Wargaming Iraq's future
Updated on 13 September 2007
What would happen if US troops were withdrawn early from Iraq? Pentagon war games may have the answers.
What would happen if US troops were withdrawn early from Iraq? Pentagon war games may have the answers.
When President Bush speaks to America tonight he'll back his general's plan to bring around 30,000 troops home by next summer. That's a very limited and highly cautious withdrawal - and Colonel Gary Anderson knows why.
In the last two years the colonel's conducted at least a dozen war games for the US army. Those role-playing exercises are classified, but Anderson makes no secret of the Pentagon's opposition to a hasty withdrawal.
We would see an acceleration of the ethnic cleansing which is going on, civil war. According to Colonel Gary Anderson, Special Adviser to the US Deputy Secretary of Defense. He doesn't see the conventional Sunni-Shia Bosnia-like bloodletting. But internecine war among the Shia for control.
The Americans have been wargaming how to pull back and avoid such a disaster. One scenario sees US combat units withdrawing from city war-zones, to the desert. Creating a buffer zone between the Arab Gulf states and a possibly expansionist Iran. The US providing air support and embedded advisers to the Iraqi army.
Yet according to another forecaster a complete withdrawal couldn't begin until 2012 - because America is far busier fighting insurgents than training Iraqis .
"What is required is a much bigger number of US advisers. There are 6,000 trainers. We need 20,000. They would have to be trained to a much higher condition than current advisors are." - James Miller, former Pentagon war planner
In other words even the modest pullback the President will talk about tonight could be a recipe for failure. Alongside the failure to forge political consensus in Baghdad.
"If that US withdrawal is not accompanied by a political accommodation, you set the scene for the eventual disintegration of the army, the country, into various sectarian factions" - Colonel Gary Anderson.
And so Washington may be on the verge of abandoning its dreams of Jeffersonian democracy. Its lofty expectations in ruins.
"I think quite frankly that the existing 18 benchmarks for Iraq are garbage, absolute garbage. I don't know who thought them up. They are ridiculous. You've got to lower the bar on what these people are available to accomplish on our timeline." Colonel Gary Anderson
The Pentagon's planners are mulling over four basic goals:
1. To defend Iraq's oil and gas
2. To defeat Al Qaeda
3. To prevent genocide
4. To Contain Iran
They're building a base near the Iranian border, and checkpoints along that border. Because the Pentagon's worst case scenario is that Iran controls Iraq's southern oilfields. And that would spark conflict where the Shiite and Arab worlds meet.
As for defeating Al Qaeda, well one Iraqi Arab Sheikh called Abdul Satta was taking them on. Earning the thanks of a delighted George Bush when he sat next to him in Anbar province last week.
But today the Sheikh was killed when his convoy was bombed. A major setback for the President who'd been expected to celebrate the sheikh's achievements as cause for hope in his speech later tonight.
So any US withdrawal from Anbar province could be too hasty. While Pentagon wargamers fear Anbar could also become a refugee haven for Sunnis fleeing Shiite massacres across central Iraq
"If we saw genocide we'd try to stop it. We don't want a Rwanda or Bosnia. I can see us put troops between these Shia and these Sunnis" - Colonel Gary Anderson
But ethnic cleansing could trigger Iraq's partition nevertheless. Between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. The US left dividing and protecting factions. Millions more fleeing the country .And what of the situation where the Kurds could declare independence?
"It's highly possible the Kurds declare independence. They are not pushing it but they are looking to see if there is equitable distribution of oil revenue" - John Bolton
But the deal on sharing Iraq's oil which was struck in February has apparently collapsed amid sectarian infighting. And if Iraq's Kurds then go for statehood, will neighbouring Turkey let them?
"If the Turks did intervene then the Kurds aren't going to go quietly into the night. There will be civil war and the Turks will be stuck in a quagmire." Colonel Gary Anderson
Iraq's new army may keep the country together. Though last week the US Congress was told it was up to two years away from being ready.
And if the President is listening to the dire warnings of the Pentagon's wargamers, he'll be pleading with the American people tonight to let his troops stay.
