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What does the fall of Ramadi mean for Iraq?

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By Victoria Fontan:Ramadi Dr. Victoria Fontan writes this article from Duhok, Kurdistan.

EDITORS NOTE: On May 20, following the publication of this article, the Iraqi government granted conditional entry to Baghdad for IDPs fleeing the violence in Ramadi. However, as of May 22, Sharqia News, Iraqi TV was reporting the bridge had only been opened for 1,000 IDP’s, leaving 5,000 remaining IDPs stranded.

The town of Ramadi has completely fallen to the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (ISIS). Many commentators have already stated that this is a major defeat for the government of Prime Minister Abadi. Indeed, it represents both a long and short-term disaster for the current Baghdad administration.

Only a month after triumphantly proclaiming that he would rid Anbar of ISIS, against US wishes to focus on re-taking Mosul, Prime Minister Abadi has failed. His strategy is not only placing Baghdad at risk, but also the Haditah Dam, the second largest source of hydropower in Iraq.

Shi’a militias are now gathering in Habaniya airbase in preparation for a major counter-offensive. Yet, a year on, Mosul is still waiting to be “saved”. This flexing of governmental and Shi’a militia muscles seems to be no more than a Baathist-style propaganda stunt, that former Saddam Information Sahhaf-style. So what does this mean for Iraq?

It is now very clear that the modern state, as Gertrude Bell designed it, belongs to the history books. Sectarian relations between Iraqi Sunnis and Shi’as have reached a point of no return. Conflict resolution scholars compare relationships to an elastic band: it can be stretched, but at one point, it breaks.

Baghdad’s refusal of Anbar Internally Displaced Persons (IPDs) illustrates this. While the Kurdistan Regional Government welcomed almost two million Arab IDPs after the fall of Mosul last June, Baghdad has closed its doors to its own, clearly indicating to the its Sunni population that Iraq is no longer their country.

With this clear sign of sectarian disintegration of the country, Kurdish independence looks like a fait accomplit. It is not a matter of if, but when Kurdistan will finally exist as a sovereign State. Seen under this light, Kurdistan is indirectly benefiting from Prime Minister Abadi’s strategic and sectarian mistakes. That is a clear long-term benefit to Kurdistan, but at what price?

In the short term, it might be that once again, Baghdad’s errors have to be paid for by the Kurds, and specifically the Peshmerga forces, who remain, under-armed, in the northern frontline of the war against ISIS. In the same way that ISIS significantly benefited from the fall of Mosul in terms of weaponry; scores of armaments were left when General Berwary and his Golden Brigades left the Anbar Military Command on Sunday.

Like the Baghdad-backed Shi’a militias, ISIS is armed with the latest technology; while Peshmerga only receive a fraction of the weapons sent by the US via the Baghdad government. This makes the holding of frontlines, such as in the town of Sinjar, which I visited a couple of weeks ago, more difficult.

This also undoubtedly reinforces an unnecessary metric imbalance between ISIS and the Peshmerga. Each time that the Baghdad Government makes another gross mistake, its ripple effects can be felt at the largest frontline against ISIS, defended by the Kurds for over 1000 kilometers. Each Baghdad military defeat creates even stronger anti-bodies in the ranks of ISIS, whose fighters, thanks to the government’s strategic mistakes, have access to the latest weapon technology. With the strategic help of former Iraqi Army top commanders, the combination is proving deadly on the battlefield. If it weren’t for the Coalition airstrikes, ISIS would have made more advances.

The results are instructive. In Tikrit, Abadi’s troops were incapable of retaking the city on their own. While more than 30,000 troops surrounded Tikrit for over a month, it was only after Coalition airstrikes and the Jibouri tribe’s assistance in re-taking the neighboring town of al-Alam, that the city could be accessed. How many ISIS bodies were found inside? Between 60 and 80. In Ramadi, it was reported that 6,000 Iraqi forces fell to 150 ISIS fighters. At this rate, the Iraqi army and Shi’a militias are only making matters worse.

Militarily, the Baghdad government has reached such a low that a sustained presence on the battlefield will only weaken its army even more, and further alienate the Sunni tribes who are still part of the coalition against ISIS. Politically, the Baghdad government should swallow its pride and start working on a serious end to sectarian politics in Iraq.

Dr. Victoria Fontan is the Interim Chair, Department of Politics and Public Policy, at the American University of Duhok, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. She is also the author of “Decolonizing Peace” (2012) and “Voices from Post-Saddam Iraq” (2008). She is now undertaking an additional PhD in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. Her thesis title is: “The Resilience of Insurgencies in Fallujah.” You can find more information on Victoria Fontan’s research on her website: http://www.victoriacfontan.com or follow her on Twitter @DecolonizingPAX.

