Surge Success Metrics

General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will be reporting on the Surge in a few days and the pundits are already deciding what that report will say. In the next few paragraphs I’ll present some factors that I think need to be considered. Since the Surge aims to improve civilian security (at least in a limited area), I will later present some metrics on civilian security. A prime purpose of the Surge was to promote a political solution, but I don’t have much to say about that since it should be obvious to everyone that there is no progress in Iraqi political area.

Considering the Surge

The Surge began in January but did not reach an effective level until months later, sometime between May and June. By any measure, I think that is too short a period to measure success, but Gen. Petraeus promised a report in September. I do not know whether Petraeus intended that this report to Congress to be a make-or-break event but politics has made it so. We have a Congress that may be concerned about failure in Iraq, troop losses, and they may be responding to an angry public, but we can be certain that most of them are also worried about November 2008. One the other hand we have a President who seems bent on staying a course that only he seems to understand. In the middle is a frustrated public that wants out of Iraq but not with a precipitous withdrawal. I think, most of all, we’d like some straight shooting from all these parties.

I spend a lot of time reviewing war blogs and reports on life in Iraq and I don’t find a clear picture of whether this Surge is working or not. Before showing some measurable statistics, here are some introductory paragraphs on the general situation. Much more information can be found at. Bill Roggio’s excellent site at Fourth Rail. Also, The Institute for the Study of War is also very good but usually about a month out of date since the information must be gleaned from non-DOD sources.

The Surge began operations with a purpose of removing insurgent forces from Baghdad. This had been tried before but the insurgents have always had safe havens nearby but outside of Baghdad. Training camps, bomb factories, safe havens and other logistic functions remained in close support of insurgents in Baghdad. Therefore, the 2007 counterinsurgency operations included operations both inside and outside of Baghdad. The general idea was to simultaneously return Baghdad to rule of law while disrupting and destroying those insurgent sites outside of Baghdad.

Operations around Baquaba were a major part of the plan and those operations have now expanded into a good part of Diyala Province, up the Diyala and Tigris Rivers. Operations in Falluja and Ramadi added to the successes in Anbar Province that occurred prior to the Surge. Similar operations are ongoing in a belt that surrounds Baghdad on all sides. These Surge operations have been successful, perhaps more successful than even Petraeus had planned. Our troops are capturing or killing insurgents, finding and destroying arms and bomb factories, and breaking up Iranian supply routes on a daily basis. In many areas, local citizens are taking back control of their towns and villages.

Before the Surge began our Marines changed the character of Anbar Province by working with tribal leaders in the fight against AQI. That was and is a military success. Many tribal leaders have joined the U.S. forces in fighting al Qaeda. Just how many tribal leaders are involved is not defined so I cannot say if this represents a majority or just a large fraction of Anbar. We do know that civilian deaths for that province are down. The tribal leaders have also started re-forming local governments so this can also be considered a political success.

However, we also armed these folks. Many of those Sunnis leaers who walked out of Parliament have ties to Anbar tribes. So it is possible they walked out, not because they feared Shia control (no change here), but because they now felt less dependent on forming a possible central government. The same arming of Sunnis is being repeated in Diyala Province. The killed or captured insurgents are still predominantly Sunni and in numbers far outweighing any possible al Qaeda connection.

What was once a series of low-scale bloodshed between rival Shia factions, mostly in the south, has spilled into the headlines with the Brits losing ground in al Basra and chaos in Karbala. As the Shias fight in the streets, should we expect the Shia Members of Parliament to shake hands and get back to negotiations on oil revenue? That would be, perhaps, too Western. We deal with an Arab honor system which holds that the most honor is gained by taking it away from the opposition. And why negotiate in Parliament over oil revenues when you can take the oil fields and the revenues by force?

Al Sadr recently commanded to his Mahdi Army to cool it. Some believe this will leave the renegade militia factions (those who apparently do not march to al Sadr’s orders) exposed to our counterinsurgency operations by allowing al Sadr to distance himself from any responsibility. Maybe so, but note that much of the intra-Shia fighting is further south and not in al Sadr’s control anyway.

