{"id":1280,"date":"2007-09-07T05:26:09","date_gmt":"2007-09-07T10:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1280"},"modified":"2007-09-07T05:26:09","modified_gmt":"2007-09-07T10:26:09","slug":"lessons-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1280","title":{"rendered":"Lessons Learned"},"content":{"rendered":"

How counterinsurgency war is fought<\/a>, courtesy of the Times of London.<\/p>\n

It’s a classic counterinsurgency war story, led by an American armor officer who got his start in Special Forces (which, above all, has practiced exactly this kind of asymmetric warfare since it was founded in the 1950’s) a Captain Patriquin – who led a long, patient, less-than-martial-looking effort to recruit, cajole and co-opt the sheikhs of Ramadi to turn against the Al-Quaeda thugs who’d take control of the city:<\/p>\n

He was a big man, moustachioed, ex-Special Forces, fluent in Arabic and engaged in what was then a revolutionary experiment for a US military renowned for busting doors down. He and a small group from the First Brigade Combat Team, part of the 1st Armoured Division, were assiduously courting the local sheikhs \u2013 tribal leaders \u2013 over endless cups of tea and cigarettes…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Captain practiced some other aspects of counterinsurgency – things that don’t occur in the much-hyped GAO report on the country:<\/p>\n

Captain Patriquin may have offered more than mere words. His main interlocutor, Sheikh Abdul Sittar Bezea al-Rishawi, told The Times <\/em>that he gave them guns and ammunition too. The sheikhs did rise up. They formed a movement called the Anbar Awakening, led by Sheikh Sittar. They persuaded thousands of their tribesmen to join the Iraqi police, which was practically defunct thanks to al-Qaeda death threats, and to work with the reviled US troops. The US military built a string of combat outposts (COPs) throughout a city that had previously been a no-go area, and through a combination of Iraqi local knowledge and American firepower they gradually regained control of Ramadi, district by district, until the last al-Qaeda fighters were expelled in three pitched battles in March. What happened in Ramadi was later replicated throughout much of Anbar province.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The effect?<\/p>\n

Ramadi\u2019s transformation is breathtaking. Shortly before I arrived last November masked al-Qaeda fighters had brazenly marched through the city centre, pronouncing it the capital of a new Islamic caliphate. The US military was still having to fight its way into the city through a gauntlet of snipers, rocket-propelled grenades, suicide car bombs and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Fifty US soldiers had been killed in the previous five months alone. I spent 24 hours huddled inside Eagles Nest, a tiny COP overlooking the derelict football stadium, listening to gunfire, explosions and the thump of mortars. The city was a ruin, with no water, electricity or functioning government. Those of its 400,000 terrified inhabitants who had not fled cowered indoors as fighting raged around them.<\/p>\n

Today Ramadi is scarcely recognisable. Scores of shattered buildings testify to the fury of past battles, but those who fled the violence are now returning. Pedestrians, cars and motorbike rickshaws throng the streets. More than 700 shops and businesses have reopened. Restaurants stay open late into the evening. People sit outside smoking hookahs, listening to music, wearing shorts \u2013 practices that al-Qaeda banned. Women walk around with uncovered faces. Children wave at US Humvees. Eagles\u2019 Nest, a heavily fortified warren of commandeered houses, is abandoned and the stadium hosts football matches.<\/p>\n

\u201cAl-Qaeda is gone. Everybody is happy,\u201d said Mohammed Ramadan, 38, a stallholder in the souk who witnessed four executions. \u201cIt was fear, pure fear. Nobody wanted to help them but you had to do what they told you.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the article notes that, rewarding as it is, the job is risky:<\/p>\n

Captain Patriquin, 32, a father of three young children, was killed by a roadside bomb days after I left Ramadi last winter. Sheikh Sittar wept when told the news. He and several tribal leaders attended his memorial service. Captain Patriquin \u201cwas an extraordinary man who played a very, very important role,\u201d he told The Times.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For what it’s worth, my condolences to the Captain’s family.<\/p>\n

And yet – the surge (combined with, I suggest, the even-more-important change in how the military is fighting the insurgency) seems to be giving next week’s report from General Petraeus the most optimistic backdrop we’ve had reason to see for years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How counterinsurgency war is fought, courtesy of the Times of London. It’s a classic counterinsurgency war story, led by an American armor officer who got his start in Special Forces (which, above all, has practiced exactly this kind of asymmetric warfare since it was founded in the 1950’s) a Captain Patriquin – who led a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}