Saturday 27 September 2014

Boots and all? Long war looms in Iraq

For the Iraqi soldiers, besieged by Islamic State for four days and fast running out of food and water, the message over their walkie-talkies prompted a wave of relief.

A rescue mission was under way to extract them from their base in Anbar Province. Soon enough, a convoy of Iraqi Army Humvees appeared on the horizon, helmed by men in the familiar uniforms of Iraq's elite counter-terrorism units.

The soldiers fled, chased by rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire. Some of the fleeing vehicles were hit by roadside bombs, planted in expectation of their retreat.
The first vehicle was ushered into the compound. It exploded, and joy turned to terror as more car bombs were detonated.

As many as 500 soldiers were killed or captured, in what was merely the latest in a series of humiliating defeats for the Iraqi Army.

The heavy military reverse happened on Sunday, just six days ago, and six weeks into the US air campaign to degrade and destroy Islamic State, the fanatical militant group also known as ISIS or ISIL.

Unsurprisingly, the incident didn't get a mention in Barack Obama's speech to the United Nations on Thursday, where the reluctant warrior presented as a war leader, vowing to "dismantle this network of death".

"The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force," he said.

Tony Abbott was equally forceful. Islamic State was "a death cult that, in declaring itself a caliphate, has declared war on the world".

The die has been cast. War will be waged.

But, with Australia set to announce within days that its fighter jets will join the aerial assault on IS, the rout at Camp Saqlawiyah was a timely and blood-soaked reminder of the immense challenges facing the US-led coalition.
Indeed, many analysts - including some within the armed forces - have grave misgivings about whether the muscular rhetoric of world leaders about destroying IS will be matched by results.

The size of the military deployment is seen as inadequate. The strategy to use foreign forces to bomb Islamic State from the skies while cadres from the Iraqi army and a small band of moderate Syrian rebels takes the fight up to Islamic State on the ground viewed as flawed, possibly fatally.

And there is precious little evidence of the kind of alliance building and political deal-making that must underpin any successful military campaign, or a real appreciation of the forces that may be unleashed as the West, once again, intervenes in a region that is a political and security basket-case.

Islamic State is fanatically motivated, commanded by experienced former officers in Saddam Hussein's army and hardened jihadists, many sprung from Abu Ghraib in a spectacular prison break organised by the group's self-proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The terrorist group is well equipped and financed and has captured air bases and military camps. Even so, on paper it would appear vastly outnumbered, and outgunned, by its opponents - at least in Iraq.

On the most generous assessment, it has a fighting force of no more than 35,000.

Amassed against them are Iraq's Army with 250,000 permanent members and twice as many reservists. Kurdish fighters allied to the US number as many as 200,000, while hundreds of thousands more in the Iraqi Shia militias could also assist.
There will be "no boots on the ground" from Western forces, but as many as 2000 US "advisers" will train and command Iraqi units, though not participate in combat.

Australian special forces will take up a similar role.

As many as a dozen nations - including five neighbouring Arab states - have pledged support to the air campaign of precision-guided munitions and cruise missiles launched from the world's most advanced aircraft and ships.
The firepower at their disposal is extraordinary but its impact will likely be limited.  

The air strikes aim to contain Islamic State, stop it moving around en masse, and hopefully take out some of its leaders. It will be up to the Iraqi, Kurdish and Free Syrian Army combat troops to do the fighting in the towns and cities where the armed battle will ultimately be won.
But numbers can be deceiving.

The Iraqi Army is a demoralised rabble. In Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, a force of 30,000 was defeated by barely 1000 IS fighters a few months ago.

It is deeply infiltrated by both extremists and agents for Iran, Iraq's powerful neighbour and Shia ally.

Dominated by Shia Muslims, it is also hated by the Sunni communities where Islamic State draws its support.  
The 5000 moderate rebels in Syria that the US will train to take on IS are an even more problematic fighting force, vastly outnumbered by the forces of the Islamists and Syrian government troops that oppose them.  

"The idea that it's a credible proposition to send in a few hundred trainers and advisers and suddenly turn the Iraqi Army from the rabble it is into a serious fighting force is very doubtful indeed - to put it mildly," says Hugh White, a former deputy secretary at Australia's Department of Defence.

"The Americans - and for that matter us - put a huge effort in building up the Iraqi forces for almost a decade, and look how that's ended up. There's no reason we can do it better this time."

While air power may kill some IS forces and limit their ability to move, the group has already adapted and responded by reverting to classic counterinsurgency tactics under fire from conventional forces.

"They've dispersed their headquarters, they've moved people from buildings that they were previously occupying into new locations," David Kilcullen, a former adviser to former US general David Petraeus in Iraq, told the ABC's Lateline this week.
"They've also split up a lot of their arms caches and moved them into mosques and other buildings that I think they believe will be difficult for the coalition to strike.

"We've seen them engaging in much less mass, open movement. So they used to move around in very large groups of vehicles in the daylight and in the open; now they're moving in smaller groups, more dispersed and by night."

