Blah, Blah, Iraq, Blah

Some random and not all that well written thoughts on Iraq. Please, please feel free to revise, commentate, etc.

Stability After The Surge

Whether we remain here in Iraq for 100 years, as one presidential candidate has alluded to, or 10 more years, the number cited by most experts and articles as the minimum time for a successful counterinsurgency effort, there is a great deal more work to be done. Increasingly our forces are transitioning from the showy kinetic operations of knocking down doors to the less non-kinetic work of developing the economy, of providing alternatives to the insurgency. This is good, this is progress.

And the Army’s upcoming new operations manual will likely encourage that trend, maintaining positive improvements, such as the surge’s shift of troops from forward operating bases to smaller outposts that allow us to more directly engage with and provide a presence among the ordinary Iraqis whose trust we must win, whose confidence we must retain. Having never seen the Army’s upcoming manual but instead having spent the last few months in the Sunni heartland and having heard many stories of how the area has improved, I’d like to share some of my own ideas.

A Revolution in Civil-Military Affairs
Win or lose, it is the local level and our work here that matters. If we are to ever succeed in sustaining the fragile gains of the surge, in transforming the relative peace into lasting development, it is here that we need to do our best work (which is no excuse for the irresponsible and disappointing behavior of the politicians in Baghdad). The infantry rifle company is a key part of our success, enabling us to defeat the insurgents when they stand and fight and, potentially more important, deterring far more from fighting us in the first place.

But why is it that while we have attached to us medics, cooks, and mechanics – all important in their own right – we have no inherent civil affairs specialist in our company? We have no real expert on creating governance structures, on developing civil society, on bridging the gap between our military forces and the civilian space we inhabit. Yes, every single one of us should, to a degree, view this as a responsibility of ours in our own right, but why can we not have one dedicated point-man with the skills and training attached to our company?

The recruiting pitch could be simple – serving as the Army’s own Peace Corps, ensuring that the military does their job well and with the best interests of the local population in mind. A two-year commitment would be ideal, attracting those who wish to do their part without sacrificing their careers. Year One would be the equivalent of a one-year course in development studies, focusing on civil-military relations, nation-building case-studies, and the nuts and bolts of rebuilding civil society. Year Two would be spent in the field, directly attached to an infantry rifle company as their lead advisor on cultural and political issues.

Given that we have 160,000 boots on the ground presently, I’d imagine that, quite charitably, half are in direct contact with the locals and not confined to FOB support operations. Divide that by the size of an infantry rifle company and double it so that half can be in Year One and half in Year Two at any given time and we’re looking at fewer than 2,000 recruits. Idealistic, Peace-Corps like recruits, yes. But if the recent surge of Barack Obama’s campaign, particularly among younger voters proves anything, it is that idealism is alive and well. It is this population that we must challenge, that we must inspire, and that, if given the tools and abilities to improve and change this war will, I believe, respond.

Continuity of Effort
It is a given in most counterinsurgency (COIN) literature that we should begin planning for the hand-over from Day 1. No one unit will succeed in everything during their deployment – they will rotate out and another unit will rotate in. But we need to do a better job of preparing our units before their boots touch the ground, before we even enter Iraqi airspace.

This, too, would be an expanded role for an expanded Army Civil Affairs Branch, helping to prepare outgoing units in dealing with new areas and new cultures, while assisting in the coordination and analysis of on-going efforts abroad. They would serve as a back-office of sorts for many of the mundane tasks and report-writing that comes with the offering and supervision of contracts and business grants, an essential part of nation-building. By leveraging existing technologies and systems, such a back-office would free-up time – an invaluable commodity – for our units in the field, while deepening the level of cultural and development knowledge on which we could draw upon at given moment, as well as helping us to better analyze data and trends on the ground.

We Have Smart Bombs, Why Not Smarter Dollars?
Such a revamped Civil Affairs program would also help us better spend our money wisely. Everything I have seen so far, especially in regards to our nigh exclusive focus on sheiks and their networks, has convinced me that we are guilty of so many of the classic arguments against foreign aid – we provide hand-outs, not hand-ups, perpetuating a sense of welfare and dependency while stifling entrepreneurship; there is little transparency and less accountability, ensuring the we don't really know where the money goes and knowing that some may come back to haunt us; and funds are poorly or misdirected, most benefiting those with entrenched connections, not those that most need or will best use our funds. The end result is the continuation of an adverse status quo, whereby the rich get richer and the poor stay poor.

Microcredit – making small loans to poor people – offers a sharp contrast to traditional charity-forms of foreign aid. Its best example is, perhaps, Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, which now has over 6 million borrowers and retains a repayment rate over 98 percent, an undeniable success, it has helped millions in Bangladesh, a poor, rural, Sunni nation, much like the Sunni heartland of Iraq, escape poverty. Furthermore, loans, by their nature, provide for better accountability, creating a relationship between lender and lendee. And since repayment is expected instead of charity, those Iraqis most inclined towards real entrepreneurship will be attracted over those simply looking for graft. The Grameen Bank model also has built-in accountability in the form of five-person borrower groups, with each lendee guaranteeing the other four. The result is a powerful system of peer-pressure and shame avoidance that encourages the borrowers to succeed together.

Re-discovering Half of the Population
And one of the more fundamental reasons microcredit programs have succeeded has been their focus on women, who have proven themselves, time and again, to be more reliable and responsible borrowers, both in making repayments and their use of profits. Focusing on women also makes good counterinsurgency sense because of their tremendous role in raising children and running the household. And while this focus on women is identified and highlighted in the new counterinsurgency manual, I have seen little of it up front and on the ground floor.

The Bangladesh case is also particularly relevant because it has become clear there that many women entrepreneurs have gone from economic empowerment to political empowerment, adding their voices and assuming responsibility in subsequent elections. By trying to replicate this on the local level in Iraq, we would add to the economy while giving a new stake to a whole class of women who would serve as a powerful counterweight to the most conservative and anti-western fundamentalists, while likely reminding them that the Prophet’s wife, Khadija, was a successful businesswoman.

We’ve come a long way since we argued that nation-building was not a job for the US military and we’ve got a long way still to go but, if we want it, there is an opportunity to follow-up the surge with real development and stability, and I, for one, think we should take it.