Irregular Warfare Podcast - The Harsh Lessons of Anbar: Insurgency, the Awakening, and the rise of ISIS

Episode Date: May 7, 2021

In this episode, we discuss US counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq's Anbar province, Iraq—from the 2006 surge through the rise of the Islamic State in 2013–2014—with two guests who both experienced the US COIN fight firsthand. Retired General Robert Neller served as the commandant as the Marine Corps and in 2005–2007, he was the deputy commanding general of I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward) in Anbar. Dr. Carter Malkasian is a historian who served as an advisor to US military leadership in Iraq and is the author of Illusions of Victory: The Anbar Awakening and the Rise of the Islamic State.

I think we made a lot of mistakes, but at the same time, you know, it's easy for you to say that. And when you're a specialist or a Lance Corporal out on the street and you're telling them that the people are not the enemy, but the enemy is within the people, but you're getting shot at and your vehicles are getting IED and you're watching your fellow soldier, sailor, airman, marine get killed or grievously wounded. That's mildly interesting, General. The story of AMBAR is of a hard-fought campaign against a very determined insurgency. The story of a famous tipping point of the AMBAR awakening. But before that, it's the stories of the battles of Fallujah, fighting in the Western Desert, and the experiences of lots of Marines and soldiers,

and other servicemen and women, and experienced intense combat, and the renewed battles against terrorism and then the Islamic State that went up until 2018 or so, but one could say even continued to this. Welcome to episode 26 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. I'm Andy Milburn, and I'll be your host today along with Kyle Atwell. In today's conversation, we examine what lessons we can derive from the U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in Anbar province, Iraq, from the surge to the rise of the Islamic State.

Our two guests bring firsthand experience in the U.S. counterinsurgency fight in Anbar province. The conversation begins by examining how the U.S. adapted to counterinsurgency strategy and implemented the 2006 surge. We discuss whether the surge was effective to include the role of the Anbar awakening among Sunni tribes. The episode then discusses the rise of the Islamic State after U.S. forces withdrew, why U.S. security advances during the surge were so fragile, and concludes with a discussion on lessons from Anbar province for future U.S. counterinsurgency efforts, to include whether and how the U.S. should intervene in future conflicts. include whether and how the U.S. should intervene in future conflicts.

General Robert Neller retired in 2019 as the 37th Commandant of the Marine Corps. In his 44 years of service, he has had operational command at every rank, to include serving as the Deputy Commanding General, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force Forward in Anbar province from 2005 to 2007. Dr. Carter Malkazian is a historian, a former advisor to U.S. military leadership in Iraq, a State Department political officer in Afghanistan, and a former senior advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford. He is author of the book Illusions of Victory, The Anbar Awakening and the Rise of the Islamic State, which serves as a framework for today's conversation.

You are listening to the Irregular Warfare podcast, a joint production of the Princeton Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. And here is our conversation with General Neller and Dr. Malkasian. Gentlemen, welcome to the Irregular Warfare Podcast. It's great to have you on today. Andy, it's great to see you again, and you and Kyle and Dr. Malkasian. Thank you for the time today and great to be with you all. General Mel, it's great to

see you again. Carter, if you don't mind, I'm going to ask you to kick off and give some context for our listeners. What is the story of Ambar province and why is it important today? The story of Ambar, in a few words, is of a hard-fought campaign against a very determined insurgency across 2003 until really about, well, 2009 of heavy U.S. Army and Marine involvement. It's the story of a famous tipping point of the Anbar Awakening. But before that, it's the stories of the battles of Fallujah, fighting in the Western Desert, and the experiences of lots of Marines and soldiers and other servicemen and women in experienced intense combat. The story goes on past 2009, as the United States departs, and as you see the Islamic State start to form,

and the renewed battles against terrorism and then the Islamic State that went up until 2018 or so, but one could say even continue today. So that's a brief shot at the history of it. In terms of why looking at it's important. Well, for one thing, the Anbar campaign has some fame. People know about the Anbar campaign. It's been mentioned in presidential elections. The Anbar awakening in

military and policy circles is kind of a well-known term. So just from that viewpoint, studying it is worthwhile. It's also worthwhile studying because people think of it as a turning point, something decisive that happened. So understanding that, what that means, and if that's true or not for policymakers and for academics is worthwhile. Carter, thanks very much for that excellent summary. For General Neller, are the lessons of Anbar province still important today? And if so, why? Well, I don't know if we'll ever have a confluence of events like occurred in Iraq and Anbar again. I mean, we could. But I think it's always important to study campaigns and military campaigns. And this was more, there's a political campaign.

