The Surge And The Iraqis
Writing in City Journal, Michael Totten makes a point that’s too often missed:
While the Americans were lucky, in a sense, that al-Qaida so thoroughly disgusted the locals, Petraeus’s strategy shift was crucial to beating the insurgents. Before the surge, American counterinsurgency had followed a “light footprint” model: soldiers and Marines lived on large protected bases and did everything they could to avoid casualties. The thinking was that this approach not only protected the military; it also would keep Iraqis from viewing Americans as oppressive occupiers. But the light footprint model prevented the Americans from providing security to Iraqis, who began to regard their occupiers as not merely oppressive but incompetent to boot.
When Petraeus surged additional troops to Iraq in January 2007, the light footprint model was replaced with aggressive counterinsurgency operations that, perhaps counterintuitively, prioritized the protection of local civilians over American forces. “Sometimes, the more you protect your force, the less secure you may be,” the Army’s new manual on counterinsurgency (COIN) explains. “Ultimate success in COIN is gained by protecting the populace, not the COIN force.”
An Iraqi sees the result for himself, and at the same time conquers his own demons:
At last, I’m in Adhmiyah driving my car safely but my mother was tremble from fear
“Why you did that … why you enter here?”
“To face my fears … I should face them Mom”
That what I want, to face my fears and to convince myself that the nightmare had ended, and I can enter any place in my country safely.
I found Adhmiyah quiet, beautiful, and fill with life as I remember it before the extremists control it.
And the ISF continue to control Basra, with increasingly positive results:
Iraqi troops rescued a British journalist for CBS News in the southern city of Basra on Monday two months after he was kidnapped, the Iraqi military said.
In recent days, Iraqi forces have started house-to-house sweeps for arms, weapons, drugs and criminal elements in several parts of Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city. The military said it has uncovered an improvised explosive device factory, along with significant arms caches and numerous roadside bombs, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.
Serious fighting in Basra has abated since a failed [sic] government offensive last month to dislodge militia groups.
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[…] to think, it was only yesterday they were still calling it a “failed” offensive. May we have many more such […]
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