The recent massive bombing of the religious minority village in the north reminds me that we have almost no counterinsurgency troops in all of the north part of Iraq. With our troop commanders saying that they are pushing the insurgents out of Diyala and that they may move to the north, I expect that area to heat up soon.

Measuring Surge Success

The Surge is working. I’m just not sure how much. The picture is one of al Qaeda on the run, breaking up Shia militias (and arresting police chiefs who stepped over the line), giving control of villages and Baghdad areas back to the locals, capturing weapons and ammo and IED parts, and interdicting supply routes from Iran. Actual numbers of weapons and ammo found and villages returned to the local citizens are named. It all seems very definitive at first glance. But I have problems with numbers that are not presented in some context that I understand. If ‘X’ numbers of villages are saved, is ‘X’ a significant number of all the villages in the area of operations? Of all the arms and ammo destroyed, is this a significant percentage of the tons we lost early in this war or is being brought in from Syria and Iran?

I started counting the number of villages, the numbers of al Qaeda killed or captured, of the many weapons and ammo found in 2007 but I quit after I discovered that the total numbers would fall short of any meaningful or known quantity – not that we actually know how many al Qaeda operatives are in Iraq or how many weapons are not accounted for. Although the numbers quoted seem impressive, I could not get my hands around any percentage of the total problems.

I can’t argue with success claimed by Generals Petraeus or Odierno. I agree that their success far exceeds anything that has gone before and by a large magnitude. Given a few more years I would predict a “win.” Or, had we started with General Petraeus’ plan in 2003, we would probably be winning now. But we didn’t.

There are some indicators that I watch even though they are usually reported by the “liberal” media. But I try to extract what seem to be the facts and hopefully leave the “liberal” analysis to others.

The IraqSlogger, which sadly is going to a premium service of about $60/month by the time you read this, reported the following data from the IWPR (Institute for War and Peace Reporting) concerning how much rule of law now exists in Iraq:

• In July, at least 1,759 Iraqis were reported killed, a more than seven per cent increase over the 1,640 who are said to have died in June, according to estimates by the Associated Press.
• One out of three Iraqis is in need of emergency aid, according to a recent report by Oxfam.

The increase of July over June deaths is only 7% and may be within normal reporting error. It does however indicate that security is not improving significantly. One-third of Iraqis in need of emergency aid is a quality of life measure and paints a grim picture.

Juan Cole, who is definitely a liberal, found the following:

• Deaths per day from political violence in 2007: 62
  Deaths per day from political violence in 2006: 33

Baghdad has gone from representing 76 percent of all civilian and police war-related deaths in Iraq in January to 52 percent in July, bringing it back to the same spot it was roughly a year ago.

• Nearly 1,000 more people have been killed in violence across Iraq in the first eight months of this year than in all of 2006. So far this year, about 14,800 people have died in war-related attacks and sectarian murders. The AP accounted for 13,811 deaths in 2006.

the number of detainees held by the US military in Iraq has risen from 19,000 to 24,400 in the course of the surge. Of these over 24,000, 85% are Sunni Arabs (20,740 of the current total). These numbers make absurd the comments of some US officers that the Shiite militias are as big a threat as the Sunni Salafi 'insurgents,' or that Iran is the major trouble maker in Iraq. (I don’t necessarily agree with his conclusions but the figures, if correct, are interesting).

The reduced percentage of deaths in Baghdad indicates the Surge is working in the areas of Surge operations. The fact that this only brings us back to the levels of one year ago is not that significant since that reflects a period when our forces were standing down (reduced footprint concept) and allowing the insurgents to consolidate. That 85% of captured insurgents are Sunnis is very telling, but stating that the Shiite militias or Iran are not big problems is misleading. Iran has supported both sides in Afghanistan and we can expect them to support both Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq – covering their bet much as we’ve done in recently by promising more arms to both Arabs and Israelis. Shiite militias are very active in killing and torturing other Iraqis. They are not yet widely attacking U.S. forces and thus are not captured as often as Sunnis. The deaths per day shows an increase of about 87% over 2006 and that does indicate that the security over much of Iraq has deteriorated.