Punishing the cowboys: Blackwater, justice, and easier wars

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By Charlie de Rivaz:

A Blackwater Little Bird Helicopter flies over the Republican Palace in Baghdad, December 2007. Photo: jamesdale10 (CC 2.0)
A Blackwater helicopter flies over the Republican Palace in Baghdad, Iraq, December 2007. Photo: jamesdale10 (CC 2.0)

On Monday, four former employees of Blackwater, the notorious private US military contractor, were sentenced for the killing of 14 unarmed civilians and the wounding of 17 more in Iraq in 2007.

Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard each received 30 years in prison after being found guilty of several charges of voluntary and attempted manslaughter. Nicholas Slatten, the team’s sniper, was sentenced to life for first-degree murder for his part in the killings, which took place while the four men were working as part of a security detail for the US State Department.

Slatten began the massacre by firing at the civilian occupants of a car caught up in traffic at the roundabout in Nisour Square, Baghdad. In the ensuing confusion three armoured vehicles opened fire, strafing the cars and pedestrians in and around the square with heavy machine guns and grenade launchers, causing what the lead prosecutor described as ‘a shocking amount of death, injury and destruction’. The defendants’ claim that they believed they were under attack did not convince the jury, who convicted them in October 2014.

After Nisour Square

In the fallout from the massacre in Nisour Square, Blackwater was blocked from providing diplomatic security in Iraq – the so-called ‘cowboys’ were sent home. Indeed, you might have expected a general cooling off in the relationship between the private security companies and state militaries.

But there’s been nothing of the kind. Between 2008 and 2011 there were more military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan than soldiers. Compare this to the First Gulf War, when there was one contractor to every hundred soldiers. [i] Most of the contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan were working in logistics: building bases, doing the laundry, cooking the food. But a significant chunk – 18% in 2012[ii] – were involved in providing security, exactly what Slough, Liberty, Heard and Slatten were supposed to be doing on that fateful day in Nisour Square.

Even Blackwater is still involved, albeit under a new – less threatening – name: ‘Academi’. As part of the failed counter-narcotics effort in Afghanistan, Academi has received $309 million from the US government. Erik Prince, Blackwater’s founder, escaped any liability for what happened in Nisour Square and is now gallivanting around Africa for Chinese mining, oil and gas companies as part of his new outfit, Frontier Services Group. In the war against ISIS, Prince has called for the US government to ‘let the private sector finish the job’.

Rotten apples?

The use of private military contractors by governments has increased, not decreased, since the Nisour Square massacre. But does it really matter? After all, weren’t Slatten and co. just a few rotten apples, caught up in the heat of the moment?

It is difficult to know how many ‘rotten apples’ are working for private military companies. In 2012, Faiza Patel, then Head of the UN Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries, claimed that the rot was widespread, alleging that private military contractors had been involved in extrajudicial killings and sex trafficking. A 2008 RAND survey found that 20% of diplomatic personnel who had worked with armed contractors in Iraq found them to be ‘unnecessarily threatening, arrogant or belligerent’. This was echoed by a 2010 New York Times article, which claimed that American troops saw contractors as ‘amateurish, overpaid and, often, trigger-happy’.

It has also become clear that private contractors were heavily involved in the torture of Iraqi detainees during the so-called ‘War on Terror’. One of the most striking revelations from the CIA Torture Report, apart from the systematic use of brutal practices like ‘rectal hydration’ and ‘rough takedowns’, was that private contractors conducted 85% of the interrogations of terror suspects. In late 2012, L-3 Services Inc paid $5.8 million in damages to 71 former detainees of Abu Ghraib who allege that they were tortured by employees of the US defence contractor.

Hiding in the shadows

But the truth is that little is known about the behaviour of private military contractors, because they typically operate in the shadows, beyond the scrutiny of the media. Most governments do not publicise the military contractors they hire, and much of what they get up to on the ground is either classified, or obscured by layers of further sub-contractors.

Indeed, it is precisely this secrecy that makes private military companies so attractive to governments: they can hide both the violence and the cost of war. When a contractor dies no one lines the streets of Wootton Bassett, waiting for the flag-draped coffin to pass. Similarly, when a contractor abuses a civilian in a faraway warzone, the government doing the contracting can deny all responsibility. No pesky court-martials are needed; no reputations tarnished.

By employing private contractors, wars can be escalated on the sly, without the need for unpopular troop increases. This is foreign policy by proxy. The UK allegedly used SAS veterans in Libya, who claim they were paid £10,000 per month, to help topple Gaddafi in 2011. The US Congress was not made aware of the fact that Blackwater were assisting the CIA and JSOC in their ‘snatch and grab’ missions in Afghanistan (and even Pakistan) until it was disclosed by the CIA director in 2009.[iii]

At the same time, the costs of private contractors can be kept ‘off the books’ in a way that the costs of regular troops cannot, thereby making an expensive war seem relatively cheap. An estimated 70% of the costs to the US of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were kept off the books, funded by emergency appropriations approved outside of the Pentagon’s annual budget.

