British Forces Chief: "Why Our Allies Messed It Up For Us in Iraq"

Every Christmas it is traditional for the Chief of Defence Staff to address the members of the Royal United Services Institute. Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup did so this evening, and since the media reports seem likely to focus on what he said about Afghanistan and Mumbai, it is worth separating off the Iraq section which is a spirited defence of British operations in southern Iraq, with a sideswipe at our allies who have been so quick to criticise the British efforts. It is well worth a read:

Thank you, chairman, and good afternoon everyone.  It’s a great pleasure to have the chance once again to speak here at RUSI; to be able to share some reflections with you as the year draws to an end, and 2008 has been eventful in so many ways. Since I spoke to you last year, 47 of our people have lost their lives on operations, and many more have been wounded, some very seriously.  2008 has seen some hard fighting, some significant military successes, and the continued development of some significant obstacles to success that will make 2009 particularly challenging. One of the biggest steps forward came early in the year, in Iraq.  Although operation charge of the knights got off to an inauspicious start, its eventual success and subsequent developments have transformed the situation in Basra.  But the operation has also attracted a degree of controversy, particularly with regard to the British role.   

So I want to take this opportunity to lay to rest some of the myths that have emerged.  Myths such as: the British had given up in Basra; that they’d done a deal to hand the city over to the militias; and that they failed to support the Iraqis during charge of the knights. But to do so, I need to take you back a bit.  Back to the latter part of 2006, in fact.  Now at that particular time, we and the United States were in a process of transition, working to transfer responsibility for security away from the coalition to the Iraqi government. But there were obstacles to this transition.  And the obstacles were different in different parts of the country.  The problem for the Americans in Baghdad and the surrounding areas was that the Iraqis were too busy trying to kill one another to face up to the question of how Shia and Sunni could co-exist politically.  The problem for the British in the south east was that the Iraqis were too busy trying to kill us to focus on the intra-Shia political issues in Basra.  These different problems required different solutions.

The US decided to increase its force levels – the surge – in order to suppress Sunni-Shia violence and create space within which the political process had some chance of success.  This was a key step.  But the process got a helping hand from a most unexpected quarter: al Qaida in Iraq.  Their appalling treatment of the Sunni tribes in the areas they dominated – such as Anbar province – led to their rejection by the local population, which then looked to the coalition for support.  At the same time, Muqtada al Sadr announced a freeze on violence by his Mahdi army militia. These factors combined to change considerably the security dynamic in the centre of Iraq.  But as I said, this was a means, not an end.  The end was a political process that allowed Sunni and Shia (and of course Kurds) broadly to co-exist in the same state.

Progress on that score was a lot slower, and the jury’s still out to some degree.  But over recent months the Iraqi government has taken a number of significant steps, and there’s now cause for some cautious optimism – recognising that this is still Iraq, and there are plenty of ways in which things could yet go wrong. For the UK, increasing force levels to the same extent was never on the cards.  We were by then already committed in Afghanistan, and balancing resources between the two theatres was and is a constant challenge.  But in any event, such an increase was not the right response. Our presence was creating a focus for Shia – and particularly Basrawi - discontent.  It was creating a spurious but tangible legitimacy for violence, and for Iranian interference in support of such violence.  And with all of this going on, there was little incentive for Basrawi politicians to focus on their own governance problems: they could always blame us.

The UK made repeated attempts to deal with extremist militia violence in the south east.  We planned and sought to execute numerous Special Forces operations. We also developed Operation Salamanca – an ambitious, comprehensive and hard-edged plan to confront and subdue the militias.  All of these combined powerful offensive action with stabilisation and development activity.  But each was, in the event, emasculated.  Because we simply couldn’t get the agreement of the Iraqi government; their own internal politics made it impossible. The Iraqi government was at that stage still dependent on the political support of Muqtada al Sadr, which made decisive action against the Jaish al-Mahdi somewhat problematic for them.  And there was a growing desire to assert Iraqi sovereignty, manifested by increasing restrictions on our offensive activity.  The latter was of course entirely understandable – and in many ways to be welcomed.

But the result was we found our hands tied to the extent that we were unable to take decisive action.  Operation Salamanca became, perforce, Operation Sinbad, a considerably watered down version of its predecessor.  It still helped, but it wasn’t the game-changing event we were after.  Interestingly, one of its best and most enduring legacies – the destruction of the hated and feared Jamiat police station, source of so much corruption and intimidation – brought down on us the wrath of the government in Baghdad. So the question was how else we could free Basra from its cycle of violence. Early in 2007 we came to the conclusion that we were going to have to do something significant to break the impasse.  Something that would force the Iraqis to face up to their problems and to their responsibilities.

