Experts see Iraq Progress, Disgust with al-Qaeda Growing

A new Iraq strategy that targets multiple terrorist outposts and capitalizes on Iraqis’ growing dislike of al Qaeda are combining to degrade insurgent operations in the country, a counter-insurgency expert said today in Baghdad.

“The intention behind the counter-operations that we’re doing is to try to knock over several insurgent safe havens simultaneously,” David Kilcullen, the senior counter-insurgency adviser to Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of Multinational Force Iraq, said during a conference call with military analysts.

Operations Phantom Thunder, Arrowhead Ripper and other ongoing, surge-affiliated actions in Iraq are being conducted simultaneously across a wide area, Kilcullen pointed out, noting one of his prime duties in Iraq is helping U.S. and Iraqi forces adapt different strategies and tactics to better confront insurgent challenges.

Arrowhead Ripper is one of several operations that are part of an overall offensive against insurgents in Iraq called Operation Phantom Thunder, which began June 15, once all of the surge troops were in place. President Bush directed a deployment of about 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq earlier this year as a surge of forces to assist the Iraqi government in confronting the insurgency.

Previous single-focus military operations conducted in Iraq, such as the 2004 campaign against insurgents in Fallujah, were successful, but many of the enemy moved elsewhere to fight another day, Kilcullen said.

The Fallujah battle “focused a lot of effort onto a very small part of Iraq,” Kilcullen noted, and “had an effect a little bit like stamping on a puddle,” as the enemy moved their infrastructure to other parts of the country.

Ongoing operations in Iraq seek “to move on several of these (enemy-held) areas at once,” Kilcullen explained, while making it more difficult for the terrorists to relocate and regroup.

A movement from large U.S. military base camps to smaller U.S.-Iraqi manned joint security stations set amid the Iraqi populace is part of the new security strategy that works in conjunction with Iraqi police to hold areas recently cleared of insurgents, Kilcullen said.

This change has also contributed to a decrease in successful enemy improvised explosive device attacks, Kilcullen said. U.S. troops are now already deployed in the areas they patrol, he noted, and therefore aren’t as vulnerable to roadside-bombs attacks as they were before, when they’d convoy from large base camps to mission areas.

Additionally, Iraq’s people are fed up with al Qaeda, Kilcullen said. Al Qaeda was once aligned with a number of Sunni tribes in western Iraq’s Anbar province, but many sheikhs there are now rejecting the terrorist group, Kilcullen said.

Kilcullen said Anbar’s tribal leaders came to dislike al Qaeda’s zealous, Taliban-like oppression, as well as the terrorist group’s negative impact on local trucking and construction businesses that are traditional money-makers for the tribes.

“I think that al Qaeda have really worn out their welcome,” Kilcullen said, noting a key U.S. objective in Iraq is to prevent it from becoming a safe haven for terrorists.