And that was part of our struggle is we realized that if we were successful in our objective of establishing security, we still needed to have local government and a federal government in Iraq that was going to provide for the people, which was probably more difficult than or as difficult than fighting a very determined adversary. You know, you're there. We didn't want to stay. They didn't want us to stay. So we had to do something different to improve the security environment. Sattar gave us an opportunity and we took it. And then it was spread on through the rest of the country, at least in the areas where the SUNY were the majority in the three provinces. Carter, we're going to get into the weeds a little bit about what exactly the surge meant. But looking at that last question, when you look at the research you've done on this and your

practical time on the ground, do you feel like the events of Anbar are relevant to current and future national security policy? Yeah, I also think they're relevant to future national security policy. They're relevant in a tactical sense about what forces have to do if they need to work with a local population. So you can easily take lessons such as you need to understand the cultural and tribal background of the folks that you're working with. You need to understand that there's probably going to be an inherent resistance to your presence there, or at least there's a good risk of that. Understanding the value of trying to work with the people, protect the people, patrol on the value of making adaptations as much as possible. The value of building trust with leaders like

Sean McFarland did with sitar. Those are all things to take. There's moral implications that are there. The decisions that General Neller and General Zilmer had to make regarding whether or not you're going to work with a tribal group that sometimes could be termed as that you have to worry about is that going to be a death squad or not. That's not to say that they were, but it's a moral issue that has to be confronted. These are valuable things to look at. Thinking up from the strategic level, there's also implications for, do we intervene somewhere or not? Are the gains that you made going to last? What do you need to do to make them last? Can you even expect them to last? And then what should

take you back to, well, should I intervene in the first place? So I think those are all big implications. Anbar province soon under reputation as being the most volatile province in Iraq, a reputation that it retained up until the awakening. But Carter, how did the insurgency begin there in the first place? Well, it starts out early on with a few unfortunate events. When we start out in Anambar, it's probably likely that the people didn't really care for American presence in the first place. There were some initial moves by special forces and some other units that came in in 2003 to have good relations with certain tribes, like the Abunimur, out around Heat and the

Al-Saud area. But overall, it's probably fair to say that the Arab, Sunni Arab population wasn't all that pleased to have a bunch of foreigners running around. Now that got worse in 2003 with a series of unfortunate accidents in the city of Fallujah, where our units there ended up opening fire on some groups of people that were protesting. And that caused a deeper sense of being upset. And the insurgency from there starts to burn, starts to grow into a larger organization. And what you see happening is these small little resistant cells, which had been what we call former regime elements, people that were associated with the

regime and the military before. Some of them were news and local, some of them were criminal gangs, and some of them were tribal related. And they're starting to get together and conduct various kinds of attacks against the Americans. That really is catalyzed in March and April of 2004 with the First Battle of Fallujah. And that First Battle of Fallujah occurs, well, because some American contractors were hung from a bridge in Fallujah. That caused military to react. That caused General Sanchez and Secretary Rumsfeld to say that the United States needs to go in and clear out Fallujah.

And so the Marines under General Mattis, General Conway, went ahead and did that. They almost took the city, but there was a big Sunni backlash because of that that spread throughout the whole country. There was a Shia backlash to a certain extent as well. And so that catalyzed the insurgency to a greater extent. And the war just kept on proceeding after that in cities like Ramadi, Al-Qaim. It became very difficult to operate in a lot of the urban areas. The Second Battle of Fallujah in November of 2004, it reduces Fallujah as a problem, doesn't quell, it reduces it as a problem. But the insurgency remains in other places. In the midst of this, as these things happen, you have a more extreme brand of the insurgency grow. Under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, what becomes known as al-Qaeda in Iraq.

And that organization is partly, well, it's led by foreigners, it is foreign funding, but that's not all of it. It does attract Iraqis and Sunnis to its ranks as well. Cells that had been working as a part of this kind of resistance movement start getting connected to AQI. And so AQI grows as an organization with more extremist aims, some visions of terrorism outside of Iraq, extremism in terms of cutting people's heads off and being very brutal towards any kind of Iraqi that would oppose them. And so the insurgency grows in that kind of form. But that's probably a good start to the insurgency, its formation, and those kind of issues.

Yeah, Andy, I just say that, and Carter will remember this, you know, everywhere we'd been, I'd been in Panama, I'd been in Somalia, and we had very quickly when we got in there to try to establish security and stability. And we had re-enfranchised those people that had been in the previous regime, the police, or even people we could vet to re-establish a military. And that was the goal of the force that went in in 2003. I mean, we got the Iraqi army, not the Republican guards per se, but we got the Iraqi army to not fight because we implied to them, hey, we're going to bring you back and let you go back to work. And so there was, but there was a very draconian policy on who could come back in the government. And they came up with a criteria based on what level of Ba'athist you were. And you had to be a Ba'athist to be in the Iraqi army.

And Carter may remember this. We realized that in Anbar, there were very, very few, if any, Shia in Anbar. And it was a retirement place for a lot of the Iraqi army generals. And so we had a meeting in the police station at Fallujah. We asked the chief of police who was Sunni and had been in the army to arrange for local general officers to come and meet with us to try to solicit their support. And we sat there for three hours and listened to them opine about the coalition provisional authority policy about the fact that they could no longer serve and that their pension, I remember a two-star telling me his pension was $100 a month

from the Iraqi government. How was he supposed to support two wives and a family on $100 a month? So there were significant strategic level decisions that were made that I think fed the insurgency because we can never prove, but certainly those people didn't, those individuals, those generals who had a lot of influence, they did not support us. And for all I know, they were facilitating the insurgency and, or they were involved with, you know, other criminality or smuggling or anything like that because they had to make a living. But, you know, you asked about implications.

