The Redhunter

COL. DEWHURST:... This area's comprised of a lot of Shi'a Muslims. I do have pockets of Sunni and Christians that also live in this area. And I am partnered with four Iraqi security force brigades that are composed of 11 Iraqi security force battalions. Three of those brigades are national police brigades, and one of those brigades is Iraqi army brigade. They're commanded by highly competent Iraqi brigadier generals. They are very patriotic. They're very aggressive. And they've been working very hard to deliver security and reconciliation and reconstruction to the population over here.

In our area I operate from two forward operating bases. I have three combat outposts, known as COPs, and nine joint security stations, JSSs. And those are where we work with and live with Iraqi security force partners, and we -- we're -- we eat with them, sleep with them, prepare for missions together, go on missions together and train together.

This partnership with the Iraqi security forces has enabled us to increase their capabilities and has led to them receiving many more tips from the Iraqi people that has led to the successful detention of many unaligned extremists and criminals being taken off the streets, which has increased the security here in east Baghdad. The combined effects of these partnered operation has been the cornerstone in our fight against extremists and other criminals.

"...we eat with them, sleep with them..." This is straight out of Petraeus' U.S. Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual 3-24 and is the major strategy change from pre-surge days. Previously, our forces more or less stayed on one of 5 major bases in Iraq, going out on raids when we got usable intel. It didn't work for several reasons. One, as soon as we left the insurgents came back. The Iraqi security forces were not able to maintain control. Second, because the populace knew the insurgents would return, they were hesitant to provide quality intelligence.

The 5 additional surge brigades (up from 15) provided U.S. commanders with the numerical safety to take the risk of leaving our bases to live among the people. This time, when we went to the communities, the leaders would ask "are you staying this time?" When the answer they got was "yes," they provided all the information and help we needed. The Iraqi security forces knew that this time they would be backed up in a fight.

See as examples

Iraq Briefing - 04 Feb 2008 - "We do not drive or commute to work"
Iraq Briefing - 22 February 2008 - "We are Living with the Population"
October 12, 2008 - Gen Petraeus' Speech on Iraq - How We Did It

COL. DEWHURST:...I like to say that our Iraqi partners are doing a superb job in the transitioning of the Sons of Iraq. In my area I have about 1,200 Sons of Iraq, of which already 400 of them have now transitioned into the Iraqi security forces, mainly to the Iraqi police. I have about 300 more that are getting ready to start into the Iraqi police academy, starting in the next month.

The Sons of Iraq program (originally called Concerned Local Citizens) has been instrumental in getting Iraqis to take ownership of their own security. The SOI program is a sort of "super neighborhood watch" of Iraqi citizens who patrol their neighborhoods and report suspicious activity to the authorities. Many of the SOI were armed, but with their own private weapons, as we did not provide them any. Because no one knows a neighborhood like the people who live there, the intelligence they provided was invaluable. More importantly, it got Iraqis "off the fence" and into our camp, taking responsibility for their own security. It also provided jobs and a paycheck; initially courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.

Ultimately, the program was temporary in nature. Now that we've largely wrapped up the insurgency, the program is being disbanded. The idea is to move the SOI participants to jobs in government, the Iraqi security forces, or private enterprise. The problem with the latter is lack of jobs, with the first two suspicion by the Maliki government. Most or many of the SOI are Sunnis, and Maliki is a Shiite. This has caused many to worry that Maliki just wants to disband the SOI without making sure as many as possible get jobs; a recipe for disaster. The U.S. command understands this full well, with Lt. Gen. Austin sending Maliki a not-so-veiled warning on the matter last September.

From Mr Tribble's opening remarks:

MR. TRIBBLE:...My team is nine people. It's a mix of State, USAID and civil affairs Army Reservists. We are -- they're experts in governance and business and industry and in agriculture, primarily, and we work directly with the brigade both at the brigade level down to the battalion and company levels, even....

