What really happened during the surge year 2007?

**Bob's World** · 04-29-2012

It's not "what" happened that is in need of serious reconsideration, so much as WHY things happened as they did.

Many factors were in play, so nothing was simply a result of one action or another, but my assessment is that the primary "lessons learned" taken away by the US were heavily weighted in favor of our official understanding of what insurgency is, and by our desire to see certain results as being linked to our actions.

My take is that many of the Sunni leaders were tired of AQ's UW campaign and the guerrilla fighters AQ brought in from elsewhere, and were ready to cut a deal to secure their own futures in the emerging governance of their homeland. A significant amount of cash was reportedly paid out to help facilitate that decision to shift focus.

We see similar hopeful bias of perspective today in Afghanistan, where insurgent fighters have been locally suppressed in certain areas through "clear" operations. Any insurgency can be locally and temporarily suppressed by a superior force, but we delude ourselves when we think of those areas as being "cleared" of the insurgents, as if they did not primarily emerge from the populaces that live in those very places. We talk about needing to stay engaged to sustain our gains, but in fact, did we really gain anything, or did we just suppress the current fighters in an area while deepening the actual resistance insurgency at the same time?

We will never know the "truth" of these things, but we would be better served as we move forward if we were willing to consider a range of possible reasons things played the way they did. This will give us greater flexibility in efforts to sustain stability, and also help avoid us painting to small of a doctrinal box that future efforts will be shaped by.

**JMA** · 04-30-2012

Originally Posted by Bob's World

We will never know the "truth" of these things, but we would be better served as we move forward if we were willing to consider a range of possible reasons things played the way they did. This will give us greater flexibility in efforts to sustain stability, and also help avoid us painting to small of a doctrinal box that future efforts will be shaped by.

Not sure I agree.

If you don't why things happened you will not know what worked.

What sort of doctrine would it be if it was said... "we did this in Iraq but we don't know if it worked but nevertheless you should consider it as an option in future interventions".

**davidbfpo** · 05-09-2012

Emma Sky's interview via SWJ has this short comment on the surge:

The change in the approach of the US military during the Surge helped persuade Iraqis to shift their strategic calculus - and reinforced these positive developments. The Surge was a key factor – but it was not the only factor that brought down the violence in Iraq. It is important to recognize the impact of US military tactics, but to put this within a strategic perspective.

Link:http://www.global-politics.co.uk/blo...aq_emmasky_rt/

Captured here as her perspective as a political adviser in OEF is important.

**Jedburgh** · 08-02-2012

International Security, Summer 2012: Testing the Surge: Why Did Violence Decline in Iraq in 2007?

Why did violence decline in Iraq in 2007? Many policymakers and scholars credit the “surge,” or the program of U.S. reinforcements and doctrinal changes that began in January 2007. Others cite the voluntary insurgent standdowns of the Sunni Awakening or say that the violence had simply run its course with the end of a wave of sectarian cleansing; still others credit an interaction between the surge and the Awakening. The difference matters for policy and scholarship, yet this debate has not moved from hypothesis to test. An assessment of the competing claims based on recently declassified data on violence at local levels and information gathered from seventy structured interviews with coalition participants finds little support for the cleansing or Awakening theses. Instead, a synergistic interaction between the surge and the Awakening was required for violence to drop as quickly and widely as it did: both were necessary; neither was sufficient. U.S. policy thus played an important role in reducing the violence in Iraq in 2007, but Iraq provides no evidence that similar methods will produce similar results elsewhere without local equivalents of the Sunni Awakening.