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ANNOUNCER:
It appears to be America's best hope for changing its
fortunes in Iraq: combating insurgent violence with a
temporary flexing of military muscle. So far, the
results are encouraging. Now, as the US Ambassador to
Iraq and the top US General there prepare to give a
new assessment of this strategy, we bring you a look
at what it means to Iraqis and to the troops charged
with making it work.
This is a CNN Special Report:
Iraq: Inside the Surge. From the
Iraqi capital, here's Michael Ware.
MICHAEL WARE: Hello. Welcome to Baghdad, and the
American military's "surge." A lot of people talk
about the surge -- perhaps America's most effective
strategy in the Iraq war -- but few talk about what
it really is.
The true nature of the surge and what's driving its
successes goes far beyond the 30,000 combat troops
sent here to reinforce the capital.
We talk to US Special Forces and field commanders,
insurgent leaders, US allies, and both the Iranian
and American Ambassadors.
But to begin, we look at exactly what is the surge.
(voiceover) This is the face of America's surge. Abu
Fahad, leader of a US-backed militia. Last year we
couldn't reveal his identity. But now we can… he's
dead, murdered one month after walking me through
these alleys, targeted for allying with America.
His was a true frontline of the surge. It was his own
neighborhood. Defending it against al-Qaeda and Shia
death squads, he did it all under contract with US
forces.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Somebody's there just watching.
He'll pop out again.
WARE: When President Bush unveiled his surge strategy
in January last year, ordering 30,000 extra troops to
Baghdad, he vowed their mission would prevail.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This
time we will have the force levels we need to hold
the areas that have been cleared.
WARE: But the surge is much more than force levels.
It's a shift in strategic thinking, comprising many
components.
First, helping Sunni militia to target al-Qaeda,
cutting deals with insurgents who'd been fighting
Americans, putting over 70,000 of them on
Washington's payroll, some of whom treat al-Qaeda
without mercy.
"These are the men who hold the areas now cleared,"
this senior insurgent commander tells me. "It's the
agreement that made the violence against the
Americans go down," he says. "And if the Americans
say it was because of troop numbers, that will
provoke the resistance."
Even Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, an opponent of the
U.S. presence, plays a part in the surge, reining in
his Mehdi Army militia with a cease-fire; a
cease-fire that's held, despite a government
offensive on his Mehdi Army strongholds in Basra.
Then, off the battlefield, there's the political
surge: an American push for Iraq's government to pass
key legislation that's had mixed results.
Much more visible: the lines of blast walls built by
the Americans. They encircle neighborhoods, walling
off Sunni communities from Shia. Their exits guarded
with checkpoints, they've turned Baghdad into a
segregated city, even changing how Iraqis get
married. For this groom, a Sunni marrying a Shia,
collecting his bride from her neighborhood,
controlled by the Mehdi Army, could be a death
sentence.
"I was forced to decorate two cars for the wedding,"
he says. "One for driving in my neighborhood. And
another for traveling through hers."
But the surge remains an undeniable success. Though
spiking in recent weeks, attacks nationwide are down
60 percent on last year, with violence at levels not
seen since 2005, according to the U.S. military, with
sectarian killings plunging by as much as 95 percent.
These successes would evaporate without U.S. troops.
But the troops haven't done it alone.
"We had to start this," Abu Fahad said, "but we're
putting death in front of our eyes. We're being put
under a lot of pressure to stop. But we won't."
Yet it wasn't long before he
was stopped,
making his death forever part of America's surge.
They were told to expect the worst. Ordered into a
Baghdad stronghold of the Mehdi Army, the militia
loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, Bravo Company of the 1-502
Air Assault Regiment went ready for battle. But what
they found surprised them all: a quiet neighborhood.
Where units before them waged torrid battles, Bravo
Company patrols in simple 8-man teams, roaming out
from a small outpost nestled within the neighborhood
of Shu'ala -- a fresh military approach, coupled with
American political accommodation for Muqtada and his
militia following the cleric's ceasefire declaration.
Flowing from that accommodation, these paratroopers
partner with Iraqi Army units drawn from the Shu'ala
neighborhood itself; the Iraqi recruits most likely
drawn from the Mehdi militia.
CAPTAIN JEREMY USSERY, BRAVO COMPANY COMMANDER: I'm
willing to work with anybody that's got a
nationalistic approach. You know, where their
loyalties lie, we always have to keep that in the
back of our heads and not be foolish about it, but at
the same time, we have to have a semi-optimistic and
realistic approach towards training these guys.
