Archive for the 'British Army' Category

This is one more in a series at The Captain’s Journal following Marine operations in the Helmand Province, Afghanistan.  A brief synopsis of their accomplishments thus far can be found here.

A U.S. Marine fires at a Taliban position near the town of Garmser, a main assembly and staging point for jihadists entering Afghanistan (AP Photo).

U.S. Marines fire on Taliban positions from a sand berm, May 2 (AP Photo).

The Marines continue to take the battle to the Taliban in Garmser.

The spring offensive is well launched – by NATO.

Or, put another way, pre-emptively provoked by the U.S. Marines Expeditionary Force.

If the best defence is a good offence, American troops recently arrived in the southern provinces have wasted no time taking the battle to the Taliban, putting an entirely different complexion on combat tactics in the heartland of the insurgency.

Joining forces with British troops who have responsibility for NATO operations in Helmand province, these battle-hardened Marines – many of them veterans of fierce combat in the Iraqi city of Ramadi two years ago – hurled themselves into the insurgency cauldron last week, with the objective of dislodging Taliban fighters from strongholds north of the border with Pakistan.

Although the British have a base in the town of Garmser, NATO’s most southerly outpost, and have battled strenuously to maintain it against encroachment, the vast surrounding district, much of it inhospitable desert, has been essentially free movement territory for the neo-Taliban.

Garmser is a main assembly and staging point for jihadists as they enter Afghan soil. It is also a key transit route for smuggling in arms and smuggling out opium – the vascular network that pumps blood into the insurgency.

The claims and counterclaims – success versus failure – have been fast and furious. While American authorities claimed on the weekend to have killed nine militants, Taliban spokesperson Qari Yosuf asserted it was the insurgents who had killed nine Americans.

There have been no official reports of U.S. casualties from the fighting. But provincial government sources, along with aid workers in the region, accuse the Marines of conducting aggressive door-to-door searches, rousting civilians from their homes, arresting innocents and forcing upward of 15,000 Afghans to flee into the hot desert for safety.

None of these claims has been confirmed. However, the U.S. propensity for using air strikes and artillery and mortar barrages in support of their ground troops has much of the domestic media here caterwauling about a suddenly “Americanized war” in Afghanistan.

Caterwauling indeed.  The British didn’t really hold any terrain inside Garmser proper, and their role in this specific operation was transport (h/t Rogue Gunner).  “Although British framework operations are currently focused further north, in the areas of Lashkar Gar, Sangin, Gereshk and Musa Qaleh, the British Task Force has had an important role to play facilitating the move of the MEU down through the province.”

This report on the Marines is somewhat amusing.  Whether the “claims and counterclaims” have been fast and furious being quite irrelevant, the success of the Marines has been fast.  The Provincial Government is fabricating information about the operation because they don’t know what else to do, but the shock of rapid success will hopefully give way to an understanding of what a change in strategy can accomplish.  It is certainly the case that the combat action has been directed and aggressive, with the Marines “unleashing earsplitting barrages of machine gun fire, mortars and artillery” at Taliban positions.

O’Neill, the company commander, says all-day potshots by Taliban fighters are little more than nuisance attacks. The militants use binoculars and have forward observers with cell phones to try to aim better at the Marines, he says.

“This is pure asymmetric harassment,” he says. “They’ll pop out of a position and fire a rocket or mortar.”

But in a bleak British assessment of Garmser a week ago, the UK is said to be losing the battle.

In Garmser, the Scottish infantrymen hope to push the Taliban back and fill the town with people again. The continuing marine operation may help that objective.

But the main British effort is concentrated in northern Helmand, and local governance is weak in Garmser, where most of the town elders and administrators have fled to the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.

And as the poppy harvest draws to a close, commanders expect a fresh spurt of fighting in the coming weeks. Combined with the stream of Taliban from Pakistan, British officers recognise they are only holding the line.

“I’m under no illusions. We are not stopping the movement north,” said Den-McKay. “We’re just giving them something to talk about.”

Perhaps an alternative picture is emerging for the chaps in the UK - that of aggressive contact with the enemy by enough troops on the ground to accomplish the mission?  One can only hope that NATO is watching closely.

Prior:

Marines Mired in Red Tape in Afghanistan

Marines Engage Taliban in Helmand Province

Operation Azada Wosa - “Stay Free”

The Times gives us an update on the British plan to scale back violence against the Taliban.