Regulating the cowboys

It is difficult to control what goes on in the shadows. Since the fifteenth century and despite Machiavelli’s warnings about the ‘undisciplined and treacherous’ nature of mercenaries, states have failed to effectively regulate the role of private companies in war. Even today, there is no effective system of legal accountability to check the behaviour of private military contractors; they typically operate beyond the jurisdiction of both national and international law.[iv]

For a long time it looked like Slough, Liberty, Heard and Slatten would evade justice too. It took over seven years before they were found guilty of the killings in Nisour Square, so long that the statute of limitations kicked in and prosecutors had to drop manslaughter charges against Slatten. In fact, the case only made it to trial after a personal intervention by Vice-President Joe Biden. Blackwater/Academi itself never got anywhere near the courtroom. If a case as high-profile and horrifying as Nisour Square proved so fragile, it is little wonder that private contractors rarely end up in court.

But even if there were effective regulation, even if we did live in a world where international law meant something and international institutions worked; even then it would still be better to reject the turn towards using private contractors instead of the regular state militaries.

More wars, bigger wars

This is because private contractors make war easier. With the support of private contractors, states can engage in more wars, and on a far grander scale than would otherwise be possible. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan would not have gone ahead without the support of private contractors: there just weren’t enough soldiers.

In particular, private contractors make unilateral wars easier. There’s a good reason that unilateral wars are unilateral: no one else supports them. If states could only entertain the possibility of going to war if that war had multilateral support, then both the legitimacy of the war and its prospects of success would be greatly increased.

Private contractors make war easier, and they also try damn hard to make it desirable. We should not kid ourselves into believing that these contractors are sitting quietly, twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the government to pick up the phone and call on their services. On the contrary, they are incentivised to lobby the hawks in government to make war. For the contractors, war equals money. It is no surprise that from 1998 Kevin Prince became a steady contributor to the Republican right – one of his recipients was, of course, George W. Bush.

Disturbingly, the more the government outsources its military needs, the more pervasive the war incentive becomes. Intelligence analysts working for companies like Blackwater are now judging security threats. Strategy experts working for these companies are now being asked their advice about the risk of prosecuting such-and-such a war. Those who stand to make money from war are gaining more and more influence in the corridors of power.

While we should welcome the weighty sentences handed down to the ‘cowboys’ responsible for the massacre in Nisour Square; it is no cause for celebration. There has been precious little change since the massacre. The state is still in thrall to the private contractors, and the contractors still operate in the shadows, beyond the eyes of the media and beyond the reach of the law. This matters. We have so far failed to tame the cowboys, we must not let them make violence an easy option.

Charlie de Rivaz is an MA student on the Conflict, Security and Development programme at King’s College London. For three years he worked in Argentina and Colombia as an English teacher and journalist. His main interests include the political economy of war, international human rights law, conflict resolution, and state-building. Charlie is the Managing Editor of Strife blog.

NOTES

[i] Pattison, James (2014), The Morality of Private War, OUP
[ii] Ibid, p.22
[iii] Ibid, p.149
[iv] Ibid, p.147

Interview – Sir David Omand on Iraq, the terrorist threat, and surveillance

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Interview by Lee Watkins:

Professor Sir David Omand GCB, talking at Chatham House in September 2013. Photo: Chatham House (CC)
Professor Sir David Omand GCB, talking at Chatham House in September 2013. Photo: Chatham House (CC)

Sir David Omand, former Director of GCHQ, on the current security climate and the recent IPT rulings on GCHQ’s information gathering.

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Besides your role as Director of GCHQ from 1996-1997, what are other highlights from your career?

I was Principal Private Secretary to the Defence Secretary during the Falklands War. That was a very intense experience, seeing things at close quarters. The other defining experience was the Bosnian War. I was Deputy Undersecretary of State Policy and in charge of the MoD’s policy, which eventually led to the NATO intervention and brought the conflict to a close. That was both extremely hard but also rewarding. A lot of people lost their lives.

I supported NATO’s intervention. This was a period of extreme tension between the US Congress and most of the parliaments in Europe. And so getting something everyone could agree on – that’s the kind of policy work that’s really rewarding. The UN, when it works well, is extremely good. But if you haven’t got full consensus from the Security Council, then it’s very difficult. Getting it under control by reconciling Europe and the United States and then getting NATO to take the lead transformed the situation.

Additionally, you contributed to the 2010 Chilcott Inquiry into the UK’s role in the Iraq War. What was your role during that war?

I wasn’t involved in the Iraq decisions myself, but I was a member of the Joint Intelligence Committee at the time of the Iraq War. I was security and intelligence coordinator in the Cabinet Office. At the time I was deeply involved in constructing the UK’s domestic counterterrorism strategy.

How would you respond to criticism that the Iraq War may have been counterproductive by creating more militant jihadists than it has deterred?

Islamic extremism predated the invasion of Iraq and the War on Terror; for instance the 1998 US Embassy bombings in East Africa carried out by Al-Qaeda or the attack on the USS Cole. You can’t draw a cause and effect conclusion, nor can you say that there’s a direct relationship. Denmark was just attacked just over a month ago and no one would accuse Danish foreign policy of being aggressive.

