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this good news is newsworthy

By Charles Bird Posted in War — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

To start with, let's look at the numbers (courtesy of Engram), and they are based on data from the Iraqi Coalition Casualty Count.  To be consistent, they're from the same source as the ones I used during a tough month.  In September, civilian casualties plummeted, and the October figures are even lower.

Why is this statistic relevant?  Because it is a measure of how well the counterinsurgency operation is working.  One of the main precepts for COIN doctrine is to create a stable environment--thus enabling economic and political progress--so the reductions in civilian deaths are a solid indicator.  The numbers also indicate that this is a trend, not a one-off.   See the 3-month moving average.

Read on...

Baghdad is still a tough town, but civilian casualties are similar to the countrywide trend.

The primary reason for the drop is that both execution-style killings and suicide terrorist attacks are way down.

Suicide bombings are al Qaeda & Co.'s calling card, and these bombers killed 75 in both September and October.  In August, prior to Petraeus' Congressional testimony, the number was 600±, mainly because al Qaeda (or a like-minded affiliate) pulled off a massive synchronized attack on the Yezidis.  It is likely that they will get away with future spectacular attacks, but given our offensive against them AND given the people's rejection of these religious extremists, al Qaeda is clearly losing in Iraq, in my opinion.  Even Osama bin Laden recognizes the dire straits his franchise is in.  And it's not just Iraq.  More and more Muslims are rejecting bin Laden's backward and barbaric ideology, as measured in declining confidence...

...and approval of the use of suicide bombings.

The above data is from Pew Research.  Although al Qaeda is relatively small in numbers in Iraq, the influence they have (or had) on events is (or was) significant.  It was al Qaeda who successfully ignited sectarian violence when they bombed the Golden Mosque in February 2006, and you can see how the Shiites responded after that.

After the Golden Mosque bombing, Shiite paramilitias began an ethnic cleansing campaign, focusing on military-age males, and it was somewhat curtailed last February (or late January) when Muqtada al Sadr announced that he would stand down his militias during our surge campaign.  But in doing so, al Qaeda was able to ramp up its attacks, and it's plausible that al Qaeda also did so in response to our more intensive operations.

It seems reasonable to me that the extra-judicial killings by Shiite militias in 2006 kept the number of al Qaeda suicide bombings down.  With the Shiite paramilitias less active in early 2007, al Qaeda went on a months-long bombing spree.  Now that al Qaeda is tamped down and now that Muqtada al Sadr has stood down (again) and made peace with his Shiite rivals, the level of violence has dropped dramatically. 

To be sure, some of the reduction in violence in Baghdad is because mixed neighborhoods have been cleansed of Sunnis by Shiite paramilitias, and Joshua Partlow found one of the toughest places in the country, but he also didn't provide the full context of how that situation came about (after Partlow's misleading reporting on civilian casualties, I view his journalism with a dose of skepticism), and Sadiyah is just one neighborhood.

The one thing I consistently hear from embeds after they've returned from Iraq is that it's a complex place.  The situation can vary from one city to the next, and in a big city such as Baghdad, from one neighborhood to the next.  Jeff Emanuel's observations are a typical example:

The other thing, of course, is complexity and nuance, and the attention span of the so-called "average American." People want black-and white, cut-and-dried, good-and-bad, success-or-failure reports from Iraq that they can hear in thirty seconds or skim in two minutes, and anything that purports to be accurate reporting or analysis will have trouble competing with that. For example, here's my tome on the current situation in Iraq as I saw and experienced it (link). It was finally (thankfully!) published by the American Thinker, a great online magazine which doesn't shy away from analysis and realistic reporting. However, before they agreed to run it, it was turned down (or ignored) by at least five print publications. Part of the reason for this is, I believe, the length and shades-of-grey style of description; another part, though, is the fact that almost all publications which would run such a piece have already picked their side of the "Iraq is going swimmingly vs. Iraq is an unmitigated disaster" divide, and refuse to publish anything which contains the least bit of negativity (for the former) or the least bit of positive news (for the latter). Anything accurate from Iraq, of course, will likely contain a bit (or more) of both; that's just the nature of the beast.

The situation in Iraq, rather than being black-and-white and easily explainable, is a million different shades of gray. The individual bits of reality seen there are so fluid that the conclusions one draws from them are often invalid before they can be expressed. Further, the complexity of the situation on the ground there is very difficult to grasp without witnessing it first-hand. Being back home for even a few weeks is enough to lose touch with its intricacy, as I found out during the two months I was home this summer between my April-May and August-October front-line embeds.

