A bit of good news from Iraq
American contractor Roy Hallums and an Iraqi national were rescued from a farmhouse just south of Baghdad. Hallums was kidnapped on the first of November, 2004.
American contractor Roy Hallums and an Iraqi national were rescued from a farmhouse just south of Baghdad. Hallums was kidnapped on the first of November, 2004.
Two British soldiers are in an Iraqi prison in Basra:
The men, who were reportedly under cover, are thought to have exchanged fire with police, after failing to stop at a checkpoint.
Two British tanks, sent to the police station where the soldiers are being held, were set alight in clashes.
The BBC story (note that scrolling down will take you to a picture of a British soldier on fire, rolling out of one of the burning vehicles. I hope he's okay.
Officials said they had received no reports of UK personnel being injured, but local council spokesman Nadhim al Jabari said two civilians were killed in the clashes.
The two British soldiers jailed in Basra are now freed. Just how is a matter of perspective:
According to the MoD, the release was negotiated, though one wall was demolished during the men's retrieval.
The Iraqi Interior Ministry claims six tanks were used to smash the prison walls in a raid, called a "barbaric act of aggression" by Basra governor Mohammed al-Waili.
Witnesses claim 150 prisoners escaped during the raid.
Iraqi officials say that no prisoners escaped.
Here's the BBC story.
...and an explanation of my title.
Injuries to the burning soldiers from the prior report are said to be "minor."
The BBC continues to report on the situation in Basra.
As I'd guessed when reading the first article, the two British soldiers were SAS. Delta would be running around in wigs and such for an American operation; SAS would do the same here. According to the British Army, the two soldiers were arrested by police and then turned over to a Shia militia, prompting what is now acknowledged as a rescue by British forces. In that light, I can understand why they went ahead and used force -- it's no good having British soldiers handed over to militia troops.
More in the extended, including the view from Al Jazeera.
Private Lynndie England is being retried:
Her defence lawyer said he would argue that her learning disability made her too compliant to authority figures.
...and...
In court in Fort Hood in Texas on Wednesday, defence lawyers told the jury of five military officers that they would argue that Pte England was overly influenced by Graner. [Her boyfriend at the time.]
"What mattered to her was her relationship to... Graner," military lawyer Capt Jonathan Crisp said in his opening arguments.
"She thinks: 'I love him, he loves me, he's not going to do something to hurt me'."
So the basic defense is that she was too compliant and trusted her boyfriend not to let her do anything illegal.
I think this case highlights the ease with which people mistreat other people. If you make an environment where it can happen and it's allowed or encouraged, then it will happen.
Woman Suicide Bomber Strikes Iraq
As the article notes, it's the first female suicide bomber (that they know of, I suppose) since the initial invasion. Here's the other recent bombings, as tallied by the BBC:
Wednesday's bomb was the fourth major attack on Iraqi security forces in as many days.
At least 10 people died in an attack on police recruits in Baquba on Tuesday.
A day earlier, a suicide car bomber killed at least seven people and wounded 30 outside the police academy in Baghdad.
On Sunday nine people were killed when a suicide bomber drove into a convoy of Iraqi special forces on patrol in the capital.
George Bush noted that there may be an increase in violence leading up to the referendum on the proposed Iraqi constitution. He kicked out this line again:
"They can't stand elections; the thought of people voting is anathema to them."
I'm sick of this inept attempt to place this conflict into some odd sword-and-sorcery fantasy mold. It's not that the insurgents are somehow burned by free elections as vampires are burned by sunlight. Instead, they've very rationally determined that they can achieve their end goal, be it a Sunni Iraq, worldwide Caliphate, or whatever, by targeting those who participate in key features of a working, civil society.
They're evil, for murdering folks like this, but they're not fantasy-book evil. They won't be scared back under the bed by free elections and they don't hiss dramatically and recoil at the sight of an American flag.
Perhaps Bush is just assuming they're knee-jerk reactionaries like him. Unfortunately, they're a lot more calculating and rational. Good can't win just by being good -- it has to be good and smart.
A letter to the president, inspired by the prior post:
Mr. Bush --
"They can't stand elections; the thought of people voting is anathema to them."
You said this recently while warning of a possible upswing in violence before the constitutional referendum in Iraq. Though the threat of violence is real, your thinking isn't, and that must change if we're going to succeed in Iraq.
You say that "voting is anathema" to the Iraqi insurgents. I say that I'm sick of this kind of magical thinking that couches the conflict in terms of some sword-and-sorcery fantasy story. Voting isn't anathema to the insurgents -- they don't burst into flame at the sight of a free election and wither into nothingness when a ballot is cast. They have, instead, rationally determined that they can best achieve their end goal, be it a Sunni Iraq or a worldwide caliphate, by targeting the construction of a working, civil society.
I'm deeply disturbed that a violent sect that wants the world to live under medieval Islam nonetheless thinks more clearly than you do. This is not a fantasy world, you are not the hero and the insurgents are not evil goblins. They're thinking carefully and choosing their best possible course of action.
Are you?
Believers in the Mandean faith reside largely in Iraq and Iran. Following the breakdown of law in post-invasion Iraq, many have been fleeing the country to avoid persecution.
Mandeans, described in this Wikipedia article, are the last remaining gnostics. They believe John the Baptist is a great prophet, but do not believe in Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. They number in the tens of thousands, and now face great danger in Iraq:
Mandeans have traditionally been protected under Islamic law, as believers in one god - like Jews and Christians.
But since the war in Iraq, they have found themselves targeted by Sunni and Shia Islamic extremists, and by criminal gangs who use religion to justify their attacks.
One leaflet which Mandeans said had been distributed to homes in Baghdad gave this warning to both them and Christians (who form another of Iraq's minorities):
"Either you embrace Islam and enjoy safety and coexist amongst us, or leave our land and stop toying with our principles. Otherwise, the sword will be the judge between belief and blasphemy."