But there is no doubt that passions were aroused by the invasion of Iraq and I expressed that at the Chilcott Inquiry. The British intelligence committee’s assessment was that as a result of our actions in Iraq the threat level would go up. This didn’t necessarily mean they should not go ahead, but they had an awareness of this assessment. They judged that that was manageable.

What about statements by Al-Qaeda and other groups that their attacks are in response to Western foreign policy, for instance that 9/11 was retaliation for US troops stationed in Saudi Arabia?

They’re going to say that anyway. I think that the Far Enemy thesis applies. If someone like Zawahiri [the current leader of al-Qaeda] believes that the West will prevent the creation of an Islamic state in Egypt or Algeria, then they will try to strike back at the power of the United States. They see the United States, the West, Israel, as implacably hostile to the creation of a Caliphate, of an Islamic State – which we are, because we are so diametrically opposed. It is a clash of values. Which is not to say that these values are intrinsic to Islam – very few Muslim communities in the US or the UK would see eye-to-eye with them.

Public anxiety has been mounting for several years, not only about terrorist attacks but also about government surveillance. Are these fears well-founded?

Some of this is inevitable because the more you know about the threat, the more anxious you are liable to be. If you’re in a happy state of ignorance, your anxiety is less – until something happens. The UK’s terrorist threat level [recently raised to “Severe”] is a way to condition the public to the existing level of risk. That way you don’t have a gross overreaction – shouts of “This must never be allowed to happen again!” and legislating away our human liberties. We make it clear that it’s not possible to stop all attacks, and that isn’t the objective.

The intelligence community’s objective isn’t to stop all attacks?

The formal objective of the UK counterterrorism strategy is to reduce risk so that people can freely go about their normal lives with confidence. You want to stop every goal from being scored by the opposing team – but you know that that’s actually impossible. No team ever succeeds in keeping out all the goals, but at any one moment you’re desperately trying to stop them from scoring. In no way does that imply that you’re taking a relaxed or casual approach. It is the reality that actually, your team is not going to win every game. If you try to give an absolute guarantee, you get driven into actions that are counterproductive.

What is your response to the recent Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) court ruling that the intelligence-sharing relationship between the NSA and GCHQ was illegal?

The IPT’s first ruling determined that British intelligence was in conformity with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the British Human Rights Act. The second again upheld the way the intelligence mission was being conducted. They determined that this was not mass surveillance, but targeted surveillance. However, under ECHR, the UK has the obligation to keep the public informed of how the law applies to them [the intelligence-gathering authorities].

Specifically there were two GCHQ guidelines not in the public domain. These safeguards applied to information collection by the US about people in the UK. In essence, an analyst was required to have the same level of authority [the Secretary of State’s authority] to access this information as if it had been the UK who collected it. But the difficulty came in where the UK was physically not in a position to get the access but the US was. The safeguard meant that the legal equivalent of a warrant, a secretary of state’s authorization, enabled the analyst to go to the US and say, “Have you got anything on this guy?” So it’s essentially a safeguard.

The court determined that two paragraphs in the government’s evidence should be public. They are now public. One of them is entirely theoretical. Technically the government had been in breach of its obligations for the preceding seven years because it hadn’t made these conditions clear. It has now made them clear, so it is now in the right. They should have done this when they first had access to the US material. So I think that’s a good decision, because it reminds the government of their obligation to explain to the public how it all works, and it’s also an excellent decision from the government’s point of view because it reaffirms that the court believes that what is currently going on is lawful, and is consistent with ECHR and it’s not mass surveillance.

I’m slightly confused by your positive response to the ruling because my impression was that GCHQ’s protocol was deemed a human rights violation.

Interception law, which requires warrants and authorities – all of that was being complied with. You’ve got various safeguards for external communication, but because of the way packages switch networks you pick up a domestic communication instead. GCHQ explained that in those circumstances you still require the same level of authority to access the material. But what they hadn’t done was make themselves understandable to the public, under ECHR regulation. And if you look at the 2008 statement, it doesn’t cover this at all. A lawyer would say it does, but if you were a layperson and you read the act, would you understand it? And the answer is no, you wouldn’t.

The government should have done more to explain. And what they’re not explaining is safeguards, which is slightly paradoxical. But the public has a right to know what those safeguards are. Immediately when the judgment came out, all the civil liberties groups jumped on it – but simultaneously GCHQ said they were delighted with the judgment, that what they were doing was legal.

Yes, in part my surprise at your reaction comes from statements by groups like Privacy International, which has launched a campaign titled “Did GCHQ spy on you?” that has gathered 6,000 signatures. Is it not your impression that people feel their privacy is being invaded?

This is simply mischief-making. This is what lobby groups do – try to create this impression. Their privacy was not being invaded, but their right to have the law explained to them was not being upheld. Would they be entitled to any compensation? I hope not.

Do you feel that there has been an escalation of public fear of being spied on? A case of increasing paranoia, if you like.