WARE: An optimism that doesn't blind the captain to
the threat he says he faces: Iranian-backed "Special
Groups." Well-trained, well-armed guerrilla teams
modeled on the Shia militia in Lebanon: Hezbollah.
And on the eve of the war's fifth anniversary, that
threat's made real. Humvees rolling out of Captain
Ussery's post after a rocket-propelled grenade attack
on US soldiers nearby. They return with a wounded
soldier, rushed onto a medivac chopper, the outpost's
second evacuation in twelve hours. The previous
night, one of Captain Ussery's own men was hurt on a
patrol targeting rebel gunmen. The young paratrooper
stretchered by his comrades, he'd been thrown from
the top of an armored vehicle by an electrical wire
strung across the street.
But those scenes are increasing rare for Bravo
Company, their days spent foot-patrolling more than
fighting. Or endlessly readying weapons and keeping
vigil. Or carving a new post out of empty warehouses.
Their lives are basic -- makeshift showers, side
mirrors for shaving, and food trucked in and eaten in
a Spartan chow hall -- with violence still present:
days after this patrol, a carbomb in the neighborhood
killed five civilians.
USSERY: Just about every day you find a IED or EFP or
something, and nobody every knew anything.
WARE: Nothing here is ever easy. And when the surge
ends, its legacy will fall upon units like Bravo
Company, and their war will continue.
1ST SERGEANT RICK SKIDIS, BRAVO COMPANY: It's just
another day, man. And we'll go out and do our best
and try to get everybody home.
Part 2
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WARE:
According to a United Nations count, 633 Iraqi
civilians were killed in February this year. A drop
from the 1807 killed in the same month last year. The
greatest factor behind this relative relief in the
bloodshed is America's agreement with its insurgent
enemies, which so far is a huge success. But could
the deal have been struck years ago? And could
thousands of Iraqi and American lives have been
saved?
(voiceover) When horror is commonplace, an old man
barely flinches as a Humvee erupts in a blast behind
him. An attack videoed by an insurgent faction still
at war with America even as other factions from the
same group, the Islamic Army of Iraq, have allied
with America, joining 70,000 guerillas now on the US
government payroll.
Announcing the surge a year ago, the US
administration warned there would be trade-offs --
this deal with enemies it once called "terrorists"
was the greatest trade-off of all. From American
commanders to the US president, it's acknowledged
that rather than fighting Sunni insurgents, enlisting
them in the so-called "Awakening" program has
dampened the violence. Yet the deal was a long time
coming.
From the beginning, the insurgents were willing to
negotiate. Talks with American officials began way
back in 2004. But why did so much American and Iraqi
blood have to be spent before agreement was found?
COLONEL RICK WELCH, US ARMY SPECIAL FORCES: I think
we didn't recognize all the opportunities when they
presented themselves because we saw all of these
groups through one lens and didn't really have the
mechanism in place to talk about specific strategies
with each group.
WARE: Green Beret Colonel Rick Welch is one of the
original architects of the covert discussions with
insurgent leaders that opened four years ago.
WELCH: We saw everyone through the lens of anti-Iraqi
forces, but it was quite a complex time. We did not
distinguish national resistance groups from al-Qaeda
or insurgents or terrorists. But that was a
distinction those groups had, and it was an important
distinction for some of those groups.
WARE: Abu Ahmed, a top commander of the Mujahideen
army, now running a US-backed militia, remembers the
frustration. "The delay pointed to the Americans'
fears," he told me. "The delay to distinguish the
national resistance from al-Qaeda was understandable
though painful."
Years later, it took a seismic shift in American
thinking for the deal to finally work.
WELCH: General Petraeus and his vision on
counterinsurgency began to drive that through the
organization. You have to change course a little bit.
Ambassador Crocker -- I mean, getting some people
coming at the right place at the right time.
WARE: Key to the breakthrough was America dropping
its insistence on including the Iraqi government in
the arrangement. Now, the Sunni militias are a check
against the Iranian-influenced regime in Baghdad.
MAJOR GENERAL KEVIN BERGNER, MULTINATIONAL FORCE,
IRAQ: So it's a period of time where there has to be
some confidence-building measures, there has to be
some trust developed, because in some cases these are
folks who were once fighting this government.
WARE: Folks with intentions to fight again, should
the Americans leave Iraq. Despite the risks, it's the
opportunities and lives lost that give most pause.
