There’s a perfectly good reason that war supporters, from McCain to Patraeus, are scrambling to lower expectations for September — the surge policy isn’t working.
Three months after the start of the Baghdad security plan that has added thousands of American and Iraqi troops to the capital, they control fewer than one-third of the city’s neighborhoods, far short of the initial goal for the operation, according to some commanders and an internal military assessment.
The American assessment, completed in late May, found that American and Iraqi forces were able to “protect the population” and “maintain physical influence over” only 146 of the 457 Baghdad neighborhoods.
In the remaining 311 neighborhoods, troops have either not begun operations aimed at rooting out insurgents or still face “resistance,” according to the one-page assessment, which was provided to The New York Times and summarized reports from brigade and battalion commanders in Baghdad.
According to the NYT report, much of this is due to the shortcomings of Iraqi security forces, which were supposed to help make the policy effective. Since the start of the surge, these forces, promised by the Maliki government, either haven’t shown up or haven’t been able to do anything. Basic tasks, such as manning checkpoints and conducting patrols, have proven too challenging for Iraqi police and army units. (“That is forcing American commanders to conduct operations to remove insurgents from some areas multiple times,” the NYT added.)
As for the politics of all of this, when the White House unveiled its surge policy in January, they raised expectations. Lawmakers (and the nation) were told that we’d start to see progress quickly. Benchmarks were laid out, highlighting what we could expect to see. Creating a stable security environment in Baghdad, for example, was supposed to be complete in July. Then it was September. Now, it’s nowhere in sight.
The NYT highlighted western Baghdad, where the First Infantry Division has been working on a security push since March.
When the battalion, commanded by Lt. Col. Patrick Frank, moved in, it was replacing a lone American Army company of 125 soldiers. Yet even with three times as many soldiers patrolling the area, violence has worsened. Last month, 249 bodies were found in the sector, up from 98 the month Colonel Frank arrived, according to statistics compiled by the battalion.
Lately, his troops have been hit by a wave of roadside bomb attacks that have killed five of them and wounded 13 others. “We have a tough fight ahead of us,” he said.
The district includes Ameel, Baya, Jihad and Furat, mostly mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods abutting the road to the Baghdad airport where his troops have established three patrol bases. Before the new strategy, there were none.
The area, a mixture of poorer urban slums and middle-class dwellings, once home to many retired professionals, has been troubled for years. Violence dipped there and across the city in the first months of the year, but has since worsened.
Militants, many associated with the Mahdi Army of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, have resumed a push to drive Sunnis from their few enclaves, American commanders said. One of the area’s last Sunni mosques was bombed Wednesday.
“This area used to be primarily Sunni, but in the last six months Jaish al-Mahdi has conducted essentially a cleansing campaign,” said Colonel Frank, using the Arabic name for the Mahdi Army.
In addition to carrying out sectarian killings, the Mahdi Army controls two of the area’s three gas stations, which refuse to sell to most Sunnis. Gunmen regularly attacked trash trucks when they entered Sunni areas until the American military began providing security. Sunni homes are also the targets of arson attacks if their occupants fail to heed warnings to leave, he said.
Sunni insurgents have fought back as well, with two large car bomb attacks in largely Shiite sections of Baya and Ameel that killed more than 60 people, officers said.
Time to go.