BRITISH troops are to scale back attacks on the Taliban after killing 7,000 insurgents in two years of conflict, defence sources said last week …

The paratroopers’ commanders hope they can cut the deaths, which they fear are a boost for the Taliban when fighters recruited from the local population are killed, as the dead insurgent’s family then feels a debt of honour to take up arms against British soldiers.

The resultant fighting raises the profile of the Taliban and enhances their reputation in the local community.

“We aim to scale back our response to incidents to avoid getting sucked into a cycle of violence among local tribesmen,” said one officer. “This way we aim to continue the process of reducing the Taliban’s influence in Helmand.”

The army hopes that the reduction in violence will enable the Department for International Development and its American counterpart USAID to accelerate reconstruction work. British commanders have expressed frustration at the limited amount of development and the reluctance of DfID to become involved.

However, US marines and British special forces will continue attacks on high-level Taliban leaders crossing the border from Pakistan.

More than 1,000 American troops from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit will take control of the border between Helmand and Pakistan later this month. They will concentrate on providing the firepower to kill Taliban leaders as they cross the border from their base in the Pakistani city of Quetta.

The US marines will work with the British Special Forces Support Group and Special Boat Service commandos who are tracking Taliban crossing the border. They will use the firepower of their M1A1 Abrams tanks and AH-1W Cobra helicopter gunships to launch a frontal assault on the hardliners.

Ah yes, The Captain’s Journal knows it by its smell: the deep magic of counterinsurgency at its best.  Fascination with special forces operators, high value targets, and personalities and leaders, along with the philosophy of “giving stuff to the people.”  Sounds good, doesn’t it?  There’s just one problem.  The plan is all confused and won’t work.

As readers know, we have been strong proponents of giving stuff to people as part of the concerned citizens program in Iraq.  But - and this is the important point - the British plan bifurcates this approach from strong military operations against the enemy, an error that wasn’t made in Iraq.  Consider, for example, that the British plan in Basra was similar to the one being espoused above, with military operations being second in importance (or even suppressed due to the notion that for every indigenous insurgent killed, two more grow up in his place).

Also consider that the Marines in Anbar could have argued this way given the heavy indigenous participation in the insurgency along with some lesser number of foreigners.  But the Marines neither argued nor behaved this way.  The indigenous population witnessed strong military action in Anbaragainst their own blood, and grew weary of this just as much as foreign jihadist violence against them.  This is another critical point that bears repeating.  The Marines won in Anbar, and the British lost in Basra.  The British plan being espoused for Afghanistan is roughly the same as was implemented in Basra, and diametrically opposed to the nature of operations in Anbar.

Another problem with this approach is that it presupposes that the Afghani Taliban need the leadership of Pakistani Taliban, or al Qaeda, in order to function.  While the border region is certainly problematic, the British will soon find that most of the insurgents within Afghanistan are indigenous Afghanis, and that reduced violence against them leads to a strengthened Taliban.

Good information coming from the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan is always welcome, but it pays to be careful, analytical, independent and questioning.  Michael Yon is without a doubt the best and most prolific reporter who has been in Iraq.  The Captain’s Journal highly respects Yon, but even he can miss the mark, even if only infrequently.  As reported by Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, Yon was heralding the advent of peace in Basra half a year ago.

MICHAEL YON POINTS TO THIS REPORT and emails: “Basra is not in chaos. In fact, crime and violence are way down and there has not been a British combat death in over a month. The report below is false.” False reports from Iraq? Say it isn’t so!

And, via the comments in this post, an article from The Telegraph that supports Yon’s version more than the other: “Indeed, wherever one looks in the British sector, there are grounds to believe that, far from degenerating into all-out civil war, the Iraqis are finally coming to terms with their post-Saddam condition and are starting to acquire the confidence and the institutions necessary for running their affairs.”

At the time, The Captain’s Journal had studied the reports of Iraqi Omar Fadhil who flatly stated that while he would not have crossed Anbar months before (and would now), he would not even consider going into the Shi’a South.  We saw women being beheaded by gangs of fundamentalist Shi’a thugs.  We also studied the rules of engagement of the British, and knew that Basra would be lost.  We politely and quietly retorted to Glenn Reynolds that “Yon is great and worthy of admiration, but he has this wrong.  If there is peace, it is only to the extent that the gangs have agreed upon their turf and the population has been subjugated to their rule” (or something along those lines).  It is important not to twist the bad news into good news, as we have been warned by the Multinational Force, partly because when it is later proven to have been twisted (or perhaps more correctly, misinterpreted), it always redounds to a loss of credibility.

