The Ramadi Model
Filed under: Gen. Petreaus, Iraq — Kevin Sullivan on August 31, 2007 @ 10:15 pm CEST
This encouraging piece in today’s Times Online arguably shows us how a sustained military presence in Iraq could work. The case study, one expected to be a cornerstone in General Petraeus’s report next month, is the Ramadi success story:
Ramadi’s transformation is breathtaking. Shortly before I arrived last November masked al-Qaeda fighters had brazenly marched through the city centre, pronouncing it the capital of a new Islamic caliphate. The US military was still having to fight its way into the city through a gauntlet of snipers, rocket-propelled grenades, suicide car bombs and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Fifty US soldiers had been killed in the previous five months alone. I spent 24 hours huddled inside Eagles Nest, a tiny COP overlooking the derelict football stadium, listening to gunfire, explosions and the thump of mortars. The city was a ruin, with no water, electricity or functioning government. Those of its 400,000 terrified inhabitants who had not fled cowered indoors as fighting raged around them.
Today Ramadi is scarcely recognisable. Scores of shattered buildings testify to the fury of past battles, but those who fled the violence are now returning. Pedestrians, cars and motorbike rickshaws throng the streets. More than 700 shops and businesses have reopened. Restaurants stay open late into the evening. People sit outside smoking hookahs, listening to music, wearing shorts – practices that al-Qaeda banned. Women walk around with uncovered faces. Children wave at US Humvees. Eagles’ Nest, a heavily fortified warren of commandeered houses, is abandoned and the stadium hosts football matches.
“Al-Qaeda is gone. Everybody is happy,” said Mohammed Ramadan, 38, a stallholder in the souk who witnessed four executions. “It was fear, pure fear. Nobody wanted to help them but you had to do what they told you.”
…
We have an Iraqi saying: ‘If you’re bitten by a snake you’re scared of the smallest insect’. We’re not going to let that snake back any more,” said Ali Sami, 39, another stallholder who recently returned home after fleeing to Baghdad. Ramadi has gone from war zone to building site. US soldiers have become the nation-builders so derided by Donald Rumsfeld, the former US Defence Secretary. They are training Ramadi’s 7,000 new policemen (a year ago it had 200) and helping the Iraqis to rebuild their broken city.
They have set up 12 district councils and a city council. They have created 19,000 day labour jobs, paying locals $7 (£3.47) an hour to clear rubble, remove acres of garbage, repair cratered roads, paint shop fronts and replace underground pipes destroyed by IEDs. They have restored electricity, water, rubbish collections and a rudimentary bus service. They are erecting 1,000 solar-powered street lamps. The hospital – commandeered by al-Qaeda – and the fire station are back up and running. Criminal courts will reopen next month. So will Ramadi’s ceramics factory, one of its few real employers. Gunfire has become a sound of celebration.
The city council and US military broadcast daily progress reports, introduced by the national anthem and English football results, from giant loudspeakers above 19 police stations.
The 6,000 US soldiers are now dubbed “friendly forces”, and most are bemused by their new civil role. “I want to fight al-Qaeda, but f*** it – this is victory,” said Corporal Patrick Marzillo from Chicago.
F*** it is right. This is a great story, although one likely to be picked apart and dismissed by the neo-progressives and other skeptics.
But this is a great victory for the American military, and a fine example of how a decentralized, people-focused form of nation building can be effective in Iraq. General Petraeus has literally re-written the book on American counter-insurgency, and there can be no doubt that providing services, aiding in the creation of jobs and making sure that basic infrastructure needs like water and energy are available will be key.
It’s still an uphill battle. The DoD and GAO are debating the results of the so-called surge, calling them “mixed” to say the least. But in the case of Ramadi, you have a city that just one year ago was overrun by terrorists and insurgents. These groups implemented a “Taliban-like” regime over the city, and publicly executed those who disregarded their regulations.
These Iraqi citizens are rejecting such repression. They have lived under it for years. Their parents, and their parent’s parents, have lived under it for years. They have had enough.
We must give the surge more time. This isn’t a popular position, and it will only get you shouted down and smeared by many on the far left. Regardless, we need to give this general more time to win a winnable war.
(Cross posted at my blog)
1 Tom
August 31, 2007 @ 10:32 pm CESTI think Kevin Drum dealt with this topic over at Political Animal, pointing out:
1. The move against AQI by the Sunni tribesmen predates the surge by about a year.
2. The Sunni tribesmen largely did this on their own, without help from the coalition.
3. It only happened because Al-Anbar province is so homogenous, ie composed almost entirely of Sunnis (unlike most other troubled provinces).
