Iraq Study Group Releases Report

This morning, the Iraq Study Group released its report to the President. If you would like to read the report, it is available HERE. 

Iraq Update: Dec. 6, 2006
December 06, 2006 19 48 GMT
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The Iraq Study Group, headed by former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, formally released its much-anticipated findings Dec. 6. The report detailed 79 specific, far-reaching recommendations ranging from security operations to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. While there are certainly changes coming, it remains in the hands of the White House and operational commanders to implement the recommendations they choose in the manner they see fit. These developments will play out in the coming weeks.

In the past few days, just as the tempo of Sunni operations has increased recently, coalition forces stepped up their own operations. Coalition troops launched several large raids north and south of Baghdad, in Baghdad’s central Fadhil area, and in Baqubah throughout the week. These raids also came on the heels of an announcement that 11 top commanders in the jihadist group Ansar al-Islam had been captured. However, coalition operations and intelligence coups aside, jihadist insurgents have shown over the past week that their capabilities have, for the most part, not been seriously curtailed.

On the morning of Dec. 1, units of Iraq’s 9th Infantry Division and U.S. advisers launched Operation Lion Strike, a pre-dawn raid into Baghdad’s Fadhil area to capture a large number of insurgents. Insurgents were ready for the Iraqi security forces; they set up an ambush and coordinated machine-gun, rocket-propelled grenade and mortar fire to hit the Iraqi security forces and their field posts. Initially, the insurgents trapped units of the 9th Infantry Division inside the ambush’s kill zone and kept up the fight for hours as the Iraqi division struggled to remain organized and get a handle on the situation. Despite having T-55 tank support, only the arrival of U.S. Apache helicopters firing anti-tank missiles and cannon rounds were able to free units of the 9th Division from the ambush.

There are two important issues here: one is that Sunni insurgents are achieving larger unit sizes in Baghdad; the other is that the relationship between jihadist and Sunni militias in Baghdad is changing. Over the past month, U.S. commanders have noticed, particularly in Diyala, that the size of insurgent elements is getting larger than just oversized teams or cells. With larger units comes not only greater capacity to inflict casualties, but also the ability to secure base areas. Until now, encounters with larger units have been in regions of less importance to U.S. forces and more difficult to monitor than they would be in Baghdad.

However, recently, jihadist influence in Baghdad has increased due to sectarian violence. Jihadist insurgents have been organizing, advising and arming Sunni militias to defend against Shiite death squads which, regardless of Muqtada al-Sadr’s restraint, are a constant threat to Baghdad’s Sunnis. The result has been the increase of Sunni and jihadist capabilities and a blurring of the line between Iraqi Sunni militia fighters and jihadist insurgents often aided by foreigners.

North of Baghdad, jihadist insurgents demonstrated a new capability to infiltrate and take control of a town in Salah ad Din province. In Salah ad Din, insurgents forced the mayor and police in the town of Siniya to resign Nov. 28 and began to use the town as a staging point for ambushes and attacks on U.S. forces in the province. In response, U.S. forces have placed Siniya under siege, closing access to the city to everything and everyone except food and water.

The U.S. tactic may be an attempt to prep the battlefield for a U.S. counterattack into the city, or it could simply be to pressure insurgents to leave the city before a hypothetical offensive is launched. The way U.S. commanders resolve the situation will reveal much about future U.S. operations in Iraq (does the U.S. wait out the insurgents, attack them, or negotiate?). But no matter what U.S. forces do, the important element in the Siniya incident is that U.S. commanders believe the insurgent threat there is heavily influenced by insurgents outside the town. This, coupled with the appearance of a company-sized element in Baghdad, indicates that Sunni insurgents could be building larger elements in more rural areas and are capable of pushing these elements into cities in an attempt to force the coalition to offer battle there.

Though separate from the predominating trend of coalition-on-jihadist insurgent battles, a clash between Shiite factions in As Samawah is also potentially significant. In an unusually large battle between the Mehdi Army and Iraqi security forces in the normally peaceful Al Muthanna province, several individuals were killed and dozens of others were wounded Nov. 30 and Dec. 1. It is likely the events in As Samawah were triggered by increased tensions between al-Sadr’s forces and the security forces in the area usually dominated by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Armed confrontation between the two groups occurs occasionally, but confrontation in such a strategically vital town (home to a highway junction, oil refinery and gas and oil pipelines) cannot be ignored. As al-Sadr separates himself from the Iraqi government SCIRI continues to support, one place where both sides could greatly influence the outcome of Iraqi politics is in As Samawah.

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