There is good news and bad news in the Basra fighting.  The good news is that there is Basra fighting.  It was well past time to confront the radical Shi’a militias, and at least one of them, the Mahdi militia, is being battered and has had to call for a truce.  The bad news is that many of them have not stood down and retain their weapons.  We have seen Sadr’s forces stand down before when the fighting ended too soon.  This is a recurring model.

The good news is that there has been more than a week of fighting in Basra and Sadr City.  The bad news is that this is only little more than a week old and there is much more to go.  The good news is that Maliki finally had the courage to go on the offensive against Sadr.  The bad news is that, according to General Petraeus, the campaign was very poorly planned and almost spurious.

For the British, the results are all bad.  David Frum writes from a reader in Basra:

I cannot comment on troop movements and other assets, but I will say that I am gratified with what the US is doing.  The British have been completely marginalized, though.  I would look for an eventual, low-key exit by the Brits covered by talk of concentrating on Afghanistan.

The Times reports:

In Basra the signs of the feared militia are slowly receding. For the first time in years alcohol vendors are selling beer close to army checkpoints, and ringtones praising the rebel cleric Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr are vanishing from mobile phones. Music shops are once again selling pop tunes instead of the recorded lectures of Shia ayatollahs.

But, as the city cautiously comes back to life after an offensive by Iraqi troops backed by hundreds of US soldiers, there is a lingering resentment towards the British Army.

Many here blame the British for allowing the al-Mahdi Army and other militias to impose a long reign of terror on the once cosmopolitan city …

“I think the British troops were the main reason that militias became very powerful,” complained InasAbed Ali, a teacher. “They didn’t fight them properly and, when they found themselves losing in the city, they moved out to the airport and chose to negotiate with the militias and criminal groups as if they were legal.”

“The British Army had no role in Basra,” Rahman Hadi, a coffee shop owner, said. “We haven’t seen any achievements by them in the streets of Basra. I don’t know why their troops didn’t respond to the acts of these militias for long years, after seeing all the suffering that Basra people went through.”

Even senior Iraqi officers admitted that the hands-off British approach to policing the city had given the militias free rein.

Peter Oborne at the Daily Mail opines:

British military history contains more than its fair share of glorious victories, but there have also been notable disasters. It has become horrifyingly clear that one of these is our involvement in southern Iraq, culminating in our soldiers’ exit from Basra Palace late last year.

Nibras Kazimi reports:

“The Iraqi Army holds the British Forces cowering behind barbed wire in Basra Airport in the lowest regard; the Iraqis hold the British responsible for dropping the ball in Basra and in Amara, allowing the crime cartels to expand and take root. Iraqi officers regularly dismiss the British military as “sissies” and “cowards”.

The news for Maliki is mixed, and very levelheaded analysis comes from Iraqi Mohammed Fadhil of Iraq the Model.

Perhaps the biggest mistake in the battle, which did not end with victory in spite of the courage exhibited in the decision to engage the enemy, was Maliki’s decision to personally lead the battle as the commander in chief of armed forces. Apparently he did this without proper consultation or in depth calculation of consequences. He forgot that by going there in person he made a commitment to go to the end. But the battle did not end in any meaningful way and so in spite of the determination in his words the prestige and credibility of the state were under threat.

Some people began to mock the operation calling it “Qadissiyat Al-Maliki” (in reference to Qadissiyat Saddam, the name Saddam used to call the 8-year war with Iran) others went as far as calling it the Rats Charge instead of Knights Charge. The reason is that the leader was there in person yet he couldn’t finish the job.

It was evident from Maliki’s words that patience was over and that the situation could no longer be settled with negotiations but it didn’t work out as desired. Had Maliki not been the direct commander of the battle the outcome would have perhaps been considered a tactical win. But his presence turned the battle into a strategic campaign for which neither Maliki nor the troops were prepared.

As for Iran, Stephen Hadley explains that they are still a major threat, and Secretary of Defense Gates inexplicably states that it is unlikely that the U.S. will ever confront Iranian forces inside of Iraq.  This is not finished, and there will likely be both good news and bad news for quite some time into the future concerning the Iraq South.  The Captain’s Journal will not engage in talking points.  We will follow the truth, and as always, beg for defeat of the enemy.

