‘I understand … the sacrifice’
Drawdown to be ‘conditions-based,’ Petraeus says
Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, spoke with senior staff writer Sean Naylor by telephone from Baghdad on Feb. 18 to discuss the progress of the war, deployments and more. Here is a transcript of that conversation, edited for clarity and length.
Q. Is there a need for a pause once the “surge” brigades have left? When would that pause occur, and for how long would you anticipate it lasting?
A. All of us have discussed this — by that I mean the [Secretary of Defense Robert Gates; Adm. William Fallon, commander of U.S. Central Command; Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and others].
The consensus is that when you have withdrawn over one-quarter of your combat forces — it’s literally a quarter of our brigade combat teams plus two Marine battalions and the Marine expeditionary unit — that it would be sensible and prudent to have a period of consolidation, perhaps some force adjustments and evaluation, before continuing with further reductions.
There’s every intent to reduce additional forces — reduce further — after this drawdown [is] complete in July. And there’s consensus that the reductions should be conditions-based, so there should be some decision points, once the dust has settled from all those reductions, at which you assess the situation and determine recommendations for additional reductions.
We don’t know what that point might be right now. We’re still doing the analysis to lay out how best and when best to make recommendations on further reductions.
This is a bit more complex than you might think, because with conditions-based reductions … you’re staring in the face a variety of different factors, including the prospect now of elections sometime in the early fall as well as, having done the reductions, see what’s going on with the enemy, see if there are further local and national political developments, see if there are economic developments locally and nationally that can help cement some of the security gains.
There will be a transition of tasks, of course, over time, to Iraqi security forces; there will be a transition of the so-called Concerned Local Citizens or Sons of Iraq [citizen groups opposed to the insurgency] into Iraqi security forces or jobs programs or, perhaps, civil service elements.
There will be detainee releases on both the coalition and the Iraqi side … They just passed an amnesty bill last week along with their 2008 budget and the provincial powers law, and previously they’ve passed the flag law [adopting changes to the country’s flag that were controversial because of a sectarian split over dropping some Saddam Hussein-era design elements] … It will be a very active period.
It is much more complex than might be seen, because the way you reduce is, you actually delay a unit from coming in at the same time that you decide to send another unit home. In other words, you’re not going to take a unit that’s been here for two months and send it home. You’re probably going to take one that’s been here for close to a full tour and delay its replacement.
But then you’re going to do some adjustments because you won’t just take a brigade out of an area completely and leave nothing, you’ll do replacement with smaller forces and so on. So that’s what we’ve been working on now for a couple of months and that’s what we’ll continue working on throughout the course of the spring and into the summer, and I’ll describe some of that, obviously, when I go back in April with [Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq] for the next round of hearings on Capitol Hill.
Q. The surge was intended to buy time for Iraqi leaders to reach some form of reconciliation. In your view, has the surge succeeded in that regard?
A. You’re aware of what the surge has done in security terms, which is really pretty significant. In terms of providing a window of opportunity … for the political leaders to grapple with some of these issues that are necessary for true national reconciliation. They have passed three laws that were benchmark laws, if you will: amnesty, provincial powers, and accountability and justice. To be sure, you have to see how they are implemented. Accountability and justice in particular need to be implemented in the spirit of reconciliation that motivated its passage.
Q. you credit Lt. Gen. [Raymond] Odierno and III Corps with helping create conditions for political reconciliation.
A. Certainly. I think he did a brilliant job as … my operational-level wingman, the operational-level architect, together with his staff, and certainly together with some tremendous division commanders, brigade commanders, battalion commanders and leaders at all levels — commissioned, warrant and non-commissioned. But he did a magnificent job and so did the corps headquarters, and they deserve considerable credit, enormous credit.
Let’s never forget the troopers who are out there in 125 degrees in body armor, Kevlar and other gear, walking point for the effort. They [the corps] made a very critical contribution and deserve a considerable amount of the credit for what has been accomplished, also, obviously, with our Iraqi partners.
It is sometimes overlooked, but the Iraqi surge was over three times our surge. They added over 100,000 Iraqi security force members … That’s an enormous generation of additional Iraqi forces. Beyond that, of course, was the emergence of Concerned Local Citizens — now [called] Sons of Iraq — which have now reached about 90,000, with some nearly 20,000 having already transitioned to Iraqi security force elements.
Q. How many al-Qaida in Iraq fighters are now left in Iraq?
A. It’s interesting you should ask that because we’ve just been working on that to submit it as part of a report, but I’m afraid it’s a classified portion of that report. I guess the best way to describe what has happened would be to say that al-Qaida in Iraq has lost a significant number of its leaders, including some of its most important foreign leaders. A number of their media emirs and operators, and that’s very important because that’s how they share information, it’s how they communicate with one another. In some cases it’s how they communicate to the outside world, it’s how they generate support, and in a sense try to motivate people to be suicide bombers, share training, tactics, techniques and procedures, and display the latest videos and photos of successes and so forth.
Q. How would you characterize al-Qaida in Iraq’s numbers now, in an unclassified fashion?
A. I’d say two things: that there has been significant damage done to al-Qaida [in] Iraq but they remain a very lethal organization and they are adaptive and remain dangerous. They have lost control of a number of areas and just surviving in many of those areas now is a challenge for them. They have lost significant numbers of leaders, and at a certain point it does become harder for them to replace leaders with individuals who have the skills, experience, competence and leadership qualities. And we have seen a degradation in all of those over time.
