Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Wall Street Journal
April 5, 2007
Pg. 1
By Greg Jaffe
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The lower-middle-class neighborhoods that Lt. Col. Jeff Peterson's troops patrol have been the epicenter of Iraq's civil war for most of the past year. "Every issue facing Baghdad writ large is in our area," he says.
In recent weeks, Col. Peterson has tried a controversial approach to calming his sector. As Sunnis and Shiites have separated into their own neighborhoods, he has resisted the urge to encourage reconciliation or even dialogue. Instead, he has erected massive concrete barriers between the sects.
His vision is for a series of small, homogenous, gated communities, each consisting of a two-block square. Each would be built around a market, a mosque and a generator. "The goal is to provide the neighborhoods with a chance to protect themselves, without having to rely on coalition forces, the Iraqi government or the militias," he says.
How he got to that point -- after months of bloodshed and failed experiments -- illustrates a lot about both the possibilities and limitations of the U.S. vision for Iraq.
Currently, the U.S. strategy for stabilizing Iraq is built around getting Iraqis to reconcile and support the democratically elected, Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. It's a classic approach to fighting an insurgency, in which an outside power works to strengthen a friendly, albeit weak, government. The hope is that with help, the government will eventually win the backing of the people by providing security and meeting essential needs. Once insurgents are cut off from support among the population, they will be relatively easy to crush. That's the premise of President Bush's surge strategy, built around bolstering support for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government.
The problem, say some commanders, is that they aren't fighting an insurgency in Iraq anymore. Today, they are trying to stop a civil war between feuding Sunnis and Shiites. "At times I have been tempted to call it a counter-civil war or counter-sectarian fight," Col. Peterson says.
This isn't just an academic point. In a civil war, building up the government and its security forces may be counterproductive, serving only to ratchet up the killing. Defusing a civil war depends on stopping everyone from fighting.
"If you are given the mission to stop hatred, how do you do that?" asks Brig. Gen. John Campbell, an assistant commander overseeing all U.S. forces in Baghdad.
The difficult mission has led military officials to try some unusual tactics. In an effort to reduce retaliatory attacks on locals, some U.S. commanders say they will hold off raiding a Sunni insurgent cell until they have intelligence on a Shiite cell of equal size in an adjoining neighborhood. U.S. commanders have even coined a new term for this tactic: "balanced targeting."
Success Story
Senior military officials in Iraq give mid-level commanders, like Col. Peterson, wide latitude in their sectors. They point to Col. Peterson as one of their success stories. "Gating off a Sunni neighborhood is not our idea of a free society," Gen. Campbell says. But in some neighborhoods it may be the only way to stop the killing, he concedes.
Col. Peterson, the 42-year-old son of an Army chaplain, has a shy, almost bemused grin, and an informal manner with his troops. He was working on finishing his doctoral thesis and getting ready to take over the economics department at West Point when he was chosen to command a battalion headed to Iraq.
When Col. Peterson's 500-soldier squadron arrived in Iraq last summer, he was told his top priority was to assist Iraqi troops in restoring order.
His squadron was based in southern Baghdad, where the U.S. military had little presence. In the weeks before his arrival, a radical Sunni group known as the Omar Brigade and the Shiite Mahdi militia had begun to battle for territory, targeting locals. In the typical sectarian murder, masked assassins would speed into a neighborhood, grab a resident, shoot him in the head, and then dump the body in a residential street. "The murders were designed to send a message about which side was dominating and which side was safe in a particular area," Col. Peterson says.
Col. Peterson's unit was partnered with an all-Shiite battalion of about 400 national police commandos. Their area, consisting of about 415,000 residents, is dominated by a large Sunni neighborhood and a densely packed Shiite enclave called Abu Dasheer.
It quickly became clear, he says, that one of his biggest problems was his partner, the national police. Sunni residents "feared the national police," Col. Peterson says. In some cases, he even believed that rogue police troops were helping the radical Shiite Mahdi militia target his unit and local Sunnis.
The animosity between Sunnis and Shiites dates to a seventh-century leadership struggle following the death of the Prophet Muhammad. More recently, the Sunnis, who are a minority in Iraq, dominated the top positions in Saddam Hussein's brutal dictatorship. Today, many Shiites are determined to exact revenge for decades of Sunni oppression.
In early October, the national police began to get into gun battles at the local Sunni mosques. They called for help from the U.S. troops, who initially joined the fight. But the police commanders could never clearly explain how or why the fights started, says Col. Peterson. "The battles were always with a Sunni mosque; never a Shiite mosque," he says. They always began when U.S. forces weren't around.
