A spate of ominous reports about the state of training of Iraqi forces has filled the newspapers in the United States. Senior American commanders on the ground in Iraq are also wondering not when but whether the insurgency can be defeated without local security forces assuming a predominant role in this fight. Indeed, Senator Joe Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee made an extraordinary statement at the confirmation hearings of ambassador-nominee to Iraq Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad last week (June 9th).
Biden, just returned from a fifth visit to Iraq, painted a disquieting picture of the landscape. He noted that in earlier visits, security was far less intrusive. Now, within the Green Zone that is the large slice of Central Baghdad that has become a fortress for U.S. personnel, he was required to wear a flack vest and helmet and driven at high speed in an armored Humvee because of the danger. Worse, Biden told the committee that senior officers in Iraq were outspoken about the difficulties that lay ahead. Indeed, Lt General David Petraeus, the army officer responsible for training Iraqi forces observed that of 110 Iraqi battalions only a handful were fully ready for operations and that it be two years before the rest would be up to speed.
The United States has now been in control of Iraq for two years and two months. In the same period in the United States during World War II, it managed to train up over one hundred Army and Marine divisions consisting of over two million men. So it is fair to ask what is the problem?
No doubt the insurgency and the danger have shifted to ordinary Iraqis who are daily being targeted and killed. Reprisals against Iraqis who side with the United States or chose to serve in the security forces are common. Reprisals are also taken against family members. Hence, serving comes with substantial risk. And, among the new Iraqi army and security forces, no doubt there are a certain number who are agents for or collaborators with the insurgents.
But the larger problem is cultural. The U.S. Army is brilliant at fighting and winning what are called “major combat operations.” These are wars and battles against comparably equipped armies with tanks, artillery and the standard weapons available to ground and air forces. Despite the Vietnam conflict, dealing with insurgencies has become a lost art. So what the U.S. military has being trying to do is to train the Iraqi forces to become scaled down versions of American combat forces. Unfortunately, tanks, artillery and “joint operations” that integrate air and naval forces do not work as well in an insurgent environment.
Furthermore, the U.S. Army is used to working with advance technology available to few if any other militaries. And even its most junior and youngest soldiers are high school graduates many who stood in the top half of their class. The Iraqi Army is not remotely as well endowed. Training well-educated, bright people who are adept at dealing with high technology works well in the United States. It does not always translate to another country whose culture and technical standard of life reflect far different realities.
As a result, the United States is trapped in a vicious circle. Its strategic and tactical thinking, weapons, doctrine and training are not obviously suited to winning an insurgency. Nor is it proficient in training non-Americans in counter-insurgency. After all, who finally won in Vietnam?
This is a message that has not yet permeated the higher ranks of the Pentagon or the White House. For the Japanese, this may not seem important. However, in the case of Korea and dealing with the North and its ambitions for nuclear weapons, the U.S. trained the south to operate as a version of the American Army. That may be well and good in the event the North attacks on the ground. But it doesn’t necessarily provide all the tools for coping with the central issue of keeping the peninsula nuclear-free and convincing Pyongyang of the benefits of negotiation and cooperation.
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