Weird politics (but one constant)

Arrived in Massachusetts. I listened to a lot of NPR on the way up here, and heard some strange stories - two in which I agreed with President Bush and one in which I almost agreed with Lieberman.

Bush vetoed the farm bill because it is full of pork for rich farmers and food prices are sky high anyway so they don't need it. Naturally all the Midwestern Congressman are screaming, as they feel entitled to billions in welfare from the federal government. Shooting down agricultural subsidies is one of the few things I agree with Bush on. It is strange to find myself agreeing with Bush.

Bush also signed a bill criminalizing genetic discrimination regarding health insurance, something I recently wrote about. Again, I agree with Bush, strange.

Even Senator Lieberman proved he isn't a total waste of oxygen today, pushing a cap-and-trade climate change bill. The bill isn't great, but it is better than nothing and shows how far the debate has moved - a few years ago this bill would have been described as radical, but now it's middle-of-the-road.

But in today's tumultuous political world, there is one constant - Dick Cheney. Today he told the graduating class at the Coast Guard Academy:

"The only way to lose this fight [Iraq] is to quit. That would be irresponsible. More than that, quitting would be an act of betrayal and dishonor."

Full text of his speech (which I haven't read) here.

Cheney believes the majority of Americans to be irresponsible dishonorable betrayers (of whom? not sure). Dick, America's leaders (which in eight long months will no longer include you) are going to have a tough enough time extracting the United States out a manpower-intensive counterinsurgency/foreign occupation already. You don't need to make their job harder by throwing in this "stabbed in the back" myth (Dolchstoss) for them to deal with as well.

Apparently Cheney and others responsible for the war would rather poison American civil-military relations than face the reality of their own mistakes.

Washington Post editorial

Washington Post's "Good Sense on Iraq"

The progress since last summer has been remarkable. ...it's worth asking why Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton remain so unwilling to alter their outdated and dogmatic views about the war.

Contrast with:

What with this and the Anbar Salvation Council threatening to take up arms against the elected council and refusing to fly the new Iraqi flag and dismissing the entire Parliament as illegitimate and Awakenings leaders declaring that no Iraqi police are allowed in their territory and clashing with them when they do and blaming Shi'ite militias (and not al-Qaeda) for the wave of attacks against them and fighting over territory and threatening to quit if they aren't paid, it really is hard to see why anybody would think that there might be anything troublesome about the relationship between the Awakenings and the Iraqi "state". Nothing to see here but great big gobs of victory folks, please move along.

One has a track record of good analysis, and the other has a large audience. The Washington Post editorial board (aka Fred Hiatt) is disconnected from reality. I'm pretty sure that if we had just listened to Fred Hiatt and the Washington Post for the last 6 years, and then done the opposite, it'd be like hitting the easy button and freedom would be on the march. It's ironic that, at the very moment that Fred Hiatt is labeling Obama and Clinton's policy views "outdated", McClatchy runs a story on the failure of the policy that Hiatt champions.

Violence in Iraq is increasing, because the groups that had allied with us (CLCs and tribal Awakening groups) finally got fed up with the lack of political benefits. They decided, why be allied with Americans if the Shi'a still kill us? We were unable to answer the question Marc Lynch had been asking for over a year, about how to integrate our local Sunni allies with the Shi'a government.

Bombing our way to 'victory' in Iraq

As part of Operation Phantom Phoenix in Iraq, the US is stepping up its use of air power.

NYTimes:

American bombers and fighter aircraft dropped 40,000 pounds of bombs on suspected militant hide-outs, storehouses and defensive positions in the southern outskirts of Baghdad on Thursday, the United States military said.
In one of the largest airstrikes in recent months, two B-1 and four F-16 aircraft dropped 38 bombs within 10 minutes near the Latifiya district south of Baghdad, the military said. The airstrikes were accompanied by a large Iraqi and American ground assault.

38 bombings in 10 minutes in Baghdad alone. Operation Phantom Phoenix is nationwide, so I'd assume many more air operations throughout the country, especially in Miqdadiyah (in Diyala province) and Samarra (source). That is a bad thing.

Airpower --> collateral damage --> pissed off Iraqis --> creating more insurgents --> bad counterinsurgency practice. Airpower in terms of dropping bombs didn't work for the Israelis in Lebanon in the summer of 2006, and it hasn't worked for the US in Iraq or Afghanistan.

"No, we don't use airstrikes because we don't have enough troops. We use airstrikes because they're in our repertoire."

Check out this Abu Muqawama post on airpower in counterinsurgency if you are interested.

Also on Iraq, this piece by Brian Katulis and classmate Peter Juul on "Four Ticking Time Bombs" in regards to Iraq:

• The collapse of “bottom up” reconciliation among Sunnis
• Increased instability in northern Iraq
• The continuing plight of refugees and internally displaced Iraqis
• Continued deadlock among Iraq’s national political leaders

A deal in Iraq

A quick post while in the middle of vacation.

