Military Review English Edition March-April 2015 | Page 116

local police based on arrangements with the sheiks, the
United States helped build the instruments of state
from the ground up.
Awakening activity during the Baghdad Surge
can yield some dangerous conclusions if taken out
of context. The best-publicized Awakening activity
took place in the greater Baghdad area in spring-summer 2007. Most of the literature on the surge, as it
came to be called, has focused on a select few senior
U.S. commanders who were savvy with the press and
had influential contacts among opinion makers. As
the mainline story goes, a collection of counterinsurgency theorists arrived in Baghdad in early 2007
and implemented a plan that they had been devising
during the previous year. The literature rightly describes how, in the surge, the U.S. military maintained
an intimate presence in the streets, with combat
outposts and joint security stations across greater
Baghdad. Between June and August 2007, as MNF–I,
the Iraqi Security Forces, and local units cleared and
held more territory, the number of security incidents
dropped precipitously.19
But this Baghdad-area activity, which was historic and well-led, cannot be treated independently
from the Awakening activity that had been occurring in 2005 and 2006. By 2007, local empowerment
schemes elsewhere in Iraq, in places such as Tal Afar
in Ninawa Province; al-Qa’im, Ramadi, and Fallujah
in Anbar; and the Abu Ghurayb area of western
Baghdad, had provided several compelling examples
of locally generated security initiatives. In contrast to
the chronology of actual events, the mainline literature tends to promote a narrative that first talks about
what happened in Baghdad in spring 2007 and then
anachronistically deals with Anbar in 2006. This obfuscates in some ways the actual chronology.20
Much had happened before the 2007 Baghdad
phase. The U.S. National Security Council had
noted the Anbar Awakening’s importance during
its late 2006 policy review, as had the authors of the
December 2006 Iraq Study Group Report. President
George W. Bush had even mentioned it in his January
2007 State of the Union Address—all pre-surge.21
In this author’s conversations with U.S. officials an d
Awakening leaders in the Baghdad area, the Iraqis in
early 2007 frequently invoked these prior incidences
as motivation to work with the MNF–I in Baghdad.
114

To be sure, Baghdad is different from Anbar, and the
Baghdad-area Awakening was not simply an Anbar
model applied to the capital city. The point is that the
momentum and success record in Anbar 2005 to 2006
greatly enabled the Awakening activity in Baghdad in
2007 and elsewhere.
This pre-2007 context matters because without
it, the Baghdad-area Awakening in spring 2007 takes
a too-elitist appearance, as if it originated in a topdown process. The reality was that by spring 2007, the
Awakening had worked upward from a phenomenon
in pockets of Iraq, encouraged and supported by elements such as civil affairs officers, special operations
forces, and brigade commanders and their staffs—
eventually recognized and supported by the MNF–I
establishment in Baghdad.
We should be cautious in thinking that an
Awakening-style program in another time and
place can begin at the top. In Afghanistan, plans
ostensibly drawing inspiration from the Iraq
Awakening—even when respecting the vast differences between the two countries—began not from the
ground up but from the top down by United States
and Afghan elites in Kabul. However, in crucial areas
of Afghanistan, such as Helmand Province and the
mountains along the eastern border with Pakistan,
many locals were already taking the initiative to
defend their areas from Taliban or al-Qaida intrusion. Yet, programs supposedly patterned after the
Awakening were put into the hands of Kabul-based
ministries with little understanding or relevance to
the people in the provincial areas. In contrast, the
Awakening started at the bottom in response to popular resentment and worked upward; this cannot be
forgotten.22
Counterinsurgency obligations do not end
once the worst of the violence has passed. The
Awakening may cautiously be called a success during its
time, especially considering the abysmal conditions that
reigned before. In Baghdad, its purpose was not necessarily to end all fighting but to provide an environment
in which Iraq could at least attempt to build a government apparatus. However, serious problems remained.
The most serious problem was Iraq’s prime minister,
who instead of seizing the opportunity for national reconciliation and establishing unity, used his security services to neutralize Sunni rivals and to prevent the Kurds
March-April 2015  MILITARY REVIEW