Counterinsurgency in Iraq is proving to be difficult, and not amenable to the classical understanding of how it is supposed to be conducted.  The potable water supply in the al Anbar Province is described as a desperate situation, and aid workers and other government representatives cannot access the region to repair the systems or bring in potable water due to security concerns.  Umm Muhammad Jalal, 39, starts every day walking to a river 7km away from her temporary home in a displacement camp on the outskirts of Fallujah, 70km west of the capital, Baghdad. Because of severe water shortages, she and many others make the daily trip to the river to collect water for all their needs.  “For the past four months we have been forced to drink, wash and clean with the river water. There is a dire shortage of potable water in Fallujah and nearby cities,” Umm Muhammad said.  “My children are sick with diarrhoea but I have no option. They cannot live without water,” she added. “Aid agencies that were helping us with their trucks of potable water are less and less frequent these days for security reasons. For the same reason, the military doesn’t want the [aid] convoys to get too close to some areas.”

Meanwhile, the Marines in Anbar are occupied with mundane duties.  Many will not fire a shot from their firearm the entire deployment.  “In farming communities along the Syrian border, U.S. Marines work with Iraqis to open health clinics and a job center and to improve trash collection and water delivery.  In Fallouja, Marines at a center for displaced people greet Sunni Muslims from Baghdad seeking sanctuary from Shiite Muslim death squads.  And along the sniper alley of a freeway that runs between Fallouja and Ramadi, Marines patrol less like warriors than traffic cops.  Rather than charge into battle, most Marines in Iraq’s western desert are engaged in nation building on a piecemeal basis.”

It is interesting that the road from Fallujah to Ramadi is even now, more than four years into the counterinsurgency campaign, described as “sniper alley.”  This is eerily reminiscent of the picture so aptly painted by National Geographic Explorer’s exposé entitled “Iraq’s Guns for Hire.”   The planning for one British security contractor night time operation, i.e., the delivery of supplies, involved a description of sniper fire along roads from Baghdad to other parts of Iraq.  The sniper firing locations were so well-known that the planning for the mission included consideration for continual movement of the convoy at the right places and the related appropriate instructions to the recently hired Iraqi drivers. The gauntlet was described as a sophisticated system of interlocking and opposing fields of fire that covered several kilometers, and just as expected, the convoy was struck with sniper fire.

In previous sniper and countersniper coverage, I have noted that although there are two primary enemy tactics of U.S. casualties in Iraq, IEDs and snipers, the doctrinal underpinnings of a strategy to counter this threat have been mostly absent.  I have also covered body armor in the context of snipers, but this is primarily a defensive answer to the threat.  Tactical solutions such as satellite patrols (the details of which will not be described here for obvious reasons) can only have some finite effectiveness, and so more is needed to address the threat.

Beyond body armor and satellite patrols, the serious thinker must ponder the question, “how can the precise locations of enemy snipers be so well-known that mission planning accounts for this threat, yet we still have soldiers and marines deployed to relatively safe FOBs without offensively engaging the enemy snipers?”  I have previously suggested unleashing American snipers from the restrictions that they have been under, but this requires re-thinking cherished features of military life like chain of command.  Finally, one is forced to wonder about the risk aversion that would leave enemy snipers on the main arteries to wreak havoc in the night hours, while the U.S. troops are said to “own the night.”

The fluidity of enemy movement is still problematic, probably for reasons that include informing the enemy of strategic and tactical intentions in advance of their implementation.  As previously discussed, it is confirmed by more recent reports that enemy forces are streaming north into the Diyala Province.  Iraqi insurgents have been streaming out of Baghdad to escape the security crackdown, carrying the fight to neighbouring Diyala province where direct attacks on Americans have nearly doubled since last summer, U.S. soldiers said.  That has led to sharp fighting only 55 kilometres north of the capital in a province known as “Little Iraq� because of its near-equal mix of Sunni and Shiite Muslims, as well as Kurds – the country’s three major groups. At stake is a strategic region that extends from the northeastern gates of Baghdad to the border with Iran.  “I was here in 2004 and I don’t remember them ever attacking tanks in open daylight, but now that’s exactly what they’re doing,� said U.S. army Capt. Paul Carlock.  “There’s a big Sunni influx here and in the last month or so it’s been pretty violent.�  Some U.S. officers suspect the advance publicity for the Baghdad security plan may have encouraged extremists – both Sunnis and Shiites – to flee the capital for surrounding provinces, including Diyala, where fewer U.S. troops are stationed.