WELCH: Well, I guess in the pure sense of it, yes. I
mean, if we had-- if we could have seen everything as
clearly then as we see it now, maybe we could have
avoided-- our policies would have reflected our
clarity of vision.
WARE: A clarity Colonel Welch and others had from the
beginning, but which took time for America's leaders
to share.
(on camera) One of the men key to the success of the
surge is US Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Career diplomat,
fluent in Arabic, he is America's point-man in Iraq.
The first American ambassador to meet face-to-face
with an Iranian counterpart in almost three decades,
I sat down with Ambassador Crocker to discuss the
state of Iraq, and the future of the American
mission.
Mr. Ambassador, the surge has been an unquestioned
success in reducing violence. But the term has taken
on a life of its own. How do you define the surge?
RYAN CROCKER, US AMBASSADOR TO IRAQ: It's a great
question, because for me it is more than simply the
increase in the number of troops, as obviously vital
as that has been. It is the surge on the civilian
side, it's the Iraqi surge. We surged by
approximately 30,000 troops; the Iraqis in the course
of 2007 put over 100,000 additional men in uniform,
Army and police, into this fight.
And finally, if you will -- and this may be the most
important element of it all -- it's the political and
the economic surge, which I think by definition is a
follow-on action. The transformation in Sunni
attitudes that we saw in the course of 2007 -- first
in Anbar, then in Baghdad and the areas around
Baghdad -- had a huge impact, not only in the fight
against al-Qaeda but in the overall security climate.
And that was followed by Sayid Muqtada al-Sadr's
announcement of a freezing of militia activities that
was then renewed in February.
WARE: Hasn't this program required a significant
shift in American strategic thinking, to distinguish
nationalist insurgents from al-Qaeda insurgents?
CROCKER: You cannot kill your way out of an
insurgency. You've got to make distinctions between
reconcilables and irreconcilables with the aim of
reducing the latter group to the smallest possible
number. That means among the reconcilables, clearly
we're going to be dealing with people who stood
against us in the past and have our blood on their
hands.
WARE: And it's going to require great patience from
the American people.
CROCKER: It will require great patience. That's what
I referred to earlier when I spoke of the need for
strategic patience here. Things are moving in the
right direction. I think that is a sustainable
process, if we keep at it. And clearly there are
costs. There have been enormous costs in both human
and financial terms, and people ask themselves, is it
worth it?
My answer is, yes it is. The gains are substantial
but they're reversible. If we were to decide we're
done here, then I think you would see things spiral
very, very quickly.
WARE: It could get bad?
CROCKER: It could get very bad.
WARE: In what way?
CROCKER: Well, if we decide we're going to disengage
for reasons of our own -- in other words, reasons not
based on conditions on the ground in Iraq -- then I
think you see a reversal of this whole process. I
think you'd see the process stop at every level --
neighborhood, local, provincial, and national -- as
the different communities look to their own survival
and basically re-supplied and re-armed.
And then I think the fight would be on, and on at a
level that we just haven't seen here before.
WARE: Are we talking about regional proxy war?
CROCKER: Well, I think that's the possibility you
have to look at, because as bad as it was in 2006 --
and no-one knows better than you how bad it was -- we
were here. If we spiral into conflict again and we're
leaving, everybody knows we're not coming back. So I
think the gloves then come completely off, and it's
in that environment that the risk of regional
involvement in the conflict, particularly from Iran,
becomes very grave indeed.
WARE: Is Iran the big winner of the last five or six
years, or not?
CROCKER: Iran could be in a very good position. I say
could be because I think they've made some pretty
poor strategic choices of their own.
WARE: But surely it played to their strategic
advantage, the removal of Saddam, the vacuum that
followed, their well-positioned ability to manipulate
that situation?
CROCKER: Well, that's why I said could be. The
overthrow of Saddam Hussein to their west, the
overthrow of the Taliban to their east, removed their
two greatest enemies in the region. That should give
them a very strong incentive to support the new order
in both Afghanistan and in Iraq.
WARE: Well then, just within your purview, what
exactly is your strategy for curbing and combating
growing Iranian influence here in Iraq? Indeed, the
White House, when the surge was announced, talked
about removing Iranian actors who have infiltrated
into Iraqi institutions. What exactly is your
strategy for combating this influence?
CROCKER: Well, in terms of Iranian actors such as
Quds Force officers, any of them that come into Iraq
and we find them, we're going to detain them.
