By Brig. Gen. John S. Brown
U.S. Army retired

Like most Americans, I pray that our current "surge strategy" works in Iraq. Like many, I have my doubts. We teach our young officers to anticipate the unexpected when planning, to have branches and sequels to deal with contingencies—a "Plan B." We should hold our senior leaders to the same standard. Our current plan is based upon the suppositions that Iraqi ethnic groups can settle their differences through constitutional processes, that we are fighting an insurgency, that a united and democratic Iraq is vital to our national security and that the American people will pay the price necessary to achieve an ideal end state. What if, instead, we come to conclude that the major Iraqi ethnicities are irreconcilable, that we are presiding over a civil war, that it makes little difference to our national security whether Iraq is united and democratic, and that the American people will happily accept a pragmatic rather than an ideal solution?

Historically speaking, what if we decided our operations in the former Yugoslavia or Afghanistan offer better models for the task at hand than post-World War II Germany or Japan? Acceptance of Yugoslav or Afghan precedents would lead to very different approaches with respect to ethnic empowerment, zones of separation, expectations of governance, refugee resettlement and the role of our soldiers in country.

In part by accident and in part by design, we empowered major ethnicities in the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan to defend their autonomy. In Bosnia, advice, arms and air strikes eventually enabled Croats and Bosnians to reverse Serbian advances. Americans were heavily involved in the renaissance of the Croatian army, which reversed Serbian fortunes in Krajina in parallel with their reversal inside Bosnia. In Kosovo NATO airpower wedded to Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) target development drove the Serbs to capitulate and thus allowed Albanian Kosovars to reoccupy their country. In Afghanistan assistance to the Northern Alliance gave embattled Tajiks, Uzbeks and Haraza the edge they needed to stand up to the largely Pashtun Taliban. As active operations wound down in the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, the major ethnicities were armed, organized and prepared to defend their interests. Subsequent efforts to develop national military institutions and largely cosmetic "disarmament" did not substantially alter the control ethnic militias exerted on their own ground.

In Iraq we have gone in an opposite direction, openly opposing local militias identified with ethnic autonomy. We occupied the country with our own Army—and some help from British and Kurdish allies—then tried to build a multiethnic Iraqi National Army to take charge of security. With respect to ethnic militias, we reined in the Kurds, intermittently fought with Shiites and continuously fought with Sunnis. Meanwhile, the Iraqi National Army we tried to construct has been a disappointment. Its effective units have been, unsurprisingly, those with distinct ethnic identities—most notably the Kurds.

We wrung our hands initially about the virtues of a multiethnic Yugoslavia, but once on the ground, unabashedly set out to separate warring ethnic groups. In Bosnia, zones of separation were an intrinsic feature of the painfully negotiated Dayton Accords and reflected military realities on the ground. In Kosovo we found ourselves defending Serbian enclaves against vengeful Albanian neighbors. In Yugoslavia as a whole we encouraged NATO (largely through Partnership for Peace) and the European Union to nurture fledgling ethnic nations towards membership in their communities. We thus accepted that ethnicities previously bound together by force were entitled to national self-determination when democratic processes came into play.

In Afghanistan zones of separation had a rather different origin. The country is so vast, compartmentalized and primitive that the ethnic groups were not particularly intermingled outside of a few urban centers. The Taliban were locally viewed as an ideology rather than an ethnicity, and ethnic hostilities had not acquired the ferocity evident in Yugoslavia (sentiments against Pakistanis and Arabs, perhaps, excepted). It seemed sufficient to deploy an international peacekeeping force only in Kabul and to allow ethnic warlords to maintain security within their own domains, at least initially. Evolution towards national institutions and national integration has proceeded at a modest pace.

In Iraq we have worked hard to bring hostile ethnicities together and have interpreted that as our soldiers' responsibility to do so. The reasons for ethnic hostility are legion: tens of thousands recently murdered, executed, gassed or assassinated. Blood feuds extend back generations and religious warfare centuries. Racism and class warfare are ever present. Many of the heretofore dominant Sunnis picture the Shiites and Kurds as bumpkins of the worst sort and cannot conceive of them as equals, much less senior partners. Many Shiites and Kurds consider the Sunnis complicit in the horrific oppression they have endured. Yet we persist in grouping these hostile elements together, proposing timetables for them to resolve their differences—as if reconciliation were an engineering project.

In the former Yugoslavia we had modest expectations with respect to democratic governance and no expectation that soldiers were directly responsible for implementing it. The Dayton Accords, heavily influenced by the then J-5 Lt. Gen. Wesley K. Clark, narrowly defined military responsibilities and carefully segregated them from civil responsibilities. Leaders on the ground, such as Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, unhesitatingly dealt with those who could get things done, certifiable war criminals excepted. In Afghanistan we were less discriminating, embracing the likes of Abdul Rashid Dostum and Ismail Khan as allies. Warlords were allowed, even encouraged, to secure their areas of operation by traditional means. In the Balkans and Afghanistan our soldiers broadly supported and secured processes evolving towards democratic governance, but direct supervision was in the hands of civil and international agencies, and soldiers did not worry very much about the pace at which it progressed.