Right there is the value of civil society, defined by its absence.
The BBC has a good overview article about advances in roadside bombs since the end of the invasion. Three adaptations have made them far more effective:
1. The use of shaped charges
2. The use of much, much larger quantities of explosives
3. Mounting them to attack side and roof armor, rather than the baseplate (that is most heavily armored in convoy vehicles)
Also discussed is the adaptive race between triggering mechanisms and countermeasures. Insurgents have largely abandoned radio triggers for unjammable methods such as landlines and IR tripwires.
The punchline is that we've passed the point where physical countermeasures such as additional vehicle armor will be effective against IEDs. What is needed now is better prediction to allow avoidance.
American casualties in Iraq hit the arbitrary threshold of 2,000 today.
According to this BBC story unofficial estimates put Iraqi civilian deaths at 25,000. I've heard much higher estimates, but will have to look into that later.
By comparison:
American Revolution: 217,000 soldiers, 4,435 combat deaths (2%)
War of 1812: 286,730 soldiers, 2,260 combat deaths (0.8%)
Mexican War: 78,718 soldiers, 1,733 combat deaths (2.2%)
Spanish-American War: 306,760 soldiers, 385 combat deaths (0.1%)
World War I: 4,735,000 soldiers, 53,402 combat deaths (1.1%)
World War II: 16,113,000 soldiers, 291,557 combat deaths (1.8%)
Korean War: 1,789,000 soldiers, 33,741 combat deaths (1.9%)
Vietnam War: 3,403,000 soldiers, 47,410 combat deaths (1.4%)
Gulf War: 665,476 soldiers, 147 combat deaths (0.02%)
These figures were taken from infoplease.com
Iraq War: roughly 350,000 soldiers, 2,000 combat deaths (0.6%)
I don't know the rotation schedule, so my estimate of troops that have passed through Iraq is a back-of-the-envelop rough based on total numbers at any one time, taken from documents such as this one.
A group of Shia Mehdi Army militia men (followers of Moqtada Sadr) went into the town of Nahrawan near Baghdad along with Iraqi police to retrieve a member of their militia who had been kidnapped by Sunni fighters. They were ambushed on the way out, leaving an assorted group of twenty militia and police dead.
The town has a mixed Sunni and Shia population, and some Arabic television stations said the clashes came against a background of tensions between the two communities.
Sunni-based militant Islamic insurgents in Iraq are openly waging a war against the Shia community, says our correspondent.
The Iraqi government is now calling for officers from previous incarnation of the Iraqi military to return to service.
In a statement on Wednesday, issued on the eve of the main annual Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, Defence Minister Saadoun Dulaimi, one of the few Sunnis in government, invited former officers with the ranks of major, captain and lieutenant to return.
"Those who wish to rejoin the new Iraqi army to serve the precious homeland should go to recruitment centres opened around the country ... for medical procedures and interviews," he said, listing six centres around the country where they can register.
The plight of the hundreds of thousands of unemployed former soldiers has been a rallying point for Sunni Arab complaints that the ruling Shia and Kurds are neglecting their interests.
After most Sunnis boycotted an election in January, they seem likely to turn out in force at the December 15 ballot; US and Iraqi officials hope this engagement in the political process can undermine popular support for the revolt.
It can be reasonably argued that the sudden unemployment of 400,000 trained soldiers following the overthrow of Hussein set up the perfect basis for the current insurgency.* Whether this effort to reengage them will help defuse it at all is hard to say. It's easy to buy people's cooperation up front; it's much harder to buy it once they've chosen and fought for a side.
The Al Jazeera story
The BBC story
*One thing that should be clear to us from the last decade -- the best recruiting tool in the world is unemployment and its associated feeling of disenfranchisement.
The BBC has an article about psychological casualties in the current American military. Some notables:
A study at Walter Reed has found that 17% of Iraq veterans suffer depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This means of 425,000 who have served since 2003, 70,000 would be experiencing psychological trauma.
This aligns reasonably well with a study cited in On Killing, which projected nearly total psychological casualties after half a year of continuous warfare.
This is hardly the biggest deal in procurement corruption -- that belongs to the legal corruption of no-bid contracts to Halliburton, the disastrous consequences of which I have heard about firsthand from serving members of our armed forces -- but a second member of the Coalition Provisional Authority is up on charges.
The US Justice Department said Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Debra Harrison, 47, who served with the Coalition Provisional Authority, was arrested on Thursday on charges involving bribery, money laundering and fraud.
Harrison is the second army officer and the fourth person charged in the past few weeks in connection with the scheme.
The Justice Department said Harrison was on active duty for the US Army in 2003 and 2004, and was responsible for developing contract solicitations and ordering contracts for reconstruction efforts for the Coalition Provisional Authority office in Hillah.
Co-conspirators
A second Army Reserve lieutenant colonel, Michael Brian Wheeler, and a former official, Robert Stein Jr., 50, were arrested last month.
Also arrested in November was Philip Bloom, a US businessman who has lived in Romania for many years.
Prosecutors say Bloom paid the kickbacks in return for more than $13 million in CPA contracts for companies that Bloom controls.
According to court papers, Harrison and her co-conspirators accepted money and gifts in return for using their official positions to rig contract bids.
I found this story on Al Jazeera. I looked, but did not find it on CNN, MSNBC or Fox. I did, of course, find news about crimes committed in small towns nowhere near where I live, a sex con targeting the Amish and the giveaway of a very expensive ring. Damn it.
Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster (UK) has written a report assessing his impression of failings of the U.S. Army in dealing with the situation in Iraq. The BBC says "UK officer slams US Iraq tactics" and Al Jazeera says "US Army in Iraq gets harsh appraisal" but having read the piece, I think both headlines are overdramatic.
