The Battle of Baghdad

[SWJED]

6 October Washington Times - Military Veterans see Desperation in Baghdad Bombs by Rowan Scarborough.

The four-month-old offensive to retake Baghdad with more troops and neighborhood sweeps so far has failed to quell violence, but at the same time commanders hope that the spasm of bombings betray a belief by the insurgents that they are losing control of areas and are running out of time.

Retired Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, a Vietnam combatant and former head of the U.S. Army War College, said that in some ways what is going on in Baghdad is classic insurgency warfare. The enemy, a mix of Sunni, Shi'ite and al Qaeda insurgents, believes it is losing control of regions or neighborhoods and tries to reverse the trend with a spike in violence.

The 1968 Tet Offensive is an example. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese army invaded major cities in South Vietnam, aiming to reverse U.S. gains in the countryside and turn U.S. public opinion against the war. It worked. President Lyndon Johnson announced that year he would not seek re-election as the war dragged on. Although Tet failed militarily, it had a major propaganda effect.

Gen. Scales said the typical thinking of insurgents is "no reason to rush. We can meter the campaign because we maintain the initiative."

But an offensive to assert control over Baghdad's neighborhoods has changed the battlefield...

[Jedburgh]

I've merged a few threads that all discuss or report on the fight to stabilize and secure Baghdad. This is a critically important strategic objective, and, hopefully, this expanded thread will facilitate discussion by allowing review of material that illustrates how we've progressed to the current situation.

Here's today's (19 Oct 06) news: Baghdad Strategy Failing, Officer Says

...Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the senior spokesman for the American military in Iraq, said that the strategy of concentrating on a limited number of highly troubled neighborhoods had not slowed sectarian violence in the city as a whole. General Caldwell said that attacks in the Baghdad area went up 22 percent during the first three weeks of Ramadan in comparison with the three weeks before.

The crackdown, which began in August, "has made a difference in the focus areas but has not met our overall expectations in sustaining a reduction in the level of violence," General Caldwell said, adding that American commanders were consulting with the Iraqi government on a change in plans...

[SWJED]

20 October Washington Post - General Says Mission In Baghdad Falls Short by John Ward Anderson.

A two-month U.S.-Iraqi military operation to stem sectarian bloodshed and insurgent attacks in Baghdad has failed to reduce the violence, which has surged 22 percent in the capital in the last three weeks, much of it in areas where the military has focused its efforts, a senior U.S. military spokesman said Thursday.

The assessment by Army Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV followed a 43 percent spike in attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces in the capital since midsummer that has pushed U.S. military fatalities to their highest rates in more than a year. The military reported that three soldiers were killed in Anbar province west of Baghdad on Wednesday, bringing the number of U.S troops killed so far this month to 74.

Caldwell's appraisal of the Baghdad campaign known as Operation Together Forward was in stark contrast to reviews during the opening weeks. At that time, U.S. military leaders said the deployment of 12,000 additional U.S. troops in Baghdad's most violent neighborhoods was significantly improving security for residents.

The operation "has not met our overall expectations of sustaining a reduction in the levels of violence," Caldwell said Thursday at a weekly news briefing. Violence has risen in the areas where the U.S.-Iraqi operation has focused, because of counterattacks, he said.

"We're finding insurgent elements, the extremists, are pushing back hard. They're trying to get back into those areas" where Iraqi and U.S. forces have targeted them, he said. "We're constantly going back in and doing clearing operations."

Under the program, joint U.S.-Iraqi teams of soldiers and police entered dangerous Baghdad neighborhoods and used aggressive tactics to try to secure them, engaging with fighters, searching door-to-door and patrolling the streets. Teams then moved on to the next sector, leaving behind a fixed force that attempted to ensure gunmen would not return. The goal of the program was also to restore basic services such as trash collection.

Now, Caldwell said, "we are working very closely with the government of Iraq to determine how best to refocus our efforts...

[Tom Odom]

20 October Washington Post - General Says Mission In Baghdad Falls Short by John Ward Anderson.....

"We're constantly going back in and doing clearing operations."

At the risk of over simplifiying (admiitedly this hypocritical of me to do this as I often point out simplistic analysis is a lodestone around our collective necks), this sentence to me goes back to the roots of our problems, troop numbers and the long term effects we have seen.

Best
Tom

[Jedburgh]

At the risk of over simplifiying (admiitedly this hypocritical of me to do this as I often point out simplistic analysis is a lodestone around our collective necks), this sentence to me goes back to the roots of our problems, troop numbers and the long term effects we have seen.

Best
Tom

It seems pretty clear that the troop numbers issue is not going to be fixed - we've just got to do better with what we have.

As regards Baghdad, I'd like to refer to the my previous post on displacement. Virtually all of those elements are present in the reaction of the bad guys to our efforts in Baghdad. I may be beating a dead horse, but we need better intelligence and better integration of intelligence with operations. Of course, to be truly effective, all of that needs to be tied in tight with close cooperation with Iraqi security elements - which is tough, because many of them are tied in with (or are part and parcel of) the elements we're attempting to disrupt and destroy.

With intel in the context of "displacement", I'm talking about true predictive intelligence, based upon in-depth knowledge of the city, its population, and the multitude of factions and their shifting alliances along with deep analysis of historical operational trends projected in sync with current and planned ops. We need analysts with significant experience not just in Iraq, but working the Baghdad AO to be tied in with trusted counterparts from among the indig. As long as this ain't happening we're not succeeding.

[Merv Benson]

Gen. Abizaid seems determined to keep troop numbers down in order to force the Iraqis to do more. This strategy had some positive results when we were primarily fighting al Qaeda as intelligence seem to improve dramatically.

As others have pointed out, the situation in Baghdad now has Iraqis of questionable allegiance dealing with militias that they may support. This is not a situation that is going to yeild much new intelligence on those operating the Shia half of the death squads. You also have the situation this week where one of the leaders of the militia is arrested and the Iraqi governemtn orders his release. That suggest that the governemtn is being influenced too heavily by these militias are that it is not serious in doing anything to stop their activities. If the government wants our continued assistance it is going to have to do better than this.

The General's resistance to fixing the force to space ratio issue also suggest that this situation is not going to be fixed soon.

[Jedburgh]

...As others have pointed out, the situation in Baghdad now has Iraqis of questionable allegiance dealing with militias that they may support. This is not a situation that is going to yeild much new intelligence on those operating the Shia half of the death squads. You also have the situation this week where one of the leaders of the militia is arrested and the Iraqi government orders his release...

The "situation this week" is only one of many similar incidents that have been occuring as we struggle with the militias. Most don't make it to the media.

The Economist, 5 Oct 06: Your Man or His? Keeping an Eye on the Security Forces

...Iraq's political parties work on the theory that if you don't fill the post with your partisans, the enemy will fill it with theirs. As a result, say American officers, they can judge the importance of a captured Sunni insurgent or Shia militiaman by the number of high-ranking Iraqi commanders calling up to demand his release...