I should note that the reported figures for deaths and related metrics come from many different sources and they rarely agree in specific numbers. They do, however, generally agree in trends.

On August 29, the Toronto Star reported:

According to a recent UN report, there are 1.8 million internally displaced persons and 2 million refugees in neighbouring countries, with an additional 40,000 to 50,000 leaving per month; 54 per cent of the population lives below the extreme poverty line of $1 a day; 43 per cent of children under the age of 5 suffer from malnutrition; inflation is 70 per cent, and in 2006 there were 34,452 recorded civilian deaths and 36,685 recorded civilian injuries.

In the above UN report, the total numbers indicate nothing about any Surge successes or failures, but the apparently recent figure or 40,000 to 50,000 leaving per month does indicate that a significant number of civilians don’t feel very secure. The high poverty level, along with the attendant malnutrition, is indicative of the high unemployment rate caused by disbanding the Iraqi Army early in this war and by continued violence and lack of security. When security is low, commerce suffers and unemployment rises.

The increase in civilian deaths from 34,452 in 2006 to 36,685 speaks for itself. The deaths reported by the UN are much higher than reported by the AP (the Juan Cole source), but both speak to an increase in 2007. DOD sources report less violence and deaths which apparently conflicts with the civilian reports. I think both are correct but DOD sources are probably referring to better conditions in the provinces where the Army and Marines are conducting operations. I now count 16 U.S. brigades in those areas, leaving only 4 brigades to cover the major part of the Iraqi population. The Kansas City Star, in an August 25 report on the same AP data added the following information:

• Nearly 1,000 more people have been killed in violence across Iraq in the first eight months of this year than in all of 2006. So far this year, about 14,800 people have died in war-related attacks and sectarian murders. The AP accounted for 13,811 deaths in 2006.

In July, the AP figures show, 35 percent of all war-related killings occurred in northern provinces. The figure one year ago was 22 percent.

The last figure validates my earlier stated fear of increased violence in the northern, non-Kurdish, provinces. The FourthRail’s Brigade Order of Battle for 31 July shows that only four brigades (plus one Korean brigade) north of the Anbar/Diyala line. The order of battle map shows nine Iraqi Army brigades and seven Static Police brigades in the same area. We know that the size of the Iraqi Army and National Police brigades are slowly increasing in numbers but their reliability depends on who in the Army or Marines you talk to. My impression is that, in general, they are useful if backed by U.S. forces, and sometimes reliable on their own. But our troops do not generally trust the Iraqi troops without onsite U.S. guidance.

Of course some of these increases in civilian deaths, displaced and refugee persons, and other metrics may be concentrated in the early part of 2007, before the Surge was staffed and fully effective. But I would have hoped Petraeus planned to show measurable improvements by the time of his September report. If there are any measurable improvements, they are not popping out in the few days left.

I am not saying that the Surge is not working. I am saying that the Surge is not showing evidence of success. The metrics of civilian security indicate some improvement in the band around and in Baghdad but certainly not for the greater part of the Iraqi population. The prime purpose of the Surge is to create an environment for the Iraqi government to proceed on a political solution. I think that environment in and around Baghdad is vastly improved over 2006. The political solution is, however, stuck in 2006. Security for the majority of Iraqis ranges from no change to worse than in 2006.

Even if the Surge is improving Iraqi lives only in the areas of counterinsurgency operations, this may be enough to continue the operations. Some breakthrough on the political side seems to be essential before the coming September report. Perhaps the breakthrough might come from al Sadr if he extends his direction to his Mahdi Army elements to not attack peaceful Sunni elements. Either way the actions of Congress and the White House should be interesting.