Lost in the coverage over Bhutto's assassination in Pakistan is news of an apparent political agreement in Iraq between the two Kurdish political parties (KDP and PUK, who stick together on the national scene) and Tariq al Hashemi, leader of the official Sunni Arab representation in Baghdad's government. The Kurds and Sunnis agreed on some bland stuff, but does it mean something more?

I think this is significant. The Kurds support Maliki's government (Shia Arab) because Maliki's government is weak. The Kurds want a weak government in Baghdad so that they can run their own show up in Kurdistan (which, as Chirol shows, ain't such a bad place, relatively).

My guess is that the Kurds are hedging their bets by making some connections with the Sunnis. This would be because the intra-Shia violence in Southern Iraq might mean Shia power is waning as they fracture, and the strengthening of the American-backed Sunni militias in central and western Iraq mean the Sunnis are on the rise. Rising Sunni power and falling of Shia power isn't the most likely scenario, but it seems prudent for the Kurds to hedge against it.

A Sunni-Kurdish coalition government in Baghdad would never be strong enough to threaten Kurdish independent actions, as Shia Arabs are the majority of Iraqis. Plus Hashemi does not have much real power - he was basically appointed to be representative of Sunni Arabs in Baghdad after Sunnis boycotted the elections. Hence he doesn't have power to give any concessions to Shia or Kurds. Instead that legitimacy lies with the sheikhs, many of whom are part of the Awakening movement. However the Kurdish political parties can't really make a deal with the Awakening movement, so perhaps Hashemi is the next best thing.

Of course looking at political events in Iraq are like reading goat entrails - you're usually wrong, and even when you're right, it's still nasty.

Looking at the Surge

With the withdrawal of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry this month, the first of the "Surge" brigades has returned from Iraq. This marks the beginning of the end of the Surge. So far, has the Surge been a success?

To answer this question, I'm going to compare the cost incurred by the Surge compared to the benefits of it. I'll try to disaggregate the recent positive trends (emphasis on trends - the overall rates of violence, etc. are still horrific) in Iraq from the effects of the Surge itself.

Costs

Costs fall in three categories - money, lives, and opportunity. It's difficult to estimate the monetary costs of sending five extra brigades to Iraq (the Surge). The Pentagon throws all sorts of junk in with their "emergency" funding requests for Iraq and Afghanistan, meaning it'd be extremely tedious to go through the text of their requests to see how much is budgeted for operations pre-Surge and post-Surge. The White House's estimate was $5.6 billion, while the GAO estimated that the costs will be "up to $27 billion" for the Surge (CNN).

It's impossible to measure the cost in terms of U.S. lives. The Surge has put more U.S. personnel in Iraq as targets for insurgents and terrorists, and U.S. casualties were the highest in early 2007 (the beginning of the Surge) as they ever were. However more brigades means Coalition military power can be concentrated in problem areas like Diyala. For my purposes I'll call the "lives" cost a wash.

In terms of opportunity costs, sending our last five brigades to Iraq means that we have no brigades in reserve. If something unexpected happens in the rest of the world - for example if North Korea crosses the DMZ - we'll be able to send no reinforcements. Of course this only matters if something like that happens- fairly unlikely, but of course the whole point we have an expeditionary military capability in the first place. Our lack of reserves also means we're unable to send troops to troubled spots like Darfur that need resources only Western militaries can provide, although it's unlikely we'd send troops there anyway.

Results?

Over the course of the Surge, trends in Iraq have gone from entirely negative to mixed. According to DoD, violence against civilians is down to February 2006 levels (before the bombing of the Samarra mosque), while violence against Coalition targets is down to summer 2005 levels. These improvements are not entirely due to the Surge (and again I'll stress that the levels of violence are down to a time back when Iraq was widely considered to be in a civil war).

The decrease in violence is due to a number of converging factors. First of all, the Surge convinced many insurgent groups to lay low to wait out the temporary increase in American forces. When the additional U.S. forces leave, as they have already started doing, these insurgent groups may pick up their weapons again. Second, Jaysh al Mahdi (the militia loyal to Moqtada al Sadr) imposed a truce on itself after they massacred religious pilgrims in Karbala. Third, the U.S. forces' change in tactics from an enemy-centric strategy (i.e., where your focus is on killing bad guys) to a population-centric strategy (where your focus is on getting the local population on your side) would have resulted in lowering civilian deaths without a Surge (although may have raised American casualty levels in the short term). Fourth, ethnic cleansing operations in Baghdad and elsewhere have passed their peak as many neighborhoods are totally cleansed.