So if you're going to go somewhere, if you're going to go and you're going to stay, first if you're not going to stay, you've got to think about, do I really want to go? Because the people aren't going to trust you in an insurgency. But then who are you going to allow if you are going to subvert or take out a regime? What members of that regime are you going to allow to come back in after you vet them? And we've done that. I mean, we've had trials and all that World War II, but we also allowed lesser people who were critical to run a government, a mayor or a chief of police or somebody to come back into the government per se, so that there was some stability.

to come back into the government per se, so that there was some stability. General Neller, you've talked about some of the policy missteps that fueled the growing insurgency to include the infamous CPA order number one, which seemed designed to do exactly that. But could you also talk a little bit about some of the hard lessons learned on the ground by those of us in uniform, intending to do the right thing, but not realizing that some of the actions we were taking were actually contributing to the growing unrest? Well, we arrived, there had been an election, but there was also a very aggressive assassination campaign against political leaders that had participated in the 2005 election, and tribal leaders that appeared to support the

Iraqi government. And I'm not sure the whole time, and Carter mentioned this, I'm not sure that we were as knowledgeable or as versed in the culture and understanding the tribal politics and the local politics as we could have been. And the tendency is you want to focus on the things that you know well, which is war fighting, as opposed to spending more time learning the history, which we did over time. And it's easy to say that. I mean, you tend to go to the thing that you're most comfortable with, as opposed to the thing you're least comfortable with. And for leaders, I think the lesson is you've got to focus on the things that you're least comfortable with. I think we made a lot of mistakes, but at the same time, it's easy for you to say that.

And when you're a specialist or a Lance Corporal out on the street and you're telling them that the people are not the enemy, but the enemy is within the people, but you're getting shot at and your vehicles are getting IED and you're watching your fellow

soldier, sailor, airman, Marine get killed or grievously wounded. That's mildly interesting, General. You tell me this, but you're out here, but you're not out here like I am 24-7. So I think there's lessons about training. There's lessons about preparation. And although I do think we did a good job, the situation evolves and the units that are coming on a six or nine or 12-month rotation, they're always working on a training plan. That's you're always kind of behind the target a little bit as far as what's evolved and what's happened.

And so there's a lot of, a lot of lessons that we could learn, but as far as policy things, the military people, you make your best recommendation, provide your best military advice, and you have to be as adamant about it as you can, if you feel strongly about it. And I know, you know, we made a commitment, I think, an ethical moral commitment to the Iraqi army in the march up and then the policy changed. And then it shouldn't have come as any surprise that we had some sort of a backlash or a negative response. A recurring theme from the book is that some insurgents or terrorists were motivated mainly by the desire to kill Americans as occupiers and that the American presence may have actually been a driver of

the conflict itself. Did I interpret this correctly from your book, Carter? Yeah, that's correct. One doesn't have to agree with that necessarily, but I would say when I arrived in Ambar, I didn't appreciate that fully enough. I may have been a little bit idealistic and a little bit naive to think that if we did the right thing, that the Iraqi people wouldn't inherently reject us, that there were possibilities for something like that looks more like South Korea, not that the country looks like South Korea, Japan, but the relationship with the people could look like that. And, you know, in retrospect, I think that was a little bit idealistic of me, naive of me, that us being there, I think, even if we didn't make any mistakes

and we treated the people perfectly well, that there was probably going to be some degree of resistance to us. I remember one time I was on patrol with a unit. It was a perfectly peaceful patrol, nothing bad happened or anything like that. But we ran into three young Iraqi men sitting in a field in front of their house. And, you know, they looked fairly fit. They looked, they weren't looking at us terribly friendly. And I kind of got the feeling that these were probably, you know, insurgents or something that we had just walked into. we weren't we were walking in an area that was um fairly tribal so it wasn't terribly likely we were running into aqi there but there were three young men sitting there and so we sat down and started to talk talk to them

and the uh lieutenant colonel who was who was there on it uh lieutenant colonel dan walroth he used to sit down and talk some ask him ask them some questions. And he eventually, as it gets to the end of his discussion, he says, well, so there are terrorists around here. They're causing problems. And one of the young men goes, resistance, insurgents, terrorists, AQI, what's the difference? They're all just fighting. And his point was, you know, we all have a reason to fight and we're fighting and it doesn't matter if you're a terrorist or you're a resistance or you're secular or if you're highly Islamic doing this. We have a reason to go forward and fight. That doesn't mean there aren't other reasons that are important for the insurgency.

There are other things that cause it. It certainly doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to do the best things that we can in our operations. Mistakes are absolutely unavoidable. We can talk a little bit more about that. But we should try to reduce them as much as possible to try to prevent the problems from being worse. General Neller, an earlier episode of this podcast focused on the question, what makes a unit good at counter insurgency? And the theme that emerged from that episode was that it's a unit that is a learning adaptive organization. On that note, would you mind talking a little bit about how the military, in this case, the Marine Corps, adapted to the insurgency in Anbar province? Just again, put it in context, I think it was the 28th of February, 2006, the Samarra Mosque was blown up. And that began the civil war, an internal civil war between Sunni and Shia

in Iraq. So in addition to us in Anbar and others facing an insurgency, the forces in then around Baghdad were caught in the middle of a Sunni Shia civil war, which didn't abate until the end of that year when the awakening took place. So how did we adapt? Again, I'm not sure that I recognized at the time the criticality of the Sunni Shia rift. I mean, I did later on because, you know, here you have a Shia-led government in Baghdad, and we are in a Sunni, 99.9% Sunni populated province. And the people there, there was no affinity to that government. And the government didn't, quite frankly, go out of their way to do anything to help the people in Anbar. I mean, there was no money coming.

