MESOP REPORT : Security In Iraq’s Anbar Shows Battle Against Insurgents Will Be Long & Often Futile
Musings on Iraq – 21 Jun 2014 – The Iraqi insurgency’s sudden charge across the country has focused most of the world’s attention upon Ninewa, Salahaddin, and to a lesser extent Diyala province. In western Anbar however, the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) have been in a pitched battle against militants since the very end of December 2013. The fighting there provides important examples for how the government’s forces will confront the insurgency in the rest of the country. The major lessoned learned is that the army and police even with help of local tribes can take any area, but they simply cannot hold it leading to constant battles for the same territory month after month. That points towards a very long war of attrition being fought in Iraq that will have many reversals.
The current uprising in Iraq started in Anbar in December 2013. Insurgents seized the major city of Fallujah, parts of the provincial capital Ramadi, and much of the smaller towns along the Euphrates and in the surrounding areas. Baghdad immediately launched an offensive to retake the province that has gained very little traction since it started. First the army, police and friendly tribes claimed to have taken town after town only to return to them in weeks and sometimes even days later. On May 5, 2014 for instance, the Anbar Operations Command said that it had cleared most of Saqlawiya, which is just to the northwest of Fallujah. Six days later SWAT forces were still fighting there, but then on May 17 it was reported that many insurgents fled from nearby Sijar, Niamiya and other surrounding towns into Saqlawiya. On May 20 the army claimed it had control of the town, but by the end of the month the ISF was back stating that only half of it was free of militants. Then on June 12 insurgents appeared to have retaken Saqlawiya and was removing concrete barriers at the entrances to the town. Two days after that a lawmaker from Anbar told the press that the ISF had completely abandoned their positions outside of the town. June 17 the deputy head of the Anbar council Faleh Issawi said that insurgents were pushed out, and then finally on June 19 the Anbar Operations Command was back to fighting there and was planning yet another mission to clear it. The inability to take and hold Saqlawiya was repeated in towns and cities throughout Anbar since December. The failure in that town was also the reason why the operation to take back Fallujah, which started at the beginning of May has gone nowhere because the insurgent bases and supply routes in and out of the city were never successfully broken up. The ISF and friendly tribes have gone into places like Saqlawiya again and again, but then move onto the next area and militants move right back in. This is because the security forces’ strategy is simply based upon killing enemy fighters and not upon any population centric counterinsurgency tactics like the Americans employed during the Surge that emphasized winning over the people, returning government administration and basic services, and getting economic activity restarted in areas. Instead the ISF has been chasing the insurgency around Anbar for six months now with little to show for it. Similar problems have already been reported in areas of Salahaddin, and will likely be repeated again and again.
Baghdad now has a greater task ahead of it as the insurgency has been able to spread the fight from Anbar to Babil, Ninewa, Salahaddin, Kirkuk, and Diyala provinces. Even with U.S. advisers, drones, and aircraft along with militias, and Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah arriving to assist the Iraqi government the task of uprooting the militants will still be a long one. The ISF simply does not have a winning strategy. Insurgents will be able to re-infiltrate areas cleared by the army and police because they have no tactics for holding them. As long as they focus upon killing their way out of the war it will drag on for months and years as the current fighting in Anbar apply foreshadows.
SOUCES
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