Drastic Action
"What have I gotten myself into?" he recalls thinking. "I felt as though I had been co-opted into their sectarian agenda."
After the third such battle, Col. Peterson decided to take drastic action.
On Oct. 8, he used massive concrete barriers to wall off dozens of streets in the Sunni district, home to about 120,000 people, so there were only two entrances. Col. Peterson then told the national police troops -- whom he was supposed to be mentoring -- that they weren't allowed into the area unless they were accompanied by his soldiers.
"It was a pretty big step backwards in terms of cooperation," he says.
After a few days, violence began to drop. In October, his troops discovered 54 dead bodies in their sector. In November, the number was 43. Locked out of the big Sunni neighborhood, the national police concentrated on patrolling the largely Shiite district of Abu Dasheer -- where they were welcomed by the people as an alternative to the radical Shiite militias that had been providing security. Col. Peterson concentrated his forces inside the Sunni isolation zone.
The lesson: "Self segregation might be a necessary interim step to reducing sectarian killing," he says.
The U.S. strategy for dealing with sectarian tension is focused on reconciliation and sharing power. Last month, Mr. Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, encouraged Sunnis and Shiites who had been driven from their neighborhoods by sectarian bloodletting to go back to their homes. He is promising cash payments and support from the largely Shiite Iraqi army and police forces to speed the resettlement.
Shortly after Mr. Maliki's televised address, Col. Peterson saw how disruptive such a policy might be in his area. He met with leaders of the now almost exclusively Shiite district of Abu Dasheer. The area had once been home to a sizable number of Sunnis, but most have been driven out by Shiite militias issuing death threats.
At the meeting, Sheikh Sattar, a Shiite leader of the neighborhood council, insisted that only three Sunni families had been driven from Abu Dasheer. His voice brimming with anger, he said that the three families were responsible for the deaths of 400 Shiites, including his son. The other Sunnis left willingly, selling their homes and stores to Shiites, he said.
"They all say that no Sunnis left Abu Dasheer" against their will, Col. Peterson says. "It is a denial of reality. But it is the party line."
After the meeting, Col. Peterson said prospects for any real reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites were dim because of so much mistrust and hatred. Overcoming differences is probably a "generational undertaking," he said.
April 5, 2007
Pg. 1
By Greg Jaffe
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The lower-middle-class neighborhoods that Lt. Col. Jeff Peterson's troops patrol have been the epicenter of Iraq's civil war for most of the past year. "Every issue facing Baghdad writ large is in our area," he says.
In recent weeks, Col. Peterson has tried a controversial approach to calming his sector. As Sunnis and Shiites have separated into their own neighborhoods, he has resisted the urge to encourage reconciliation or even dialogue. Instead, he has erected massive concrete barriers between the sects.
His vision is for a series of small, homogenous, gated communities, each consisting of a two-block square. Each would be built around a market, a mosque and a generator. "The goal is to provide the neighborhoods with a chance to protect themselves, without having to rely on coalition forces, the Iraqi government or the militias," he says.
How he got to that point -- after months of bloodshed and failed experiments -- illustrates a lot about both the possibilities and limitations of the U.S. vision for Iraq.
Currently, the U.S. strategy for stabilizing Iraq is built around getting Iraqis to reconcile and support the democratically elected, Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. It's a classic approach to fighting an insurgency, in which an outside power works to strengthen a friendly, albeit weak, government. The hope is that with help, the government will eventually win the backing of the people by providing security and meeting essential needs. Once insurgents are cut off from support among the population, they will be relatively easy to crush. That's the premise of President Bush's surge strategy, built around bolstering support for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government.
The problem, say some commanders, is that they aren't fighting an insurgency in Iraq anymore. Today, they are trying to stop a civil war between feuding Sunnis and Shiites. "At times I have been tempted to call it a counter-civil war or counter-sectarian fight," Col. Peterson says.
This isn't just an academic point. In a civil war, building up the government and its security forces may be counterproductive, serving only to ratchet up the killing. Defusing a civil war depends on stopping everyone from fighting.
"If you are given the mission to stop hatred, how do you do that?" asks Brig. Gen. John Campbell, an assistant commander overseeing all U.S. forces in Baghdad.
The difficult mission has led military officials to try some unusual tactics. In an effort to reduce retaliatory attacks on locals, some U.S. commanders say they will hold off raiding a Sunni insurgent cell until they have intelligence on a Shiite cell of equal size in an adjoining neighborhood. U.S. commanders have even coined a new term for this tactic: "balanced targeting."
