Why the new Iraq strategy worked
...He gets it mostly right. Moving the troops out to protect the population was key. The surge improved the force to space ration needed to protect the people, but the turning of the Sunni's into Sons of Iraq forces to do the same thing also multiplied the force to space ratio.Gen. David H. Petraeus and his teams abandoned a failing strategy when they took charge of Operation Iraqi Freedom. They broke with the previous campaign plan that set the primary objective of American forces as "transitioning to Iraqi self-reliance" and made protecting the population the coalition's central mission.
The military couldn't stabilize Iraq by operating out of large bases isolated from the Iraqi population, while militias offered the only source of protection for average citizens. Deploying the surge brigades into Baghdad where they could interact with the population allowed the coalition to cultivate lasting relationships with Iraqi informants. In turn, American soldiers gained the intelligence needed to effectively target the insurgency.
The second crucial development had very little to do with American initiatives and everything to do with inter-Sunni politics. As brilliantly documented by David Kilcullen in Autonomy of a Tribal Revolt, al-Qaeda's brutality, its foreign leadership, and its recklessness wounded the pride, offended the honor, and emptied the pockets of the inhabitants of Anbar province. This sparked the "Anbar Awakening" that fractured the Sunni insurgency and prompted thousands of "volunteers" to ally with American forces.
When 10,000 Iraqis ally with coalition forces this creates an effective net gain of 20,000 because it takes 10,000 from the ranks of the insurgency. In contrast, when America deploys 10,000 U.S. troops it effectively gains less than half that number because the majority of the troops are needed to perform force protection and logistical tasks.
The ratio between U.S. forces and the Iraqi population that Americans were charged with protecting was never very high (in fact the architects of the surge requested more troops than were actually deployed), but the schism within the Sunni community created a tremendous multiplier effect.
The third development that set the stage for progress was one that the American military actively resisted - the sectarian cleansing of Baghdad's Sunni population.
It is important to recall that in 2003 the dominant forces in Iraq's Sunni Arab community launched a war aimed at restoring a Sunni dictatorship. For decades Sunni supremacists had pacified "uppity" Shiites and Kurds through murder and intimidation. This is how a small minority dominated a majority. In the post-Hussein era, car bombs were their principal instrument: murder a few Shiites and the rest would submit.
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In any counterinsurgency operation, the force to space ratio is a beginning point. It has to be adequate or you will be engaged in a whack a mole operation having to buy the same real estate more than once and paying in blood each time.
The Shia militia war against the Sunnis following the bombing of the golden dome mosque was a catalyst for change in US policy, but I don't think their ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods in Baghdad was that decisive. Once the forces were in place to protect the people it was no longer needed.
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