Finally and most important, the Anbar Awakening hit full force in Anbar province, coinciding with the Surge. The Awakening movement, now spreading across Iraq (but not without resistance from the central government), allowed the U.S. military to coopt the tribal forces that were allowing Al Qaeda in Iraq to target Americans in Anbar province. The U.S. thus eliminated an enemy and were able to assist local tribes eliminate an Al Qaeda safehaven in Anbar, lowering violence rates against both U.S. troops and civilians. I assume the Surge, giving extra units to Anbar, made the task of rolling up Al Qaeda cells in Anbar quicker, but that same effect likely could have been accomplished by transferring units from quieter parts of Iraq anyway.

Judgment

Thus of the positive trends in Iraq, none of them have really been due to the Surge in American troop levels. In addition, the Surge has accomplished nothing politically in Baghdad - the Iraqi government in Baghdad remains as irrelevant as it ever has been. The Surge's original logic - to improve the security situation in Baghdad to give the central government the "breathing space" necessary to accomplish political reconciliation - has been a total failure, as the central government hasn't accomplished anything in months.

The Surge cost the U.S. billions of dollars and risked (and still risks) leaving the U.S. totally unprepared for contingencies around the world. In exchange we got little or nothing. While some insurgent groups may have decided to lay low during the period of increased American troops, that merely displaces current violence into the future, while those groups use the time to regroup, retrain and rearm.

Bush's Surge policy is/was a failure. Only the skill of a new leadership team in Iraq, the completion of Iraqi ethnic cleansing operations, and liberal amounts of luck have prevented the Surge's failure from being obvious. Instead, lazy journalists (and hacks) attribute the positive (and probably temporary) trends in Iraq to the Surge, giving Republicans (like McCain) political cover for failed policies. Credit, instead, should go to the mid-level officers who helped facilitate the tactical alliances with Sunni tribes in Al-Anbar, to people like Abu Risha and Abul Abed of Amariyah (a nutcase, but OUR nutcase), who took it upon themselves to fight Al Qaeda in Iraq, and to Lady Luck, the best ally of any military.

A laugher from Heritage

I was doing a little research on the hypertoobz (I'm still in the finals crunch) and just found this paper from Heritage, dated January 15th, 2004: The Iraqi Mafia: An Evolving Insurgency, by Dana Dillon and Melissa Parham. Check out this line (emphasis added):

Despite presidential candidate and retired general Wesley Clark's comment that the war in Iraq is a "$150 billion mess," and Al Gore's declaration that it was a "catastrophic mistake," Saddam's capture is more proof that the democratic transition in Iraq is progressing well. America is developing new methods and tactics to defeat an unpopular and increasingly criminal Iraqi insurgency. The U.S. will drive that insurgency out of existence by hitting it where it hurts the most: the pocketbook.

If I had unlimited time I would go through all the DC think tanks' publications and see which had the best track records on Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't think Heritage would fare well.

Iraq's soccer team voted team of the year

Readers of the magazine World Soccer voted Iraq as the team of the year, ahead of European champions AC Milan and Spanish side Sevilla FC. From World Soccer:

Iraq’s extraordinary journey from war-torn also-rans to continental champions with victory at the Asian Cup earned them the team award, the first time it has gone to an Asian side. Milan were second and Sevilla third.

Iraq won with 22.2% of the vote, ahead of Milan at 21.5%.

Cholera and security in Iraq

Mark Drapeau, who works down the hall from me, has a piece in the New York Times today on the cholera epidemic in Iraq - A Microscopic Insurgent. Abu Muqawama picked it up and agrees with most of it, but I was struck by one comment he made:

Abu Muqawama isn't sure disease-prevention should be elevated over providing local security in our list of priorities...

I feel this is a false dichotomy between disease-prevention and security. Disease prevention IS providing local security (a fellow commenter on Abu Muqawama agrees). I'd like to show how by relating it to my analysis of attacking the Iraqi national identity that I posted last week.

Going back to that post, we remember that "Groups providing security and social services will be able to charge prices at a level inverse to the degree of state failure." As the demand for security goes up, the prices non-state groups can charge go up as well, assuming the state is unable to provide.

The same holds true for social services such as health care. Assuming the Iraqi Ministry of Health is dysfunctional (which is is), anti-cholera campaigns will have to be done by either charities (which can't function in Iraq due to the security situation), the US military (which does not view this as a priority as far as I can see), or tribal and sectarian hybrid militia groups. As the cholera situation worsens, which it will due to the nonexistent sanitation services in much of Iraq (look at this picture of Basra), these non-state groups will pick up the slack from the government, and will correspondingly gain power and legitimacy.

Thus anti-cholera campaigns are every bit as integral to US goals in Iraq as training the Iraqi army. Both are capacity building, but it happens that our security organizations are much better suited to build up Iraqi military capacity than its public health capacity. In my view, that's the primary reason why training the Iraqi army is viewed as security and disease-prevention is viewed as hippy-dippy do-gooder work for the pinkos at OxFam to take care of (not that counterinsurgency-types like Abu Muqawama feel that way, but many 'hard security' types do). Disease-prevention would be yet another security task a SysAdmin force would be useful for in Iraq.

