Working Paper
By
Peter W. Connors, PhD
8165906821
A DIFFERENT ENEMY EVERY DAY
Despite concerted efforts, insurgents in Iraq failed to disrupt the January 2005 national election. There is no doubt, however, that a true insurgency was in full bloom by early 2005; and denials of an Iraqi insurgency by Bush administration and Coalition officials had subsided. The insurgency at this point was a loose confederation of Former Regime Elements, Sunni nationalists, foreign fighters including al-Qaida (AQI), Shia militias, and criminal groups. Sunni insurgents were united in their desires to derail the new Iraqi government and to drive out the Coalition, while Shia militiamen opposed the Coalition presence and Sunni-Shia reconciliation. Insurgents, who by this time had learned not to confront Coalition forces in direct combat, were resorting to ambushes and the use improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to attack US troops and Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). AQI was deemed responsible for the high-visibility, deadly, attacks on Shia civilians and Coalition/Iraqi forces. These high-profile attacks were intended to raise questions among Iraqis regarding the competence of their new government and its ability to provide adequate security for the people. During the winter of 2005, the number of daily insurgent attacks increased to nearly twice that of the previous year. Attacks against the ISF and Shia retaliation strikes against Sunnis were also on the increase. In spite of a significant number of Coalition and ISF offensive operations intended to kill or capture insurgents, the pace of terrorist attacks in Iraq intensified over the remainder of 2005. This chapter describes the evolving nature of the Iraq insurgency in both 2005 and 2006, as well as the composition, motivations, and tactics of the various insurgent groups. Initially, however, is a brief discussion of the root causes of the Iraqi insurgency, which began shortly after the fall of Saddam’s regime in April 2003.
Roots of the Insurgency in Iraq
As Operation Iraqi Freedom combat operations officially concluded in April 2003, Coalition military commanders and US government officials genuinely anticipated that peace and stability would soon return to Iraq. Although several pre-invasion assessments predicted limited looting, plundering, acts of revenge, and the possibility of organized violence, only Coalition Forces Land Component Command (CFLCC) planners actually envisioned the rise of an outright insurgency in post –Saddam Iraq.[1] Colonel Kevin Benson, Chief of CFLCC Planning, however, discounted the possibility of a full-blown insurgency, rating it as unlikely.[2] As a result, Coalition post-conflict operations concentrated primarily on humanitarian assistance (restoring electricity and water, re-opening hospitals and banks) and searching for weapons of mass destruction. A significant number of US Soldiers had served in Bosnia and Kosovo and could have easily made the transition to peacekeeping operations in Iraq, however, the preponderance of Coalition forces were under-prepared to curb the widespread lawlessness and broad based looting that erupted across the country in April 2003.[3] Despite near heroic efforts by Soldiers and Marines to protect key facilities in Baghdad and elsewhere, the magnitude of the looting was overwhelming and impossible to prevent. Additionally, since US-led invasion forces had destroyed television and radio transmission facilities in an effort to silence Iraqi Minister of Information, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf (Baghdad Bob), it was impossible for the Coalition to communicate en masse with the Iraqi people and to express its intention of liberating, not occupying, the country.[4]
The much debated issue of adequate troop strength may also be related to the early days of the insurgency in Iraq. James Dobbins, Director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation gave newly-appointed Presidential Envoy and Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, a report that estimated that as many as 500,000 troops would be required to stabilize postwar Iraq. Bremer forwarded a summary of the report to Secretary Rumsfeld, but never received a response.[5] Former head of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), Lieutenant General (Ret) Jay Garner, supported the notion that a larger force was necessary. “The force was not big enough…things began to deteriorate right away,” Garner explained.[6] He described further how the Commander of the United States Central Command (CENTCOM), General Tommy Franks’ original Iraq invasion plan called for a force of 380,000 and how this figure was continually whittled down by officials in the Pentagon. General Franks would later point out that had the 4th ID been able to move through Turkey in March and attack Iraq from the north, the division would have been in the Baghdad area in April and been able to assist with local security. Franks also believes that had the 1st Cavalry Division been deployed in accordance with the original Time-Phased-Force Deployment List (TPFDL), they too would have been in a position to contribute to Phase IV peacekeeping operations.[7] On 21 April 2003, Garner met in Baghdad with V Corps Commander and commander of US ground forces in Iraq, General William Wallace. Wallace’s troops were already guarding 272 static targets that he had never planned on having to protect. “It was eating up his entire force,” Garner noted.[8] Relatedly, Colonel Kevin Benson’s CFLCC ECLIPSE II plan for post-hostilities Iraq called for a total of 20 brigades – approximately 300,000 combat, combat support, and service support troops - in the Phase IV troop-to- task analysis.[9] Adding to the complexity of the situation was the fact that many Coalition units were still engaged in combat operations and, thus, unable to focus attention on less serious looting issues. Finally, Soldiers were unprepared and in most cases unwilling to use deadly force against non-combatant Iraqi civilians who were simply pillaging former regime facilities and infrastructure. As a result of the chaos that ensued immediately following the downfall of Saddam’s regime, many Iraqis began to question the Coalition’s motives and its ability to establish authority and to maintain law and order. This skepticism among Iraqis regarding the Coalition became one of several causes of the insurgency that emerged in the spring of 2003 and grew for the remainder of the year and beyond.