2 Kevin
August 31, 2007 @ 10:45 pm CESTThanks Tom, because I was trying to remember where I had read that ridiculous third point, and you reminded me!
Why is it, if a conservative were to say, oh, national health care only works in “homogenous” places, or that crime doesn’t happen in “homogenous” places, they would be called a racist? These arguments have indeed been made, however when someone basically says “peace is only possible when these stinkin’ Arabs are all the same” it gets a pass?
The key point missed here is that it is Sunni dominated, and part of the dreaded triangle. Will places where there are warring sects right next to each other be more difficult to pacify? of course. But this doesn’t mean it can’t be done, and it is most certainly a model for the right way to implement change at the grassroots level.
On point 1, I think you have a point. However, what ties the rejection of AQI into the surge is the ability of the U.S. military to restore infrastructure, maintain check points on the city’s exterior and quite simply put a human face on the big, bad occupier.
And this is why your second point (or Drum’s) falls short to me, Tom. In the case of Ramadi, this would not have been possible without the coalition. The tribes opposed AQI’s repressive presence before last year, but it’s the U.S. military that has enabled it. It’s no small coincidence that the town is praising an American army captain. They should of course be proud of the role they have played in rejecting terror and reclaiming their home. But when will Americans be proud of their soldiers, who helped make it possible?
3 Rich Horton
August 31, 2007 @ 11:09 pm CESTYeah, that is the lefty talking point this week: Any success in Iraq has nothing to do with the United States or our armed forces.
Such people will accept nothing but failure…at least if the United States is involved in any way, shape or form.
Sorry Tom…I’m in a mood.
4 mikkel
August 31, 2007 @ 11:45 pm CESTIF there was some commitment to pull out if it failed, I would be for supporting the continuance of the surge. What has happened in Ramadi is great news of course, but I’m not sure how it’s different than Ramadi 05 or Tal Afar or Fallujah or the dozens of other towns. It’s pretty clear that when we have troops sitting in a town they can pacify it and start to rebuild. Time and again though it’s even more obvious that the second the locals start calling the shots things fall apart again.
It’s not that I think we’re destined to lose, it’s that we don’t have the resources or patience to wait 10+ years and rebuild the whole country on this level. Even Petraeus has said that’s how long he expects it to take best case. Meanwhile they’re saying the troop levels literally cannot be maintained more than another nine months.
5 Kevin
August 31, 2007 @ 11:52 pm CESTmikkel, all good points. However “Ramadi ‘05″ and Ramadi right now are worlds away, and it’s mostly due to our efforts there.
I agree it could take long. What military reconstruction project has been swift? We’re still in Korea, and the reconstruction of Western Europe certainly didn’t happen over night (there I go breaking my promise of no parallels already).
Why does Iraq not deserve the same effort?
6 Tom
September 1, 2007 @ 3:21 am CESTBecause the reason we have a civil war in Iraq is that the Shiites and Sunnis and Kurds don’t get along and don’t want to share the same space. It’s not the same situation we have with various ethnic groups in the US.
Not “in the mood for love”, apparently
I will grant you that failure in Iraq does help justify opposition to the war…even I sometimes feel vindicated when things go wrong there.
Not a very nice picture, but then I never claimed I was a very nice person…
7 Kevin Sullivan
September 1, 2007 @ 4:05 am CESTTom, it’s precisely the same reason. People choose to dislike each other for absurd reasons.
If you subscribe to the notion that “Arabs just can’t do freedom and democracy,” well, you should come clean with that.
8 Xel
September 1, 2007 @ 8:26 am CESTThis is great news in that it means that it is possible to have progress without getting it via centralized government, allowing for a piece-by-piece stabilization that circumvents the corruption. The problem is that these homogenous sectors need to learn to protect themselves from future power-seekers, and to accept neighbourhood with sectors of wildly different alignment. Otherwise there will just be many small parishes or something attacking each other.
Anyway, any progress in Iraq is tarnished in the fact that a) It was botched beyond belief right under the noses of the GOP incumbents and b) it was the wrong country even from the start. There is no glory to be found and the pro-war crowd has nothing to be proud of but I hope a lot can be salvaged.
9 Tom
September 1, 2007 @ 1:55 pm CESTUmm, no I don’t. The violent ethnic strife in Iraq shows that the various factions there have difficulties getting along, it doesn’t mean that there is no hope for democracy in the Middle East. Not entirely sure where you’re getting the idea that I’m an anti-Arab racist….