Collateral damage from Information Operations

Broadly defined, collateral damage is unintentional damage or incidental damage affecting facilities, equipment or personnel occurring as a result of military actions directed against targeted enemy forces or facilities. Such damage can occur to friendly, neutral, and even enemy forces.
US Air Force Intelligence Targeting Guide.

Noah Shachtman has a post up at Danger Room on a US military Psychological Operation. Basically, in 2006 a Sergeant Colabuno in Anbar province kept sending back reports to his superiors saying that in order to get Sunni Arabs on our side in Fallujah, we'd do well to talk tough on Iran. Then in January, White House rhetoric changed from concentrating on Iran's nuclear program to alleged Iranian support for Iraqi armed groups. Colabuno: "That overnight changed the attitudes of the people towards us. They took it as almost an apology."

Given the level of coordination between the military effort in Iraq and the information operations run by the White House, it would take a lot to convince me that the rhetoric from the White House was in any way related to requests from Iraq. The way I read it, there was a pull environment in Iraq, where an audience (Anbar Sunnis) wanted to pull a specific message out of the Americans. The Bush administration wanted to push the same message out at either its domestic audience or at Iran for diplomatic reasons, and that message spilled over to Iraq. By pure chance, the Bush administration's rhetoric on Iran happened to line up with what Iraqi Sunnis wanted to hear. This raises the question of "what if"?

What if we had an administration that took seriously the need to integrate all aspects of national power (military, economic, diplomatic, and information) in wartime, and thus executed an information strategy coming out of the White House that is tailored to events in Iraq and towards an Iraqi audience? There would be collateral damage on the American domestic scene. The message would have to come out of the White House to have credibility. The global reach of even local newspapers means that any story resulting from an information operation could leak into the American press, further bolstering the case for war with Iran by providing "independent" corroboration. The American electorate could mistakenly push its own government into a war with Iran. (Right now, over a third of Americans polled believe we should bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.)

MountainRunner, my go-to blog on matters for public diplomacy, information operations, et al, has noted a few times that the Smith-Mundt Act, which governed the actions of the now-defunct US Information Agency and now governs the actions of the Bureau of the State Department that the USIA was folded in to, was not designed to protect American audiences from US government propaganda. Rather, it was designed to help guide the USIA to counter Soviet propaganda. The Department of Defense, despite not being covered by Smith-Mundt and therefore theoretically being free to propagandize whomever they like, is skittish in doing anything that could be labeled as propaganda for fear of collateral damage. The few times they have, it blew up in their faces and they were charged with propagandizing. Unfortunately I haven't seen anything by MountainRunner or anyone else in the hypertoobz on whether there might be a solution to the problem of collateral damage in information operations.

There are going to be many challenges in information operations against Al Qaeda, of which collateral damage is only one. The dispersed nature of Al Qaeda and its potential support that we must try to influence means that we can't limit information operations to specific media outlets. The potential for political blowback for almost any operation combined with natural CYA instincts mean that our operational cycle will be long, as things have to travel up the chain of command to get approved. And of course there will always be a credibility problem - if any stories are exposed as either planted or false, all pro-American stories in the media will be dismissed whether they were the result of US information operations or not, and whether they are true or not.

Lots of problems, no solutions!

(P.S., MountainRunner wrote a good piece on the obvious need to update the Smith-Mundt Act for Small Wars Journal.)

How to attack a national identity

One of America's core interests in Iraq is “An Iraq that is peaceful, united, stable, democratic, and secure.” Essential to the achievement of American goals in Iraq is the maintenance of an Iraqi national identity that includes both Sunni and Shia Arab communities. This goal is in direct opposition to the goals of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which seeks an Sunni Islamic Caliphate that rules Iraq (among other places). That goal requires the destruction of the Iraqi nationalist identity and its replacement with a (Sunni) Islamic identity. This post will explore some of the rationale behind AQI's strategy and tactics. We will take the goal of AQI, that of an Islamic Caliphate to replace states in the Middle East and therefore the creation of an Islamic identity, as a given.

Strategy and Tactics

To achieve its goal of eliminating the Iraqi nationalist identity, AQI needs to create a self-sustaining cycle of violence between Sunni and Shia communities, and needs to eliminate the state's monopoly on legitimate violence and provision of social services. AQI can accomplish the first objective in three ways. First, they can launch information campaigns portraying local personal violence in political terms. Second, they can also attack 'linking nodes' between Sunni and Shia communities, such as mixed marriages and mixed neighborhoods. Increasing the social distance between Sunni and Shia individuals increases their costs in overcoming AQI propaganda. Third, they can attack systempunkts – targets that have the ability to cause cascading social collapse (the Al-Askari bombing is an example).