Yet the polls show that two-thirds of the British public think that more powers should be given to intelligence agencies because of the threat of terrorism. This is a very vocal campaign run on behalf of a minority. Now, they need to be taken seriously – they should be taken seriously – but I don’t think you should run away with the idea that there is huge British public unease. On the contrary, the majority of the British public want the agencies to go on trying to stop attacks.

So you feel that the fears of a terrorist attack are higher than the fears of privacy intrusion? Both of these public concerns put pressure on the intelligence community.

A lot of unease is down to a simple conceptual error in confusing mass surveillance with bulk access. This problem has bedevilled the whole argument. The IPT judgment discusses bulk access. GCHQ has the ability to capture quite a lot of external communication – it’s still a tiny part of the internet – and then a filtering is applied by computers, looking for the specific indicators of the targets they’re allowed to access. What is allowed to be seen by an analyst is tiny. If analysts are seeking, say, Syrian jihadists, then they are only allowed to view what is permitted to them on the relevant certificate. That’s why the IPT concluded that this was highly targeted and not mass surveillance. But it does involve computers looking at the major bearers of information in order to find useful material.

When you think about it, there’d be no other way to find the IP address of a computer being used by a terrorist. How would you find the communication? There are arguments over whether you should feel that your privacy has been intruded upon, even if it’s just the computer whizzing through and throwing your stuff away, because it’s not what they’re looking for. And that argument will go on, but it wasn’t accepted by the IPT.

The key for me is, it’s not about the tools being used by the agency. They are essential. They’re needed to catch paedophiles and criminals and terrorists. Law enforcement is all about digital intelligence these days. Worry about the oversight. Who gets to sign the authority? Who checks they’re actually complying with the regulations?

So you feel it’s a question of human integrity rather than technology?

Yes. This is where the IPT comes in. The report by Rt. Hon Sir Anthony May, Interception of Communications Commissioner, again concluded there’s no mass surveillance going on. He has free access to all the analysts’ stuff at GCHQ and he was previously an appeal court judge, so he’s quite a formidable character.

In the UK, I personally think that we have the model for the rest of Europe to follow. We’ve got parliamentary oversight, judicial oversight, got a specialist court for all of this. The bit that hasn’t been right has been the transparency vis-a-vis the public. The more transparent the government is, the more the public supports it. What Snowden has done is unleash a kind of worry – “What are they doing? How can I trust them?” – and in fact the more that comes out, for example through the IPT, the more people should be reassured that it’s a very organised system, it’s got checks and balances.

We’ve discussed concerns over too much information – what about worries over too little? In many cases, including the recent Charlie Hebdo attack, preceding a terrorist attack there is a trail of tweets, of blog posts, of other online clues that an attack will occur. Is there perhaps not enough access to information?

If you can get private correspondence, rather than public blogging, that will give you a better clue as to where they are – and do they have something big in mind? They may tip someone else off and say, “We’re going to do it on Saturday.” You can’t conclude one way or another about the Charlie Hebdo attack. It’s very important that people understand: intelligence work is a jigsaw puzzle. It’s putting together several jigsaw puzzles simultaneously. The pieces are all muddled up and you haven’t got the lid of the box. You can’t pick up one piece and say, “Without this, the attack wouldn’t have happened.”

It’s kind of a crazy question: “How many terrorist attacks has digital intelligence stopped?” Well, how long is a piece of string? If you’ve got reasonably good coverage of the people who mean you harm, you will stop most of them. The director of the security service indicated recently that the last dozen attempts in the UK have been stopped. Will the next one be stopped? Who knows. At least the score rate is good. And one would not want it the other way around.

Thank you.

Sir David Omand GCB is a visiting Professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. He was the first UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator, responsible to the Prime Minister for the professional health of the intelligence community, national counter-terrorism strategy and “homeland security”. For seven years he served on the Joint Intelligence Committee. He was Permanent Secretary of the Home Office from 1997 to 2000, and before that Director of GCHQ. During the Falklands conflict he was Principal Private Secretary to the Defence Secretary, and he served for three years in NATO Brussels as the UK Defence Counsellor. He has previously written on some of these issues for Strife. You can find his article here. 
Lee Watkins is an MA student in the Terrorism, Security and Society programme in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.
 
 

Lessons from Algeria: counter-insurgency, commitment and cruelty

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By Ethan Brooks and Thomas Giles:

French troops in Oran, northwest Algeria, 1956. Photo: JP Vasse (CC)
French troops in Oran, northwest Algeria, 1956. Photo: JP Vasse (CC)

In the Algerian War of 1954-62, the belligerents tore apart a society that had coexisted for a century. The wounds they left were too deep to heal. But the continuation of theviolence after the war and the spiraling civilian-targeted terror campaigns conducted by both French colonists and Algerian independence fighters was not inevitable. Avoiding this type of outcome is the point of counter-insurgency operations today. More than sixty years later, we can see that no counter-insurgency campaign can succeed with aggressive ‘search and destroy’ tactics against embedded insurgentsif the ultimate aim is peaceful coexistence in a divided society. The United States failed to take this lesson to Iraq and as a result had to adapt during its operations. Any country considering a counter-insurgency operation in the future must weigh up the extra costs of attempting it without this tool. France’s experience in Algeria shows that restraint and long-term commitment are vital if conflicts are to be resolved without the kind of fallout seen in Algeria in the 1960s and Iraq since 2011.

