U.S. Tactical Errors Aided Iraqi Insurgents

Newswise — Tactical errors by U.S. military leaders made it easier for insurgent forces to gain a foothold in Iraq, according to Dr. Andrea Lopez, a political science professor and conflict studies expert from Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pa.

Lopez argues in an article published in the March, 2007 issue of the scholarly journal Third World Quarterly that when U.S. commanders decided in 2003 to withdraw forces from cities in the Sunni Triangle, and move those forces into heavily fortified bases outside the cities, they broke a cardinal rule of counterinsurgency " they abandoned the population they had fought to liberate.

"The center of gravity in a guerrilla war is the population," Lopez writes. "Win over the population and you win the war." But when U.S. forces pulled back from the cities, "Insurgents of all ideologies took advantage of the vacuum of power in the cities, gaining support, terrorizing the population, and fomenting sectarian violence," Lopez argues.

The population became increasingly skeptical that the U.S. military and the new Iraqi government could provide them with basic security, Lopez says. This undermined U.S. rebuilding efforts, and bolstered the political strength of insurgent groups. And these emboldened insurgents continue to mount attacks throughout the country.

In contrast, Lopez says that U.S. tactics in Afghanistan were more fundamentally in line with classic counterinsurgency theory. When violence in Afghanistan escalated in 2003, the U.S. dispatched teams of 60 to 100 combat troops and civil affairs personnel, called Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), into the countryside to establish military presence throughout the country. The PRTs helped to maintain order and keep insurgent elements from forming alliances with locals.

But despite the theoretically sound approach, Lopez says, the U.S. lacked the manpower in Afghanistan for the PRTs to be truly effective.

"The small number of NATO, coalition and U.S. forces has left large areas of the countryside vulnerable to infiltration by guerrillas," she says. "In both Iraq and Afghanistan violence has increased and the insurgents appear stronger than previously."

Lopez argues that what has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan is symptomatic of an institutional problem within the U.S. military.

"The U.S. inability to deal with the counterinsurgencies is a reflection of its reluctance to engage in—indeed, to discuss—small wars," she writes. "The lack of significant reform reinforces the argument that the U.S. government and military continue to have a significant preference for conventional war, to the detriment of the ability to widely employ successful counterinsurgent techniques.

"Until the U.S. adapts its doctrine to the reality that the majority of wars will be small, unconventional wars, it will continue to engage in clearly destructive steps, such as the withdrawal from the cities in Iraq in 2003, and will fail to commit significant, necessary resources, such as PRTs, to those steps, which could result in victory against insurgencies."

For background, Dr. Andrea Lopez is the chair of the international studies major at Susquehanna University and has given numerous presentations at academic conferences on counterinsurgency and guerilla warfare.