Jedburgh:

I read this yesterday and, for the first time, said to myself, "Eureka!"

Somebody was getting closer to the problems and solutions.

Having served in that capacity on an ad hoc basis in Northern Iraq for a year, it was nice to see that somebody is finally getting it---the need to synthesize a reasonable and cohesive picture across all the bands and boundaries.

On my first arrival in Iraq in December 2007, I started data gathering---only to find out how little anyone knew, or, if somebody did have a nugget, it all too often later proved to be of little value---especially the stuff I got from Baghdad and hauled up to Tikrit.

Start with the most basic elements:

I obtained three different provicial/district maps from US sources---on close analysis (which is what I do), I found that most of the boundaries and lines were different, and or inconsistent/irrational. Looked great printed on big official colorful maps, but, for example, How could the District boundaries of Bayji District in Salah ad Din not actually include the district capital, Bayji, which was shown as part of Tikrit District? How could parts of Taji, extending all the way into Baghdad, be part of Salah ad Din?

So I started collecting population data---just basic stuff like how many people in each province and district. Everybody had data, but, if you put them side by side, they were all different, and some were so way-wrong as to be foolish. How could there be either 200,000, 300,000 or 450,000 people in the walled enclosure of Samarra? It had to be one number or another.

Why did this kind of basic stuff matter?

First, if you didn't know where the provincial and district boundaries were, how could you build civilian capacity, align US civ/mil activities to civilian government, know who was supposed to be (or become) in charge?

Second, if you didn't know whether there were 200,000 or 450,000 people in Samarra, how could you plan and resource anything credible---civ or mil?

It was in the Odyssey that followed---collecting the right information---that I learned so much of why we were stumbling around for so long. Especially when you returned to the states and saw so much of the contracted intel---tribal maps, etc...---that were, too often, not worth the paper they were printed on. Or worse, the windshield "Humint" stuff "collected" by some PhD staring out the grimy window of a gun truck...

All too often, I found that folks in the field distrusted most of it, and for damned good reasons---but not having a clear picture left a lot to be desired, and precluded, in many instances, rapid and effective comprehensive strategies. (Iraq: Six years, one year at a time; A whole country, one battlespace at a time)

When I was re-targeted to the UN DIBS Team in August 2008, we began a systemmatic assessment of the disputed internal boundaries, and all the very successful COIN strategies which Sadaam had employed for twenty-five years---mass resettlements, genocide, town destruction, tribal and factional cooptation, etc....

Simply mapping and documenting that whole history was instructive---certainly, studying the ruthless and effective Sadaam Campaign, modelled directly on the "successful" British stuff, gives me a very uncomfortable perspective on many of the happy-talk COINISTA perspectives (it is about power). But it also laid bare most of the problems and potential solutions---not the windshield crap coming out of DC.

Why were we stumbling around so long getting hit high and low from problems we didn't understand and enemies that were unforeseen? I don't know all the answers, but I saw the path to them....

A few months ago, I started a blog about Afghan national population counts. Between input from Entropy and others, we settled on numbers far below the published figures of 33.6 million---around 25 instead. Then the CIA Factbook---oracle that it is---made a major revision. Instructive to me was not the revision, but the explanation: The figures had been developed by a desk jockey in the Census Bureau from old 1970's Era data projected forward. Here we are in a big war, and the best we know about the place is from outdated data projected forward by a Census Bureau deskjockey.

No wonder...

Now, at least, an authoritative group on the inside has laid out some of the basics.

A good start after a decade in this business.

Steve