad correspondents Damien Cave and Alissa Rubin:

The security improvements in most neighborhoods are real. Days now pass without a car bomb, after a high of 44 in the city in February. The number of bodies appearing on Baghdad’s streets has plummeted to about 5 a day, from as many as 35 eight months ago, and suicide bombings across Iraq fell to 16 in October, half the number of last summer and down sharply from a recent peak of 59 in March, the American military says.

As a result, for the first time in nearly two years, people are moving with freedom around much of this city. In more than 50 interviews across Baghdad, it became clear that while there were still no-go zones, more Iraqis now drive between Sunni and Shiite areas for work, shopping or school, a few even after dark. In the most stable neighborhoods of Baghdad, some secular women are also dressing as they wish. Wedding bands are playing in public again, and at a handful of once shuttered liquor stores customers now line up outside in a collective rebuke to religious vigilantes from the Shiite Mahdi Army. [more]

And on NPR's Morning Edition, Jamie Tarabay reports: "Nine months after the start of the U.S. troop surge in Baghdad, signs of life are slowly returning to some neighborhoods of the Iraqi capital. In the Sunni enclave of Amriya on the west side of the city, shops are reopening, and the economy is picking up."

Iraqi bloggers, military bloggers, and a U.S. Army surgeon in West Baghdad who I've been talking with by phone confirm these recently reported trends.

But don't blame it all on the surge. There are other important factors contributing to these recent improvements. For example, there's the popular backlash against the terror campaign of al-Qaeda (ALQ) and other extremists and the formation of anti-ALQ coalitions among tribal leaders. Those trends began in 2006 and gathered momentum in early 2007. Here's what I wrote about the trend last May:

The tribal leaders formed the Anbar Salvation Council in fall 2006 to fight al-Qa'ida. Also called the Anbar Awakening, the coalition began with dozens of tribes and now boasts more than 40 tribes or sub-tribes from Anbar. The Sunni Arab leader of the movement, Sheik Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi, lost his father and three brothers to al-Qaida assassins. AP quotes al-Rishawi as saying insurgents were "killing innocent people, anyone suspected of opposing them. They brought us nothing but destruction and we finally said, enough is enough."

Early this year, as the council gained new tribal members and strength, cooperation with U.S. forces began to improve especially in and around Ramadi, Anbar's provincial council. Last month I talked with a Marine fellow in Senator Reed's office who served in Ramadi two years ago. He stays in touch with fellow Marines, including men serving there right now who confirm a remarkable turnaround in Ramadi.

Other related trends include: the organizing of neighborhood militias, the spread of local cease-fires, the growing capabilities of some of Iraq's security forces and commanders, and the shift to a counterinsurgency strategy that emphasizes protecting and securing the local population. In addition, Gen. Petreaus and other commanders have focused on building alliances at the local level with anyone who can help restore order.

The real question is less about whether or not we're seeing improvements in security. We are, and that's good news. But can these recent improvements be sustained? And will the downward trend in violence continue? After all, Iraq's rate of conflict-related deaths remains among the highest in the world.

Our friend Abu Aardvark and other experts are not so sure. They caution that, despite recent improvements in security, current military tactics carry the risk of moving Iraq "towards a warlord state, along a Basra model, with power devolved to local militias, gangs, tribes, and power-brokers, with a purely nominal central state."

Abu Aardvark's caution, if not pessimism, got strong military back-up in last Thursday's Washington Post. In his front page article "Iraqis Wasting an Opportunity, U.S. Officers Say", Tom Ricks writes:

Senior military commanders here now portray the intransigence of Iraq's Shiite-dominated government as the key threat facing the U.S. effort in Iraq, rather than al-Qaeda terrorists, Sunni insurgents or Iranian-backed militias.

In more than a dozen interviews, U.S. military officials expressed growing concern over the Iraqi government's failure to capitalize on sharp declines in attacks against U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians. A window of opportunity has opened for the government to reach out to its former foes, said Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the commander of day-to-day U.S. military operations in Iraq, but "it's unclear how long that window is going to be open."

...all the U.S. military officials interviewed said their most pressing concern is that Sunnis will sour if the Iraqi government doesn't begin to reciprocate their peace overtures. "The Sunnis have shown great patience," said Campbell. "You don't want the Sunnis that are working with you . . . to go back to the dark side."