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Even today there are parts of France that have been part of the country for less time than Algeria was. Fully incorporated as an extension of metropolitan France from 1881 under the Second Republic, it was organized into départements like continental France and was complete with all the trappings of the French state.[1] After the war, the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan spoke of ‘Winds of Change’ drawing the imperial era to a close, but in French Algeria the reality was different. For the colons (the Europeans living there) Algeria could never be just another colonial outpost to abandon during the seemingly inevitable tide of decolonization.

The French Empire was a civilizational mission to make Algeria and the rest of the colonies part of France. By contrast, while India had been ‘the jewel in the crown’ of the British Empire and its loss in 1947 had meant a loss of prestige, Britain did not feel as if it was losing a part of itself. The opposite was true of France. In the words of the French Prime Minister at the start of the conflict, Algeria was “irrevocably French”.[2]

If we read history through the lens of its destination, the gradual build-up of Algerian nationalism after the First World War is plain to see. Our eyes are drawn to the violent elements we recognize as important later on. But this is a mistake. The savage war and terror campaigns can in no way be described as inevitable.

Up until the end of the Second World War, French Algerian society was able to function as normal. Terrible violence did occur in the Sétif massacre in 1945 that followed police clashes with Muslim Algerians celebrating the German surrender, but Algeria was to have another decade of the peaceful coexistence it had enjoyed for over a hundred years. The majority of Arab Algerians favoured – or at least saw as the only viable outcome – a variation on the status quo with more political rights and the accompanying economic benefits.[3] Demands for violent overthrow of French rule were limited to the fringes. Nor for that matter were the colons too worried about their future. The idea of having to flee for their lives across the Mediterranean with their worldly belongings in suitcases would have seemed absurd.

To find the cause of the horror story, we must point to decisions made by both sides. In this case, to blame are, on the one hand, the civilian-targeting tactics of the Algerian revolutionary National Liberation Front (FLN), and on the other the unrestrained response of the French army and their failure to control the illegitimate combatants on their side. These combatants included the colon paramilitaries and the French intelligence services which operated in secret via proxies. Aggressive ‘search and destroy’ tactics cannot succeed in the long-term if the insurgents cannot be separated from the population. Hearts and minds cannot be won later on when the force aiming at ‘pacification’ is indistinguishable from the insurgents in the brutality of its tactics. Seen in this light, the bulk of the population can be seen as bystanders who were gradually sucked into the conflict as it grew in intensity. Civilian-targeting forced people to choose sides. The resulting divide was unbridgeable after the fighting. The only option for the Pied-Noirs and the Harkis (the Muslim Algerians who sided with the French) was to flee to France.[4]

The spark for the war came in November 1954 when the FLN carried out its first attacks, a series of over thirty bombings that left seven people dead, five of whom were European civilians. This shocked the French and triggered the deployment of paratroopers to Algeria. But even this event is easily exaggerated in importance. It was the response that leant the attack its significance.

At this point, the FLN was estimated to have only around 500 fighters and was only one small, albeit very violent, group within the broader Algerian independence movement. Before FLN ascendency, there were many moderate parties. These included the Mouvement National Algérien (MNA), which desired Algerian independence, but did not wish to achieve it by violence, the moderate republican party known as the Amis du Manifeste et des Libertés, and the Algerian Communist Party. The FLN rose to prominence because the French authorities allowed it to violently consolidate its dominance over other pro-independence groups, especially the MNA, a failure that stemmed from an unwillingness to distinguish between ‘good and ‘bad’ anti-French factions and engage with them politically before it was too late. Without the MNA, there was no Muslim Algerian voice arguing for a non-violent political solution. FLN dominance dictated the intensity of the conflict and the escalating response of the French authorities sealed Algeria’s fate. Fighting fire with fire, the French military establishment and the colons hit back hard, meeting the FLN’s terror war in Algiers with equal savagery.[5] The popularity of the FLN rapidly grew as ordinary Algerians turned against France.

While the aggressive French tactics were in part the result of existing military doctrine that advocated fierce repression, they were also a product of the military leadership. After humiliation in 1940 at the hands of the German Army, another defeat in Indochina in 1954, and the meekness that accompanied the Suez withdrawal in 1956, another military rout or feeble acquiescence would have shown France to be a cripple on the world stage.[6] The rot had to stop in Algeria. Left to their own devices by politicians in Paris stuck in the deadlock of the Fourth Republic, the generals took the responsibility for holding France together upon themselves. Political oversight should have led to tighter bounds placed on the use of force and long-term goals kept more clearly in mind. Without it, the army made its own decisions as to the lessons it believed it had learned in Indochina. Blaming defeat on a lack of toughness and panicked by the threat of communism, they resolved never to come second best in resolve or forcefulness again. The lack of restraint and the surprising cruelty of the French campaign was a direct result of this. A policy of summary killings, torture, intimidation and terror was carried out. By 1960-61, the FLN had been defeated militarily in Algiers and only small pockets of resistance remained. But during the fighting, aggressive tactics had turned the population of Algeria against the French.

