*Half of Iraq seems to be flipping out over the walls that the U.S. military are building to divvy up Baghdad. But U.S. Central Command chief Admiral "Fox" Fallon says the "short term" "barriers" are a smooth move. Matt Armstrong, the brains behind the relentlessly-smart *MountainRunner national security blog, would beg to differ. In his first DANGER ROOM post, Armstrong says, "Neither political nor military doctrine or logic can justify this folly."
These "gated communities"
may provide a tactical reprieve against violence, but they do not satisfy any strategic requirements of creating confidence and legitimacy. And they're a waste of money, besides. A friend (RS) threw together some numbers on what this wall might cost:
This doesn't include security, project management, administration, transportation, fuel, Iraqi tribal bribes, and miscellaneous other expenses.
Using GoogleEarth, I drew what amounted to exactly 13 miles of perimeter around this first community for a good visual (kmz here).
I've often wondered that if instead of spending bricks of Benjamin's on whatever the CPA spent money on and instead created well-paying legal, judicial, and police positions with transparent oversight (including local media) would we better off? In the case of the wall, what $12.5
million dollars buy? If kids get $150 to fire an RPG -- which they take because their parents don't have a job -- what do you think this cash could buy? Probably more than the temporary security of yet another Sunni enclave.
At best, this is an attempt to recreate the strategic hamlet program from Vietnam, and even British fortresses in the Sudan and Afghanistan a century and a half ago. But this isn't the countryside and these are not autonomous units to be caged. To say there are "serious problems"
with the gated communities, as Anthony Cordesman puts it, is an understatement. Cordesman notes partitioning in Ulster and the
Balkans brought security but at a significant cost. Sadly, Ambassador Crocker defended the plan as a means "to try and identify where the fault lines are and where avenues of attack lie and set up the barriers literally to prevent those attacks." *Al-Hayat *quoted several Iraqi officials who defended the strategy, claiming that building such walls will "give security forces a bigger chance of executing their military missions."
This is nonsense. Iraq is not, at its core, a military mission, after all. It's political -- and it's nearly always been political, even before Saddam's statue was toppled four years ago this month.
In the struggle for legitimacy, from the point of view of the various insurgent and criminal groups, war is politics and our role in war is political at every step of the way. How then does the wall further the political aims of moral legitimacy over the population?
Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus and counterinsurgency adviser
Australian Army Lt. Col. David Kilcullen are both know this. Which makes the chatter -- that the Iraqi reaction to the wall somehow caught American and Iraq authorities "off guard" -- even more maddening. How could they not have anticipated visceral linkage with Israel's wall in the West Bank by the audience in the Middle East or the Berlin Wall by Europeans or even the peacelines in Ireland to our most important coalition partner? There are three possible reasons:
it was not their call, they really didn't expect the brouhaha, or they weren't paying attention. Options one, two, and three are all bad. I eliminated a fourth option -- they didn't know about it -- because that just paints a terrible picture of the command structure (let's not talk about the war "czar", the simple suggestion of which indicates a far deeper systemic problem).
It's depressing to read Moktada al-Sadr's allies have a better read on the impact of the wall than we do:
I agree with hardening market places and public areas that are gathering points, but the protection of protected residential neighborhoods does nothing to isolate the insurgents from their support that we've have spent four years nurturing with our own deeds Hughes has ignored. On the contrary, it will feed the information operations of the numerous insurgent groups and turn allies against us. Should we continue to give ammunition to those critiques?
I cannot fathom this plan was blessed by David Kilcullen, the Aussie counterinsurgency expert. It simply does not resonate with his 28 Articles, allegedly a core document of the surge. See 21 ("exploit the single narrative... counterinsurgency is a competition to mobilize popular support") and 25 ("Fight the enemy's strategy, not his forces") in particular and keep in mind the point of the insurgents: delegitimize anything American or Coalition sponsored ("they cannot protect you, they don't want to protect you, they only want our oil", etc) and they seek to divide anything resembling an Iraqi coalition for peace. (If you are inclined to read an "annotated" 28 Articles, see the Small Wars
Council's blog: Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.)
If we are trying to build a state, we cannot afford to create the image or partitions for the sake of short-term security that will, in reality, not materialize but backfire. We need security, but we need the backing of the people to achieve it. We need solid institutions. We spent nearly four years ignoring this fundamental requirement, fueling religious-based movements in a society that *__had __*a national identity.
Arguments that successful insurgent breaches of the wall support this argument are, with all due respect, laughable. Protecting neighborhoods does not require hermetic seals but support by the population.
What is the alternative? No course of action that is potentially winnable is attractive at this point. Our window of opportunity was squandered long ago with fantasies "build back better" with no-experience partisans. Today, we need a massive infusion of peacemaking and nation-building civil-military teams with the bricks of cash that was also squandered long ago with a commensurate deep commitment to success that comes only from a strong mobilization of the people. The Bush Administration, unfortunately, has lost credibility not only at home but also in Iraq. Gated communities won't help for many of the reasons Cordesman lays out. It's just another brick in the wall to divide the people of Iraq.
-- Matt Armstrong, cross-posted at MountainRunner