The Army officer who requested anonymity said that if the Iraqi government doesn't reach out, then for former Sunni insurgents "it's game on -- they're back to attacking again."

The year-long progress in fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq could carry a downside. Maj. Mark Brady, who works on reconciliation issues, noted that a Sunni leader told him: "As soon as we finish with al-Qaeda, we start with the Shiite extremists." Talk like that is sharply discouraged, Brady noted as he walked across the dusty ground of Camp Liberty, on the western fringes of Baghdad. [more]

In short, despite improvements in security, the challenge of building an enduring peace remains.

So that's the Ground Truth Guide to the BIG political question of this year's Thanksgiving. I'll leave it to our readers and future blogs to generate some more intelligent questions that the media ought to be asking and elected officials and candidates ought to be answering.

Photo caption: Women walk through Baghdad's Zawra Park. Joao Silva for The New York Times.

Blogger alert: Abu Aardvark recently hosted an interesting mano y mano debate between Georgetown scholar Colin Kahl and Center for American Progress policy analyst Brian Katulis.

Iraq's Hydrocarbon Law

Amongst the benchmarks in the supplemental appropriations bill for 2007, section 1904(b) states, “On or before October 1st, 2007, the President shall certify to the Congress that the Government of Iraq has enacted a broadly accepted hydro-carbon law that equitably shares oil revenues among all Iraqis.”

“Oil” was a catchword before the Iraq war even began. So what do we know about Iraqi oil and what can we say about the significance of this hydrocarbon law in terms of Iraq and its people, and the oil industry as a whole?

Iraq’s oil sector was nationalized in 1972 and has since been a source of national pride for everyone in the country. Privatization may seem like a good idea in the U.S., but it's not a real option for Iraq at this point. The oil law on the table - actually the first of four - creates a national framework for managing Iraq’s oil sector under the new regime.

Yahia Said, Middle East and North Africa regional director at Revenue Watch Institute, a nonprofit organization monitoring Iraq's oil industry, said in a PBS interview: “This is the first application of Iraq's federal constitution. It will show the way of how the Iraqi union will be structured and how it will work into the future.” The law centralizes management over the oil sector in the Iraqi government, rather than dividing it among Sunni, Shi’a and Kurds. This retains the nationalist flavor of the oil sector.

The remaining three laws will tackle a much more complex and controversial issue: distribution of oil revenue. The central and northwestern Sunni-dominated regions of Iraq contain little oil, so Sunnis fear they will miss out on profits. To the north lies the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which is mixed Kurdish and Arab. Kurdish leaders have threatened to annex Kirkuk and withdraw from Iraq if they are not given their own fair share of oil revenue.

An equitable law would signify reconciliation and unity between Iraq’s various religious and ethnic groups at the national level. Iraq needs to create these laws carefully and with benchmarks in mind. EPIC has argued in favor of such benchmarks and we will continue to follow the progress of Iraq’s oil sector now and in the future.

The Silver Lining of the Supplemental

Yesterday, Congressional Democrats ended a nearly 5-month cold war with the Bush Administration by approving supplemental Iraq war funding absent a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal.

The anti-war netroots at Daily Kos and practically everywhere else on the internet are now in a tizzy, declaring "if the supplemental bill passes, it most probably means that Mister Bush has all the money he needs to continue this bloody disaster for the next 16 months." Even the New York Times is riddled with language about how the Dems "relented" and made a "wrenching reversal."

But as Erik noted in his recent blog, the media has a curious affinity for black-and-white half-truths, and for declaring "game over" in the third inning. Congressional leaders will have other, better opportunities to duke it out on a number of funding bills in coming months, including Department of Defense Appropriations. Furthermore, there's more to this emergency spending bill than the timetable issue.

For starters, this is the first bill that begins to address the urgent needs of the fastest growing refugee and internally displaced populations in the world. It provides funding for lifesaving humanitarian assistance and protection to help those displaced by the conflicts in Iraq and Darfur. Secondly, it restores funding for development NGOs that have successfully partnered with local Iraqi leaders to help them rebuild their war-torn communities. Third, the bill provides some of the assistance that Iraq desperately needs for an economic and political solution -- something that neither troop surges nor withdrawals are likely to produce alone.