We judged that the only way to do this was to withdraw our permanently based forces from Basra city, and to put the Iraqis in the lead there.  In our view the Iraqis would then have to deal with the intra-Shia problem, and to confront the allied issue of Iranian involvement. This was also the judgement of General Mohan, who was appointed by the Iraqi government to take security responsibility for Basra.  Indeed, during one of my meetings with him last year he asked us to take exactly that action.  He said that if we pulled out of the city, then he could deal with the security situation; if we remained, no-one could. But of course we were not operating alone, but as members of a coalition.  So we had to consult our American partners, who were in the lead.  I spoke several times with General Peter Pace, my opposite number in Washington, and with General Dave Petraeus in Baghdad.  Their view was the same as ours: that the problems in Basra were Iraqi problems, and that they needed Iraqi solutions.  We did of course debate the precise timing of the transfer of provincial control in Basra; but we were agreed on the overall approach.

It was, though, a means to an end, not an end in itself.  And late last year, following our withdrawal from the city and the transfer of security responsibility in Basra province to the Iraqis, general Mohan’s progress seemed to slow.  So we pressed hard for an Iraqi-led plan to deal with the Jaish al Mahdi special groups and criminal elements who, although relatively small in number, were continuing to block progress in Basra. After much prompting, and in close co-operation with the UK, Mohan produced such a plan in early 2008.  This was briefed to and approved by General Petraeus and the Iraqi government.  I visited Baghdad myself in March, and stressed two things: we desperately needed to make progress, so we had to keep up the pressure on the Iraqis to act quickly; and the operation could not be allowed to fail.  We would need sufficient corps assets to guarantee military success.  Again, we were all agreed.

Then, suddenly, Maliki decided that he personally was going to lead the Iraqi army into action in Basra, and that he was going to do it immediately.  Little in the way of planning, limited intelligence, no preparation of the battle space – just get on with it. I have to say that we felt rather torn by this decision.  It was, from a professional perspective, no way to launch an operation.  On the other hand, the Iraqi prime minister was giving the political lead we’d been seeking all along.  In any event, as our American colleagues in Baghdad said, this was an express train that couldn’t be stopped.

One striking success was that the Iraqis were able to move an entire extra division to the south in very short order.  But unsurprisingly, the operation quickly turned chaotic.  One brigade of 14 divisions was taken straight out of initial training and thrown into a confused fight with no coherent command and control.  Not unnaturally, it pretty much dissolved. We were asked to provide air support, but there were no precise targets and huge uncertainty over the location of civilians and the dangers of collateral damage. Nevertheless, more experienced units of the Iraqi army stuck to their task, and the coalition multi-national corps deployed supporting assets – particularly air, aviation and joint fires teams.  Through our joint efforts, we were able slowly to pull some order out of the chaos, and the tide turned against the Jaish al-Mahdi.

One important factor was the support of the ordinary citizens of Basra for the actions of the Iraqi army.  Over time this resulted in a great deal of valuable intelligence, and much more effective targeting.  And in my view what set the conditions for that support was our decision last year to withdraw from the lead in Basra city and to hand it to the Iraqi army – as the Americans will be doing in cities throughout Iraq next year. Another key development was the Iraqi acceptance of the degree of malign Iranian involvement.  We’d been pressing them on this for a long time, of course.  But only when they were confronted with the consequences of such meddling themselves did they really face up to the problem, and start to address it.  This was reflected tellingly by graffiti on one of the bridges leading into Iran.  From fleeing members of the jam special groups: “we’ll be back”.  From soldiers of the Iraqi army: “we’ll be waiting”.

So, far from being a divergence from the UK approach, charge of the knights was what we’d aimed for, worked for, and argued for over more than twelve months.  Not the way it was launched, certainly; but the substance of the operation. And the outcome was what we had hoped for and what we had predicted.  And for anyone who thinks this is a bit of post-facto rationalisation, I refer them to my on-the-record statements over the past two years. The result is that we’re now close to the stage where we can alter fundamentally our mission in Iraq.  We intend to move to the sort of bilateral military partnership that we have with other friends in the region, and to work with the Iraqis in those areas and on those issues where they want our support.  That transition will dramatically reduce the number of people we have on the ground in Iraq.