Similar to the Sunni insurgents, a large number of the Mahdi army senior leadership has fled the region to safe haven in Iran.  Sources in the “Ahwazian Revolution Information Centerâ€? have alleged the presence of Sadrist elements and cadres in the Ahwaz region of southwest Iran, which has a large ethnic Arab population.  In a statement, the center says its sources have observed some of the leadership of the Mahdi Army and its elements in the two border cities of Muhamra and Abadan, with the escort of Iranian guards, and under the auspices of the administrative area (qa’im maqama) of Abadan.  The Sadrists arrived in “not insignificantâ€? numbers, the statement says, and their appearance was noticed on Sunday in these two cities on the border near Basra.  This area of Iran, also known as Khuzistan, has a large Arab population. The Ahwazian Revolution Information Center represents an ethnic Arab movement within Iran, and is opposed to the Iranian regime.  The Ahwazian Center’s statement alleges that the administrative area of Abadan prepared the facilities for the Sadrists travel in these two cities, and has supplied them with identification and Iranian permits, so that their presence can go unnoticed.  As predicted in The Enemy Reacts to the Surge, the Sadrists will wait out the current U.S. security operations and return when U.S. forces stand down (or leave).

So with the flight of the insurgents, be they Sunni or Shi’a, much of the opportunity to kill or capture them has been lost.  Further East back in the Anbar Province, “Americans find themselves taking on duties they had not expected. In Ramadi, an Army lieutenant colonel trained as an artillery officer spends his days trying to make sure Iraqi police get paid, lest they desert and join the insurgents. In Haditha, Marines patrol on foot, greeting Iraqis at a market, trying to win hearts and minds one at a time.  In numerous communities, including Saqlawiya, Marines listen to the complaints of Iraqis about war-damaged homes and businesses, making payments in cases where the damage was caused by Marines.”

But the Marines are frustrated, many with visions of OIF1 in their head.  Marines who have become experts at squad rushes and “closing with and destroying the enemy by fire and maneuver” are instead called to be social workers.  While the Marines can accomodate and adapt, the necessity to do this exists because the bumbling State Department has yet to engage in the global war on terror and thus hasn’t the people or infrastructure in place in Iraq to effect the vision of nation-building.

Interestingly, the LA Times article mentions Haditha, where Marines patrol on foot, greeting Iraqis.  It is time for that in Haditha, because as I pointed out in my article Security and WHAM: Getting the Order Right, the necessary security was put in place to enable WHAM – winning hearts and minds.  But sand berms cannot be constructed around every city in Iraq, and even if they could, the Sadrists will come back, while AQI and AAS will return from the Diyala Province (or simply remain there to wreak havoc).

If there was any doubt about the value of security, one can turn to the beginning example with water supply.  Turning to the Iraqis for their thoughts, “My four children are sick with chronic diarrhea. The doctor told me that it is because of contaminated water. I don’t know what to do because I cannot afford to buy bottles of clean water for my children,” said Sahira Saleh, 41, a resident of the Sadr City district of Baghdad.  “It is hard to say this but years ago I was praying for the death of [former president] Saddam Hussein, but today I wish he could come back to life and was in power again because at least in his time we used to have safe water, good sewage systems, had food to eat and our children never got diarrhoea,” she said.

The idea of occupying forces is repugnant to anyone.  But far worse is no potable water, no school for the children and no electricity, made that way due to the root case of it all — no security.  Torture houses trump WHAM, snipers still put rounds through Marines, and IEDs still cause double amputees to be sent back home to pick up the pieces of their lives.  Yet we will not unleash the American snipers, and enough of the enemy are left on the highways to create well-known interlocking fields of fire.  Artifacts and relics of the Vietnam experience are not particularly useful for combatting the jihadists who flow in from around the world, and with many Americans too interested in watching shameful television to worry about the notion of a war for the survival of the West.