December 20, 2004
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December 20, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
In Iraq, Less Can Be More
By PETER KHALIL
ashington — EVEN with the world’s most advanced military machine at its disposal, the United States is having remarkable difficulty defeating or even containing the relatively small number of Saddam Hussein loyalists, religious extremists and foreign terrorists in Iraq. Thus the plan to gradually turn security matters over to the Iraqis would seem to be doomed from the start. But a closer look at the insurgents’ goals and methods may give clues to a better approach.
The 15,000 or so insurgents are spoilers whose disparate long-term aims range from pipe dreams of restoring the Baathist regime to installing a fundamentalist Islamist autocracy. But the futility of their long-term goals does nothing to impede their short-term effectiveness. The 150,000 Iraqis who have so far joined the state security services can do little to stand in their way; in fact, even if their ranks increased to 500,000 through rushed training, they would still be largely ineffective.
However, a force of 25,000 or so highly trained Iraqi internal security troops, operating at the pointy end of the spear, with the remaining bulk of Iraqi forces in a supporting role, might be able to do the job. That’s because counterinsurgency is not about numbers; the quality of the security forces, not their quantity, is the key.
Traditional military forces are not geared toward the mainly urban operations needed to defeat small cells of guerrillas. In particular, Iraq needs security forces that are trained specifically in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations. Yet because of the scale of the insurgency, we have been forced to use the fledgling Iraqi Army and National Guard. Most guardsmen have had only cursory training, and the army troops have largely been prepared for conventional military defense against external threats. Not only is pressing them into counterinsurgency duties a misuse of their training, it’s bad politics: the army was a tool for internal repression under Saddam Hussein, and it should not play a prominent internal security role in a democratic Iraq.
The answer lies with specially trained Iraqi internal security forces, separate from the standard military, including mobile counterterrorism units, light-infantry police battalions and SWAT teams. There are now only a handful of battalions with such training. Yet, with the help of intelligence coordination and American logistical support, they have been effective. They performed well alongside coalition troops in Falluja and Samarra, and pulled off a hostage rescue in Kirkuk in which the Americans provided only logistical support.
Unfortunately, the coalition was late off the mark in building up these units, and the training is long – a minimum of 16 weeks for each man, as compared to the two weeks of boot camp given a typical guardsman.
Recruits from the different Iraqi forces are being trained at bases and police academies across Iraq by coalition personnel and Iraqi officers who have undergone “train the trainer” courses. In addition, some military officers are receiving leadership instruction in military colleges in America,
Britain, Italy and Australia. Police recruits are also being given intensive counterinsurgency training in neighboring states, including Jordan.
The coalition has a goal of 33 battalions of these troops, some 25,000 men, which seems about right (any more, and there exists the long-term risk of a force that could rival the civilian government). Achieving this goal would be best done through the additional deployment of an American training brigade (ideally including members of one of the Army’s elite ranger training battalions) as well as several hundred more police trainers from local departments and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
As vital as this assistance will be, however, the coalition must be careful not to sacrifice principles essential to a democracy, like the rights of the detained and civilian control over the armed forces. The latter is a particular danger if the army becomes immersed in internal security roles.
Training these specialized troops will take time; the United States should be prepared to shoulder the main burden of Iraqi security for the next 6 to 12 months. The Bush administration, which is so fond of publicizing the large numbers of Iraqi soldiers and police officers in uniform, should forget about the raw numbers. Instead, we must focus on training more of the right type of Iraqi security forces to do the job.
Peter Khalil, a visiting fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, was the director of national security policy for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq from August 2003 to May 2004.
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