No, we didn't get as much as we would have liked, but EPIC and our Iraq Peace and Development Working Group (IPDWG) allies lobbied hard and won $85 million above the President's request for Iraqi refugee/IDP assistance and restored $50 million of funding for USAID's Community Action Program (CAP) and the Marla Ruzicka War Victims Fund.

Even if you're among the "support our troops, bring them home" crowd and you buy the Daily Kos' 16-month-bloodbath prophecy, you ought to know this funding is crucial for protecting our troops. As long as they're over there, the best way we can help them is by stabilizing Iraq through political, civil and economic projects. Employed Iraqis with ownership of and interest in community projects, such as those funded by CAP and highlighted in our "Overlooked Successes" conference, aren't strapping bombs to their chests and going after Americans. And what you may not have heard is that these moderates do have an influence on those who are causing trouble - popular support is key to movements such as Moqtada al-Sadr's.

The sooner we get moving on economic, political and civil solutions, the less justification this Administration will have for maintaining or augmenting troop levels.

Also present in the approved bill are benchmarks. We're planning a series of blog entries here giving you details on each one, but for now suffice it to say we've been calling for benchmarks for years. Of course, benchmarks on U.S. progress rather than focusing entirely on the Iraqi side of the equation would have been nice. But you know how it is in Washington - baby steps, baby steps.

The bottom line is that U.S. troop levels are just one part, one question in the debate over Iraq's future. The media needs to be careful not to over-focus on that question at the expense of the needs of the Iraqi people.

Iraq Study Group Gains Renewed Attention

A front page article in today's Washington Post opens: "After an initially tepid reception from policymakers, the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group are getting a second look from the White House and Congress, as officials continue to scour for bipartisan solutions to salvage the American engagement in Iraq."

Last December, EPIC championed the Iraq Study Group report as a bipartisan solution for responsibly moving forward on Iraq. Though the Group's recommendations were initially tabled by the congressional leaders and the Bush administration, we are pleased to see that Washington is finally giving the report the attention and consideration it needs and deserves.

As negotiations on the FY2007 supplemental continue this week, the White House seems poised to accept a measure to impose political benchmarks on the Iraqi government and reduce U.S. assistance to Iraq if those benchmarks are not met. This was one of the key recommendations included in last December's bipartisan report on Iraq, and now seems to be one of the most acceptable measures among both democratic and republican congressional offices.

Nearly all of the recommendations made by Iraq Study Group (ISG) are in accordance with the following goals that EPIC declared in 2003 as essential for peace in Iraq:

• Improve the protection of civilians and human rights
• Promote political participation, inclusion and reconciliation
• Grow Iraq's institutional capacity for security and the rule of law
• Improve government transparency and accountability
• Support job creation and Iraqi-led development, especially at the local level
• Increase international involvement and participation by civil society

However, while the report offers a solid top-down approach to achieving these goals, e.g. regional diplomacy, EPIC maintains that for this strategy to succeed the U.S. must simultaneously encourage development on the local level by increasing U.S. support for Iraqi non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and addressing the current jobs crisis. This bottom-up approach will strengthen the economy and secure the streets, which will in turn increase the likelihood for success of the ISG’s other recommendations.

The U.S., however, cannot be expected to bear the entire burden of these development projects. Through coordination with the International Compact for Iraq—the UN-sponsored framework for providing international assistance—governments, international organizations and NGOs around the world must aid Iraq’s recovery.

The Iraq Study Group has cleared the way for a more honest debate, and EPIC is pleased that the debate is finally getting underway. As the conversation develops, we hope that the President and Congress will soon realize the vital importance of community-based initiatives and economic revitalization to a comprehensive new approach to Iraq. Iraqi-driven peace and development must be the cornerstone of any new plan for the country.

Is Reconciliation possible during Civil War?

Responding to my May 2 post Where are the Benchmarks for U.S. Progress? Bruce Wallace (aka PT Witte in Second Life) asks...

Where is the reconciliation benchmark? How long are the Iraqis going to wait before they get a strong reconciliation program going? It's not like we don't know how to do this. Great work in connecting divided people has already been done in South Africa, Northern Ireland, Rwanda. It's time for the Iraqis to stand up to the forces that seek to divide.