of their way to do anything to help the people in Anbar. I mean, there was no money coming. It was, you know, the wounds and the scars from the Saddam Hussein regime were very, very, very, very deep. And I'm still not sure that they've ever, ever healed. So, you know, here we are, we're trying to grow the Iraqi army and the Iraqi police and security forces. We're trying to get young men in Anbar to join a security force that's led by a Shia government. And we're trying to fight Al Qaeda and other people. As Carter said, whether you just didn't like Americans or you were an Islamic thing and we were infidels or you were Al-Qaeda or we were bad for business, all of the above. We kind of found ourselves in an interesting place. And quite frankly, in July of that year, it was not going well at all.

not going well at all. So we're now in the summer of 2006, in the aftermath of the destruction of the Samarra Mosque, and the insurgency now looks as though it's transitioning to a full-blown civil war. Carter, you were on the ground at the time. What were your observations about how the U.S. military adapted to a rapidly deteriorating situation? There was this interest in how the U.S. military was going to adapt and an interest in almost every unit about adapting and doing better to fight, defeat, suppress the insurgents. And I noticed that from the first time I stepped in AMBAR in 2004. So at that time, when General Mattis came in with the 1st Marine Division, he'd already talked about counterinsurgency. He'd already had brought his men together to talk about it. He was already trying to spread lessons to all the men, spread readings to all his commanders. And he was

trying to understand how adaptation was occurring and understand how to best implement it throughout all the force. Out in Heath, there were special forces under Adam Suk that were spending a lot of time working with the Abanim, were doing very early tribal engagement efforts that in many ways will certainly predate and are going to look a lot like what we see happening later on. The idea of combined action platoons taken from the Marine experience in Vietnam, where small groups of advisors work with local military and police units. That was being taken on board. In fact, General Mattis actually established certain cap platoons to work with the Iraqi police or the Iraqi army. So like Lieutenant Colonel Buell

with 3-1 around Karama and in Fallujah, he had a platoon doing that kind of work. So the momentum was already happening and people were interested in making change. That's not to say that every change that was attempted was right. Like sometimes we probably focused a little too much on rating. Sometimes maybe too many bombs were dropped. But in a way, this was all part of attempting to try to find the way forward. Now, I think that year, 2004, was really overshadowed by Fallujah. And Fallujah is very much a conventional style fight.

And it's hard to criticize a lot that happened because if you're going to clear a city of 2,000, give or take a bit insurgents, then it's going to be really hard to do that if you're not using some air power and dropping buildings. There isn't a way to win hearts and minds and take care of that problem. Not that there's a way to win hearts and minds for many things. And then in 2005, that kind of spirit and interest in reform and in fixing things continued. So we have like an Al-Qaim, Lieutenant Colonel Dale Alford. He spreads his men out to work with the police and army. He gets in a very small post. He emphasizes a lot of foot patrolling. And, you know, General Casey was very taken with that and tried to spread that message throughout the force. We see those kind of changes happening. And that continued on into the early part of 2006,

when we're seeing these problems occur. So, I mean, General Neller himself, he's making sure advisors are going out to work with the Iraqi army and police. And he's checking that on an inaudibly basis. He's pushing forward changes to deal with IEDs, which are by far the deadliest thing that we have to deal with, even if a suicide car bomb is a more impressive individual event. So he's looking for the small changes

and reforms that need to be done for our forces to survive better. So I think there was a lot of emphasis on change before we got to the awakening. And that's not to say everything succeeded or something like that, but just that the interest was there. Carter triggered this memory. So you remember we had the MITS, BITS, and PITS, the Border Military and Police Transition Teams, and they were 10 to

15 people. In July, we're sitting around and it was Larry Nicholson. We're just, hey, we got to do something different. This is not working. If our mission is to transition security responsibility to the Iraqis, we're here to facilitate the Iraqi security forces fighting the insurgency because we want to leave. That's our end game. And so basically what we did is we said, okay, we're going to double and triple the size of these teams. So we made a battalion team, 30 people, and our division team was 45. And then, okay, where are we going to get these people from? Because we're not going to get any more people. So we taxed every unit in their area that had a transition team or an

advisor team to provide individuals. We had a reserve infantry battalion. First one was from Boston. Next one was from Detroit. They had a lot of law enforcement people. So, hey, anybody who's not a leader, they're going to go down and be a police transition team. We'll give you a squad of Marines to provide security. Well, how are we supposed to operate? Well, you're not. You're supposed to help the Iraqis operate. We're here to facilitate them securing their country. I thought I came here. Yeah, you're going to, don't worry about it. There's enough fighting here. You're going to get yours, but you know, you're here to facilitate them. And I remember we did that. And I think it's probably a little known story, but I think it had a significant effect. First, the Iraqis saw,

hey, we're really going to invest in you. And that we're out here doing the things that started with Dale Alford with the combat outposts and the local patrolling. And we're going to spread ourselves out, kind of the inkblot thing. I remember General Hagee was in his last month's command. I took him across the Euphrates River by Habanilla to meet a battalion team. And they fell out. There's like 30 Marines there. And he goes, I thought there was supposed to be 10. I said, well, we changed it, sir. Well, where did you get to all the people? We just took them. We've got 32,000 people here.