To eliminate the state's monopoly on violence and social services, AQI merely has to perpetuate regular acts of violence and target the state's social services, making it too dangerous for state employees to go to work. These tactics will create the environment in which the population of Iraq is forced to search for outside providers of security and services. These providers are likely to be either tribal or neighborhood-based sectarian militias. As Iraqis receive security and social services from these non-state groups, their identities will devolve away from nationalism and towards either tribal or sectarian identities.

Identity – Sectarian or Tribal?

It is likely that Iraqis will fall back to tribal security forces where possible instead of sectarian militias due to lower entry costs. Many Iraqis already have a tribal identity, however they are not already part of sectarian militias. AIn areas where tribes are strong, such as Anbar province, tribal security forces will replace the state, because tribal social infrastructure is already in place. In areas where tribes have been crushed (either by Saddam, Al Qaeda, the US, or others) or are weak for other reasons, such as Basra province or some slums in Baghdad, Iraqis might fall back to sectarian militias for security instead. In areas where sectarian groups and tribes are in opposition, sectarian groups will have a key advantage – because sectarian membership is more voluntary than tribal membership, sectarian militias will not be forced to extend benefits based on kinship, thus mitigating a free rider problem of tribes. From AQI's point of view, it is preferable that the population fall back on sectarian militias. Tribes provide an alternative political organization to the Caliphate, and also cut across sectarian identities, with many tribes incorporating both Sunni and Shia branches. Also, the high entry costs of sectarian militias are likely to lead to two favorable outcomes from AQI's point of view – religious radicalization and deepening of sectarian identities.

The Price of Security

Sectarian militias will charge high entry costs in order to combat the “free rider” problem. As mentioned earlier, tribes have the problem of involuntary membership, meaning a greater free rider problem and a decreased ability to charge high membership fees (as members are entitled to benefits based on kinship).

Groups providing security and social services will be able to charge prices at a level inverse to the degree of state failure (assuming weak or non-existent tribes, Iraqis will be forced to choose between sectarian militias and the state). As the official state falls further into collapse and is less able to provide security and social services, those public goods become more valuable and private providers such as sectarian militias are thus able to charge higher prices for them. The higher prices come in the form of more extreme religious policies – bans on smoking and alcohol, modest dress for women, etc. Higher entry prices will also lead to a greater degree of identification with the sect at the expense of the national identity.

Religious Radicalization

This religious radicalization works for AQI no matter what sect engages in it. As Sunnis radicalize, they become ideologically closer to AQI. When Shia groups radicalize, due to the cycle of violence between Sunni and Shia, they will form extremist identities in opposition to Sunni groups and will thus be easier to exclude from Al Qaeda's Islamic Caliphate identity. They will also polarize identity politics.

If Iraqis fall back to tribal structures for security and social services instead of creating sectarian militias (as they have in many areas, most notably Anbar), this will present an opportunity to US forces. Tribal forces are apparently amenable to tactical alliances with coalition forces and also cut across sectarian identity. They are therefore theoretically compatible with a broader Iraqi national identity, which would be concurrent with America's strategic goals in Iraq.

Thus, if AQIZ or some other organization is successful in attacking the national identity of Iraq, the US should attempt to deflect reliance for security and social services away from sectarian groups and onto tribes instead. In this effort, we have been aided because AQI and allied sectarian groups like the Islamic State in Iraq, apparently miscalculated and charged entry prices that were too high and that Iraqis were unwilling to pay. One of the "prices" was "do not smoke cigarettes or we will cut off your fingers", and another was "give me your daughters" (detailed by Dr. Kilcullen in Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt). Iraqis decided they'd rather go with tribes and the rest, as they say, is history (or so we hope).

Conference on Iraqi reconciliation

Come to my conference!

In cooperation with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Forces Transformation and Resources (OUSD-P), we are delighted to announce our upcoming seminar on Transforming National Security: Prospects for Reconciliation in Iraq. The seminar will be held November 13th, 2007 in Marshall Hall, Room 155, National Defense University, Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, DC.

Transformation is one of the most important enterprises of the Department of Defense, the U.S. military, and the entire national security community. There is a tendency to identify “Transformation” solely with intelligence and weapons platforms. However, transformation also means new missions for the American military. The stability of an emerging government in Iraq is the most obvious example. Much discussed, and perhaps less understood, reconciliation remains a goal of U.S. policy in Iraq. During this conference we intend to broaden our understanding of reconciliation as a process and as an end. We will also examine how not only the U.S. but also Iraq and its neighbors view the prospects for reconciliation in Iraq. Transforming National Security: Prospects for Reconciliation in Iraq will examine progress and methods being employed toward this goal.