Q. What percentage of the al-Qaida in Iraq force is foreign?
A. We think it’s a good bit less than 10 percent, but it is a critical part of the organization because it tends to be the senior leaders, a number of the most skilled in improvised explosive devices, explosives, car bomb manufacture, media operations, and they typically play a big role in the foreign fighter network.
And although … the number of foreign fighters is down by perhaps as much as half, there is still that half coming in, and a significant percentage of that, we believe, is suicide bombers, and of course that remains a very real threat in Iraq.
Q. How many [Iranian paramilitary] Quds Force operators are in Iraq right now?
A. The only Quds Force members that we know of are those that are in diplomatic positions and therefore have diplomatic immunity …. The [Iranian] ambassador to Iraq is a Quds Force member.
Clearly there is a continuing concern with the Quds Force-supported special group elements; those have been the biggest concern when it comes to elements violating the ceasefire declared by [radical Shiite cleric] Moqtada al-Sadr.
It is the special groups that appear to be the ones who carry out the most significant violations of the ceasefire, in that they are the principal users of the explosively formed projectiles that had been such a dangerous weapon. The numbers of those used in January were up significantly, although they’ve been very erratic this particular month. There have been operations conducted against them, and a number of their leaders and operators have been detained.
Q. How hard do you have to work to keep that ceasefire with al-Sadr’s militia force, Jaysh al-Mahdi, in place, and what is the long-term plan to remove JAM from the security equation in Iraq?
A. Well, there are a number of engagement efforts ongoing, all the way from local efforts by individual battalion commanders on up — in some cases company commanders — who have engaged militia members [and] leaders, who have in some cases reached local accommodations with them, which basically mean they can’t carry out criminal activity — that’s the bottom line – and if they do they are obviously vulnerable to being detained as violators of the law.
This is done, in most cases, with involvement of Iraqi security force leaders, local Iraqi leaders and … That really goes on at all levels, all the way up to the level of the force headquarters and the embassy.
What everyone would like to do across the spectrum is to get various elements to lay down their weapons and become members of the political process and contributing members of society rather than members of elements that use armed violence to achieve their objectives.
Q. Is that a realistic possibility?
A. Well, we’ve seen some progress. I’m not sure that a year ago that all that many folks would have anticipated or predicted the progress that would have been made against al-Qaida Iraq. There are innumerable challenges, there are numerous threats and issues to be dealt with, but the fact is that the level of violence is down, the level of civilian deaths are down even more, and when we incorporate Iraqi data, the reduction in civilian deaths is very, very significant.
Q. Is there any incentive for Sadr to give up his private army, through which he derives much of his power?
A. The challenge for Moqtada al-Sadr is to avoid the further tarnishing of the reputation of the Sadr movement, which traces itself to the martyr Sadr, his father, [and is] founded on a principle of service to the least fortunate. But what has happened is because of the exposure of militia involvement in precipitating the violence … the public is not as inclined to welcome the militia the way they used to.
If al-Qaida is trying to blow your neighborhood up, you’ll shelter behind anyone who will defend that neighborhood. When that threat recedes, as it has in most neighborhoods in Baghdad — [and] there’s nobody here doing victory dances in the end zone, there’s no claim of having turned corners, seen lights at the end of the tunnel or anything like that — [then] the reality of Iraq remains that it’s very hard and there are innumerable challenges, obstacles and bad guys.
But to come back to Moqtada, his challenge is: How can he keep support of the people, so that his movement can win provincial elections, for example, and still … retain that militia, whose salaries come from carrying out illicit activities. There’s not a source of funding for the militia unless they can get legitimate jobs in some ministries, which they did when Sadr ministers controlled some of those ministries. During the height of the sectarian violence, they hijacked the ministry of health and, to lesser degrees, the ministry of transportation and … Facility Protection Security Forces and so on.
A lot of that has been exposed and it’s a serious blemish on the movement, and the reason for the ceasefire is to demonstrate an effort to discipline the ranks so as to retain the support and allegiance of the downtrodden in particular that the movement pledges to support. But when the militia members prey on those downtrodden, they are working against what it is that they are trying to accomplish.
Q. There seems to be a sense inside the Beltway — and this might be oversimplifying it — that the debate over force levels in Iraq is increasingly pitting you against the uniformed military leaders here in the Pentagon.
A. I think that’s a vast oversimplification.
First of all, I very much understand the strain and the sacrifice that these long deployments have required. I have first-hand knowledge of that. Between 2001 and the time of the testimony, I think I’ll have been deployed for 52 months since 2001, so I am keenly aware of that, as is my family, and we all want to reduce that strain and increase dwell time.
And I think that the Army will be able to make announcements in the next few months …
But in recent weeks the secretary of defense has described his thinking on — again — that when there have been such significant reductions that it would be prudent to have a period of evaluation and consolidation. Adm. Fallon has done the same. Others that I’ve talked to certainly are of the same mind. So I think that that may be a bit overstated. We don’t even start the serious briefings until sometime in March, leading up to the testimony in April.