The BBC article
The Al Jazeera article
The article in Military Review
Brigadier Aylwin-Foster's essay is, instead, a fairly sober critique of the Army's specific weaknesses in dealing with the current effort in Iraq. He argues that the U.S. Army is first and foremost designed to be a tool for national survival, rather than for enforcement of political policy. As a consequence, its focus is on warfighting. Combined with a strong institutional culture, this means that though the Army can innovate effectively in warfighting, it has failed to learn how to successfully win a counterinsurgency and often resorts to "kinetic" solutions -- search and destroy missions -- rather than effectively winning over the local populace and in so doing isolating insurgents.
The part that may have irked some American officers is his section about the deprofessionalizing of the Army, but the facts there -- about massive loss of mid-level officers who fail to re-up -- are clear.
Overall, this is a useful outside critique. Though he never suggested it, it makes me think that we might just need a new force dedicated to specific counterinsurgency operations. Then we'd have the Marines for strikes, the Army for conventional warfare and garrison duty and a third force for counterinsurgency, nation building and support.
More notes and quotes in the extended entry.
Continue reading "Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster critiques U.S. military performance in Iraq" »
Al Jazeera has recently aired video of Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll, as they report in this article. The group holding her has threatened to kill her unless the United States frees all female Iraqi prisoners.
At a glance, this is a ridiculous demand. Even divorcing ourselves from knowledge of American policy vis-a-vis such threats, one can empirically see that the United States has not responded positively to such methods in the past few years in Iraq. It is a foregone conclusion that whatever happens to Ms. Carroll, the kidnappers will not achieve their stated goal. What, then, is the intent?
The first option is that they do not understand that their method won't yield the results that they expect. There's compelling evidence from past human behavior to think that this may be true. Rather like bank robbers trying to negotiate a helicopter ride to the airport, they may simply think they can achieve more than is realistically possible.
The second option is that they know very well that their demands will not be met, and their intent is to kill Ms. Carroll. That being so, why wouldn't they just do that in the first place, as other insurgents have done in the past few years? One potential explanation is that by presenting this fake choice, they combine the two missions of making Iraq an explicitly costly place to operate (1) and putting the United States in the role of choosing to let bad things happen (2). It's only a bonus that they picked Iraqi women as their release target -- the concept of women being in prison (and, by the way they phrase it, American prisons) can't go over well with the general audience in the Arab world.
It can be very hard to differentiate genuine, foolish fanaticism from the calculated veneer of foolish fanatacism with an underlying, achievable goal. I couldn't say myself which one this is.
One final note:
Carroll's former employers The Jordan Times published a Sunday editorial, stating: "The kidnappers who abducted her could not have chosen a more wrong target. True, Jill is a US citizen. But she is also more critical of US policies towards the Middle East than many Arabs… Jill has been from day one opposed to the war, to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. "
It seems quite plausible that they didn't know who she was (beyond "press", perhaps) when they took her. She was probaby just an accessible target. The CSM most likely can't afford much in the way of security for its people.
icasualties.org, whose title sounds like some horrific Mac product, is a database that tracks coalition fatalities in Iraq. In addition to the front page summary information, the site has a query function. From this, you can see some things that aren't clear watching the normal news cycle. For example:
There have been seven homicides. Two occurred when a soldier rolled a grenade into an officers' tent before the invasion; this incident was widely reported. Two more I recall hearing about on the news. The other three I hadn't heard anything about, but one occurred as recently as last November. Note that homicides are distinct from any hostile action -- this means a Coalition member killed another Coalition member.
There have been fifty deaths by illness. This is notable because it reflects the spectacular advances we've made in medical care and disease prevention. By comparison, the first and second World Wars saw deaths from disease on the order of the number of combat deaths. We're almost certainly past the point where an accidental outbreak could wipe out our military.
62 Captains, 47 1st Lieutenants and 26 2nd Lieutenants have been lost to hostile action. The highest-ranking officer killed in Iraq to date is Colonel William W. Wood, Commander, 1st Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment, who died as the consequence of an IED attack in southern Baghdad on October 27th of last year.
I think that someone got their wish in Iraq -- the bombing of the Shia Al Askari shrine has sparked massive reprisals against Sunnis and their shrines, as reported in many places, including this Al Jazeera article.
The BBC took an atypically odd tack on the story with this article, which focuses on the deaths of three journalists working for Al Arabiya, capping it with this sentence:
Police in the capital, Baghdad, say they have recovered the bodies of 50 people overnight.
I'm aware that journalists care a lot about what happens to journalists, but is three dead journalists really the story when fifty people were killed last night in Baghdad?
Update: The BBC changed the headline and focus of their article overnight. I wrote to them asking if their emphasis was correct yesterday; I wonder how many other people did as well.
Over a month ago, I wrote about the kidnapping of Jill Carroll in the context of looking at the reasoning behind blatantly unrealistic demands.
The kidnappers, having let their first ultimatum slide, announced a new due date that is now approaching, as reported in this Al Jazeera article.
From the article:
Jassem Boudai, the station owner [of Kuwaiti station Alrai], said the kidnappers set a Sunday deadline for US and Iraqi authorities to meet their demands or they would kill her.
The kidnappers had demanded the release of all women detainees in Iraq but Boudai indicated the group had provided more specific conditions which he refused to reveal.
Jill Carroll, who I wrote about here and here is still out there somewhere, status unknown.
The Christian Science Monitor has a status page that tracks new information about her. In addition, a public service message campaign has been airing on Iraqi television. You can see the PSA video here, and read the transcript here.
JIll Carroll, captive since early January, was released into the custody of a Sunni political group that had been negotiating for her release.
The BBC story
The Al Jazeera story
Ms. Carroll has been emphasizing that she was treated well, and "never hit or hurt." This is in contrast with her obvious upset in the video that was released of her by her kidnappers, but is very much in accord with her desire for things to work out in Iraq. She's definitely motivated.