Since a few of you were doubtful about the headline, I have bolded up some of the passages that refer to those problems with the allies. For obvious reasons, Stirrup focuses on the Iraqis but there is an underlying sub-text of problems with the Americans too, the special operations planned for the south that never went ahead, the agreements with the US on British plans only for senior Pentagon officials to complain later. It is worth noting that he refers to agreements with Petraeus and not with any of the US generals who preceded him. There were two problems here, the first one is that no-one - and sadly in one  crucial sense that includes the Brits - seems to have understood the nature of peace-building until Petraeus came along. Stirrup dismisses the problems caused by the lack of boots on the ground but that - and the resultant failure to patrol 24/7 - was at the heart of the problem from the very start. Petraeus is incidentally the sole reason to be optimistic about the coalition's chances of success in Afghanistan. There aren't any others, particularly given the attitudes of current UK defence chiefs, who seem to have learned nothing from the failure to put enough troops into southern Iraq.

Comments

[Graeme Stagg]

How good to read such a clear and concise record about our armed forces worthy performance in Southern Iraq straight from one of our most effective British Forces Chiefs of Staff in living memory. Well done Sir Jock and all the courageous men and women under your command. I wish them continued success and hope they are able to complete the handover to Iraqi Forces in 2009 and depart the country in good order with the job done.

[Stevey]

An interesting speech. I think that lack of boots on the ground was the key problem. Compare British force levels in Northern Ireland and American force levels in the rest of Iraq, to what the UK was able to field in Basra/ Southern Iraq. The numbers of soldiers compared to the population was far more reasonable during the Troubles and in the American sectors of Iraq. With such limited resources, I think that the British army did a good job.

[Mikey]

Well said, Jock. BTW, the title of this post strikes me as misleading.

[bob burns]

Self serving BS. You F'ed up. You failed in your mission. You showed fear in the face of the enemy. You were more concerned with casualties than results. Your commanders and politicians are just not up to the job. Your army no longer exists. You should disband, go home, and be farmers. You're a disgrace to all brave souls who came before you

[Jon Brown]

Well worth reading but why the headline ? The context of the speech does not strike any note with the headline from my perspective. Journalistic leeway aside, is this not just something to 'get the readers to take interest.' A realistic headline would be good, please do not descend to headline 'bannerism,' a la The Sun.

Mick says: Second comment along these lines so I have bolded up some of the passages that refer to those problems with the allies. For obvious reasons, Stirrup focuses on the Iraqis but there is an underlying sub-text of problems with the Americans too, the special operations planned for the south that never went ahead, the agreements with the US on British plans only for senior Pentagon officials to complain later. It is worth noting that he refers to agreements with Petraeus and not with any of the US generals who preceded him. There were two problems here, the first one is that no-one - and that includes the Brits - seems to have understood the nature of peace-building until Petraeus came along. Stirrup dismisses the problems caused by the lack of boots on the ground but that - and the resultant failure to patrol 24/7 was at the heart of the problem from the very start. Petraeus is incidentally the sole reason to be optimistic about the coalition's chances of success in Afghanistan. There aren't any others, particularly given the attitudes of current UK defence chiefs, who seem to have learned nothing from the failure to put enough troops into southern Iraq.

[Tommy]

Mick. Where were the troops going to come from ? Also how the hell was the War feasible politically ( in the UK) after no WMD's were found ? I supported the War and think we should stay but Blair's mistakes put the Army in an impossible position.

[Expat 44]

A useful - and overdue - piece of clarification from the CDS.

One of the problems all along in Iraq was the US initial belief that all you needed was firepower and "kick ass". But insurgencies demand more complex and subtle skills.

Insurgencies are no place for gung-ho General Pattons. You have to have the support of the population and they have to believe that you will win.

Basra was bedevilled with underground Iranian suport for the illegal private armies; only the Iraqis could sort them out. The role of the British forces was simply to clear up the mess, hold the ring for the Iraqi security forces and seal off the Iranian border.

The end result is a clear victory both for the methods used and for the political outcome.

Basra stands as a tribute and an object lesson in how to deal with a complex insurgency. Basra is relatively peaceful and is now governed by its own people.

Mr Burns is reacting like a US Marine, not a man intent on a good outcome for the citizens of Basra.

Peace building is not war fighting. Well trained armies have to be able to do both.

[Edward]

Iran is responsible for defeat of US in Iraq war. It supoprted and supplied its Shia allies in Basras and Baghdad. All expert now see Iraq war has lost by the allies. Only Iran is the clear winner in all this.

http://ayatollah.blog.co.uk/