Bruce is right. More ought to be done to promote conflict resolution, peacebuilding and national reconciliation in Iraq. I also share his view about the utility of increased pressure on Iraqi parliamentarians and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal Maliki's government to achieve political benchmarks. However, I disagree with the popular notion that deadlines will magically compel Iraqis to act. While deadlines might help, other factors, such as the small matter of Iraq's civil war, present major stumbling blocks.

Thus, my answer to Bruce's question "how long are Iraqis going to wait before they get a strong reconciliation program going?" is simple: they will wait until they feel secure enough to do so.

As long as Iraq's civil war continues, national reconciliation will be difficult if not impossible. But Iraqi leaders (and the U.S.) have no option but to try, and plenty of Iraqis can't be blamed for not trying. I think of an Iraqi colleague killed by an unknown gunmen last year. His crime? He was trying to advance peace and reconciliation between Sunni and Shia neighbors in the midst of rising sectarian violence.

Reconciliation is not something that ends wars, but rather helps societies heal after wars. South Africa’s truth and reconciliation process did not begin until after apartheid came to an end. Rwanda, on the other hand, is relatively stable, yet far from national reconciliation. The Tutsi-dominated government is still holding countless Rwandans in prison camps, including many denied due process. Rwandans expressing human rights concerns are often accused of "genocidal thinking." Meanwhile, 10,000s of Rwandan refugees and remnants of the Interahamwe, informal Hutu-dominated militias that participated in the genocide, remain just across the border in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. To heal Rwanda’s divided society, a lot of reconciliation work remains.

So if national reconciliation doesn’t end civil wars, how do they really end? According to the literature, civil wars end when either one side wins outright or when combatants reach a stalemate, realizing no side is strong enough to prevail and hold onto power.

Returning to Bruce (aka PT Witte), his choice of countries -- Rwanda, Northern Ireland and South Africa -- offers an interesting range of case studies. In Rwanda, the civil war ended with one side (the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front) winning outright. Northern Ireland’s long civil war between Protestant Unionists and Catholic Nationalists ended in stalemate, making the 1998 Good Friday Agreement possible and leading to the formation of a power-sharing government. In the case of South Africa, decades of violent apartheid ended when the ruling National Party began negotiating itself out of power and the African National Congress (ANC) won the country’s first multi-racial elections in 1994. When the ANC came to power, the government was not purged of civil servants from the previous regime (an example one would wish L. Paul Bremer and Iraqi expatriates had followed back in 2003).

Unfortunately, the combatants of Iraq’s civil war appear to be far from both stalemate and a decisive victory by any one side. Based on their rhetoric, factions among the various insurgent groups and militias clearly believe they can seize power through force of arms –- at least, once the Americans are out of the way.

In his recent Foreign Affairs essay, James Fearon writes:

Even if an increase in the number of U.S. combat troops reduces violence in Baghdad and so buys time for negotiations on power sharing in the current Iraqi government, there is no good reason to expect that subsequent reductions would not revive the violent power struggle. Civil wars are rarely ended by stable power-sharing agreements. When they are, it typically takes combatants who are not highly factionalized and years of fighting to clarify the balance of power. Neither condition is satisfied by Iraq at present.

In other words, barring a massive outside intervention that only Sen. McCain seems to support, it’s far more likely that Iraq's civil war will get much worse before it can get better.
Pro-withdrawal Democrats like Rep. Murtha seem to recognize this. Rather than pull U.S. forces from the Middle East, he advocates "strategic redeployment" to "contain" Iraq's civil war. Likewise, less talk in recent months has centered on "ending the war." Instead, Congressional leaders talk about "ending U.S. military involvement in Iraq's civil war."

In their January report When Things Fall Apart, Kenneth Pollack and Daniel Byman of Brookings put it this way:

President George W. Bush has staked everything on one last-chance effort to quell the fighting and jumpstart a process of political reconciliation and economic reconstruction. Should this last effort fail, the United States is likely to very quickly have to determine how best to handle an Iraq that will be erupting into Bosnia- or Lebanon-style all-out civil war. The history of such wars is that they are disastrous for all parties, but the United States will have little choice but to try to stave off disaster as best it can.

Until a lasting peace can be negotiated between Iraq’s warring factions, we have an obligation to do what we can to protect innocent civilians, assist war victims, and help refugees and internally displaced persons, especially those who are most vulnerable. We also have a responsibility to work with our Iraqi and international partners to prevent the conflict from escalating beyond Iraq’s borders into a full scale regional war. That ought to be something the Bush administration and both parties in Congress can agree on –- regardless of differences over military surges and troop withdrawals.