In Iraq we were so determined to remake the country from the ground up that we fired the entire Baathist infrastructure—which is to say everyone with experience in administration or governance—in one fell swoop. We fired the Iraqi Army on the same day. Absent international civil assistance, we turned democratization processes over to our soldiers and encouraged them to be quick about it. Captains took over as pro tem mayors of villages and field grades as pro tem mayors of towns. They were to hustle the locals along with elections and the like, all the while fighting a war and without much in the way of interpreters and cultural familiarity. It is a tribute to their resourcefulness that a national government and parliament in fact stood up. It is a comment upon the fuzziness of our division of labor that we put such a task upon them.

In Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan refugees were a top international priority, and we visibly assisted international agencies in caring for them and resettling them. When practical, this involved returning them to their homes, but not always. A number of our interventions in Bosnia in effect kept restive Bosnians from returning to ancestral homes in what had become Serbian territory. Aid and assistance was available to help them settle elsewhere. It was hoped that, over time, enough would do so to avoid a Balkan version of the Gaza Strip, and displaced persons would get on with new lives worth living somewhere other than where they had lived before. In Afghanistan refugee issues have been as visible but less problematic: few Afghans have reason to resettle where another ethnicity would find them unwelcome.

In Iraq hundreds of thousands of displaced persons are less visible, in part because we have not yet admitted the extent to which "ethnic cleansing" is succeeding. If Iraq comes apart, displaced persons will become an enormous source of instability. Could the international community set aside resources to resettle them where they can become safe and prosperous? Baghdad presents a huge problem in this regard. Like most Third World capitals it is parasitic, and without a unified nation will lose the logic for its size. This is all the more reason to plan ahead.

In Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan our soldiers did assume some constabulary responsibilities initially, but not for long and never with the pervasiveness that they have assumed them in Iraq. Within the ethnic enclaves, law and order were of greater importance to the locals than to ourselves, and we handed over this responsibility to police and paramilitaries as quickly as we could. In the Balkans we turned our attention to keeping the ethnicities out of each others' business, and in Afghanistan to hunting down remnant al Qaeda and Taliban. The idea that our soldiers will serve for years as a constabulary is unique to Iraq.

We are told that if we leave Iraq precipitously, bloody civil war will follow and the country will disintegrate. Perhaps we could help nature take its course more gently and assist the inevitable to occur with minimal bloodshed. National self-determination can be a good thing—as Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Estonians, Slovenians, Macedonians and many others can attest. A benign partition of Iraq is unlikely to occur without our help. We could start by redesigning assistance to the Iraqi Army along ethnic lines, fielding units prepared to police and defend their own ethnic enclaves. We could deal with the ethnic leadership as it now exists, providing the reasonable assistance and advice they request to empower them to secure their own people. This could include aid to militias we have heretofore spurned—or even fought. Fortuitously, the ethnic leadership that has risen to the top does have some electoral legitimacy, which we should encourage. We could assist in identifying sensible zones of separation and assist in developing the defenses that will secure them. The surest way to avoid bloodshed is to render attacks unlikely to succeed. We could enlist international help in comfortably resettling those who do not choose to live within the borders as reconfigured. The satisfactory resolution of refugee issues could be a litmus test of success. Since the Shiites and Kurds will get far more oil than the Sunnis, targeted economic assistance would be part of the equation as well. We could remove our soldiers from the streets of Iraq and as far into inaccessible deserts and mountains as possible. Their jobs would be to train Iraqis in secure locations, foray against identifiable international terrorists and respond to requests to bring massive firepower to bear on those who violate zones of separation or international boundaries.

The implication here is assistance rather than direction: we help the Iraqis achieve results they themselves have chosen, with minimal exposure of our soldiers. We help each ethnicity achieve the degree of autonomy it desires. If Iraqis demonstrate that they wish to remain united, it would be fine with us, but we would no longer shed the blood of our soldiers to force such a result. Conversely, if the Shiites decide they prefer Iranian assistance to ours or that of Sunni Libyans, we should keep our sense of humor: these foreigners will be welcome no longer than we were. An independent Kurdistan will create huge diplomatic issues with the Turks, and an independent Shia state huge diplomatic issues with our Sunni Arab allies. These are within our means to resolve without bloodshed, and foreigners should not be allowed to preclude the right to national self-determination within Iraq. If in 10 years oil flows and three stable Mesopotamian nations are tied to the United States by gratitude and dependency, is that not a victory of sorts?

Not all of my colleagues are fond of my version of "Plan B." This is fine, since the time for debate is now. The worst thing we could do is persist with a plan that proves unworkable and then have no alternatives when the fact that it is unworkable becomes clear.


Recommended Reading:

Briscoe, Charles H., et. al., Weapon of Choice: U.S. Army Special Forces in Afghanistan (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2004)

Clark, Wesley K., Winning Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism and the American Empire (New York: Public Affairs, 2003)

Nation, R. Craig, War in the Balkans, 1991-2002 (Carlisle, Pennsylvania: U.S. Army War College, 2003)

Phillips, R. Cody, Bosnia-Herzegovina: The U.S. Army's Role in Peace Enforcement Operations 1995-2004 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 2005)

Stewart, Richard W., Operation ENDURING FREEDOM: The U.S. Army in Afghanistan, October 2001-March 2002 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 2004)