IS has deployed the strategy with great success. As well as defeating the Iraqi Army in Anbar, they have fought more battles close to Baghdad and gained new territory in Syria and Lebanon.

The advances are especially sobering for the US given 200 air strikes have already been launched.

Kilcullen was in Iraq when the US rolled back the precursor to Islamic State - al-Qaeda in Iraq - a victory that ended up being illusory.
Within three years of the withdrawal of the US from Iraq, Islamic State had recaptured cities such as Fallujah and Ramadi, where seminal battles of that campaign were fought.

The US prevailed because it persuaded Sunni tribal leaders with money and promises of a more inclusive Iraq to turn on al-Qaeda.

It must gain their support again.

According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), gaining support of the Sunnis amounts to nothing less than "the core challenge" of any strategy to defeat Islamic State.

"They attack every other religion and sect … their bases must be in Sunni lands," it observed.  "[It] can only flourish in distressed Sunni communities".

But former leaders who allied with the US during the awakening have been assassinated, the think tank says.
Many of those who remain alive are happy to do deals with Islamic State.

The Sunnis, says Kilcullen, are sympathetic to IS after feeling deeply betrayed by the West and distrustful of an Iraqi government and military that persecuted them under former leader Nouri al-Maliki.

"How do you convince Iraqi Sunnis who trusted us during the surge, who worked with the West on promises of a better deal at the hands of the Iraqi government - now that that deal has been reneged on by Baghdad, how do you convince them to try it again?," pondered Kilcullen.

The West is back into Iraq for the third time in 25 years.
The mission to eradicate IS takes place amid deep undercurrents of discord in the Middle East, where regional powers see the move to quash IS as an opportunity to press their long-term claims.

Underpinning the tensions is the long-running and terribly violent contest between Sunni - the majority sect of the faith - and Shia, represented by Iran, the new Iraq government and Syria.

Monash University terrorism analyst Greg Barton believes any durable victory over Islamic State will likely require nothing less than creating a new state in northern Syria.

ISW sees the ousting of Syria's leader Bashar al-Assad as an essential ingredient of long-term victory over Sunni militancy. Assad, it notes, is considered the "principal symbol" of brutal Shia oppression of Sunnis.
Co-operation with the regime, it says, "will persuade Sunni Arabs that the US is against them, foreclosing the possibility of allying with them".  

The competing interests and complexities are immense.
As Australia's former ambassador to Syria, Bob Bowker wryly observes: "If you think you understand the Middle East, then it hasn't been explained properly".

For Hugh White, the litany of mistakes by the West as it has repeatedly intervened in the region should be a cautionary lesson.
"The only people who can fix this are the countries in the region ... these are the countries on the ground with the big armies who have a real stake in the outcome."
Others differ. A proposal by ISW suggests putting 25,000 US troops into Iraq, mostly specialists in quick reaction, and commandos.
But the respected think tank concedes that the strategy it believes is best for combating Islamic State "contains a high risk of failure".
The consequences of inaction are even worse, it argues. IS will retain its territory, the largest and richest safe haven ever held by a jihadist group, including al-Qaeda.
Sectarian conflict will escalate and foreign fighters - including Australians - will recycle through the battlefield, acquiring dangerous skills that could be redeployed to orchestrate terrorist attacks back in their homelands.
Chief of Defence, Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin, insists the air strikes will weaken IS.
"It's to take away any bigger bits of the equipment … those sorts of direct and indirect fire support that they may have and their logistics … so that it becomes a fight that's in favour of the Iraqi security forces."
Binskin says IS is a terrorist organisation, rather than an army. They are "very driven" but he is not convinced of their ability to maintain and use the heavy equipment they have seized in a long-term and tactical way.
Jim Molan, the retired Army major-general, is one of the few optimists about the chances of success, albeit a cautious one.
"Western air power is incredibly precise," he says, adding that a force of 50,000 to 70,000 competent Iraqi troops and paramilitary police could be mustered reasonably quickly.

The problem for the coalition against IS is that it needs to achieve decisive victories to be credible. For Islamic State, it just has to endure to be winning.
As Henry Kissinger observed, "The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose."
The narrative of the underdog resisting the anti-Islam West is a powerful one that will aid recruitment. The inevitable civilian casualties from the aerial bombing would be a "huge propaganda coup", says Andrew Davies from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Plans could be accelerated to launch terrorist attacks on the West.

There are no easy solutions - military action, and inaction, both carry huge risks.
There is unanimous agreement that the war against IS will be a long grind. And even if it runs well, many including the Chief of Army Lieutenant General David Morrison say it may turn out to be the early stages of a "long war" of interconnected conflicts across the region. 
"It could be the next long war," he said. "Not fighting against a nation-state ... rather an amalgam of radical organisations able to coalesce and actually split asunder and then coalesce again."


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/boots-and-all-long-war-looms-in-iraq-20140926-10mi9a.html#ixzz3ESLlz9zR


A lot said  but there is an important  bit that is left unsaid.  The role of sunni  Saudi Arabia  gets no mention. The Saudi role  in promoting a Sunni challenge to the  majority Shia  needs to be talked about. 

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