WARE: Some of your own intelligence agencies would
name some of the most senior officials in this
country as Iranian agents of influence, with
interventions in the arrests of Quds Force officers
in the past and more recently. Isn't this a concern
for you?
CROCKER: Well, clearly Iran has been a negative
influence in Iraq, as we've just been discussing, but
they do not have unchecked opportunity here. Iran, as
we know, is Persian, it is not Arab. Iraq's Arab
identity is intensely felt by all of its Arab
population, Shia as well as Sunnis. And Iraqi Shias
died by the hundreds of thousands in the Iran/Iraq
war, defending their Arab homeland of Iraq. That
isn't forgotten. There is a lot of bitterness,
indeed, on both sides. So there is a limit, I think,
to Iranian influence for historical and cultural
reasons.
Part 3
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WARE: When
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Baghdad
recently, unlike American dignitaries, he announced
his arrival weeks in advance and eschewed the
security of the US-built Green Zone -- a display of
Tehran's confidence in its influence in Iraq…
influence that rivals America's.
(voiceover) Streets of conflict and the chatter of
gunfire. And perhaps a foretaste of an Iraq after
American withdrawal. Opposing Shia factions -- some
in uniform, others not; all linked to Iran -- vying
violently for power in the southern city of Basra. A
massive Iraqi government military offensive blunted
by militia resilience. The offensive has unmasked the
Army's deficiencies and exposed limits to
Washington's influence while highlighting the
ascendancy of Tehran's. As American forces advised
overwhelmed Iraqi officers, Iran seized the moment to
host Iraqi delegations on Iranian soil, brokering the
deal that took the guns off Basra's streets.
It was a display of the influence Iran wields across
much of Iraq; influence America seeks to contain, but
Iran's ties are well-entrenched. The building blocks
of Iraq's government are political groups linked to
Iran through funding, military support, or long
association. One of the government's most dominant
factions was actually created in Tehran; it's
paramilitary wing served in the Iranian Revolutionary
Guards Corps. And American debate calling for their
soldiers to come home aligns with Iranian policy,
which long advocated American withdrawal.
HASSAN KAZEMI QOMI, IRANIAN AMBASSADOR TO IRAQ
(translated): If Americans want a break from their
problems here and problems which have overshadowed
their domestic life, then they have to give
responsibility for security to the Iraqi government
and give it full sovereignty over its own matters and
allow regional countries to cooperate with the new
Iraq.
WARE (voiceover): Cooperation in which Iran assumes
the role the US plays now.
QOMI (translated): Undoubtedly, countries in the
region, including Iran, can help the government of
Iraq to build a professional defense and security
structure through training and transfer of
experience.
WARE: The US condemns the covert campaign by Iran's
elite Quds Force units, directing Shia militia to
attack US forces in Iraq.
BERGNER: Well, we have said for quite some time that
we know that there are elements of extremist groups
here in Iraq who are dependant upon both Iranian
Revolutionary Guards Corps' Quds Force for material
support as well as funding, as well as training, and
they have -- the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps'
Quds Force -- has also used Lebanese Hezbollah as a
proxy of sorts, a surrogate, to execute their policy
here in Iraq.
WARE (voiceover): Claims Iran's ambassador brushes
away.
QOMI (translated): Unfortunately, Iran and the US
interactions have been hostile, and in the past,
since the victory of the Islamic revolution, these
hostilities and allegations but have had no affect on
the Islamic Iran's will and its constructive role in
Iraq.
WARE: US commanders say that will is to use the Iraq
battlefield to weaken US resolve on a range of
issues, like Iran's nuclear program. They say the
supply of Iranian-made roadside bombs known as EFPs
to Iraqi militia fits into that strategy.
USSERY: Lost a soldier due to an EFP, so-- that was
actually in establishing our JSS [Joint Security
Station], so they're-- like I said, they're lethal.
WARE: Is that hard to take?
USSERY: Well, you ever lost a brother? That's what
it's like.
WARE: As the flow of those bombs into Iraq continues
and factional fighting like this in Basra still
threatens, the true dynamic of the Iraq war
increasingly becomes America's confrontation with
Iran.
(on camera) Though the surge is coming to an end,
America's presence in Iraq is not. As US commander
General David Petraeus so often reminds, the
situation is too tenuous. So the questions now are:
what form will the US presence take, and what kind of
Iraq will emerge?
From Baghdad, I'm Michael Ware. Thank you for joining
us.