Introduction and Background

Several months ago upon following our commentary on the Afghanistan campaign, a field grade officer, and someone who is definitely in a position to know, contacted The Captain’s Journal and recommended that we focus our attention on the ongoing lethargy of the campaign due to NATO incompetence and inability to formulate a coherent and sensible strategy.

Soon after this we published NATO Intransigence in Afghanistan and The Marines, Afghanistan and Strategic Malaise.  We have also pointed out that however bad a shadow NATO casts over the campaign in Afghanistan, the Taliban and al Qaeda have no such incoherence, and have settled on a comprehensive approach to both Pakistan and Afghanistan.  Now from the Baltimore Sun, we learn just how bad the strategic malaise is and how prescient were our warnings.

Field Report

From the Baltimore Sun:

Multinational force has multiple leaders
By David Wood

Sun reporter

April 11, 2008

KANDAHAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan

Disagreements and coordination problems high within the international military command are delaying combat operations for 2,500 Marines who arrived here last month to help root out Taliban forces, according to military officers here.

For weeks the Marines — with their light armor, infantry, artillery and a squadron of transport and attack helicopters and Harrier strike fighters — have been virtually quarantined at the international air base here, unable to operate beyond the base perimeter.

Within immediate striking distance are radical Islamist Taliban forces that are entrenched around major towns in southern Afghanistan, where they control the lucrative narcotics trade and are consolidating their position as an alternative to the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.

But disputes among the many layers of international command here — an ungainly conglomeration of 40 nations ranging from Albania and Iceland to the U.S. and Britain — have forced a series of delays.

Unlike most U.S. military operations, even the small details of operations here — such as the radio frequency used to evacuate a soldier for medical care — must first be coordinated with multiple military commands.

Then, there have been larger disputes over strategy. Some commanders here want more emphasis on civic action in conjunction with local Afghans. Others believe security must take precedence.

For Marines, who are accustomed to landing in a war zone and immediately going into action with their own plans, the holdup has been frustrating.

Frequent changes among command leaders and unclear lines of authority have made it difficult for the Marines to win general approval for the timing, goals and extent of proposed operations.

Marine operations planning, which is routinely completed in hours or days, has gone on for weeks while they await agreement and approval from above.

“They invite us here … and they don’t know how to use us?” said Lt. Col. Anthony Henderson, commander of the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines. “We are trying to keep our frustration in check … but we have to wait for the elephants to stop dancing,” Henderson said, referring to the brass-heavy international command.

“The clash is between the tactical reality on the ground and political perceptions held elsewhere,” Marine Maj. Heath Henderson, deputy operations officer for the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, told his staff. “You can make your own judgments about which you think will prevail.”

Including the Marines, there are 17,522 allied troops in southern Afghanistan, including British, Dutch, Canadians, Danes, Estonians, Australians, Romanians and representatives of nine other nations, according to the high command.

These coalition military forces are assembled under the banner of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), commanded by U.S. Army Gen. Dan K. McNeill, headquartered in Kabul with an international staff.

Beneath McNeill are five regional commands and numerous national military commands. Henderson’s Marine battalion and its parent task force, the 24th MEU, officially are under the command of ISAF and McNeill. But they are assigned to work in conjunction with the regional command here and other coalition forces.

Coordination on long-term strategy is complex, staff officers here said, because the commanders and staffs at each level regularly rotate. Regional command south here, for instance, changes every nine months between British, Canadian and Dutch officers.

With one proposed operation temporarily blocked, Henderson told his planners to consider a scaled-back option.

“I think it’s a stretch, but let’s look at it,” he said, adding glumly, “as the sound of desperation seeps into my voice.”

The regional command here, RC-South, declined to comment on any command issues. In Kabul, Brig. Gen. Carlos Branco, a senior spokesman for the ISAF, said the Marines “answer to” ISAF but are under the “tactical control” of RC-South. He said ISAF was satisfied that this is the best arrangement to “coordinate and synchronize” combat operations.

In case of a disagreement, McNeill would make the final decision, said Branco, a Portuguese officer.

The problems are magnified when Afghan government officials at the national and provincial level weigh in with their own judgments. The result, some say, is that the counterinsurgency campaign, which is inherently difficult enough, suffers from the lack of a clear vision and strategy.

