Surge provided balm for sorry mess

IN my view, the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was an extremely serious strategic error. However, the task of moment is not to cry over spilled milk but to help clean it up: a task in which the surge, the comprehensive counterinsurgency approach and our troops on the ground are admirably succeeding.

IN my view, the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was an extremely serious strategic error. However, the task of moment is not to cry over spilled milk but to help clean it up: a task in which the surge, the comprehensive counterinsurgency approach and our troops on the ground are admirably succeeding.

In the comprehensive approach, best-practice counterinsurgency closely integrates political, security, economic andinformation components. It synchronises civil and military efforts underunified political direction and common command and control, funding and resource mechanisms.

This requires a shared diagnosis of the situation, agreed between civilian and military agencies, intervening coalition forces and host nation governments, and updated through continuous, objective situational assessment.

This method thus represents the best approach to ending the Iraq war.

When I went to Iraq in 2007 (and on both previous occasions) it was to help end the war by suppressing the violence and defeating the insurgency: to end the war, not abandon it halfway through, leaving the Iraqis to be slaughtered.

When the US and the coalition invaded Iraq in 2003, we took on a moral and legal responsibility for its people's wellbeing. Regardless of anyone's position on the decision to invade, those obligations still stand and cannot be wished away merely because they have proven inconvenient.

Still, like almost every other counterinsurgency professional, I warned against the war in 2002-03 on the grounds that it was likely to be extremely difficult, demand far more resources than our leaders seemed willing to commit, inflame world Muslim opinion, making our counterterrorism tasks harder, and entail a significant opportunity cost in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

This was hardly an original or brilliant insight; it was a view shared with the rest of the counterinsurgency community. One would be hard-pressed to find any professional counterinsurgent who thought the 2003-04 Iraq strategy was sensible.

The task for practitioners in the field today is not to second-guess the decisions of 2003 but to get on with the job at hand, which is what both Americans and Iraqis expect of us. In that respect, the new strategy and tactics implemented in 2007, which have relied for their effectiveness on a population-centric strategy and the extra troop numbers of the surge, are succeeding and deserve to be supported.

As noted, in 2006 a normal night in Baghdad involved 50 to 100 dead Iraqi civilians, and each month we lost dozens of Americans killed or maimed. In 2008, a bad night involves one or two dead civilians, US losses are dramatically down - to levels not regularly seen since 2003 - and security is beginning to be restored.

Therefore, even on the most conservative estimate, in the 18 months of the surge to date, the new counterinsurgency approach has saved 12,000 to 16,000 Iraqis and hundreds of American lives. And we are now, finally, in a position to pursue a political strategy that will ultimately see Iraq stable, our forces withdrawn and the whole sorry adventure of Iraq cleaned up to the maximum extent possible, so that we can get on with finishing the fight in other theatres, most pressingly Afghanistan.

On the ground, in Iraq and Afghanistan over several years, I have fought and worked alongside brave and dedicated military and civilian colleagues who are making an enormous difference in an incredibly tough environment. These quiet professionals deserve our unstinting support.

Besides having the courage to close with and finish the enemy (an enemy capable of immense depravity and cruelty towards its own people), they have proven capable of great compassion and kindness towards the people they protect. The new tactics and tools they are applying - protecting the people 24/7, building alliances of trust with local communities, putting political reconciliation and engagement first, connecting the people to the Government, co-opting anyone willing to be reconciled, and simultaneously eliminating the irreconcilables with precision and discrimination - these techniques are the best way out of a bad situation that we should never have got ourselves into.

My position on counterinsurgency in general, and on Iraq and Afghanistan in particular, could therefore be summarised as "never again, but ..."

That is, we should avoid any future large-scale, unilateral military intervention in the Islamic world.

Edited extract from The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, by David Kilcullen (Scribe, $35).