We just took them from out of our own hide. Well, who gave you authority to do that? Nobody. We just did it, Kaminat. And then he kind of looked at me and I went, hey, this is what success looks like, General. This is what success looks like, General. This is what success looks like, advising. For future, if you're going to advise, you have to invest. I think my intuition is it had a significant impact, not just on the local population and on the Iraqi security forces,

but also on the insurgents. Both of you have spoken previously about the importance of the advisor mission in Iraq, and the advisors were in real terms the key to any practical exit strategy. And yet, arguably, certainly within the Marine Corps, it was never really recognized as the main effort. But nevertheless, I know, General Neller, you were a proponent of the mission at the time. What were some of the challenges faced by advisors in Iraq and some of the lessons that we learned institutionally about the advisor mission? Those that have preceded us were not foolish people, and they usually wrote all this stuff down. Now, whether

the next generation or the next event is going to take the time to go back and read it and fully embrace it and understand it, some lessons, you know, are just hard learned. And remember now at the same time that General Petraeus was at Fort Leavenworth and he and General Mattis, who was at WMF, Marcent, you know, they wrote the counterinsurgency manual. So a lot of this stuff, and remember it came out for review while we were out there. And it's a really good piece of work. And it's worth having a copy of that in the Marine Corps Small Wars Manual. You go back and you read it.

And it tells you the very similar things that how do you support a host nation force, some of which may be constabulary or paramilitary, and get them to follow the rule of law. And that's not normally something we do. We kind of let the special forces do that. But I think Marines, and I'll be parochial here, I think Marines like special forces. We're used to traveling around the world, engaging in training and working with other foreign militaries. And you should develop some sense of cultural awareness by dealing with other countries and pick up some of the language and some of the customs and courtesies, which is a big deal. And, you know, we made some mistakes. And again, not everybody is suited for this mission.

There were a few people, and Carter will remember this, they just weren't comfortable out there on the edge. And this is a high risk mission. I mean, you're out there maybe with a small group of your fellow Americans, the QRF isn't going to get there in 10 minutes and you have to trust your counterpart that they're going to provide security. And so it takes time and it's a very difficult, demanding, courageous kind of mission. But I believe in the future, if we want to engage, we talk about great power competition, one V one against another peer. I think the real way to fight it is to compete in other areas.

For example, the United States in this hemisphere and in Africa is where we really, it's a more of an indirect approach, but I think special forces and small teams of Americans, whether they be soldiers, sailors, and Marine Coast Guardsmen, or civil service can go out there and have a huge impact. Talking about the surge as this big increase of resources at the national level can seem somewhat abstract. It means more troops, more money. I think there was a civilian surge that was supposed to accompany it. So kind of understanding the characteristics of the surge in AMBAR specifically and how it translated into how we fought tactically and operationally is really valuable. In the years following the surge, the kind of death of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Anbar and a drop in violence in the area was regarded by many as a victory.

And there have been debates about why violence reduced. Can you kind of go through what those arguments are and where you fall in on what explains the drop in violence? I don't know if we know exactly everything that explains the drop in violence? I don't know if we know exactly everything that explains the drop in violence that happened through the surge. And there's lots of different explanations and there's things the Iraqis were doing that today we don't even understand all about. But a lot of it starts with what we call the Anbar Awakening, where a group of tribes led by Abdel Sattar decided to start fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq. And there's debates as to what made them decide to stop fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq. Some say that it was

al-Qaeda in Iraq was so brutal that it forced them to fight. They had killed certain tribal leaders. Some people say that it was us that enabled them to do it, that we were helping them more. And General McFarland did a fantastic job helping them. So I'm not disputing that. Some people say, and I think there's something to this, that Al Qaeda was edging in on these guys' territory, edging in on their money, edging in on their criminal enterprises, and they didn't really want to see that happen. So whatever the reasons, that got these folks to start fighting to a greater end. And we tried to help them as much as we could with money, with air support. It means communications to get the air support, allowing them to have police forces and police stations.

And it wasn't something that turned immediately. It wasn't just like these guys stood up and all the violence ended. It was six to eight months of really hard fighting in which we had heavy casualties and Al-Qaeda in Iraq had heavy casualties. And it took time to spread the movement. And so these are just a few guys in blue uniforms, ragtag crews, going on patrols and trying to hold police stations against massive suicide car bombs. And at the same time, there's Marines out, there's soldiers out, patrolling, setting up more and more small outposts. I think it is fair to say that this happened at a point where all that adaptation we were talking about was starting to blossom. And so you're starting to see tactical improvements happen at the same time.

And you saw a willingness to work with tribal groups and a capacity to that was probably a bit larger than it had been previously. Previously, people were definitely interested in doing it and they tried to do it. But I think we were a little bit better by that time. And so Alkai Narai tries to react or they try to survive, but eventually they're suffering a lot of casualty. And so eventually they start getting pressed out in various areas. When their tribe decides they don't want you in their area, they have a good idea to say who's who and to point people out. And then they can tell us who the bad guys are. And our special operations forces can go after them, or the Marine unit can go after them, the Army unit can go after them. And so that's slowly

spreading out and getting them out of the area. But at the same time, there's a lot of things we still don't know about. There's lots of stories about government or tribal or intelligence based Iraqi hit squads that are working out in various areas and trying to get rid of these guys. I mean, I'd also like just to re-footstump the moral dimensions of this. We were deciding we were going to work with a tribal militia, essentially. A militia that wasn't hired by the government that we're trying to support, that would eventually be paid by the government.