“We don’t understand where we are going here,” said Lt. Col. Brian Mennes, commander of Task Force Fury, a battalion of paratroopers just leaving Kandahar after 15 months of counterinsurgency operations here. “We desperately want to see a strategy in front of us,” he said in an interview …

Bigger problems run afoul of conflicting strategies and easily bruised national pride.

At another planning session, a question arose about the capabilities of a British combat unit. “I can tell you they have killed more people than anybody else in this room,” a British major declared hotly. There was shocked silence from the roomful of Marines, most of whom have done two or three combat tours in Iraq and don’t boast about battlefield exploits.

Meantime, the 2,500 Marines here train, clean their weapons yet again, take long conditioning runs along the dust-choked perimeter roads, and wonder when they’re going to begin what they came for.

“This is killing us,” says a staff sergeant. “There’s only so much training you can do, especially considering that most of my Marines just got back from Iraq.”

Analysis and Commentary

Of the campaign we previously said of the deployment of the Marines that “The current institutional and strategic malaise in the NATO project in Afghanistan is about to be stirred up with the presence of 3200 warrior-hunters who want to make contact with the enemy.  The real re-examination of the campaign won’t come as a result of the addition of 3200 troops.  It will come with the addition of a completely different ethos than has previously been in theater.  Re-examination should be a healthy process, even if a difficult one.”

It appears as if the re-examination that was so badly needed to occur has failed, and the most powerful fighting force on earth, the U.S. Marines, is sitting in tents without being utilized.  Some of this is due to strategic differences: “Some commanders here want more emphasis on civic action in conjunction with local Afghans. Others believe security must take precedence.”

Take particular note of the doctrinal confusion that this bit of truth-telling reveals.  It succumbs to the most prevelant and powerful temptation that a field grade officer can face - that of setting one prong of the strategy over against another prong.  It is the devil’s game, the great temptation of having to find a center of gravity - that is, a single center of gravity- in order to strategize against that center, and it holds many commanders in intellectual bondage.

We have dealt with this in Center of Gravity Versus Lines of Effort in COIN.  It is not only not necessary to find a single focus in our counterinsurgency efforts, it is counterproductive.  There is no reason that the troops who wish to focus more on civic involvement (e.g., the European and British troops) cannot do so while the Marines hunt the Taliban.  We have already noted that along much of the terrain outside of the cities, the Taliban control the high ground and it has been recommended by knowledgeable locals that if we wish to counter the efforts of the enemy, we will focus efforts on chasing them and gaining control of the more mountainous areas.

But the problems run even deeper than strategy.  The current NATO engagement is being run by committee, and the committee must settle everything from strategy to radio communications.  This failure can only be laid at the feet of General McNeill.  The Marines are deployed as a MEU, i.e., a Marine Expeditionary Unit.  They are self sufficient, and are by design not intended to need much if any support from the balance of forces in theater.  To require the Marines to work under the headship of a NATO committee not only has wasted time thus far, but the remainder of their time in Afghanistan is in jeopardy.  Literally, the deployment of 3200 Marines to Afghanistan is in danger of redounding to no significant gains due to lack of leadership and NATO intransigence.

It might not get any better any time soon. Canadian Brigadier General Denis Thompson is preparing to take over the head of NATO troops in Afghanistan.  The Captain’s Journal will not opine either way on Thompson’s leadership, except to say that he references what the Canadians refer to as the Manley Report.  He says that the recommendations of the Manley panel should help Afghanistan’s war torn country.  The only problem with this is that outside of providing a few helicopters to specific troops here and there, the report mainly describes the Canadian attempt to convince its population that Canada should be involved in Afghanistan.  The Manley panel is no gold mine of strategic doctrine.  It will be of no help to Thompson as he attempts to deal with recalcitrant field grade officers who chest butt other officers over battle experience and argue over radio frequencies.

Conclusion

The concept of an MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit) is that it is in little or no need of assistance.  It is self sufficient in every way, and the only need of the 24th MEU is to be given the green light to hunt al Qaeda and Taliban.  British officers who want to save face over the erstwhile lazy performance of the NATO forces will only slow the Marines and render their contribution void - and perhaps this is the intent.

Prior

Resurgence of Taliban and al Qaeda

The Taliban and Snake Oil Salesmen

The Marines, Afghanistan and Strategic Malaise

Everyone Thought the Taliban Would Not Fight!