The five main areas that we're working on are everything on the other side of the spectrum from the security issues that Mark was talking about. Governance -- primarily, it's helping the Iraqi institutions develop better and more effective ways of delivering essential services -- sewer, water, trash and so forth.

We do a lot of political development, focusing primarily now on elections and support for parties and candidates, and just in general the electoral process that's starting in this -- in January of 2009.

We have a lot of programs focusing on business and economic growth in our area. Again, at the sort of local level, we do -- we're working with a lot of NGOs, trying to develop a civil society, the whole network of NGOs and professional associations that makes up a society, that makes things happen outside of government, government intervention and government control.

And finally, we're doing some programming in support of reconciliation among these communities that we mentioned earlier: Christian and Sunni and Shi'a, the mix that's in our neighborhood....

I would say -- I would go so far as to say that in a lot of our areas we're beyond counterinsurgency. We're really into a development phase. And that means that our mission has changed a little bit. We're focusing not so much on individual symptoms or specific neighborhoods, but it's really about the system that is or is not in place to address the issue, whether it's sewer or water or economic development. We're trying to get away from a focus on small projects, and look at the processes that have to be in place on the Iraqi side.

Really, what it comes down to is trying to help the Iraqis develop Iraqi solutions to their problems, not impose or deliver our solutions. This means fewer projects on our side. It means less U.S. money spent. And gradually, the trajectory over the next six to eight months, I suspect, is going to be in that direction, and that's a good thing.

Although the PRTs are small in number they are big in effect. However, unless used properly, economic and political development will have little effect on ending an insurgency.

One reason for our failure in the early years is that we put the economic and political cart before the security horse. That is to say, we though that economic and political progress would make up for or even end the security problem. This was incorrect, and at odds with history. What Petreus' team found out while writing Field Manual 3-24 in 2005-6 was that history conclusively showed that unless you secure the populace economic and political progress will achieve nothing.

Therefore, now that security has been achieved can the PRTs play a useful role. We also have much political progress taking place, as for example the recent passage in the Iraqi parliament of the SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement). Of course, there is much yet to do.

On to the Q & A

Q Dawn Casey, Talk Radio News Service. My question is actually for Mr. Tribble.

You said some of the areas you were assisting in, with governance, and you would give some specific examples of helping with the essential services there. I am really curious what sort of help you are helping them with and, you know, what the programs are.

MR. TRIBBLE: The big picture is, the mantra that we use is pretty much the same one that the military uses on the security force side -- coach, teach, mentor.

We have a small team of governance advisers: I myself along with some in the brigade as well as a couple of my EPRT team members. Essentially what we're doing is getting out to the municipal city, the city municipal works department, its various offices and affiliates in the city, in our district.

We're just helping them identify their priorities. It's just a constant engagement with them.

We're training them or helping them to train them on things like planning, budgeting, resource management; how they link their needs to resource requests to their higher headquarters, to the city government; things as mundane as how do they track service requests from customers or from the neighborhood councils that identify neighborhoods where the sewer is backed up. A lot of it is very mundane and it's just daily, weekly, talking to them, working with them, and sort of showing them ways to do things.

And at the same time as we work at the -- really at the sub- municipal level, then there's the -- a Baghdad PRT above us that's engaging with the mayor and the sort of leadership of the city, trying to push down resources to the local -- to the local government.
So if you came out and saw it, you'd see us going to the municipal works departments; looking at their equipment; talking to them about how they manage their equipment, how they deploy it; helping them develop plans for trash pickup and that sort of thing. It's all very -- very, very nuts and bolts and not particularly glamorous, but it is in fact, I think, having some effect.

As he mentions later in the interview, it is indeed as if we are starting from scratch. One occasionally wonders, "didn't they have an army and local governments before we came in?" The answer is yes, but they were dysfunctional to the point of being barely recognizable. Among our many bad assumptions in pre-invasion thinking was to understimate the damage a totalitarian system can do to a country. The Germans were lucky to have only been under the Nazis for 12 years.