Transforming National Security: Prospects for Reconciliation in Iraq.

Presenters include myself and my boss, Professor Andrea Bartoli, Dr. David Steele (former USIP, worked with Kosovars and Serbs), Tony Blinken (Senate Foreign Relations Staff Director), Dr. Ken Pollack, Dr. Joost Hiltermann, William McCallister, Alan King, Phebe Marr, Chaplain (LTC) Jonathan Gibbs (liaised with Iraqi religious figures while in Iraq), COL (ret.) Paul Hughes, Dr. Dan Serwer, Ambassador Roger Harrison, Ambassador Robert Pearson, and Dr. Judith Yaphe. An all-star cast!

Here's the agenda (pdf). It's next Tuesday, November 13th, from 9AM to 5PM. Sign up by sending an email to CTNSP-NCO@ndu.edu. It's free and open to the public. Plus it's endorsed by Abu Muqawama!

Reactionary anthropologists

A followup on my previous posts on anthropologists at war.
The New York Times published an oped by Richard Shweder, an anthropology professor at the University of Chicago, on the contribution of anthropologists to American efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan (via Abu Muqawama). Professor Shweder frames the current debate between "help US military efforts" on one side and "US government evil and corrupting" on the other side. He concludes:

The real issue is how our profession is going to begin to play a far more significant educational role in the formulation of foreign policy, in the hope that anthropologists won’t have to answer some patriotic call late in a sad day to become an armed angel riding the shoulder of a misguided American warrior.

A good point, but how are you going to build the significance of anthropology as a discipline if you don't want anthropologists to work for the branches of government most relevant? It seems to me that a substantial portion of American academics would prefer the purity of irrelevance to dirtying themselves with relevancy to policy:

While often presented by its proponents as work that builds a more secure world, protects US soldiers on the battlefield, or promotes cross-cultural understanding... such work breaches relations of openness and trust with the people anthropologists work with around the world and, directly or indirectly, enables the occupation of one country by another.

Meet Iraq's new soccer coach

The Norwegian Egil Roger Olsen will be the Iraqi soccer team's new coach. He's an experienced coach who, as coach of Norway, has beaten Brazil and taken Norway to the #2 ranking in the world by playing boring football (long balls, defensive and counterattacking, etc.). He has a three year contract, meaning unless he is fired for poor results, he'll be coaching Iraq through the Confederations Cup, World Cup qualifying, and hopefully the World Cup itself. Iraq is training in Kurdistan for security reasons - I guess in Kurdistan there is less of a risk of being assassinated for the crime of being an athlete.

This is good news for Younis Mahmoud, captain of the Iraqi team and scorer of the winning goal in Iraq's Asian Cup triumph. Younis is a big target-forward who can hold up the ball or turn and run and score. He will fit well with Olsen's philosophy of long balls over the top to a lone striker.

Reidar Vasser, a Norwegian historian, has some interesting thoughts on Olsen's appointment.

SCARED - Concerned Anthropologists

Academia and government are two very separate cultures. As Sandy Berger noted, there isn't much cross-pollination (to the detriment of both), and the Network of Concerned Anthropologists would like to keep it that way, at least where their profession would be most useful:

We, the undersigned, believe that anthropologists should not engage in research and other activities that contribute to counter-insurgency operations in Iraq or in related theaters in the “war on terror.

These anthropologists believe that they have a bond of openness and trust with "studied populations" and that assisting American counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq would harm those bonds.

The Small Wars Journal posted a response from the Seriously Concerned Anthropologists for a Ridiculously Enfeebled Defense (SCARED):

Pledge of Non-participation in Counter-insurgency

We, the undersigned, believe that anthropologists should not engage in research and other activities that contribute to counter-insurgency (COIN) operations in Iraq or in related theaters in the “war on terror.” While some people say COIN reduces the need for massive bombing that results in untold civilian casualties, we say we will not get our hands dirty even if it saves lives.

US military and intelligence agencies and military contractors have identified “cultural knowledge,” “ethnographic intelligence,” and “human terrain mapping” as essential to US-led military intervention in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East. We prefer that they remain hopelessly ignorant and ineffective, thereby dragging out the war on terror and multiplying the death count. Rather than instilling cultural understanding in US military operations, we prefer that soldiers in the battlefield never learn to distinguish ordinary peaceful Arab and Muslim culture from the death cult of suicide terror and insurgency.

Today's US military practices the cultural imperialism that privileges some native peoples (the so-called "moderates") at the expense of others (the so-called "terrorists"). But, as anthropologists, we know that such normative evaluations are inherently subjective and we refuse to abet such cultural hegemony. Rather than impose the normative American value structures (such as "freedom" and "democracy") on foreign peoples, it is our responsibility to allow competing normative schemes (such as "fascism" and "theocracy") to assert their normal roles in such societies without the interference of colonialist Western powers.