Edit: Tim points out the obvious possibility that I missed -- Stockholm syndrome. It would be instructive to hear what Ms. Carroll has to say after some crisis counseling. After all, she may not have been hit, but barring great acting ability, she seemed convinced they were going to make good on their death threat earlier when she was filmed.
I'm glad she made it out alive.
Edit 2: Jill Carroll has now made it out of Iraq, and says that she was required to make this video before she could be released. So it was under duress.
Anyone trying to develop a counterinsurgency plan for present-day Iraq should be able to develop a reasonable plan for this scenario:
It's just after Christmas, 1776. You have just been placed in command of the British effort in the Americas. Though large-scale military efforts have largely succeeded in diminishing the insurgents' ability to directly contest your government in the field, insurgent attacks continue. Notably, an allied contingent was captured the day after Christmas in Trenton. Earlier administrative and warfighting policies have led to an environment of discontent, with wide-spread support for insurgent forces. Many outside powers also view this as an opportunity to contest your nation's dominance on the world scale. How do you propose to effectively halt the insurgency, retain civil government in the area and avoid the appearance of vulnerability to other world powers?
Iraq saw another large suicide bombing attack today, with a triple strike on the Buratha Mosque that killed 51 people and injured three times as many.
Layla al-Khajifa, a Shia Muslim who works for the United Iraqi Alliance, told the BBC the Buratha mosque was an extremely popular place to pray on a Friday - so much so that in recent times she had not been able to get in.
"It's a very famous mosque - there is a cemetery in there," she said. "Iraqis who don't have money to go to Najaf, they bury their dead there."
In attempting to prevent these attacks, we need to look at the chokepoints. There are four obvious potential limiting factors for suicide bombings:
1) Viable targets
2) Access to these targets
3) Bomb materials
4) Suicide bombers
As is apparent from the quote I put in above, there is no shortage of viable targets in Iraq -- even in this climate of mass killing, people gather at religious sites and marketplaces. Similarly, there is no lack of access, though, as Tim and I have discussed, this may be a reason why attacks are focused on Iraq right now rather than Western nations -- Iraq represents "low-hanging fruit" by dint of its very porous security. The third point, bomb materials, is also a non issue by dint of the relative lawlessness of Iraq.
This leaves suicide bombers as the rate-limiting factor in suicide attacks. A Washington Post article from last July places the number of suicide attacks since the U.S. invasion or Iraq at about 400, or 15 per month -- one every two days. Another Washington Post article indicates that based on websites maintained by militants, anywhere from half to two thirds of suicide bombers in Iraq are Saudis.
So how do we convince 7-10 young Saudi men per month not to kill themselves? Though we can always try to harden the targets and limit access to materials, neither one of these methods will actually work. We can only succeed by striking at motivation.
Consider this in a contemporary American context. Any adult can go right now to a sporting goods store, buy a shotgun and ammunition and go murder a bunch of people. Depending on where you live, you may have to wait a week or two before your killing spree can start. Notably, this isn't endemic, and we aren't suffering hundreds of events like this every year. The motivation isn't there.
The only success we'll see is if we alter the rate-limiting step -- motivation. And a lot of that's coming from outside Iraq right now.
In case you missed it, former analyst Ray McGovern directly challenged Donald Rumsfeld on whether or not he misled the United States to lead us into war. This was during one of those theoretically "friendly audience" events.
You can read some interview extracts with him from CNN here.
MCGOVERN: Well, you know, she [a protester] talked about lies. And I get very upset when Donald Rumsfeld shakes his head and says, "Lies, gosh, lies. I hate it when somebody says that our president would tell lies."
Of course, she hadn't said the president; she said Rumsfeld. But he said that lies are fundamentally destructive of the trust, without which government cannot work.
And that's true. And I found myself really agreeing with that.
ZAHN: Essentially, what he told you is: I never said exactly where the weapons of mass destruction were. I was referring to, we had a pretty darn good idea where the sites were. ... Do you buy what he said today?
MCGOVERN: His words [in 2003] were: "We know where -- where the WMD are. They're near Tikrit and Baghdad, and north, south, east, and west of there." That's a direct quote.
And when he used that wonderful non sequitur by looking at the uniformed personnel in the front row and saying: "Well, they went in with protective gear; they certainly thought there were weapons of mass destruction there." Well, my goodness, of course, they did. Because you, Donald Rumsfeld, told them that they were there.
The best coverage has been on Anderson Cooper 360, where they factchecked at least two of the things Rumsfeld asserted he had not said -- that there was bulletproof evidence of ties between Saddam Hussein and the WTC and Pentagon attacks, and that we knew exactly where the WMD facilities were. They have video of Rumsfeld saying the latter, and the direct cite for the former.
It's good to see him being called on this. His willful malfeasance is killing our people daily.
During my review of Nigel Aylwin-Foster's critique of the U.S. military, I pointed out his mention of the book Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, by Lt. Col John A. Nagl. In his book, Lt. Col Nagl compares the successful British counterinsurgency during the Malayan Emergency with the failed American effort in Vietnam, with the goal of determining how the organizational culture of each group affected its ability to learn and adapt.
Nagl isn't the first to make this comparison, as he himself points out. Notably, British officers who were part of the successful effort in Malaya were sent over to Vietnam to adivse the Americans. Just as notably, they were ignored and sidelined, eventually leaving in frustration.
As described in detail in this book, the British succeeded in Malaya because they did not cleave to doctrine and were fairly quick to realize that in Malaya, the political situation came ahead of the military -- and the goal was to create a secure environment. To that end, political and military efforts were put under a unified command. Locals were relied on and heavily integrated into British efforts. CTs, or communist terrorists, were encouraged to come over to the government side, where they were taken on as advisors and asked to record messages for or speak personally to their old allies. Lines of communication were open from the bottom up, and the officer in charge frequently went to personally visit various areas under his command to see how things were going.