Insert stock photos of General Garner and Ambassador Bremer
On 16 May and 23 May 2003, respectively, the Coalition Provisional Authority issued CPA Order Number 1 (De-Baathification of Iraqi Society) and CPA Order Number 2 (Dissolution of Entities).[10] The subsequent banishment of Baathists and the sudden unemployment of hundreds of thousands of angry, armed, young Iraqi men may very well have contributed to the inception of the insurgency.
ORHA Director, Jay Garner, who remained in Iraq until 1 June 2003, strongly disagreed with both Orders 1 and 2. Both General Wallace and Garner were counting on the availability of former Iraqi soldiers and mid-level Baathists to help rebuild the country. “We told at least 300,000 soldiers they didn’t have jobs and they were still armed….we told 50,000 Baathists –‘you don’t have a job,’” Garner later explained.[11] In a heated discussion with CPA Administrator, L.Paul Bremer, Garner tried to soften the impact of de-Baathification, arguing “it’s absolutely too deep….you don’t want to do this….you can’t live with the results.”[12] CIA Baghdad station chief, Charles Sadell, who also met with Bremer, warned him “that you are going to drive between 30,000 and 50,000 Baathists underground before the sun sets in Baghdad.”[13] Bremer, however, refused to back-down, noting that he had his orders and was going to execute them – both CPA Orders 1 and 2 were implemented shortly thereafter.
Bremer staunchly defended his stance on de-Baathification and disbanding the Iraqi army. According to Bremer the vast majority of Iraqis viewed de-Baathification in a favorable light, since it manifestly demonstrated the Coalitions intent to move beyond Saddam’s oppressive regime by replacing it with a new democratic Iraqi government.[14] Similarly, Bremer considered disbanding the Iraqi army to be “absolutely correct,” and that simply recalling the former army would lead to “political catastrophe.”[15] Retaining the Iraqi army and failing to deal decisively with Baathists “would have led to immediate civil war and the break-up of Iraq,” in Bremer’s view.[16]
In September 2003, Ambassador Bremer published seven steps to sovereignty that described the manner in which the CPA would continue to oversee Iraq until a permanent constitution was adopted and elections were held. By October, however, Secretary Rumsfeld had convinced Bremer to close down the CPA by June 2004. Former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas J. Feith, would nevertheless suggest that not turning governance over to Iraqis sooner, i.e. leaving the CPA in control for fourteen months, was the most significant contributing factor to the rise of insurgency in Iraq.[17]
Major General David Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, described the effects of de-Ba’athification as “tens of thousands of former party members unemployed, without any salary, without any retirement, without any benefits, and therefore, to a large degree, without any incentive to support the new Iraq.”[18] Also, newly appointed CENTCOM commander, General John Abizaid, “recognized that the violence in Iraq was escalating…that groups were organizing in an effort to prolong the opposition to US presence…that some of them were military officers, former Baathists… and that a long term resistance was forming.”[19] As the Coalition slowly addressed the unintended consequences of de-Baathification and dissolution during the summer of 2003, many disenfranchised/unemployed Sunni Arabs, who “found themselves politically and organizationally adrift,” began to affiliate with elements of the mounting insurgency in an effort to both support their families and to fight what they considered a foreign occupation.[20] “I am a father of nine and I have a wife,” bemoaned Abu Basel, a newly unemployed former military officer who had fought in the Iraq-Iran conflict and had been a prisoner of war for ten years.[21]
As intelligence gathering relative to the insurgency improved during the summer of 2003, the Bush administration began to acknowledge potential miscalculations with respect to post-Saddam peacekeeping operations and the surprising resistance encountered from Saddam loyalists, Baathist insurgents, and foreign terrorists.[22] At the same time, however, administration officials down-played the seriousness of the insurgency. Secretary Rumsfeld, for example, referred to Iraqi insurgents as “dead-enders – Baath Party loyalists and remnants of the paramilitary Fedayeen Saddam and Iraqi Republican Guards,” while special assistant to the Secretary of Defense, Lawrence Di Rita, called them simply “mid-level Baathists holding out hope that the regime can come back.”[23]
Initial Coalition optimism resulting from the killings of Uday and Qusay Hussein by US forces in Mosul in July 2003 soon gave way to further misgivings when insurgents bombed the Jordanian embassy and the UN headquarters at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad.[24]
Insert photo of bombed out UN building
Insurgent attacks on electrical, water, and oil infrastructure increased during the fall as did the targeting of civilian workers participating in various reconstruction projects throughout Iraq. As with the deaths of his sons, the capture of Saddam Hussein in December was heralded by Coalition leaders as foreshadowing the collapse of the insurgency. Instead, insurgent violence, inflamed by the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, intensified in 2004 with an increasing number of attacks on Iraqi security forces and the abhorrent beheadings of hostages.[25] When four contractors were brutally mutilated in Fallujah, the US vowed to retaliate.
