Tuesday
Oct282008
Misunderstanding Iraq
It has long been acknowledged that there were intelligence failures in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, such as the absence of weapons of mass destruction. According to Wayne White, former deputy director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research's Office of Analysis for the Near East and South Asia, the lack of understanding over Iraq shared by both the government and the public is much more complex and far-reaching.
Speaking at a conference on Iraq held at Georgetown University, White placed some of the responsibility for today's confusion over Iraq on mainstream sources, such as popular articles written by uninformed scholars and military documentaries. White said that these sources led to the widespread neglect of a possible insurgency.
"I saw this in the Iran-Iraq war, warned about it in an assessment to policy makers in the first week of the 2003 war regarding the impending occupation of Sunni Arab areas farther north and was essentially ignored, with one response being from a senior State Department policy maker, 'can somebody go tell Wayne we're winning the war'," said White.
"Even as late as the summer of 2003, when the intelligence community began to craft in reaction to violence a national intelligence estimate on the sources of violence and instability in Iraq...I was the only representative in the room that said we faced a growing insurgency."
White said that there was a number of basic threats that were overlooked in the initial invasion, such as the negative effects of anti U.S. propaganda taught in schools and presented through Arab media. White also noted that there are threats that still have not been addressed, like a conflict between the increasingly powerful Iraqi army and the Iraqi civilian government, which White describes as corrupt and more disconnected from the needs of the people than the army.
"A core problem affecting U.S. intelligence analysis as well as, and even more so, the formulation of U.S. policy since 2003, has been the inability to grasp the full sweep of Iraq's multidimensional societal matrix," said White.
Speaking at a conference on Iraq held at Georgetown University, White placed some of the responsibility for today's confusion over Iraq on mainstream sources, such as popular articles written by uninformed scholars and military documentaries. White said that these sources led to the widespread neglect of a possible insurgency.
"I saw this in the Iran-Iraq war, warned about it in an assessment to policy makers in the first week of the 2003 war regarding the impending occupation of Sunni Arab areas farther north and was essentially ignored, with one response being from a senior State Department policy maker, 'can somebody go tell Wayne we're winning the war'," said White.
"Even as late as the summer of 2003, when the intelligence community began to craft in reaction to violence a national intelligence estimate on the sources of violence and instability in Iraq...I was the only representative in the room that said we faced a growing insurgency."
White said that there was a number of basic threats that were overlooked in the initial invasion, such as the negative effects of anti U.S. propaganda taught in schools and presented through Arab media. White also noted that there are threats that still have not been addressed, like a conflict between the increasingly powerful Iraqi army and the Iraqi civilian government, which White describes as corrupt and more disconnected from the needs of the people than the army.
"A core problem affecting U.S. intelligence analysis as well as, and even more so, the formulation of U.S. policy since 2003, has been the inability to grasp the full sweep of Iraq's multidimensional societal matrix," said White.
tagged 
Iraq, State Deparment, insurgency in News/Commentary
Iraq, State Deparment, insurgency in News/Commentary
Former Minister: Afghan Police Only Way To Victory In Afghanistan
As Iraqi security has improved, the situation security in Afghanistan has become increasingly unstable. The Obama Administration recently pledged to increase the amount of soldiers stationed in Afghanistan by 30,000, but critics claim that the only way to improve Afghan security is by cultivating the security forces themselves, not by adding more American soldiers.
Today, the United States Institute for Peace stated some of their alternative policies because they believe that a surge will inevitably fail.
One of the main problems with the Afghan police force presently, according to Ali Jalali, the Interior Minister of Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005, is that the public does not trust the police. He cited an example where Afghan police officers at a checkpoint were armed only with rocket-propelled grenades, which intimidated the public. “Police is not only to protect people, but also they are responsible to protect the population and the rule of law,” he said.
The Afghani police system established after 2001 was ineffective because the financial resources were not given, and their role as protectors of the law mixed with the need to stop insurgents, Jalali said, adding that when the army and police have common goals, neither institution does their job effectively.
“Police should fight crime,” Jalali said. He would like to see police divided into two groups - traditional police and paramilitary police. Traditional police would patrol the streets and enforce the rule of law, whereas paramilitary police would patrol the borders and aid in fighting terrorists, he said.
Afghan security forces also suffer from a lack of training. Karen Hall, the Afghanistan Police Program Manager for the U.S. State Department, said that 75 percent of the Afghan military is illiterate.
“How can a police officer function if they can not fill out a police report, if they can’t effectively communicate to prosecutors what crimes an individual committed,” said Hall.
The casualty rate for Afghan police is three times as high as the Afghan military. Hall believes that this is the direct result of ineffective training mixed with a dramatic lack of funding during the beginning of the war in 2002. Afghan security forces received less than $1 billion dollars from the U.S., from to 2002 to 2005, the Afghan military received more than $16 billion per year.
Both Jelali and Hall agreed that the only way for at true victory in Afghanistan is dependent on how well the Afghan security forces can patrol their own nation. But the coalition forces have only deemed 12 of the 40 districts in Afghanistan independent and safe, Hall said.