This is definitely a case where "united we stand, divided we fall." While it has become fashionable and in some cases accurate to blame the Iraqis for zero-sum politics and not moving quickly enough, there is plenty of room for improvement on those accounts here in Washington as well.

Meanwhile in the field throughout Iraq, Americans and Iraqis -- civilian and military -- are risking their lives to do what they can with what they have. Many have little choice in the matter. If efforts at the national level with Prime Minister Maliki’s government stall, much can still be done at the local level. For readers interested in local conflict prevention and peacebuilding strategies for Iraq, I recommend this resource (PDF) from our friends at the 3D Security Initiative.

Thanks for the great questions Bruce, and for giving EPIC a Second Life among PT Witte and friends.

Where are the Benchmarks for U.S. Progress?

Let's step into our way-back machine and throw the dial to early November 2006. Speculating on potential common ground between President Bush and the coming Democratic majority, I wrote this:

To help stabilize Iraq and repair some of the damage done by the U.S., there will need to be a viable strategy for responsible withdrawal and continued development assistance. In a word: “benchmarks.”

Dial the way-back machine further to the summer of 2003, when EPIC hosted a weekend Iraq Forum and lobbied more than 100 Members of Congress, delivering our Citizens' Humanitarian Pledge to the Peace of Iraq signed by 30,000 Americans. Our message at that time was the same, Congress must establish benchmarks to hold the Bush administration accountable for progress in helping the people of Iraq rebuild after the U.S. invasion and decades of war, tyranny and crippling sanctions.

Four years later and Congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle are finally converging on benchmarks, but sadly they’re not the benchmarks that I had in mind. The benchmarks proposed by Senator Olympia Snowe and other Republicans are one-sided and misguided. One-sided because they focus on “Iraqi progress” and ignore the American side of the equation. Misguided because they seem to suggest that Iraq has a fully functional state and if Iraq’s leaders would simply get on with it, there would be a political solution to Iraq’s multiple conflicts and we'd soon see the country's economy, infrastructure, and government services back on track.

This week the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) released its latest quarterly report evaluating “U.S. progress.” The findings are summed up nicely by the Washington Post: “The U.S. project to rebuild Iraq remains far short of its targets, leaving the country plagued by power outages, inadequate oil production and shortages of clean water and health care, according to a report to be issued today by a U.S. government oversight agency.”

Benchmarks are not a bad idea, but they ought to be realistic and balanced to demand government performance from both Washington and Baghdad.

Bush Vetoes Supplemental Spending Bill

As promised, President Bush vetoed Congress' $124 billion emergency supplemental yesterday, sending congressional Democrats back to the drawing board on the crucial spending legislation.

Since the president largely rejected bill because of its Oct. 1 deadline for beginning troop withdrawal, congressional leaders are now discussing new legislation that would remove the timetables but include specific benchmarks created to urge Iraqi leaders to reduce the violence. Increasingly perturbed by the president but unwilling to back a withdrawal plan, Republicans in the House and Senate seem primed to support a plan that includes benchmarks for Iraq's government, the LA Times speculates.

CNN reports: "'I do think there are some kinds of benchmarks that might well achieve bipartisan support and might actually even conceivably be helpful to the effort in Iraq,' the Kentucky Republican [Senator Mitch O'Connell] said. 'And that's what we're going to be looking for.'"

The benchmarks being discussed include passing laws on revenue sharing for oil output, national reconciliation, and sectarian violence. Interestingly, these are measures that President Bush himself has repeatedly urged Iraq's government to undertake.

The question remains as to how long the new legislation will take to be drafted, passed and implemented. As our leaders here in Washington continue to debate the bill -- and, as many argue, they continue to play out their partisan theatrics -- 100,000s of Iraqis continue to suffer. In addition to supporting our troops, the bill provides desperately-needed funds for relief and aid for millions of Iraqi families. While EPIC is urging Congress and President Bush to increase funding for this important work, we are also articulating the need to implement this legislation in a timely and efficient manner -- keeping partisan politics off the table.

After all, every day that passes means countless more innocent lives lost.