In hindsight, it is difficult to imagine how France ever thought it could keep a peaceful hold on Algérie Française. The Arabs in Algeria were denied many of the political rights that the Europeans had and as a result felt treated as second-class citizens, but the anger and hatred that existed by 1962 did not exist in 1954. French rule could never have lasted in the long-term. However, the massacres, continued terror campaigns and the heart-breaking exodus of colons that followed Algerian Independence in the years 1961-1962 could have been avoided had a different approach been taken.

In looking back at the Algerian War, the goal is not to see how France might have held onto Algeria had it made better decisions. The goal must be to understand how western countries can carry out effective counter-insurgency efforts and avoid the level of suffering and bloodshed that is indelibly linked to Algeria’s independence experience. After the civilian-targeted violence of the war, there was no possibility that Muslim Algerians and the colons could continue to live together as they had done before. The precedent set by both the FLN and colon paramilitaries of targeting civilians with reprisals meant that the cycle of retaliatory massacres was and would have remained intractable.

Any mission that seeks to uphold a central authority against violent challengers must be willing to see the job through without allowing the fight to become personal in the way it was for the French in Algeria. Maintaining this sort of distance above the fray requires enormous sacrifice, restraint, and a willingness to let crimes against you go unpunished. On this last count the United States struggled in its Iraq mission and became the target of violence aiming to provoke a response similar to that of the French in Algeria. The sixty years that have passed since the Algerian War have seen many more counter-insurgency operations, including several in North Africa and the Middle East. Since the Arab Spring, we have seen that nearly every country in the region could find itself needing military help to avoid a drawn-out civil war and mass killings. Given this, it is probable that new counter-insurgency operations will be undertaken. Nor are they likely to be as easy as France’s mission in Mali, where the insurgents were mostly rural and the rebel fighters were geographically, religiously and ethnically distinct from the rest of the population. This especially applies today as events in Syria, Iraq and Libya progress. A lack of long-term commitment wrecked the mission in Iraq. The results of that failure are all too clear today.

Ethan Brooks is in his third year of a BA in International Politics at King’s College London. Thomas Giles is in his third year of a BA in War Studies, also at King’s.

NOTES

[1] Evans, Martin. Algeria: France’s Undeclared War, 2012, p.19

[2] Merom, Gil. How Democracies lose small wars: State, Society, and the Failures of France in Algeria, Israel in Lebanon and the United States in Vietnam, 2003, p.90

[3]Evans, Martin. Algeria: France’s Undeclared War, 2012, p. 101

[4]Horne, Alistair. A Savage War of Peace. p. 537.

[5] Branche, Raphaëlle. La torture et l’armée pendant la guerre d’Algérie. France: Gallimard (2001), p. 423-24

[6] De Saint Marc, Hélie. Mémoires les champs de braises. France: Perrin (2002), p.173

Did torture cost American lives?

by

By Christopher D. Kolenda:

Photo: US Army (creative commons)
US soldier in Iraq. Photo: US Army (creative commons)

“The enemy is the enemy, until he becomes my prisoner,” I remember Lieutenant General Hal Moore saying, “then he is my responsibility”. Moore was with co-author Joe Galloway at Fort Hood, Texas, in 1993. They were talking to officers from 1st Squadron, 7th Cavalry, Moore’s unit in Vietnam, about their book We Were Soldiers Once … and Young.

The message has stuck with me ever since.

This conversation from over twenty years ago came to my mind as I read the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report about the use of so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’.

It makes disturbing reading. One cannot help but be horrified by the graphic descriptions of actions that Americans inflicted on detainees in the wake of the September 11 attacks – torture, in several instances.

The Senate reports a number of cases in which members of the CIA questioned the legality and efficacy of the techniques, but were allegedly rebuffed. That roughly 85% of the detention and interrogation efforts were reportedly carried out by contractors, who do not share the same oaths or professional values as CIA members, raises other important questions.

The Central Intelligence Agency’s response thankfully notes that the program will not be reinitiated under any circumstances, and carefully explains that their counterpoints to the Senate report in no way suggest an ends-justify-the-means case for the practices employed.

A recent op-ed by former Agency leaders makes no such distinctions. They emphasize that the prevailing sense of fear at the time over another attack and the (disturbing) lack of knowledge about al-Qaeda justified the need for “enhanced” techniques. The outcomes, they suggest, saved American lives.

But did unintended consequences, directly or indirectly, actually cost American lives? That question is beyond the scope of the Senate report, the Agency response, and the arguments by the former CIA leaders. It merits thoughtful attention nonetheless.