This is not to say that Malaya was clean -- one of the British administrative heads was assassinated, his replacement being driven from the airport in the still bullet-riddled car.
In contrast, Vietnam was marked by many disconnects. There was a disconnect between the goals of the military high command (protecting Vietnam from an external invasion) and the situation on the ground (an internal insurgency). There was a disconnect between continuing analysis of the situation and the ideas of the military high command -- several analyses, including one called PROVN (Program for the Pacification and Long-term Development of Vietnam) recommended a completely different approach that would focus on increasing security and local integration, rather than attempting to fight a conventional war against the insurgent opponent. FInally, there was a disconnect between military command and real outcomes. When the USMC's CAP program, which integrated troops into communities, actually succeeded in preventing communist political gains, General Westmoreland still denied its utility and thought it would be too complex to enact.
Again, it boils down to the fact that the American military is geared toward national survival and standardization, whereas the British military is quirky and eschews doctrine. At the end of the day, Nagl concludes that the American military still is not a very good learning organization when it comes to adapting out of its role in national survival. Much as Brigadier Foster found, the American military is very good at adapting within its box of direct military action, but is not very good at pacification, security and counterinsurgency.
However, he points out in a very brief mention that other militaries that have a strong culture of individual identity, regimental traditions and "small wars" aren't actually very good at mainstream military action -- the British among them.
Organizational culture and its associated inertia is very hard to overcome -- and this may mean that it really ought not to be the military's job to do the kind of work they're doing right now in Iraq. It also means that at the end of the day, Lt. Col Nagl doesn't have any firm recommendations about how to promote organizational learning -- just a case study of two organizations in similar situations with very different outcomes.
It's a good book, but it's mainly one of questions rather than answers.
Koizumi has announced that Japan's contingent of six hundred troops will be leaving Iraq. Their presence in Iraq has been very unpopular in Japan. Koizumi stood firm, however, even through the kidnapping of three Japanese aid workers and the killing of five or six others. The decision to pull out follows on the news that security around their posting in Samawa is about to shift over from British and Australian forces to the Iraqis.
There's definitely something to be inferred from that.
The BBC article
The Al Jazeera article
They're not stopping their work in Iraq entirely:
After the withdrawal of ground troops, Japan's air force is expected to expand its transport activities in Iraq from a base in neighbouring Kuwait.
An unconfirmed posting by an al Qaeda-associated group indicates plans to kill four Russian embassy staffers kidnapped earlier this week.
The message follows on the heels of the group's unreasonable demands that Russia withdraw from Chechnya and release its Muslim prisoners in the space of 48 hours. Once again, even were the Russians entirely gung-ho on this idea, the impossible deadline points toward the validity of the actual demand as anything but a propaganda piece.
However, there's an important footnote in this story:
Chechen fighters on Tuesday demanded the release of the hostages.
Akhmed Zakayev, the exiled foreign minister in the Chechen rebel "government", denied any links to the Mujahidin Shura Council.
Much like Hamas before them, the Chechens, while showing very few qualms about using similar tactics, refuse to be associated with al Qaeda.
The Russian diplomats who were kidnapped last week in Iraq have been killed. Putin doesn't plan on letting the murders slide:
News agencies on Wednesday, quoting the Kremlin press service, said: "The [Russian] president has ordered the special forces to take all necessary measures to find and destroy the criminals who killed Russian diplomats in Iraq."
Presumably, Russia could pull teams from Chechnya who have already been working on this kind of detail and will be motivated and not terribly sympathetic toward the natives.
The UN currently estimates about 100 civilian deaths per day in Iraq. To compare, there were roughly 190 civilian deaths per day during the American civil war, with the key caveat that the majority of those were from disease rather than violence, which is definitely not the case in Iraq.
The Los Angeles Times has apparently already made the policy decision to refer to the fighting in Iraq as a civil war. One speaker I heard today made the case for referring to it as a civil war, with the hope that this will drive the international community to take measures that have been used in other civil war situations, such as Sri Lanka. As long as the United States is making Iraq largely our backyard, however, I think this is unlikely.
Saddam Hussein is now on trial for genocide in the killing of over 180,000 kurds during the Anfal campaign of the late 80s. Following testimony against him in court, he said this (to the court): "You are agents of Iran and Zionism. We will crush your heads."
Have to watch out for those damned Zionist-Iranian conspiracies. They're just so common.
A report on Anfal from Human Rights Watch that opens with a heartbreaking letter from a soldier who returned from the Iran-Iraq war only to discover his family had been killed in his absence.
As reported by many news agencies today, Burnham et al have followed up on their 2004 Iraq war mortality analysis with a survey intended to develop a reasonable estimate of "excess" deaths since the 2003 invasion. In this case, "excess" means deaths exceeding those expected based on pre-war mortality rates.
As described in their paper, which the journal The Lancet has made publicly accessibly here, they used teams of medical professionals as surveyors, sending them to survey "clusters" of forty households in fifty areas in Iraq's 16 Governorates (they ended up only doing forty-seven clusters due to security problems). Based on extensive interviews, they estimate that roughly 651,000 additional deaths above the expected mortality rate have occurred since the invasion (with a fairly wide margin for inaccuracy, ranging from a low estimate of 393,000 to a high of 942,000). Of these, the vast majority -- an estimated 601,000 -- have been violent deaths.
It is not unusual for more people to die in a warzone simply from the lack of proper food and medical care. However, this "excess" mortality would account for about 2.5% of the total Iraqi population -- again, with over 90% of that from violent causes.