Marcus Griffin (who to my knowledge has no connection with SCARED) is an anthropologist working with US forces in Iraq who maintains a blog (I wish he would update more but I guess he has more important things to do). He has some good posts on what his work means for anthropology more generally, such as whether it puts other anthropologists in danger, and a response to criticism from one of the founders of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists.

A scenario for Iraq

I've been doing some scenario planning on Iraq and southern Iraq lately. Scenarios are tools for thinking about the future - possibilities that highlight key variables, rather than a vision of what one thinks the future will actually look like. Here's one:

-------------------------------------------------

Iraq 2010

A domestic demand in the United States for troop withdrawal leads to the formation of tactical alliances between American units and local tribes and militias, such as the ones in Anbar recently. Since most neighborhoods are by now ethnically or in some cases tribally homogeneous, tribes have an interest in lowering violence levels, and a tenuous stability ensues. The local power and legitimacy of tribal leaders is thus given international legitimacy by the official Iraqi government and Coalition troops. The reduction of violence allows the United States to significantly draw down combat personnel and focus on training the official Iraqi army.

In Baghdad, progress on a "national reconciliation" plan goes nowhere, but there is a significant constitutional revision, changing parliamentary representation from national party lists to geographic districts that largely line up with ethnic, sectarian and tribal fault lines. Representatives now are more accountable to their individual constituents and less accountable to a national party structure. The way to electoral victory is through the endorsement of the local sheikhs, who usually have security arrangements and tactical alliances with the Coalition.

This political development means that Baghdad now gains real relevance as a center of politics. Since the United States has focused its effort on training and true joint operations rather than combat operations and counterinsurgency, most of Iraq's army now is able to operate independently, with a central command structure and a sense of professional pride and identity tying it to the central authorities in Baghdad. Baghdad is also a center of corruption and patronage. Through the distribution of reconstruction funds and with the threat of the new Iraqi army, Baghdad is able to operate with a loose control over a patchwork of fiefdoms.

-------------------------------------------------

In terms of Iraq, I dare say it's optimistic!

Challenging the new COIN doctrine

LtC Gian Gentile (who I mentioned earlier here) has an article challenging FM 3-24, also known as General Petraeus' counterinsurgency doctrine. It's started some spirited discussion, in which LtC Gian Gentile has taken part, at the Small Wars Journal forum. I found the thread when I noticed a bunch of hits all coming from a referral at SWJ. Apparently my two earlier posts mentioning LtC Gian Gentile are number two and three on Google. No idea how that happened.

Interesting reads

Two from Wes Clark: first, his article in the Washington Post's Outlook section on The Next War:

...the next war is always looming, and so is the urgent question of whether the U.S. military can adapt in time to win it.
Today, the most likely next conflict will be with Iran...
...But if it's clear how a war with Iran would start, it's far less clear how it would end.
...The next war could also come from somewhere unexpected; if you'd told most Americans in August 2001 that the United States would be invading Afghanistan within weeks, they'd have called you crazy.
...the lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan couldn't be more clear: Don't ever, ever go to war unless you can describe and create a more desirable end state. And doing so takes a whole lot more than just the use of force.
...The best war is the one that doesn't have to be fought, and the best military is the one capable and versatile enough to deter the next war in the first place.

Also, yesterday Clark officially endorsed Hillary Clinton for President. Clark's been close to the Clinton family since the Kosovo war, and I interpret his endorsement as a signal that he'd definitely be involved in a Clinton cabinet, or possibly as a running mate.

-------------------------------------------------

An article from Der Spiegel on climate refugees - Tuvalu may be the first country in the world to entirely disappear as a result of climate change.

"Is it supposed to become a virtual country?" asked Rainer Lagoni, Professor of Maritime Law at the University of Hamburg. There is no legal definition for a country entirely without land.

Climate intelligence would certainly be a priority for countries in the South Pacific...

-------------------------------------------------

Boston Globe - The Nonbelievers

In a world where zealots crash planes into buildings in the name of God and politicians use the Bible to craft public policy, Epstein sees himself as in the vanguard of an emerging movement fueled by the rise of skepticism, advances in science and technology, and a spreading aversion toward radical religious ideologies and traditions. He and other humanists, who also call themselves atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, secularists, or brights, point to a survey... which found that 20 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 say they have no religious affiliation or consider themselves atheists or agnostics – nearly double those who said that in a similar survey 20 years ago.

-------------------------------------------------

Vanity Fair - Going After Gore

A very interesting after-action report on the press coverage of the Gore campaign. It describes a cycle in which Gore received disproportionately unfavorable coverage, which caused him to restrict access to the press, which caused more unfavorable coverage, etc. Gore also dumbed down his message because he felt reporters were too stupid to understand what he was talking about (arguably true):

Gore: You're reduced to saying, 'Today, here's the message: reduce pollution,' and not necessarily by XYZ out of fear that it will be, well, 'Today he talked about belching cows!'"

