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Tuesday, October 18, 2005

The operational and strategic picture in Western Iraq 
Bill Roggio has an outstanding infographic up on his site here:

http://billroggio.com/flashplayer.php?media=anbarcampaign&w=800&h=600

It's really a shame we don't get this from traditional media outlets, who are so caught up in the play-by-play they forget to look at the scoreboard.

Roggio's grasp of the difference between a sweep operation and a clear and hold operation is key - and it's an aspect of the conflict that traditional media outlets have across the board failed to understand.

Watch the graphics. Watch how the red blips - representing towns in which coalition forces could not keep a robust security force on station to combat the insurgents - turn blue. The blue blips don't represent sweetness and light. But they do represent towns where pro-Iraqi forces have taken ground, are consolidating gains, and are now developing their own human intelligence networks with which to take the fight to the enemy at the time and place of our own choosing.

This does not mean that fighting will end tomorrow. The blue blips don't mean guerrilla resurgence is impossible. The insurgents can elect to concentrate their forces anywhere they think they can get to.

But it does mean that they will have to try to do so, and to consolidate and leave a healthy footprint in areas where Iraqi forces have set up increasingly strong and credible intelligence networks of their own, and it will be increasingly difficult for insurgents to concentrate in strength, undetected. Out-of-towners, especially foreigners - stick out like sore thumbs in Iraqi neighborhoods, and every time they try to gather 100 people or so to pick a fight they run the risk of exposing themselves.

For this reason, the pressure on insurgent leaders to localize the fight - to limit themselves to troops and weapons available locally - will be powerful, which will cramp his ability or willingness to attempt to concentrate in force they way he was allowed to concentrate in Fallujah.

It will also force them to rely increasingly on less secure means of communication, and will slow down his optempo. More and more security forces are becoming available to conduct traffic control points of the sort that nearly snagged Zarqawi, and forced him to abandon his laptop a few months ago.

These checkpoints can of course, become targets of attack themselves. But their increasing frequency must interdict the flow of cash and ordnance into Iraq, and will make long-range movement of same difficult and risky.

Coalition forces may be challenged in the cities. But the insurgency cannot challenge them on the desert highways, where coalition firepower and air mobility can be brought to bear. The coalition will seek to force the insurgent to duke it out in the countryside in order to move supplies and cash to their operatives in the country's interior, hundreds of miles from the Jordanian border.

The insurgent will, for his part, be tempted to confine his activities to close to the Syrian border. Trying to do otherwise forces him to run a gantlet of TCPs between Syria and Ramadi or Baghdad. Local insurgents in these areas may be largely cut off from Syrian support.

Syria has the power to cut the insurgency off at the knees. The most delicate game in town is the one to entice Syria to do so, while maintaining a credible stick with which to beat the crap out of him if he does not.

This will potentially pose some interesting policy questions for the US, as Syria could potentially offer to help crackdown on border movement with Iraq in exchange for us turning a blind eye towards their support of terrorism in Lebanon, Israel, and Golan/West Bank. Syria may try to drive a wedge between the US and Israel in this fashion.

Do we take him up on it?

Tough call.

But Bill Roggio's grasp of the significance of political and police gains in these locales is critical to understand.

Splash, out

Jason

Comments:
Why not point out to Syria, that if they don't help, we will get around to doing them next?
Point out to Mr. Assad that he is apt to be indicted for complicity in the murder of the Lebanese leader, and the only thing that will save his sorry skin is complete cooperation in the war on terror.
If he doesn't want to do that, wish him good luck, and tell him there will be a price on his head in the future.
 
Well, I don't really think we're in a position to decisively go after Syria now, for two reasons - we need to maintain cooperation elsewhere (Egypt and Saudi Arabia) in the war on terror and going after Syria would make it extremely difficult for those countries to do so.

Everybody understood going after Saddam (even if they pretended not to for domestic audiences). Saudi Arabia was delighted to see him gone, because he was a constant threat.

We don't have the same cover wrt Syria.

The second reason is that we do not have a secure supply line to support decisive maneuver against Syria.

If we did, we wouldn't have to worry about Syria in the first place.

Jason
 
Also, Iraq is not done with the al Anbar operation, we still need to invest the Euphrates area (the Sunni Triangle proper). We choke off the supply routes feeding the insurgency, now we have to consolidate those gains within Iraq proper (mostly by the Iraqis themselves) rather than just holding. By next August (with another 70,000 troops in Iraq and advanced training for the current ~115 battalions), we might see some action against Syria, but probably not unless the Syrians up and lose their minds; it would be an election cycle and it would take an open act of war to convince the American public to fight.

BTW, I linked to your article here.
 
If this were a game of chess or go Syria would look surrounded and in a very weak position. Syria is a key ally of terrorist Iran, but has American allies on all its borders now. Pressure is being applied, mainly diplomaticly with the big stick of military or more economic pressure held waiting.

The trick is to decide what we want and how to procede. We have peeled away Lebanon from Syrian control. They are now trying democracy. This is a huge improvement.

Lebanon has been an abcess of terrorism semi-remote controlled from Syria for decades. Iran's most successful terrorism base is in Lebanon. Their terrorist army is called Hezbola. This group is possibly bigger and more dangerous than Al Qaeda. Hopefully now that threat should be fading.

If terrorism can be cleaned out of Lebanon the effects on both Israel and Iran are both very positive.
Even Israeli Palistinian peace is possible with the outside forces that support terrorism weakened.

The results of the elections and military successes in Iraq will be felt in Syria and far beyond.
 
Yes.

At first glance, I didn't make too much of the "surrounded by U.S. allies on all sides" idea, just because I'm naturally suspicious of strategic arguments that rely on arrows on a map, without some underlying demographic or economic logic. Cuba is isolated, too, but that doesn't stop Castro from being, well, Castro.

But the U.S's two biggest trading partners are Mexico and Canada. Our economy relies on them, and Syria relies on Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, and Lebanon.

If these three countries are willing to apply significant economic pressure against Syria, that may bring Assad to the table and preclude the neccessity for military action.

True, economic isolation did not work on Hussein. But Assad is not Hussein.

Jason
 
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Several commenters have overlooked the geostrategic logic of the greater picture. Imagine that the goal is to, in stages, clean the entire nest out (Syria, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan). Our first move was decided by Bin Laden, and the necessity of taking down his base after 9/11. That was probably when the decision was taken to make a clean sweep of it, in the interests of middle-to-long-term domestic security. Our next obvious move is in Iraq, because it guts the middle from the remaining mass of terror-tory, and the case for Iraq is the easiest one of the remaining three to make. Now, Iran is trapped between US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Syria is trapped between US forces in Iraq and the Mediterranean Sea. Most probably, Syria would be next, in order to gain the use of its Mediterranean ports for the massive transshipment of ordnance and materiel necessary for a final push through Iran from the west(with a secondary force moving south to crush Hizbullah between the pincers of the US and Israel), and with a defensive wall of forces set up in western Afghanistan against which fleeing Iranian forces would dash themselves to pieces. The justification for these moves is the continuous flow of destabilization-minded mujaheddin into Iraq from these two countries, and it was most likely(and correctly) supposed by the US in advance that they would be unable to restrain themselves from doing so and thus furnishing the US with a legitimate and handy causus belli (at least in the case of Syria - not so much from Iran yet - but I'll bet that, if I'm right and the US does move on Syria, that the infiltration from Iran would increase to causus belli levels).
 
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