Others have, naturally, dismissed this estimate, as it is remarkably higher than the administration's estimate of 30,000, or even the official tally of the government of Iraq. However, as the authors point out, other than in Bosnia, they were unable to find any conflict where passive surveillance -- that is, found body counts, news and morgue reports -- successfully identified more than 20% of actual deaths. Considered in this light, the administation's tally of 30,000 civilian dead would lead to a low estimate of 150,000 dead -- about half the low estimate from the current Burnham study. As they also point out, in other violent conflicts, such as in Guatemala between 1960 and 1990, during periods of intense violence, only 5% of deaths were successfully reported. That would give us a modified administration estimate of 600,000 dead.
In other words, matching the Burnham study's conclusion.
Of the violent deaths reported in this study, the majority were from gunshots, with a substantial number from car bombs as well. About a third were attributed to Coalition forces, which brings up the important point that the Burnham study did not ask respondents to distinguish between combatant and noncombatant deaths (they were worried people would either not answer, or that the question would draw dangerous attention to the surveyors). Even if we assume that (1) these attributions are correct (I don't necessarily believe they are) and that (2) these represent combatants, that would leave an estimated 400,000 violent deaths of innocent civilians.
I buy the estimate. This is the same kind of door-to-door surveying that's used to calculate presidential popularity or figure out which radio stations people listen to. They sampled nearly 2,000 households, or about 12,000 people, which is far more than most opinion polls in the U.S. sample, but applied to a population less than 10% that of the U.S.
The upshot is that a tally of 600,000 violent deaths in the last three years is entirely credible.
And horrifying.
Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army took over the city of Amarah today. 800 Madhist troops moved in, stormed and then demolished the town's three police stations and are now patrolling the streets.
When cities are changing hands, that's a civil war.
Oh, and Sunnis under the Shura Council took over Ramadi yesterday. It's meant to be the first step in their creation of a Sunni Islamic state within the current territory of Iraq.
Update: Amarah (or Amara, depending in your spelling preference) has been retaken by Coalition forces.
As I wrote about previously, the Mandeans (also known as Sabeans), a minority religious group in Iraq, are in serious danger of being wiped out completely. Numbering in the low tens of thousands, this last remaining gnostic group has found itself at great risk in the sectarian deathbed that Iraq has become, despite the supposed provision in Islamic law that all believers in the one God (i.e. Christians, Jews, Mandeans) should be protected. Of course, given that most of the murdering in Iraq is rival Islamic sects going at each other's members, it's not surprising that they've thrown out this tenet regarding non-Muslims.
The month of October found Mandeans and Iraqi Christians (Assyrians) pushing for an autonomous region in the current governorate of Ninawa, as described here and promoted by Assyrian Christians here. An article on the site of the Kurdistan Regional Government indicates that the entire Mandean population -- which the article numbers at 60,000, three times higher than most other estimates -- is asking for a safe haven in Kurdistan (that is, northern Iraq).
All of these efforts are in addition to the many Mandeans who are simply trying to get out of Iraq, and have been trying since 2003 or even earlier.
They need some kind of protection. Mandean leader Sheikh Raad Mutar Saleh was gunned down in Suweira earlier in October, as reported here. Again, when Muslims are murdering each other in bulk, every one else is fair game.
Four months ago, four Russian embassy staffers were kidnapped and killed in Iraq, as I discussed here. Putin reportedly ordered Russian special forces to "take all necessary measures to find and destroy" the killers. Checking back on things, there has been exactly zero news on this topic -- as there would have to be, if Russian special forces were actually at large in U.S.-occupied Iraq.
But the organization responsible for the murders, the Mujahidin Shura Council, was the same group that took to the streets in Ramadi earlier in October to declare the town part of a (Sunni) Islamic state within Iraq.
This suggests Russia has not been able to resolve this problem. Then again, the vigorous declaration up front may have been an end in itself.
The Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) will cease to exist October 1, 2007.
Washington lawmakers have reacted with shock at the discovery that an obscure clause in a military spending bill will terminate the work of the auditor.
Indeed, it's odd that the Inspector General's office would have this built-in timeout, as they have diligently exposed problems in Iraq, such as lying on the part of KBR (one of many happy recipients of massive contracts for reconstruction -- and, as I learned from speaking with military personnel, a company that is prone to only feeding American soldiers once a day within a tightly constrained one-hour period, rather than giving them the three meals a day their contract required...).
It's also odd that lawmakers are "shocked" this week, given that Senator Leahy of Vermont was arguing for an amendement that would remove SIGIR's expiration date all the way back in May of this year, as indicated here.
You can read the relevant language yourself by looking in section 2207 (d) in this copy of the law. I understand how easy it would be to miss it, given that the note in the margin immediately next to this line says "Expiration date."
Totally hidden. Easily missed (well, except when it was openly debated and the effort to remove it was shot down by Senate Republicans).
Among other problems, the office has identified the disappearance of billions of dollars in Iraq and the disappearance of one in every twenty-five weapons brought into Iraq.
Republican Senator Susan Collins told the New York Times she was mystified about how the termination clause had found its way into the bill.
Really? Is the legislative record so poor that we can't identify the person who put this timeout in? Or was it just a chance for her to distance herself and her party from the problem?
Honestly, I could understand how a spirit of optimism would have put the original expiration date in, back when the office was formed. What is indefensible is the quashing of efforts earlier this year to let the office continue, especially in light of its many substantial and recent discoveries in service to our soldiers in Iraq.
You can read the office's reports by clicking here.
Last month there was a little bit of hubbub -- mainly in the form of repudiation by American and Iraqi officials -- over Burnham et al's estimate that on the order of 600,000 violent deaths had occurred since the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. At the time, the official American tally of Iraqi deaths came in at about 30,000, with the Iraqis saying something similar.
Yesterday, Health Minister Ali al-Shemari posited a civilian death toll of 150,000. This value is apparently based on an attempted total count of civilian and police dead, including people who were abducted and later found dead. al-Shemari still denies that 600,000 is a credible figure. Note, however, that due to the nature of the Burnham study's estimation technique, the full range of possible values is 393,000 to 942,000. Also consider that Burnham did not try to distinguish between people killed while fighting as insurgents, and those killed as civilians.