NATO Intrasigence in Afghanistan

Discussions in Counterinsurgency

More on Suicide Bomber Kill Ratio

Taking the High Ground in Afghanistan

Taliban and al Qaeda Strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan

No Spring Offensive in Afghanistan?

The Taliban and Distributed Operations

Talks with the Taliban: Clinging to False Hopes

The Khyber Pass

Grim of Blackfive is back from Iraq where he served as a civilian consultant.  The Captain’s Journal likes Grim.  He is a thinking man, and every thought he gives us makes us smarter, whether we agree or not.  In this case, he opines on several things, one of which is the recent fighting in Basra.

The Shia problem is armed factionalism.  The current violence of this last month and going forward represents the start of the solution to that problem.  People alarmed by the violence have missed the story. 

The GoI and the JAM are both disaggregating their bad elements.  Mickey Kaus deserves credit for noticing, at least as far as the GoI goes:

Whether it was an incremental success or a humiliating fizzle, hasn’t the Maliki government’s assault on Sadr-linked Shiite militias operated, de facto, as a highly efficient purge of the Iraqi army? According to Juan Cole, those who heeded calls for defection or who otherwise refused to fight have been fired. … P.S.: Meanwhile, some 10,000 militia members who did fight on the government’s side have reportedly been inducted into the security forces.

What people have not noticed is that JAM is doing essentially the same thing.  For quite some time Sadr has been purging JAM of elements that do not obey him.  Sadr has said that he will disown members who violate the ceasefire, excepting in self-defense.  His proposed truce calls for patience from his members, and comes “after receiving assurances” that his membership will not be targetted if he has them stand down. 

Those who continue to fight will be ready prey for the Iraqi security forces, many of whom are from the Badr faction.  As Wretchard noted, the de facto arbiter of the Shia situation is al Sistani, who has declared that the militias are not legitimate authorities in Iraq.  And — again, crediting Kaus for his careful thinking about what he reads — the political debates within the Iraqi government seem to favor this overall movement.  (It’s also worth nothing that the calls for the JAM to surrender its arms have really been only for heavy weapons — that is, they could retain small arms, as the Sons of Iraq do.) 

The recent violence has been healthy, then.  Disaggregation of irreconcilable elements is a key element to our COIN strategy; here we see it happening naturally.  The political process appears to be strengthened, and the Sunni blocks are now participating in helping to settle the Shiite question in a manner acceptable to themselves — as are the Kurds.  That sounds like a genuine national coalition forming, one that will accept Sadr as a political figure.

I have moderate disagreement with Grim on Basra.  In Jeremiah 13:23, we are rhetorically asked if a leopard can change its spots?  We have seen how Sadr allegedly is eyeing Sistani’s position of authority, undergoing religious training in Iran.  Sadr is a radical Islamist, and for him to be a legitimate political figure in Iraq is akin to the Mullahs ruling Iran.  He is an arm of Iranian military and political power, just like Hezbollah in Lebanon.  He isn’t finished yet.  It is badly premature to draft his obituary.  It would be better for Iraq and the U.S. to make it clear that Sadr isn’t welcome inside Iraq any more.

Furthermore, as we observed in Basra and Iran, “In order to cut ties with Iran, the SIIC “members” of the Iraqi Security Forces - who had to fight only rival miltias in Basra this time around - should be forced to rid Iraq of all Iranian influence, including Quds, Hezbollah, IRG and any other proxy Iranian fighters.  Failure to do so, from leadership down to the lowest ranking soldier, should be addressed as treason.  Until the SIIC is forced to fight for Iraq as opposed to fighting against rival gangs, they too are merely Iranian proxy forces.”

Badr was originally formed as part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and still receive pensions from the IRGC.  It is important to get a clear picture on this issue.  They are, quite literally, on the payroll of Iran.  Until they are put into a position where they have to prove their loyalty to Iraq, the fighting in Basra might be intra-Shi’a gang warfare aided by the Iraqi Army (and some by U.S. forces).

There are tens of thousands of Iranian fighters inside Iraq.  Five days of fighting in Basra and a few more in Sadr City are not enough to rid Iraq of Iranian influence.  We are only at the very beginning stages of the fight in the South.  Since Britain implemented the “we may as well go ahead and give all of the terrain to the enemy” approach to counterinsurgency, the developments in the South lag far behind the West and North.

There are miles to go before we sleep.