Q Colonel, it's Mike Mount with CNN. Going back on the security situation -- as we've been talking about the SOFA, you know, pulls you back out of the main parts of the cities by June, what's your confidence level -- and you've been working with them for some time now -- what's your confidence level with the Iraqi forces and the police in your region? And do you have a high level of confidence that they're going to be able to kind of take control of the area as you start backing off and maybe further down the road, too, as troops are eventually pulled out?

COL. DEWHURST: Yeah, I can tell you from day one -- this is actually my second tour over here -- and the difference from my first tour to the second tour is the -- one is the confidence and competence of the Iraqi security forces and, two, their logistics, their supplies and equipment is much better than it was two years ago when I was over here. And what I have seen in my year of working with them, they have greatly increased their capabilities to -- a lot of the operations now are Iraqi-led, Iraqi-planned, and we are supporting their operations. And that's very encouraging for me as we look forward.

Over the past two years I have covered several briefings in which commanders have expressed concerns about the logistical capabilities of the Iraqi Army.

The saying about how "amateurs discuss strategy, pros talk logistics" may be overstated, but it has a lot of relevance. Be wary, for example, about anyone who rattles on about how we need "more troops in Afghanistan" but says nothing about how we'll keep them supplied (hint; google for the "Khyber Pass").

Continuing with his answer:

COL. DEWHURST:...However that's now created lots more challenges for us to work through. It's now, okay, we have this agreement; now we've got to work through, how are we going to start withdrawing, pulling back? And how are we going to shape that? Because we want to do that in a very methodical manner because we don't want to lose the security gains that we have made.

Hello Barack Obama, are you listening? Democrats and Republicans in Congress? Any liberals reading this post, did you catch that? Any of you types who like to say things like what Kevin O'Meara* says about bloggers like me:

Redhunter also tells us the "War is over". Ok, then let's immediately stop spending $10bl per month, bring the troops home, downsize the Pentagon and get on with life. Oh, maybe they liked the war when it was raging.

Are you paying attention? Stop with the Movon.org talking points and learn what's really going on.

Regarding the violence; what I hear time and again is that we can reduce the overall level of violence, but stopping the isolated "spectacular attack" is hard. One time I heard Gen Odierno (I believe) say that that the way they judge progress is by a 90 day rolling average.

Col Dewhurst speaks about the "spectacular attack" later in the briefing:

COL. DEWHURST:....Probably the -- you asked about the most negative thing. I don't know if it's negative or it's just -- my concern is that there -- what keeps me up at night is that -- is that extremists that still trying to do that spectacular attack. And that is my concern, of trying to find out, get the information, who that is, to prevent that attack from happening in the first place. And that's probably the only thing that still bothers me, is those spectacular attacks are -- still have the potential of happening.

The lesson is; don't let the occasional spectacular attack convince you that things have not changed dramatically since the terrible days of 2006.

The journalists challenged and questioned some of Col Dewhurst and Mr. Tribble had to say, but I think mostly on non-vital issues. Time will tell if we can translate the security, economic, and political gains into a viable state at peace with itself and it's neighbors, but you'd have to be blind or in complete denial to think that the trends are not strongly in our favor.

A defeated insurgency, and an at least somewhat pluralistic Iraq would be a major blow to the worldwide jihadist movement, and an enhancement to U.S. prestige. Just the recent signing of the SOFA alone was a blow to Iran and a sign of an ever more confident and capable Iraqi leadership.

All in all, a very interesting and useful briefing, which contributed to our understanding of the situation in Iraq.

* Update - Kevin has now decided to hide his website behind a password. I'd challenged a few of his posts in comments there, and saw that at least one other conservative had too. Apparently this was too much for him.

Update II - January 3 2009 - Kevin has come out to play again, removing the password restriction from his website.