And also consider that a family will notice when someone goes missing, but the Health Minister's tally requires a body.
All things considered, the Burnham estimate is still quite solid, especially given the tendency of morgue and other government-based reporting methods to underreport civilian deaths in wartime.
Lawyers for several Abu Ghraib and Guantamo Bay detainees filed suit in Germany against Donald Rumsfeld and a number of other defendants. German law allows filing of war crimes charges regardless of where the cases are alleged to have occurred.
Charges are being filed by attorney Wolfgang Kaleck at the head of an effort backed by the Center for Constitutional Rights, the International Federation for Human Rights and others. You can read the whole list of defendants here. Notables include Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Alberto Gonzales and William Haynes.
Equally notable is the case's lead witness, former Brigadier General Janis Karpinski:
Former U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the one-time commander of all U.S. military prisons in Iraq, said she would testify against her superiors because only a handful of low-ranking soldiers have been convicted over the abuse at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail.
Karpinski, who was relieved of her command and demoted to colonel last year, said she wanted to "be a voice for my soldiers."
"They were tried and convicted in the world court before they ever set foot in any courtroom ... while people who are far more culpable and responsible have walked away blameless," Karpinski said during a presentation of the case in Berlin.
Today, al Jazeera reports on the increasing tendency of American news outlets to refer to the conflict in Iraq as a civil war, rather than labeling it an insurgency, terrorism, or something else. Naturally, the Bush administration is not pleased with this label, and disputes its applicability:
Stephen Hadley, the White House national security adviser, said the Iraqis "don't talk of it as a civil war" because the army and police had not fractured along sectarian lines and the government continued to hold together.
It's hard for Americans to visualize a "civil war" that doesn't involve large armies of men dressed in blue and gray, fighting on formal battlefields and taking cities. It's true that this is not happening in Iraq. However, that doesn't mean the army and police aren't fractured on sectarian lines. Consider the many, many reports of Iraqi security forces standing by as a Sunni or Shia militia moves into a neighborhood dominated by the other sect and begins killing.
A civil war can happen even when the security forces all receive their paycheck from the same place. All they have to do is let someone else handle the killing.
I'm currently reading the Thomas Ricks book, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. Among many of those described in its pages who pushed very, very hard for a war in Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz is a real standout. He believed that not only was an attack on Iraq necessary, we would be greeted as liberators, and American troop levels could be dropped to something on the order of 30,000 soldiers within months of the invasion.
I heard a discussion last month in which a speaker said that Wolfowitz would emerge as the "true tragic figure" of the Iraq story, because he (Wolfowitz) honestly believed in what he was doing.
Not so.
A tragic figure not only believes what they're doing, but does their best with what they know at the time.
In contrast, Wolfowitz ignored fact-based thinking and preferred to live in -- to adapt from Rommel -- cloud cuckoo land.
When General Shinseki was called on to develop a speculative plan for an invasion of Iraq, his troop level estimates for post-invasion Iraq were, quite reasonably, based on troop levels that had succeeded in keeping the peace in ethnically torn Bosnia. That was one soldier per fifty people. In Iraq, after ruling out the relatively peaceful Kurdish territories, this would have meant about 300,000 soldiers, or ten times the number Wolfowitz was writing in his dream journal every night.
Called on to testify on likely occupation needs just months before the invasion, Shinseki decided to reach farther back in history and looked at troop levels used in the occupations of postwar Germany and Japan. Based on these levels, the estimate for Iraq was 260,000 soldiers. Once again, much, much higher than what Wolfowitz had in mind.
What did Paul have to say about this?
"Some of the higher end predictions that we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark." His reasoning, he explained, was that "it is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army -- hard to imagine." (from Fiasco, pp. 97-98)
That was it. It was hard, for him, to imagine. Despite the evidence from Bosnia. More importantly, despite the exact same estimates coming from the postwar occupations of Germany and Japan, two ethnically homogenous nations that did not offer widespread partisan resistance after the war. One would imagine that a man who saw such a profound link between World War II and Iraq would have been able to see that, as well.
One might also imagine that a military theorist such as Wolfowitz could see that the U.S. might well induce Iraqi regular army forces to surrender solely by precision-bombing them into paste. Our ability to destroy and demoralize the regular army, and to force the regime into hiding, was never an issue (though even then, the "light and fast" approach pushed by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz indubitably did more harm than good, even in the initial invasion).
Wolfowitz refused to run the numbers when they got in the way of his imagination. His involvement is a tragedy, but he is no tragic figure. Just a negligent philosopher responsible for widespread chaos and death.
BBC: Nine US servicemen killed in Iraq
Slow news day so far.
Quite a bit of reporting and discussion followed last week's revelation that Rumsfeld had, after several years of abject failure, decided that maybe a policy change was needed in Iraq. He included recommendations he liked, as well as those he found more distasteful.
But honestly, it was more of the same old crap.
Consider this quote from the memo (as quoted by the BBC):
The memo also suggests "beginning with modest withdrawals of US and coalition forces... so Iraqis know they have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country".
"...have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility..."
That's it, really. The Iraqis are a bunch of children, who, as a group, are irresponsible and refuse to try and help because we're around. As if patriotic Iraqi men weren't still signing up for the security forces, despite the regularity with which busloads of recruits are kidnapped and executed. This comment, just on its own, stands up as a glaring example of the type of irresponsible, fairy-tale-driven thinking that Rumsfeld uses. Think of the old "We need to have a smaller, faster military" idea. Did he model whether that would work or not? No. It's not about reasoning, it's about a near-dogmatic belief in an idea, with an utter terror of subjecting that idea to rational analysis.