Insert photo of contractors
Marines attacked the city, but were forced to withdraw as a cease-fire settlement was reached with the insurgents. CPA administrator Paul Bremer noted that had the fight for Fallujah continued, the Iraqi Governing Council would have been lost since the Sunni members would have all resigned. “In the end, it [the withdrawal from Fallujah] was the President’s [Bush] decision,” Bremer explained.[26] Insurgents throughout Iraq were encouraged by the turn of events in Fallujah – to them it was a significant victory.
Coalition leaders again believed that the transfer of authority in June from the CPA to the Interim Iraqi Government (IIG) headed by former Baathist Iyad Allawi would have a diminishing effect on the insurgency. Unfortunately, insurgent violence increased in Ramadi and Samarra, a car bomb killed nearly 50 people in Al-Karkh, a suicide bomber killed 22 US Soldiers in a Mosul mess tent, those Iraqis who cooperated with the Coalition or the IIG were increasingly subjected to kidnappings and beheadings, and Sunni Islamists intensified attacks of Shia civilians in an effort to provoke sectarian hostilities and disrupt the January 2005 legislative elections.[27] As pre-election violence persisted, the resulting security issues were partially responsible for the withdrawal of Iraq’s largest Sunni Muslim party (the Iraqi Islamic party) from the campaign.[28] Numerous high-profile attacks were intended to dissuade Iraqi citizens from participating as candidates, poll workers, or voters in the election process. Just days before the election, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi released an internet message that announced “a bitter war against democracy and all those who seek to enact it”… and denounced the IIG as a “tool used by the Americans to promote this lie that is called democracy.”[29] Thirteen electoral commissioners resigned in Anbar province in the face of prolonged insurgent intimidation. “It is impossible to hold elections in the province…they are kidding themselves,” Saad Abdul-Aziz Rawi, head commissioner, explained, referring to officials insistent on proceeding with elections in Anbar.[30] On the day of the election, ISF and Iraqi police were assigned primary polling place security responsibility, while US troops patrolled the streets and served as a behind-the-scenes backup reserve force. Although 45 Iraqis died in election day violence, the anticipated spike in terrorist attacks failed to materialize.
Enemy Situation in Iraq 2005 – Campaign of Intimidation
By early 2005, Former Regime Elements (FRE), religious extremists, newly radicalized Sunni nationalists, foreign fighter such as al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI), Shia militias, and various criminal organizations had weakly united to form the Iraq insurgency, which still consisted mainly of Sunni Arabs.[31] Foreign fighters and Sunni insurgents often engaged in campaigns of intimidation aimed primarily at Shia. In Tal Afar, for example, Sunni extremists known as Takfirin, terrorized Shia, threatened to kill them, and branded them infidels for not adopting strict forms of Islam. The insurgency at this point was not a national movement, but rather a series of semi-autonomous regional groups loosely connect through family, tribal, and former professional social networks. There was no national insurgent leader in Iraq, no centralized command and control, and no shared vision for the future. Fragile networks also existed between insurgent groups for recruiting, procuring weapons, training, and funneling funds; and AQI’s network of foreign Salafi jihadists, although small, was the most sophisticated.[32] The RAND Arroyo Center described the Iraq insurgency as net warfare perpetrated by flatter, linear, diffuse, and multidimensional networks, as opposed to traditional pyramidal hierarchies. Autonomy and local initiative prevailed among insurgent groups and decisions were often made on a decentralized, consensus-building, basis.[33]