Observation #8 from the Senate report notes some of the negative effects of the program on the efforts of other agencies, such as the State Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation. Observation #20 suggests that America’s moral standing in the world has suffered. Impacts on the Department of Defense are not mentioned.

This brings me back to the discussion with Hal Moore. Protection of civilians and combatants no longer posing a threat – wounded, sick and prisoners – even at increased risk to yourself, should distinguish American soldiers in times of war. This would be a principle in any organization that I led. It was also, I believed, a practical necessity.

Equally important was to foster a command climate that encouraged, even demanded, candid feedback. Even the best guardians need other guardians animated by common principles.

How we treat others in combat, whether they be civilians faced with impossible real-world choices, people who cannot protect themselves from violence and brutality, and incapacitated or detained fighters on the battlefield we may have been trying to kill a moment beforehand, says a lot about us.

I relied on this principle time and again as a commander in combat in Afghanistan as we dealt with the real-world complexities of fighting an insurgency – in some cases an insurrection – that wore no uniforms, blended with the population, and played by a very different set of rules.

You find yourself in a constant battle of unenviable trade-offs – balancing risk to the mission, risk to your soldiers, and protection of others, for instance. Uncertainties abound over which local actors to trust and how much, over what rules and incentives motivate them, about which information and various interpretations of it to believe, and how best to accomplish the mission and defeat your adversaries or sets of adversaries.

You also find yourself contending with a wide range of emotions. Elation over winning a battlefield engagement; visceral anger and anguish when your soldiers are wounded or killed; outrage when civilians are brutalized or killed by your enemy; sadness in the face of human suffering; anxiety and concern over setbacks; joy and satisfaction at success.

You operate in a world of fine lines, easily crossed. Elation can turn to bloodlust; anger and outrage into revenge; concern into paralysis; sadness and joy into pity and hubris. Your principles and candid people around you keep you on the right side, especially in the most difficult and dangerous and disorienting circumstances.

I found in Afghanistan that the principles of protection and candour normally carried manageable short-term risks, but had significant positive practical implications.

I was astonished to find, however, that many Afghans believed that Americans engaged in torture and human rights abuses as a matter of policy. Many, I discovered, did not see us as the ‘good guys’. They feared us. I learned over time that several opportunists had beforehand provided bogus reports to eager officials. These reports often provoked military actions against their otherwise innocent rivals. The former knew exactly what buttons to push. Their rivals swore blood-feuds against the Americans. All this made the insurgency stronger, the fighting tougher, and our job much, much harder.

My subsequent tours in Afghanistan suggest that our experience was not unique. Of course demands that our Afghan partners respect human rights rung hollow to some. Even Taliban leaders and associates would contrast their treatment of U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl with rumours and reports of torture of their people by Americans.

It is in this context that I suggest the need for further examination. The program did not exist in isolation. It formed part of the context in which our forces operated in combat. Over seven thousand American service members were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan; tens of thousands live with wounds visible and non-visible. Many more civilians were killed or wounded. A precise answer to the cost in lives is unknowable.

There are important questions about how the program may have affected the conduct of the wars, including:

  • To what extent did the perceptions and justifications of the program, to include the actual and perceived use of torture, affect our soldiers and their mission?
  • To what extent did senior leaders’ public justifications of the program affect broader policy and strategy options in the conduct of the wars?
  • To what extent did perceptions and justifications of the program promote an ends-justify-the-means mentality within the military in Afghanistan and Iraq?
  • To what extent did the perceptions and justifications foster a belief in the military that such practices were acceptable and could be used by them in combat?
  • To what extent did ‘false positives’ or erroneous reports, perhaps made out of fear of torture, lead to military actions that cost lives (civilian and military) and created unnecessary enemies?
  • To what extent did the actual and perceived use of torture compromise the military’s moral standing in the eyes of the people in Afghanistan and Iraq? In what ways did that affect the mission and its prospects of success?

The CIA is filled with people who were repulsed by the behaviours cited on the Senate report. These public servants saved American (and Afghan and Iraqi) lives while upholding the values that make the Agency great. To what extent the program that troubled them affected the conduct of the wars, and the people conducting them, merits further investigation.

Did the mentality that created and justified a program intended to save American lives cost American and civilian lives, too, and what can we learn from that?

Christopher D. Kolenda is a Senior Military Fellow at King’s College London and President and CEO of Kolenda Strategic Leadership which helps Not-for-Profit organizations maximize their impact in conflict zones.  He commanded Paratroopers in combat and served as Senior Advisor to three Commanders of International Forces (ISAF) over four tours in Afghanistan.  See his two books on applied combat leadership: Leadership: The Warrior’s Art and The Counterinsurgency Challenge.

Editors’ note: Strife and the US Foreign Policy Research group will be hosting our first annual conference 4 March 2015 at King’s College London entitled: “A world in flux? Analysis and prospects for the U.S. in global security”. Leading up to this, we will be featuring a number of articles and responses to current events related to US and global security from a variety of students, researchers, practitioners and academics. This article is part of that series.