Insurgency and Counter Insurgency in Iraq by Ahmed S. Hashim

1.            Book Details

a.            Title                 -           Insurgency and Counter Insurgency in Iraq

b.            Author             -           Ahmed S. Hashim

c.            First Print       -           30 March 2006

d.            Publisher       -           C. Hurts & Co. Ltd (United Kingdom)

e.            Pages             -           473    

f.             Price               -           £20.00

About Author

2.            Ahmed S. Hashim is Professor of Strategic Studies at the U.S. Naval War College and an expert on Middle Eastern strategic issues and irregular warfare, served three tours in Iraq between November 2003 and September 2005 as an advisor to the U.S. command in Baghdad. His previous books include Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment and Iraq: Sanctions and Beyond, both written with Anthony H. Cordesman.

The Book

3.            Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq is the best book published to date on the Iraqi insurgency’s “origins, motivations, and evolution and the U.S. policy and strategic and operational responses to it.” Completed in November 2005 and released in March 2006, the book presciently anticipated the subsequent sharp escalation of sectarian violence in Iraq that threatens to saddle the United States with its greatest foreign-policy disaster since the Vietnam War.

4.            Hashim begins by placing the Iraqi revolt in its historical context. He next profiles the various insurgent groups, detailing their origins, aims, and operational and tactical modus operandi. Looking ahead, Hashim warns that ethnic and sectarian groups may soon be pitted against one another in what will be a fiercely contested fight over who gets what in the new Iraq.

5.            Hashim contends that three American “structural defects — ideological rigidity born of certain predispositions, failure to implement reconstruction, and the organizational culture and mindset of the U.S. military — promoted the outbreak and perpetuation of the insurgency.” There followed the disastrous decisions to invade Iraq with a force too small to secure the country, to disband the Iraqi army (by not recalling it to paid duty), to deprive the reconstruction effort of sufficient money and essential Baathist professional expertise, and to fight a counterinsurgent war in a manner that benefited the insurgency itself.

6.            In Iraq, the U.S. Army, which for 30 years after the Vietnam War willfully ignored even the study of counterinsurgency, notwithstanding the prevalence of irregular threats to U.S. security in the post-Cold War world, violated virtually every established principle of successful counterinsurgency, including minimal use of force, primacy of political responses, integrated civil-military operations, and separation of insurgents from the local population. The army concentrated on killing insurgents and did not understand the tactical force requirements of counterinsurgency — forbearance, personnel continuity in the field, foreign-language skills, cross-cultural understanding, and sufficient troop strength to clear and hold territory — much less engage in reconstruction. The combination of inadequate force on the ground and a one-year troop rotation policy precluded effective pacification of Sunni Arab Iraq as well as “time to develop and institutionalize knowledge of the particular area.”

7.            Hashim believes that the “insurgency has not only exacerbated ethno-sectarian tensions in the country, but also highlighted and solidified the mutually exclusivist nationalisms of (Iraq’s Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish) communities. As a result, the prospects for U.S. success in Iraq, in bringing about security as a stepping-stone towards reconstruction and political stability, are not good.” In fact, the situation in Iraq has so worsened since Hashim completed Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq in November 2005 that the White House has stopped repeating its mantra of “staying the course” and lowered its once-avowed goal of a democratic Iraq to simply an Iraqi government strong enough to permit a U.S. withdrawal.

8.            Hashim believes that a “managed partition” of Iraq i.e. “a process mediated by the Coalition and the international community in negotiations with the major ethno-sectarian communities in Iraq” — is the only option available “that can allow us to leave with honor intact.” In fact, Kurdish Iraq has already effectively partitioned itself, and the Sunni Arab community’s unwillingness to accept Shiite governance bodes ill for effective central government in the rest of the country. The American invasion and occupation of Iraq may have forever destroyed the Iraqi.

9.            Comments.  Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq is must reading for both students of modern irregular warfare and those who wish to understand a foreign-policy debacle that has revealed the vincibility of American military power. The book offers a clear-eyed analysis of the increasingly complex violence that threatens the very future of Iraq. His criticizers believe that Hashim's study is thick with detail but his style undercuts his narrative. His use of the first person gives an arrogant tone to the narrative, transforming his study into a lecture. Moreover, Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq won plaudits in popular press precisely because Hashim pressed the right populist buttons.