Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Lexington (KY) Herald Leader
August 12, 2007
Pg. 6
By Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy Newspapers
U.S. troops could withdraw from Iraq within months, but if Iraq's government remains politically deadlocked, it probably would collapse and the nation would descend into chaos, a war game organized by the U.S. Army concluded earlier this month.
The war gamers, following a scenario created by their Army hosts, determined that U.S. troops would secure the exit route to Kuwait through largely Shiite Muslim southern Iraq and face little fighting as they drove their equipment out. Any attacks, the panel judged, would be "harassment attacks," most likely by a few Sunni members of al-Qaida in Iraq who wanted to attack American troops one last time.
"Why would they stop us? They have been telling us to leave," said one participant who requested anonymity to speak freely about the war game.
Once U.S. troops left, however, the chaos in Iraq would escalate. Shiite militias would drive Baghdad's Sunni population into Iraq's western Anbar province, which is almost exclusively Sunni, the war gamers concluded. There would be a power struggle within Anbar among tribes backed by outside Sunni Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and Syria.
Rival Shiite factions would fight one another to control much of the rest of the country, and Iran presumably would back one side, although the gamers couldn't assess how overt Iranian interference would be. Turkey would consider entering Iraq from the north to thwart the Kurds, who desire independence and claim some of Turkey as part of their homeland.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's government would be unable to control the country. The gamers concluded his government could collapse unless Iran supported it.
"The mess we would leave behind would be awful," the participant said. "The ethnic cleansing is happening now. Once we're gone, absent a political solution that would allow the Iraqi Army to go into action, all of that will be accelerated."
The Army staged the one-day exercise earlier this month at a Hilton hotel in suburban Springfield, Va., and invited 30 Iraq experts, among them serving and retired officers and Iraqi exiles.
The organizers picked April 2008 as a starting point -- the month after which U.S. commanders have said they can't maintain the surge of additional U.S. forces and still give troops a year off between 15-month deployments -- and January 2009 as the end. They played the roles of the Sunnis, the Shiites, the insurgents, the militias, the military generals and the Iraqi government.
The game was one of several simulations of what Iraq might look like in the 2009 timetable if U.S. troops leave, said retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, who participated in the Springfield exercise and several previous such games. He said the Army hasn't yet staged an exercise premised on an abrupt withdrawal.
That the military war games are focusing on the potential chaos in Iraq, rather than an abrupt troop withdrawal, offers some insight into how the Pentagon is planning for the next stage of the war, several of the participants told McClatchy Newspapers.
America's future in Iraq will be at center stage next month when officials will give an assessment and recommendation to Congress on Iraq's security and political situation.
August 12, 2007
Pg. 6
By Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy Newspapers
U.S. troops could withdraw from Iraq within months, but if Iraq's government remains politically deadlocked, it probably would collapse and the nation would descend into chaos, a war game organized by the U.S. Army concluded earlier this month.
The war gamers, following a scenario created by their Army hosts, determined that U.S. troops would secure the exit route to Kuwait through largely Shiite Muslim southern Iraq and face little fighting as they drove their equipment out. Any attacks, the panel judged, would be "harassment attacks," most likely by a few Sunni members of al-Qaida in Iraq who wanted to attack American troops one last time.
"Why would they stop us? They have been telling us to leave," said one participant who requested anonymity to speak freely about the war game.
Once U.S. troops left, however, the chaos in Iraq would escalate. Shiite militias would drive Baghdad's Sunni population into Iraq's western Anbar province, which is almost exclusively Sunni, the war gamers concluded. There would be a power struggle within Anbar among tribes backed by outside Sunni Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and Syria.
Rival Shiite factions would fight one another to control much of the rest of the country, and Iran presumably would back one side, although the gamers couldn't assess how overt Iranian interference would be. Turkey would consider entering Iraq from the north to thwart the Kurds, who desire independence and claim some of Turkey as part of their homeland.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's government would be unable to control the country. The gamers concluded his government could collapse unless Iran supported it.
"The mess we would leave behind would be awful," the participant said. "The ethnic cleansing is happening now. Once we're gone, absent a political solution that would allow the Iraqi Army to go into action, all of that will be accelerated."
The Army staged the one-day exercise earlier this month at a Hilton hotel in suburban Springfield, Va., and invited 30 Iraq experts, among them serving and retired officers and Iraqi exiles.
The organizers picked April 2008 as a starting point -- the month after which U.S. commanders have said they can't maintain the surge of additional U.S. forces and still give troops a year off between 15-month deployments -- and January 2009 as the end. They played the roles of the Sunnis, the Shiites, the insurgents, the militias, the military generals and the Iraqi government.
The game was one of several simulations of what Iraq might look like in the 2009 timetable if U.S. troops leave, said retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, who participated in the Springfield exercise and several previous such games. He said the Army hasn't yet staged an exercise premised on an abrupt withdrawal.
That the military war games are focusing on the potential chaos in Iraq, rather than an abrupt troop withdrawal, offers some insight into how the Pentagon is planning for the next stage of the war, several of the participants told McClatchy Newspapers.
America's future in Iraq will be at center stage next month when officials will give an assessment and recommendation to Congress on Iraq's security and political situation.