Success Story
Senior military officials in Iraq give mid-level commanders, like Col. Peterson, wide latitude in their sectors. They point to Col. Peterson as one of their success stories. "Gating off a Sunni neighborhood is not our idea of a free society," Gen. Campbell says. But in some neighborhoods it may be the only way to stop the killing, he concedes.
Col. Peterson, the 42-year-old son of an Army chaplain, has a shy, almost bemused grin, and an informal manner with his troops. He was working on finishing his doctoral thesis and getting ready to take over the economics department at West Point when he was chosen to command a battalion headed to Iraq.
When Col. Peterson's 500-soldier squadron arrived in Iraq last summer, he was told his top priority was to assist Iraqi troops in restoring order.
His squadron was based in southern Baghdad, where the U.S. military had little presence. In the weeks before his arrival, a radical Sunni group known as the Omar Brigade and the Shiite Mahdi militia had begun to battle for territory, targeting locals. In the typical sectarian murder, masked assassins would speed into a neighborhood, grab a resident, shoot him in the head, and then dump the body in a residential street. "The murders were designed to send a message about which side was dominating and which side was safe in a particular area," Col. Peterson says.
Col. Peterson's unit was partnered with an all-Shiite battalion of about 400 national police commandos. Their area, consisting of about 415,000 residents, is dominated by a large Sunni neighborhood and a densely packed Shiite enclave called Abu Dasheer.
It quickly became clear, he says, that one of his biggest problems was his partner, the national police. Sunni residents "feared the national police," Col. Peterson says. In some cases, he even believed that rogue police troops were helping the radical Shiite Mahdi militia target his unit and local Sunnis.
The animosity between Sunnis and Shiites dates to a seventh-century leadership struggle following the death of the Prophet Muhammad. More recently, the Sunnis, who are a minority in Iraq, dominated the top positions in Saddam Hussein's brutal dictatorship. Today, many Shiites are determined to exact revenge for decades of Sunni oppression.
In early October, the national police began to get into gun battles at the local Sunni mosques. They called for help from the U.S. troops, who initially joined the fight. But the police commanders could never clearly explain how or why the fights started, says Col. Peterson. "The battles were always with a Sunni mosque; never a Shiite mosque," he says. They always began when U.S. forces weren't around.
Drastic Action
"What have I gotten myself into?" he recalls thinking. "I felt as though I had been co-opted into their sectarian agenda."
After the third such battle, Col. Peterson decided to take drastic action.
On Oct. 8, he used massive concrete barriers to wall off dozens of streets in the Sunni district, home to about 120,000 people, so there were only two entrances. Col. Peterson then told the national police troops -- whom he was supposed to be mentoring -- that they weren't allowed into the area unless they were accompanied by his soldiers.
"It was a pretty big step backwards in terms of cooperation," he says.
After a few days, violence began to drop. In October, his troops discovered 54 dead bodies in their sector. In November, the number was 43. Locked out of the big Sunni neighborhood, the national police concentrated on patrolling the largely Shiite district of Abu Dasheer -- where they were welcomed by the people as an alternative to the radical Shiite militias that had been providing security. Col. Peterson concentrated his forces inside the Sunni isolation zone.
The lesson: "Self segregation might be a necessary interim step to reducing sectarian killing," he says.
The U.S. strategy for dealing with sectarian tension is focused on reconciliation and sharing power. Last month, Mr. Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, encouraged Sunnis and Shiites who had been driven from their neighborhoods by sectarian bloodletting to go back to their homes. He is promising cash payments and support from the largely Shiite Iraqi army and police forces to speed the resettlement.
Shortly after Mr. Maliki's televised address, Col. Peterson saw how disruptive such a policy might be in his area. He met with leaders of the now almost exclusively Shiite district of Abu Dasheer. The area had once been home to a sizable number of Sunnis, but most have been driven out by Shiite militias issuing death threats.
At the meeting, Sheikh Sattar, a Shiite leader of the neighborhood council, insisted that only three Sunni families had been driven from Abu Dasheer. His voice brimming with anger, he said that the three families were responsible for the deaths of 400 Shiites, including his son. The other Sunnis left willingly, selling their homes and stores to Shiites, he said.
"They all say that no Sunnis left Abu Dasheer" against their will, Col. Peterson says. "It is a denial of reality. But it is the party line."
After the meeting, Col. Peterson said prospects for any real reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites were dim because of so much mistrust and hatred. Overcoming differences is probably a "generational undertaking," he said.