Finishing the Job - Cover Story
After smashing two hostile regimes in two years, the U.S. military in 2004 faces the critical challenge of winning the peace in Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. News traveled with the nation's top military officer, Gen. Richard Myers, as he met with his commanders to discuss the prospects.
By Mark Mazzetti
BALAD, IRAQ--There was a time not long ago when soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division longed for war. The first division to land on the shores of Utah Beach in Normandy was meant to have a starring role in the assault on Baghdad, leading a northern offensive by roaring down from Turkey. Yet history didn't go as planned, and they languished on troopships in the Mediterranean Sea while diplomats squabbled. Arriving in Baghdad after Saddam Hussein's statue toppled in Firdos Square, the division's soldiers watched enviously as others earned the glory.
As it turns out, they have come to know war all too well. But instead of tank fights in the desert, theirs has been a war far more complex--snuffing out a lethal insurgency in this Baathist heartland of central Iraq while fighting a subtle war for hearts and minds. Soldiers of the 4th Infantry have seen friends die in crowded Sunni cities and during nighttime patrols when the deadliest weapon is often a child's toy stuffed with explosives placed alongside a highway. It has not been a war they or many others expected. Yet far more than the events of three brief weeks in the spring of 2003, it is the events of the eight months that followed that best foretell the future of the U.S. experience in Iraq. And, indeed, not just in Iraq. The demands on the military here illustrate the disparate roles--warrior, diplomat, street cop, nation builder, among others--that American soldiers are likely to be called upon to perform for years to come in distant and unstable locales. The front lines in the age of pre-emption are scattered across the globe.
The coming year in Iraq will not be one of shock and awe. For the U.S. military, success will not be measured in miles of terrain conquered nor by large armies defeated. Instead, victory will be the slow accumulation of mundane successes needed to bring calm to post-Saddam Iraq as well as to shore up a fragile peace in Afghanistan (box, Page 33). In Iraq, at least according to the plans, it will be a year the military spends half as occupiers and half as invited guests in a sovereign nation. And, most important to U.S. commanders here, the ongoing efforts to win an unfinished war can't sabotage the more delicate efforts to secure a lasting peace. For America's experiment in Iraq to work, U.S. forces have the immediate task of eliminating an insurgency that draws breath even after its spiritual leader was dragged from his hiding place. As Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, remarks, "We've got a lot of work to do in the next six months."
New clues. Saddam's capture has provided a morale boost and more. In Baghdad, for instance, soldiers have exploited documents found with the former dictator to capture Baathist financiers bankrolling the insurgency and to develop intelligence about resistance cells across the city. "When we were looking at those cells, we were never sure exactly what existed above them," says Brig. Gen. Martin Dempsey of the 1st Armored Division, which patrols the capital city. "We really didn't know how the cells in Adamiya related to the cell in the Abu Ghraib or the cell in the al-Jihad neighborhood. Now we know."
The U.S. intelligence community is also developing a better sense of how the insurgency is financed. U.S. News has learned that a report prepared recently by the Defense Intelligence Agency details a system of couriers the insurgents use to ferry money into Iraq from wealthy Mideastern donors. Intelligence officials believe that money is raised in places such as Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, and Syria for delivery to the insurgents. In exchange, the insurgents send out videotapes of attacks against U.S. forces--proof to the financiers that the money is being well spent.
Commanders believe that botched attempts to rob Iraqi banks in recent weeks are a sign that the insurgency is having greater difficulty funding its operations. Gen. John Abizaid of Central Command tells U.S. News: "I believe that money is starting to dry up in the resistance, because we are beginning to understand where the money is coming from, not only internally but externally."
