TAL AFAR

[babylonsister]

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_03/011032.php
Kevin Drum

TAL AFAR....Last year, it seemed as if half the reporters in Baghdad made a pilgrimage to Ninewah province and filed glowing reports about how the relative calm in the city of Tal Afar demonstrated that counterinsurgency could work in Iraq if only it were planned and executed competently. This was always something of a mirage, but even with that in mind yesterday's news about the resurgence of violence there left me too discouraged to write anything about it. However, others are made of sterner stuff. Joe Klein gets the gist here:

The violence in Tal Afar is all the more depressing because that city was the site of the most recent, pre-Baghdad experiment in counter-insurgency tactics. The estimable scholar-warrior Col H.R. McMaster led the effort, and Bush praised it at the time...and it fell apart as soon as the Americans left.

Spencer Ackerman, who spent last week in Mosul (about 40 miles east of Tal Afar), says that without exception, every officer he talked to credited the relative peace of Ninewah province to "the competence and strength of the 2nd and 3rd Iraqi Army Divisions operating in Ninewah, as well as the Iraqi police." But that was last week. So what happened?

The depth of sectarian division in Ninewah is impressive to behold, even for a cynic or a pessimist....Yet for the most part, the political process in the province has held.

....What the Tal Afar massacre shows is how thin a tissue the process is. By Baghdad standards, the twin suicide bombings weren't that much pressure for the jihadists to apply, and they managed to spur a bloodbath that sucked at least some members of the security forces in....Yet Petraeus, Wiercinski, Twitty, etc, have a point. Ninewah does evince more normalcy than most Iraqi provinces. The trouble is that things like the Tal Afar massacre are part of normalcy in the new Iraq.

It's simply not possible for a political process to take even minimal hold in the middle of a tinderbox -- and this week's violence strongly suggests that even after two years of successful (!) counterinsurgency Tal Afar remains a tinderbox. So ask yourself: If the Army's showpiece of counterinsurgency -- in a city of modest size far away from the fury of the Sunni triangle -- breaks down at the first hint of violence, what does that say about Baghdad? That we would need 200,000 troops there for ten years to have even a modest hope of success? Probably. But we don't have either 200,000 troops or ten years.

Every day that we stay in Iraq does further damage to our long-range best interests in the Middle East. At best, that would be worth it only if our continued presence there were likely to bring a measure of peace to Iraq itself. The failure of Tal Afar suggests that we don't have either the manpower or the ability to do that, and that in turn means we're literally accomplishing nothing in Iraq except making things worse along almost every dimension.

The sooner we get out of Iraq, the sooner we can rethink our recklessly militaristic approach to the war on terror and instead start applying some common sense to the problem. Unfortunately, it looks like we still have a couple more years of digging ourselves deeper into a hole before that will happen. 2009 can't come soon enough.

[americanstranger]

1. I put together a bunch of quotes about Tal Afar yesterday.

George W. Bush, September 28, 2005: Because of our joint efforts, hundreds of terrorists have been killed or captured or flushed, which makes it more difficult for the foreign terrorists to enter Iraq through the northwest route.

As part of General Casey's strategy, Iraqi forces remain in Tal Afar to ensure that the terrorists are not allowed to return and regroup. Coalition and Iraqi troops are on the hunt for terrorists in western Iraq. We're on the offense. We have a plan to win.

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George W. Bush, October 1, 2005: During operations in the key town of Tal Afar, Iraqi security forces outnumbered coalition forces for the first time in a major offensive operation. Because of our joint efforts, hundreds of insurgents and terrorists have been killed, or captured, or flushed out, and our continued efforts will make it more difficult for foreign terrorists to enter Iraq.

As part of our strategy, Iraqi forces have stayed behind in Tal Afar to ensure that the terrorists cannot return and regroup. And coalition and Iraqi troops are pursuing the terrorists in western Iraq, working to deny al Qaeda a safe haven there, and to stop terrorists from crossing into the country through Syria.

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George W. Bush, November 30, 2005: This year in Tal Afar, it was a very different story.

The assault was primarily led by Iraqi security forces -- 11 Iraqi battalions, backed by five coalition battalions providing support. Many Iraqi units conducted their own anti-terrorist operations and controlled their own battle space -- hunting for enemy fighters and securing neighborhoods block-by-block. To consolidate their military success, Iraqi units stayed behind to help maintain law and order -- and reconstruction projects have been started to improve infrastructure and create jobs and provide hope.

One of the Iraqi soldiers who fought in Tal Afar was a private named Tarek Hazem. This brave Iraqi fighter says, "We're not afraid. We're here to protect our country. All we feel is motivated to kill the terrorists." Iraqi forces not only cleared the city, they held it. And because of the skill and courage of the Iraqi forces, the citizens of Tal Afar were able to vote in October's constitutional referendum.

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National Strategy For Victory In Iraq, November 30, 2005: In the recently cleared Tal Afar, more than 200 local volunteers have begun police training before returning to help protect their city.

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Scott McClellan, March 20, 2006: We're going to be going to Cleveland, where the President will continue to update the American people about our strategy for victory in Iraq. Specifically, today, the President is going to tell the story of Tal Afar. It is a concrete example of how our strategy is working. The President in his remarks will talk about how we have adapted to circumstances on the ground, we've seen problems and we've changed our approach to meet the realities on the ground.

And he'll go into great detail about how we went about that in Tal Afar. He'll talk about how we moved to a clear, hold and build approach. And in large part it's been successful because of the training and equipping of Iraqi security forces has gone well and because of the efforts we undertook working with local leaders to address some of the problems. And he'll talk about how that's really restored confidence among the people of Tal Afar going forward.

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Dick Cheney, October 4, 2006: A year ago, this unit was on the ground in Tal Afar, Iraq, a base of operations for the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the terrorist Zarqawi. By your bravery and persistence, you helped retake that city. The mayor of Tal Afar, himself, put it best: "The men and women of the 3rd ACR," he said, "changed the city of Tal Afar from a ghost town in which terrorists spread death and destruction, to a secure city flourishing with life."

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http://www.blah3.com/article.php?story=20070328162205150

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