-------------------------------------------------

The Economist - Does independence beckon?

Article on the prospects for official independence for Kurdistan. The way I see it, the status quo is great for Kurdistan, and any attempt to formalize what they have now would jeopardize everything.

-------------------------------------------------

Enterprise Management Resilience Blog - Explaining Development-in-a-Box

Steve DeAngelides explains in detail his company's conception of practical aid to developing regions.

Abu Risha update

Ahmed Abu Risha, Sattar Abu Risha's brother, has succeeded the assassinated sheikh as head of the Anbar Salvation Council.

Al Qaeda in Iraq has claimed responsibility for the assassination.

Boston Globe article.

Sheikh Sattar Abu Risha, killed

This morning I watched an Al Jazeera program (parts one, two) on the Anbar Awakening that interviewed Sheikh Sattar Abu Risha, the supposed 'unifier' of various Sunni Arab tribes in Al-Anbar. Abu Risha seemed like a pretty shady character, and he made some extraordinary claims, like he was the head of all Arab tribes in Iraq. He also dared the 'terrorists' to attack him when he returned to Iraq (he was spending time in Jordan and Dubai). It was his own version of "bring it on".

General Petraeus immediately blamed the assassination on Al Qaeda. The news articles don't mention any claim of responsibility, and I don't see why the assassination couldn't have been the result of an old-fashioned power struggle.

Now the Washington Post and BBC are reporting that he was assassinated by a roadside bomb. This continues the trend of anyone who might conceivably play any role in Iraqi political reconciliation (although I doubt Abu Risha would have played any helpful role in that) being assassinated, or intimidated into fleeing Iraq.

What will happen to the Anbar Awakening, now that its progenitor has been killed? Will there be a succession struggle for the largess that the US military has showered on Abu Risha? Probably. Supposedly the actual head of the Anbar Awakening is Sheikh Sittar ar Rishawi, so now we can see whether Abu Risha was just a braggart or whether he actually played an important role.

Update: Marc Lynch (Abu Aardvark) posts his thoughts.

Update: Annonymous commentor clarifies the situation, pointing out that Abu Risha and Sittar ar Rishawi are the same person.

African narrative

The past week (really, the past 4 1/2 years), America has had a public debate over the war in Iraq. These numbers have been thrown against those numbers, raising the question "how do you know what you know?" This is a question various professors have asked in my classes again and again.

When Kenneth Pollack (now my professor) and Michael O'Hanlon wrote their op-ed in the New York Times, titled A War We Just Might Win (they did not choose the title), they were criticized for basing their claims off of a week-long tour of US military personnel and installations in Iraq, contextualized by an expertise in mostly conventional military operations. Glenn Greenwald, who I'd guess I share many political views with, is 110% convinced in his own righteousness in criticizing O'Hanlon for cherry-picking numbers (O'Hanlon's rebuttal largely rehashes his original points, showing how Greenwald and O'Hanlon are talking past each other).

When the seven soldiers from the 82nd Airborne wrote their op-ed, coming to opposite conclusions from Pollack and O'Hanlon, they were criticized because their knowledge was so immediate that they couldn't possibly see the larger picture.

Choosing objective measurable metrics, like Eli is trying to do, is a possible fix to this problem. But as he acknowledges, just because you can measure something doesn't mean it's valuable. The corollary to this is that just because something is valuable doesn't mean it's measurable. A further problem is just because a number matters today does not mean it will matter tomorrow - as Eli argues, the strategy has to drive the metrics. Strategies change over time, meaning metrics change over time. This leads to the possibility that the situation might be measurable today but not tomorrow. We are then back to square one. I disagreed with a lot of what LtC Gian Gentile said at this Heritage Foundation event, but he was right when he said that the best way to communicate the military/political situation in an insurgency is through narrative.

Recently Dan at TDAXP has frustrated me with his claims that the continent of Africa has sunk into an abyss of genocide, economic disaster and decay. His argument is that a Western recolonization of Africa is Africa's only hope.

I violently want to disagree with him - I think his data is either sketchy or irrelevant (why would Africans be too unintelligent to turn failed states into functioning states without foreign domination, but other failed societies self-corrected independently?) but I don't have the necessary data to back up my own claims (I actually don't think the data exists to prove or disprove it yet). Essentially my argument is similar to Nassim Nicholas Taleb's argument in The Black Swan - You think you know a lot and I think I know very little, but since in reality we both know very little, I'm ahead of you.

What touched off this rant was watching a video of Chris Abani's talk at TED titled "Learning the Stories of Africa." It's about the importance of narrative, and everybody should take 18 minutes of their time to go watch it.