The memo above is pure conjecture, of the worst and most irresponsible sort. What if, instead, we had seen this:
"Studies on Iraqi culture and subsequent wargaming indicate that a drawdown in American military presence would lead to a temporary spike in violence, followed within 4-6 months by increased security and a normalization of relations between official government actors and local militias."
I made that up, of course. I have no idea whether modeling suggests that's what would happen -- because our current leaders do not believe in modeling, or evidence-based analysis, or historical analogy. They just believe.
The problem is that Rumsfeld's beliefs do not shield our soldiers from snipers, RPGs and IEDs.
Better that he fulfill that role in person. That, as nothing else has, might have forced him to temper his beliefs with reality.
Fifteen members of a Shia religious foundation (the Shia Endowment) killed by gunmen in Northern Baghdad.
Sixteen people killed by a triple car bombing near a gas station in Southwest Baghdad.
Two killed by a car bomb in the Shia neighborhood of Amil.
Two killed by a mortar attack on a Baghdad market.
One American soldier killed during an ambush on a convoy.
Two Iraqi soldiers killed by a roadside bomb in the Sunni Yarmouk district.
Five American soldiers killed during fighting in Anbar province.
Five American soldiers killed by a roadside bomb near Kirkuk.
Ten people killed by a mortar attack in the cental Midan district in Baghdad.
Four people killed by a suicide bomber in Sadr City.
One person (the driver) killed during an attack in western Baghdad on the car of Brigadier General Muhsin al-Yassri, the security chief for the Higher Education Ministry (the chief was critically injured).
Ali Hussein al-Daiyan, a general from Hussein's regime, killed by gunmen in Ghazaliya.
School principal Sadiq Ali Jassim killed by gunmen in Jihad.
Four people killed by a bombing in Iskandariya.
Forty-five bodies found in various parts of Baghdad, all shot.
One more American soldier reported killed on Wednesday, in Ramadi, Anbar province.
One American soldier died from wounds received a day earlier in Anbar province.
Twelve people killed in Ramadi.
Two police officers killed by a car bomb in Fallujah.
One bystander girl killed in Mosul.
Professor Mohammed Haidar Sulaiman killed by gunmen in Mosul.
al-Harith Abdul-Hamid, director of the Baghdad University psychology center, killed on the way to work.
One person killed by a car bomb in the Baghdad neighborhood of Karrada.
Police Colonel Mudim Abdullah and two guards killed in eastern Baghdad.
One person killed by a drive-by shooting in Diyala province.
One police officer killed by a roadside bomb in Diyala province.
35 bodies found, blindfolded and shot, in various parts of Baghdad.
Reporting today from the AP.
Eight people killed by a car bomb near al-Abbas shrine in Karbala.
Three people killed by a car bomb in Mosul.
Two people killed by a mortar attack in the Shia suburb of Kadhimiya in Baghdad.
Four people killed by gunmen in a series of attacks in Baquba.
Five Shia men, brothers, shot in their home in Jihad, Baghdad.
A Shia man and his three sons also shot in their home in Jihad.
Five people killed in fights between Shia militias and Sunni Janabi tribesmen in neighborhood of Al-Amil.
Nine people killed in Diyala province, including a police officer and two children.
A professor and student killed in Ramadi during an attack on a police patrol.
A hospital security guard killed in Tikrit.
A barber killed in Kirkuk.
Sixty bodies found, tortured and shot, in Baghdad.
Four American soldiers killed by roadside bombs in Baghdad.
One police officer killed by a suicide car bombing in Dora, southern Baghdad.
One student killed by a roadside car bomb near al-Maamoun college in western Baghdad.
One person killed by another bombing in Baghdad.
Four people killed by mortar attacks in Baghdad.
Colonel Yaarub Khazaal, working security for Ahmed Chalabi, killed by gunmen in Yarmouk, western Baghdad.
Fifty-one bodies found, all shot, in Baghdad.
Reporting from the AP and the BBC.
Three Marines killed fighting in Anbar province.
Seventy Shia day laborers killed by dual car bombs in Tayaran Square in central Baghdad.
Associated Press Television Network cameraman Aswan Ahmed Lutfallah killed by gunfire in Mosul.
Five people killed and thirteen bodies found in Baquba.
BBC article
al Jazeera article
AP reporting
(As a note, it's a given that deaths are underreported, especially in whatever news makes it to the international level, but when a major attack occurs, that tends to push all the smaller, "incidental" violence off the screen.)
Seven Iraqi soldiers killed by dual truck suicide bombings of an army base in Riyadh, northern Iraq.
Ten people killed by a car bombing near the Shia al-Kamaliyah mosque in eastern Baghdad.
Five people killed by a pair of car bombs near the Sunni al-Samuri mosque in southern Baghdad.
A police officer killed by a bombing.
A mother and two children killed by a mortar attack in Hawija.
Nine members of a Shia family, including children, killed by gunmen south of Baghdad.
Five people killed in Baquba.
Three people killed elsewhere in Iraq.
A note on casualty reporting from the BBC:
Mass casualty attacks get more attention, but reality is that the violence is going on all the time, claiming an estimated 120 lives a day in Baghdad, the BBC's Andrew North says.
There are now at least 50-60 violent incident a day in the capital, our correspondent says.
A common deflection tactic used by some promoters of the war in Iraq is to point out that Hussein was a tyrant, and did cruel things to his people. True as this is, I term it a deflection because the case for war was not based on humanitarian issues (and if we were people who regularly invaded countries over humanitarian issues, then we should already have invaded Sudan, North Korea and several others).
Deflection or no, I think a supporter of the war could make a strong case for "it was all worth it even though the basis was false" if things were better for people within Iraq now.
But that's not the case, and they certainly know it. In a survey of 2,000 Iraqis conducted by the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies, 95% of respondents indicated they think the security situation in Iraq has deteriorated since the U.S. invasion. They're right -- over a hundred people are killed every day as a consequence of