While the capture of Iraq's erstwhile dictator had symbolic as well as substantive importance, Saddam was hardly coordinating a rear-guard insurgency from an 8-foot hole. That makes it more important for the generals to go after the cadre of Saddam's underlings believed responsible for the attacks. "When fighting this particular enemy," says Abizaid, "knocking out the midlevel leadership is the key to success." Consequently, the Army divisions throughout Iraq have been capitalizing on a flood of new intelligence to step up raids in every part of the country. One morning in mid-December, the 101st Airborne launched 35 simultaneous predawn raids throughout Mosul that netted 23 of the intended targets. Last week, a brigade of the 4th Infantry crashed a meeting of a suspected insurgent cell in Samarra, capturing 73 gathered in one house. Despite the optimism that the U.S. forces are finally coming to know their enemy, nobody pretends that the coming year will be any less bloody. "I see them going to more horrific events. More suicide bombers, more IEDs [improvised explosive devices]," says Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno of the 4th Infantry.
Hot spots. This is a war without a rear echelon. Soldiers bringing supplies to combat units in central Iraq still face near-daily attacks in the villages where Saddam once drew his strength, and convoys now bypass entirely some hot spots like Fallujah. "During the war, you felt relatively safe," says Capt. Dan Bartlett of the 181st Transport Battalion, which runs food, fuel, and ammunition to U.S. forces. "It wasn't until after the war when our mission really got dangerous."
Soldiers in Bartlett's battalion have begun jury-rigging their vehicles with sandbags and steel plates to withstand rounds from ever present AK-47s. And some national guardsmen in the unit only recently received protective body armor, after months of running a gantlet of small-arms fire and IEDs. Before Sgt. 1st Class Mark Hawley received his body armor last week, he had to cut out squares of armor from burned-out Iraqi military vehicles, slipping them inside his flak vest for protection.
It is long past the point for soldiers and their commanders to hope that Iraqis will grow to love the American military occupation. Yet coalition officials in Baghdad hope that an infusion of $18.6 billion in reconstruction money in early 2004 will generate goodwill. The plan is to spend the money as publicly as possible, fanning construction teams throughout the country. Army civil affairs teams will go into cities and villages in advance of civilian contractors, a mission to win popular support with hammers and nails. Even with such outreach, the military's response to the insurgency has raised concerns that often heavy-handed tactics in central Iraq may cause more Iraqis to take up arms. Commanders in Iraq defend their recent decision to go on the offensive yet acknowledge that the linchpin of any counterinsurgency campaign is to ensure that the ranks of the resistance fighters don't swell. "The key to fighting any insurgency is to isolate the enemy," Abizaid explains. "Most importantly, you have to isolate the enemy from ever gaining a base of support among the population at large."
Taking stock. This message is hardly lost on the marines now training in California to deploy to the "Sunni triangle" in the early months of 2004. Of all the military branches, the Marine Corps has the longest tradition of fighting counterinsurgency campaigns, and top officers at Camp Pendleton have been studying both the Army's successes and failures in volatile places like Fallujah and Ramadi. One failure: Many at the Pentagon believe that in the immediate days after Baghdad's fall, several incidents where soldiers fired shots at crowds of protesters--killing unarmed Iraqis--caused many in the Sunni triangle not only to turn against the United States but to openly accept Fedayeen forces back into the cities west of Baghdad.
The Marines will be just one piece of a massive force moving in during 2004 to replace the 130,000 troops currently stationed in Iraq--a redeployment that has led to another mobilization of the already stretched National Guard and Reserves. It will be the largest two-way transfer of soldiers and equipment the United States has attempted since World War II, a risky endeavor commanders in the region refer to as "the surge." More than 800 U.S. military vehicles already drive north daily from Kuwait, a figure that will grow exponentially with the arrival of 105,000 new troops. Besides the increased risk from having so many forces in Iraq, generals at the Pentagon and Central Command are concerned that a year's worth of Iraq knowledge will be lost in the handoff. So planners have built in an overlap between those arriving and departing and have already deployed some intelligence officers from the new units to gain experience with the counterinsurgency campaign. "We don't want to lose the expertise that has been gained," General Myers tells U.S. News.
And, along with these short-term headaches, U.S. officials have begun looking beyond the horizon--to next summer, when political authority devolves to Iraqis. It is then, when the political face of the occupation fades out but the U.S. military presence remains, that the 100,000-plus troops left in Iraq may face their greatest challenge. But for the commanders, as well as for the soldiers going out on dangerous patrols, that remains a long way off. And those who once longed for war now know better. |