Perhaps the only thing more difficult that grasping that complexity – surrounding both the positive and negative developments there – is attempting to communicate it effectively to those who either cannot or have not been to the various front lines in Iraq to witness it for themselves. However, as one who has chosen to travel there myself for the express purpose of gathering information and communicating it to the people at home who can and will use it to make an informed decision on the situation there, that is a task that I have taken on, for better or worse.

Unfortunately, doing so means that those who are staunchly against the war there, as well as those who are for it, will be disappointed, as the news from there is rarely purely positive or purely negative, but, as mentioned multiple times above, is generally a dark or light shade of gray.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that you can't make a judgment on an entire nation based on what's going on in a single city or neighborhood.  There are a couple of other metrics worth talking about, and one of the them is U.S. military casualties, which have also dropped considerably.

Even more impressive is that the above numbers are declining despite the fact that our operations are still highly kinetic and our soldiers have a greater presence on Iraqi streets.  In terms of infrastructure, electricity generation in September was higher than any other month since June 2003.

It will be interesting to see how it goes in the coming months.  There's more data from Michael O'Hanlon at Brookings.  One number that gives me concern is the number of Iraqi troops and police at Level I (fully independent) and Level II (in the lead with Coalition support).  The more troops at these levels, the fewer American troops needed.  In Petraeus' slideshow last September, there were about 95,000 Iraqis at Level I and II.  By spring 2008, we'll be reducing our troop presence by around 30,000 and we'll need to have a good number of Iraqis trained up by that time.  Another metric for concern is the numbers of Iraqis that are internally displaced or have left the country.

In the political arena, advances are still being made in the provinces, cities and tribes, but not on the national stage.  It looks like Fred Kagan is doing a little goalpost moving, but it sounds fair:

As the violence recedes, leaders in all the contending Iraqi communities will naturally seek to address their internal differences. Our interest in the outcome is limited: As long as the Iraqis are committed to the principle of resolving their differences through a political process rather than violence, and as long as any settlement they reach is sufficiently fair so as not to reignite the violence, then our interests will have been secured. The Iraqis can continue to debate the oil law, provincial rights, federalism, and so on for decades (as Americans have debated civil rights, Social Security, immigration, health care, and states rights) with no harm to our interests, assuming their debates are channeled through a political process. And this is almost certainly what will happen. Even if the current Iraqi parliament passed all the benchmark legislation Americans desire tomorrow, Iraqis would continue to debate, argue, adjust, and press for reforms on these key issues, probably for generations. That is what a self-governing people does.

This is a good liberal position, stressing the importance of process over results, though I doubt that any liberals will agree with Kagan.  The goals for political advancement have not been met and probably need to be revised.  In any case, if the surge strategy can help Iraqis resolve their issues through non-violent political means, and if the country can keep from devolving into a theocratic dictatorship, then that might be the best we can expect.  I still view success in Iraq as it becoming a free, peaceful non-theocratic representative republic, and on that basis, we very well may not succeed.

I know that quite a few on the Left are unwilling to credit the surge strategy for the recent successes.  But if things went to hell instead of improved, wouldn't the Left be blaming the surge for the regress?  If success happens while the strategy is in effect, it doesn't seem unfair to me to give the strategy at least partial credit.  After all, the COIN plan is helping to create this environment.  It sort of reminds of the time when Prince of Tides received seven Oscar nominations but Barbra Streisand was denied Best Director.  At the Academy Awards, Billy Crystal did a little song and dance, capping his routine with this line:  "Seven nominations on the shelf, did this film direct itself?"

Disclaimers:  I don't think we are winning or that we have "turned the corner" in Iraq, but nor am I convinced that Iraq is "irretrievably lost".  It is beginning to look like al Qaeda is clearly losing.  I believe the current surge strategy is the best plan available, and I range from mildly optimistic to mildly pessimistic that it will succeed.  Currently, there are clear signs that it's working.  It may very well have been implemented too late, and it's likely that our manpower levels are too low, but I'm giving the plan 'til year end before I make a judgment on whether we should stick with the current strategy or opt for Plan B (orderly, phased withdrawal of American troops).  In their September testimony before Congress, the Petraeus-Crocker team bought themselves a Friedman unit, so it looks like the current strategy is going to last at least through March 2008.