Inside the Triangle
The 3rd Brigade Combat Team (BCT) of the 4th Infantry Division patrols an area of Iraq roughly the size of Vermont and New Hampshire. Located east, northeast and northwest of Baghdad, the command contains Diyala province, where Abu Musaq al-Zarqawi was killed in June, and the southern part of Salahuddin province, the third most lethal of Iraq’s 18 governates (behind Anbar and Baghdad).
The 3rd BCT’s 3,700 servicemen are responsible for the security of an area containing 1,800,000 Iraqis – some in densely populated cities like Baqubah (the capital of Diyala), and Balad (in the border province of Salahuddin); others, in remote desert villages. The area also includes the world-famous date groves of Diyala.
On August 4, 2006, Col. Brian Jones, commander of the 3rd BCT, briefed the press on the status of this ethnically diverse chunk of the “Sunni Triangle.” Diyala province, which contains most of his command’s population, is 50% Sunni, 35% Shi’ite, and 10% Kurdish.
Col. Jones describes coalition operations as “kinetic” and “non-kinetic”. The non-kinetic operations deal with economic reconstruction and local politics. The kinetic operations deal with security – police, army, and border patrol.
According to Jones, the “non-kinetic” operations – the everyday problems of Iraqi life – dominate the BCT’s time, even in the heart of the insurgency. “This non-kinetic role is dominant in most of the areas in which we operate… One example of an economic initiative was our work with the provincial and federal Ministries of Agriculture to complete pesticide spraying of Diyala’s extensive date crop to combat the destructive dubas bug. Iraq dates are the country’s second largest export next to oil, and therefore an important economic stabilizer and job provider. This was the first time spraying was conducted in three years.”
The BCT finds itself involved in every aspect of the State Department/DoD joint reconstruction effort, sometimes as political facilitators, sometimes as transport, sometimes as security, and sometimes as labor. Over the past six months, the team has been involved in every kind of service project: water, electricity, sewage, medicine, agriculture, roads, bridges, education, irrigation, fuel supply, communications, and political arbitration.
At this press conference (as at most), no reporter probed these “non-kinetic” operations, so crucial to Iraqis’ everyday lives. Rather, the representatives from the AP, Reuters, CNN, Fox News, and NPR asked about security operations.
Col. Jones addressed the past six months’ violence in his command area. “To date,” he said, “we have performed more than 12,000 combat patrols and conducted focus raids that have captured more than 300 insurgents. Additionally, we have discovered hundreds of caches with small arms munitions and military equipment.”
The character of the insurgency, he said, has changed substantially over the past half year. “What we saw when we got here was the breakdown in insurgent targeting in Diyala Province…. [I]nitially we were the target of just about 60 percent of the attacks, and over the six-to-eight months we’ve been here, that has shifted, [to] where we are seeing anywhere from 20 to 25 percent of the attacks. The majority [of attacks] are now among the civilian population. And we believe this was a conscious decision by the terrorists.”
The roots of the violence are complex. Diyala province is majority-Sunni, but its elected government is dominated by Shi’a and Kurds, due to Sunni boycotts of earlier elections. Another complicating factor is Kurdish land claims under TAL 58 of the new Constitution, which calls for repatriation of land to those expropriated under the Ba’athist regime.
Diyala is the only eastern border province south of the Kurdish region where Sunnis hold a majority. Iran’s Shi’ite autocracy has funneled support to radical Shi’ite groups in Diyala, hoping to prevent a change in the current balance of power.
Al Qaeda was the dominant Sunni insurgent presence until the take-down of al-Zarqawi, June 8, 2006. “At that time,” said Col. Jones, “over that three or four week period, we truly attacked the al Qaeda network, and I think managed to take it to its knees… we’ve really put a hurt on them.”
From an operational point of view, Col. Jones describes the insurgency as a pyramid, with foreign fighters and professional terrorists on the top, Ba’athist recidivists and rogue militias in the middle, and for-profit criminals at the bottom. Criminals are not only hired to perform the various assassinations and bombings that are the political core of the insurgency: they also are hired to perform the acts of extortion that finance much of it. The colonel explains: “There’s a good deal of money generated by kidnapping and hostage-taking. So you hear a lot about the kidnapping that’s going on. But what you don’t hear is – a lot of it is associated with a “release” program where the terrorists tell the family, “Hey, give us $40,000, and we’ll give you back your son or daughter… That’s how they’re using extortion to fund some of the terrorist activity that’s going on.”
Col. Jones described the performance of the Iraqi Army with great pride. “The army,” he said, “has been improving by leaps and bounds in the eight months we’ve been here. And truly I think we’re starting to see the evolution of a professional force, as opposed to a force of necessity, which is, I think, what I’d have called it when it was originally formed.”
The new, American-trained force has advanced not only in combat-readiness, but in the development of a professional esprit de corps. This renders it a national force: an honest broker between the often rowdy parties of the Iraqi body politic.
In Jones’ own command, the Iraqi Army 5th Division, under Brigadier General Shoquer, assumed lead combat responsibilities on July 3rd. “This allows our forces to shift to a supporting role,” said Jones, “where we will provide mentorship and tactical enablers – for instance, quick reaction forces on intelligence assistance and logistical support…”
The police, he maintains, are still undertrained, underequipped, and often unprofessional. But he attributes these shortcoming in part to the emphasis that the coalition placed on standing up an army. Over the next year, Jones says, the coalition will concentrate on professionalizing the Iraqi police – a development made possible by the increasing independence of the Iraqi Army.
To summarize Col. Brian Jones’ main points:
- The Iraqi insurgency in the Sunni triangle now concentrates on maneuvering for power in the post-Saddam government, rather than on attacking the coalition that installed that government.
- The establishment of an Iraqi security force capable of defeating the insurgency is progressing steadily.
- The non-kinetic provision of services that will legitimize the new order for ordinary Iraqis is also progressing steadily.
However, he cautions, it is the Iraqis, not the Americans, who will determine the outcome:
“We remain extremely proud of our accomplishments in assisting the Iraqi people with the security necessary to establish their elected government, and in assisting the development of the institutions which will provide the long-term stability, prosperity and opportunity to develop the Iraq of their hopes and dreams. This is a tough mission, and our nation’s forces and this brigade are performing it well. But ultimately, the Iraqi people will have to decide what their future holds.”