10 Kevin
September 1, 2007 @ 3:29 pm CESTAnd again, I grant you that certain areas will be harder to subdue.
But every democracy that exists today was once composed of warring factions, rival tribes and territorial states. I don’t mean to accuse you of anything in particular, but if you read the Yglesias, Drum, Klein etc. crowd, you pick up a certain kind of tone. Yglesias did it just yesterday.
I can’t chock it up to anything other than some predisposition against the idea of Arab democracy. It’s not like the conversation has never been had, but I just find it peculiar that it’s what we hear EVERY TIME there’s some level of progres somewhere.
I guess I can see your point if you suspect that these areas are only pacified for the moment, but again, these areas were “homogenized” a year ago, too. But it was still a chaotic warzone.
11 Tom
September 1, 2007 @ 5:15 pm CESTYou mean this quote from Yglesias:
. I don’t get the impression that he’s of the “Arabs can’t handle democracy” school; he seems to be saying that ethnic divisions are common and difficult to bridge.
12 Kevin
September 1, 2007 @ 5:33 pm CESTHis point is sort of silly, because there is a wooorld of difference between check points outside of every city and a debate over democratic procedure in Belgium.
Our efforts can get Iraq to a much better place politically, and I don’t believe we need to “fix” years of ethnic opposition in order to do it. So as a way to dismiss the war effort, I find this rather moot. Yes, democracy is hard. But we don’t need to leave Iraq as a shining example of deliberative action. We do need to plant the seeds.
So yes…that quote! But not merely that. There seems to be an acceptance on the Left that the Middle East just can’t do it. You see it elsewhere of course, and it was how Reagan viewed the region (and the people).
Maybe I’ll post on this, but there is a bit of Liberal idealism/anti-authoritarianism that has died on the Left. I know there’s a debate going on elsewhere over who killed it, or if it ever really went anywhere, or if it’s sound policy, etc.
Tom, do you believe that these warring tribes and sects will simply never be able to negotiate, or is your greater concern that it would require us being there too long to mediate it?
13 Interested
September 1, 2007 @ 5:43 pm CESTOur own history if full of ethnic groups that killed each other (and still happens) Through the passage of time did we learn to live together as human beings. This happens in spots all over the world every single day.
14 Tom
September 1, 2007 @ 5:43 pm CESTActually, neither. Well, the second one kind of, but I think it’s more a case of our presence may be making things worse. I suspect once we’re gone things will eventually improve, but as Michael posted above on another topic, things will get worse in the short term in order to get better in the long term.
15 Kevin
September 1, 2007 @ 6:49 pm CESTThis argument has never made sense to me. If we’re exacerbating the matter, why would things get immediately worse once we leave?
With all due respect Tom, I’ve never really felt that this argument has ever been truly qualified by those who make it.
How will things improve? Will Sunnis and Shi’ites join together to make a peace? Isn’t it more likely that they will continue to kill each other over years of grudges and favoritism from the Baathists? Isn’t it much more likely that countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran will enter in order to merely protect their own ethnic and security interests?
This strikes me as a symptom of the progressive foreign policy outlook–American presence=very bad, no matter what.
I dunno, maybe Liberalism really is dead.
16 Michael van der Galiën
September 1, 2007 @ 8:05 pm CESTKevin: of course they will only act because of that. Turkey will act to protect the Turkmen, Saudi Arabia will support Sunnis (in their war against Shiites) and Iran will help Shiites (in their war against Sunnis).
O, and then we also have the Kurds.
It is not dead, its ideology simply does not take reality into account. You could call it braindead;)
17 Kevin
September 1, 2007 @ 8:22 pm CESTThe question about who would enter and why was more rhetorical.
I agree though, I think it would be territorial in nature, and would leave a Balkanized Iraq.
And hey, I see “liberal” in your ideology, too. Maybe that makes you only half braindead.
18 Michael van der Galiën
September 1, 2007 @ 8:25 pm CESTHaha yeah. Guess so. Call me a pragmatic ideologist.
Seriously though - I am more and more changing into a ‘conservative.’
19 War is Over, if You Want It « The Van Der Galiën Gazette
September 18, 2007 @ 5:50 pm CEST[…] few weeks ago, I discussed the potential in American forces utilizing the Ramadi Model in other provinces. This “bottom up” method has been debated back and forth around […]