But at first, there's a question of where the salary is going to come from, questions of who is it reporting to. And they really didn't want to be reporting to the government terribly much. They wanted to report to themselves. So there was a question about, well, who are these guys accountable to?

What are they going to do? These are all things that are accompanying, working with militias. And you can read in a lot of things now that people feel that, well, we just should have moved forward and immediately gone with it. Immediately decided to go for it because the risks were that great. And it's worth it. You should just accept that. And thankfully, a lot of those things didn't come to pass. But General Zomer, you know, he slowed things down. General Neller could talk about the Zomer letter that he put out that said how we were going to work with them and how they were going to have to work for the government. that. If something bad had happened back then because of those militias, would it look today like it was worth it? Would it look today like the risk was worthwhile with everything that's happening and Anbar essentially falling? I don't think it would look like it was worth it. And in retrospect, I don't know what I would have said at the time, but in retrospect, I don't think that

would have been worth any U.S. soldier, Marine having impugned their moral position by having done that. I don't think that would have been worth it. So whatever tactical friction happened because we waited a little and we were a little careful, I think in the long view it was worth it. Yeah, just some more information on what Dr. Malkasian said. So when we became aware through Colonel McFarland that there was a potential to work with these guys, General Zilmer had very strong concerns, and as we all did, about the validation and the vetting of these forces. So basically what we said is, okay, you're going to have to be a member of the army or

the police in order for us to support you. Now, were there other things going on? Undoubtedly, yes. I mean, there was a former Saddam Fadine people, and we had to get names of people. In order for you to join the police or the Iraqi army, you had to submit a roster. They have to be vetted in Baghdad, which was a whole, we had a whole team of people that did nothing but vet and pay the Iraqi army and the police because they weren't getting paid. And we also had another policy decision. I remember this was early on. We told them that if they got wounded, we would treat

them at our medical facilities. That was a huge win for us to get them to fight. And, you know, you hear a lot, well, the Iraqis, I said, give me one example where after that decision, where the Iraqi army or police didn't fight and stand by us. And you can't find one because once they knew we were going to treat their wounds, once they knew that we were going to do our very best to pay them and provide security for them and help them be successful, those policy decisions. But on the other side, once the awakening started, what it really was, was the majority of it was, okay, we'll provide young men to be police and to serve in the army as long as they can stay in Anbar and not have to go to other provinces, which for a while with

the Iraqi government was a deal breaker. We finally convinced them, look, just let them stay here for two years. Let them stay near their homes. Now, there's a downside to that too, because they're still under the influence of the local tribes and the sheikhs. And as Carter said, it didn't happen overnight. I remember we couldn't get anybody to go to the Iraqi recruit training facility in Havaniya. And in September, we got like 400. And then we had another graduation. Next month, we had like 700. And then the month after that, we had 1,000. And then we had a cap on police in Anbar of about 13,000. And by the time we left in February of 2007, we had to get an expansion of that because so many people wanted to join the police. We had gone from mayors in Fallujah and Al Qaim and no mayors

in all the other major cities to a mayor in every everywhere except the city out west. I can't think of it. So it didn't happen immediately, but it happened rather rapidly where, you know, kind of from August, September into February, and then it continued to accelerate into 2007. And I'll just end with this. The other generals with us was General Dave Reist, and he kind of worked the Palm Hill side and the economic side. And he used to meet with expat sheikhs in Amman, Jordan. And he came back one time and he goes, I met with one of the senior tribal leaders from Ambar and the guy told me this, we will win when we let you win. And I think they decided to let us win or let there be success by allowing the tribes to support us as opposed to Al-Qaeda for all the reasons that Carter laid out.

Yeah, the U.S. forces and resources, if I'm understanding correctly, made a difference. The question is how those resources tied into the long-term local political dynamics. And this is a theme in your book, Carter, which is a little complex, but I think it's worth getting to before we move on, which is that we were able to essentially support some tribes and our support was able to tip the balance and help them in a lot of ways. And if I understand though, these tribes, some of the ones we supported were not status quo powers. They were not people who were already in powerful positions. We kind of assisted them to rise up against kind of the status quo political dynamics of the area. And then, so the question is, you know, are we shifting political dynamics temporarily

or were the things that we were providing leading to kind of a long-term change in local political dynamics? Yeah, I think that's a good summary of it. I think an easy way to think about it is that Al-Qaeda had managed to form in the area. Al-Qaeda had supporters that weren't just foreigners. And Al-Qaeda had managed to pretty much kick all the tribes on their back heels. And it had happened in a variety of places. back heels. And it happened in a variety of places. Maybe I could cite maybe one or two tribes that were able to hold their own against al-Qaeda. Why does that happen? Because tribes are fractured. They're about protecting themselves and defending themselves. There is no hierarchy

that effectively exists to unite them together, especially if it's not uniting against a foreign invader, it, uniting against other Iraqis and such. That's really difficult. And so Al-Qaeda's got money. They're more united. They're able to exploit religion, try to convince people that they're right. And so they've got some real advantages. So we come in and we tip the balance. We support some of these tribes, which, as you noted, are also more at the top tribes. So we supported certain tribes. We gave them power.

We enabled them to be able to hold down Al Qaeda. But that was a virtue of money, bombs, advising. That's how that was able to happen. So when you leave and you remove that, then dynamics are going to shift again. And it's a decent bet that they can shift back to the way that they previously were. And I think that's what you start to see happening after we leave. You both describe a rare synergy between a policy decision, namely the surge, and tactical actions on the ground that together, along with other

factors, contributed to a dramatic reduction in violence. And then in 2011, U.S. troops leave Iraq, and within three years, the Islamic State has established a caliphate that encompasses one third of Syria and Iraq. And, well, they've captured Fallujah, Ramadi, most of Anbar province and are within 30 kilometers of Baghdad with it is fair to say the compliance if not the active support of most of the Sunni tribes in Anbar province, the same tribes that had supported the awakening and collaborated with the Marines in the counterinsurgency efforts. Why, in your opinion, did this dramatic change in allegiance and indeed in the Iraqi government's fortunes take place in such a short period of time? Again, you were there and you saw a lot

of this yourself during your service. When we left in 2011, to me, the big concern was, okay, is the Iraqi government going to continue? Are they going to, what's the forcing function for them to treat the people that live in Anbar, Diyala, and Saladin with equity and some level of fairness? And it would be very easy for somebody to come in there if they didn't do that, or there were perception of them not doing that, which there always was. That, hey, this Iranian government in Baghdad, they don't care about you. Look at how you're living out here. Look at the wealth that's happening in the South and on and on and on. And so they were able, I think, to influence people because, again,

some of those people, maybe they just went to ground. And then when you saw this successful Sunni ISIS resurgence in Syria, there was opportunity. So then as far as what happened to the Iraqi security forces and their level of capability and training and readiness, I'm not qualified to speak to that. All I will do say is that the 7th Iraqi division that we trained that ended up at al-Assad, I don't think they were ever overrun or beaten. And again, here you see the Marine Corps ends up sending two advisor groups into Takatim and to al-Assad to support the local Iraqi forces, but in a very different way, more as a

Iraqi forces, but in a very different way, more as a fire support coordinator and helping them provide coalition capabilities for their fight. But now you've also got popular militia forces that are Shia-led in Anbar, which I find, I mean, I know it's happened, but I find it, even though there were Shia soldiers in the 1st and 7th Iraqi Division, the fact that there are PMF forces in Anbar, I find incredible just because of the long historical animosity between the Sunni and the Shia, not just in Iraq, but globally. So it's a different kind of thing. And you've got Iranian elements in Baghdad, as you know. We've got Iranian elements in Baghdad, as you know. The government is in a difficult position where they asked us to come in, but then they've got their Iranian affiliations. But the fact that the seeds of another insurgency or at least a rebellion against the Iraqi

federal government were there, it shouldn't be surprising, particularly if they didn't take care of the people that live in these three provinces, which are the three majority Sunni provinces in Iraq. And the tendency, I don't know, my guess is they didn't. Just like my guess is, after the destruction for the successful fight against ISIS, the destruction of Ramadi and other towns, I'd be willing to bet that there hasn't been a lot of reconstruction of these places, which is a shame because if they don't do something to tell the people that live there that your federal government cares about you, we're going to potentially see this again. Carter, you discuss this period in your book. Can you tell us a little bit about

the conditions that led to the reportedly poor performance by the Iraqi army and the rise of the Islamic State? So, I mean, for one thing, we had been gone for a while at this point. So the units getting the same kind of money, the same kind of training, the same kind of advising and mentoring of leadership, that wasn't there anymore. And you have to think about the situation that these units are in, in Anbar province. They have a large number of Shia in the units, and they're surrounded by Sunni populations. The tribes that used to help keep some control over things, they've grown more fragmented over time as the government has ceased to provide money to them all. And there is no presence like our presence was to reduce those

rivalries that exist. Sattar gets killed early on, many think not by Al-Qaeda in Iraq, but by a tribal rival. His brother takes over, his brother doesn't have his kind of charisma. Other groups come up that cause rivalries and cause issues to happen there. So the military's in that environment, plus the military's in this environment

of Sunnis who are very upset at the government. So throughout 2013, there's these protests happening in Ramadi and Fallujah, where people are criticizing the government, refusing to do what the government has to say. And the government's from time to time telling the army to clear this out, you need to go take care of this problem, which culminates at the end of that year when they finally send them into Fallujah. But while those protests are happening, those protests feature members of the Islamic State, because the Islamic State sees what's happening. The AQI becomes the Islamic State by this period. They see what's happening.

And so they go in and rally people too, to come and work with them. And there isn't much one can do. So if you're a Sunni, a tribal tribal or anyone else who'd worked with the government before, what are you going to do in that situation? Are you going to decide you're going to fight the Islamic State on behalf of the government? All the local people hate the government. So you're going to lose power if you do that. Or are you just going to kind of let things go a little bit and see how it's going to play? That would be a more natural inclination. So the army is not in a good situation to manage everything. They're facing greater threat than

they faced before. And we shouldn't understate the impact of Islamic State tactics, their use of car bombs that were extremely explosive, you know, trucks and garbage trucks, dump trucks, fire trucks, Humvees piled with explosives. There's a much larger blast. So that did a lot to frighten them. I guess the last thing I'd say here is that this dynamic that we see in Iraq and in Anbar is not only seen there. It's seen throughout Iraq. It's seen in Afghanistan. The forces that we create can perform fairly well when we're there.

When we leave, there is often a great deal of degradation, which we should then think about in our expectations of how they're going to perform in the future. I mean, that makes sense. You said that you observed that when we build forces, when we leave, they often struggle. So a perpetual light footprint presence might make sense if we have a critical interest. From building our own military and diplomatic capabilities as the United States, what are the implications of this for how we structure our force, how we conduct training, and how we kind of get ready to engage in these types of future conflicts? So our mutual friend, Kale Weston, you probably know, he despises surges.

He always didn't like the idea of surging forces. He was always vociferously against it. He'd always say we should stay low to go long. And I think that there's a lot of wisdom in that. That one of the main policy expectations I think that one should have is that a lot of the changes that you create very well won't last. So if you value that stability, if that stability is an interest, then you're going to have to plan to stay. And that should also start shaping a lot of other thoughts. So if you know that your surge or your short military intervention isn't going to create long-term stability,

and you know that the only thing that is going to create a modicum of that stability and mitigate threats to the United States, if the only thing that's going to do that is staying, then you should be thinking about what's the smallest force that can do this? What's the way that makes us most sustainable? How do I minimize costs? How do I minimize casualties? Because with a lot of these surges, the gains that we saw happen have now disappeared. And in many cases, the situation that drove us to surging, we're actually in a worse situation now than we were at that point. Not so much in Iraq, but definitely in Afghanistan now. So intention to stay long. If you can't, if the costs aren't worth it, then you probably shouldn't get involved in the first place.

Probably should just stay out. That's a second big policy. The third policy lesson is kind of in the middle between the two, and it's not something that's in the book. And that's that you should think when you're in the middle of these things, it often feels incredibly urgent. I mentioned that in the awakening part. It often feels incredibly urgent. I mentioned that in the awakening part. The surge at the time in 06, 07, when they were putting in the additional force under Donald Trump, that seemed really urgent.

Like, we really needed to do this to defend our national interests. Surging in Afghanistan seemed incredibly urgent. Seemed like things were about to fall apart. In those moments, it might be worthwhile to bias oneself a little bit against how great the danger is and to be a little patient and to see how much you can ride out, to see how much you can endure, because that may avoid responses that only get us into deeper trouble later on or are costly and difficult to enact. So I guess I'd say, you know, when it was faced with urgency, have patience. So those would be my three big implications I think I'd give. Well, I think we clearly need greater capacity in those other agencies other than the Department of Defense, whether it be state, USAID, Peace Corps, go small and go long, as Carter said. I mean, sometimes less is more. I read a paper written

by General Brute Krulak when he was on the National Security Council in the 60s when he gave advice about Vietnam. And he said, never, never, never commit conventional forces to Vietnam. We can do this all with advisors and support the South Vietnamese government. And so patience is not necessarily an American virtue, particularly with a four-year political cycle. So again, taking the long view, whether it be against a peer or a strategic objective is critical. As far as the force, you train for the mission.

We tell battalion, brigade, squadron size units, ships, here's your mission and you do your pre-deployment for that mission. You know, we tell battalion, brigade, squadron size units, ships, here's your mission, and you do your pre-deployment for that mission. But for the leadership, for the officers, and the senior enlisted, you know, we need to educate. Our educational system has to prepare them to see when they get to where they're going, that it's not necessarily what they thought it was going to be, and that they have the intellectual capacity to go, whoa, this isn't what I expected. We may need to adjust or I need to maybe not do the things I thought I was going to do. And I'm afraid that brings us to the end of this episode. General Neller and Dr. Malkasian, thank you very much for coming on the Irregular Warfare podcast. It's been a great pleasure having you as guests. And it's great to see you again and you and Kyle,

and especially great to see Dr. Malkasian, who is a very modest guy and is proud to put himself on the line as much as any infantry, Marine, or soldier I've ever seen. A great American and a great national treasure, but it's great to be on the podcast with him. And I wish you guys well. Everybody stay safe. Thank you, General. It's incredibly generous. And I think I'd say everything plus about yourself.

Andy, Kyle, thank you for the time today and going through this. It's great that you guys are keeping a focus on irregular warfare and spreading this information about. Thank you. Thanks again for listening to episode 26 of the Irregular Warfare podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks. In our next episode, Nick and Andy will discuss the role of special operations forces and irregular warfare in a potential conflict with China with Admiral James Tavridis. After that, Shauna and Nick will host Gail Limon, author of the book Daughters of Kobani, and General Joseph Battelle to discuss working with partner forces in the counter-Islamic state fight in Syria. Please be sure to subscribe

to the Irregular Warfare podcast so you don't miss an episode. You can also follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. One last note, what you hear in this episode are the views of the participants and do not represent those of West Point, the Department of Defense, or any other agency of the U.S. government. Thanks again, and see you next time.