In the years immediately following the 2006 "Surge" of American
troops in Iraq, observers of America's counterinsurgency war there
regarded the defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in Anbar Province as
one of the strategy's signature victories. With the assistance of
American troops, the fractious tribal sheiks in that province
united in an "Awakening" that ultimately led to the defeat of the
legendarily brutal AQI. The success of the Awakening convinced many
that smart, properly resourced counterinsurgency strategies could
in fact work. Even more, the episode showed that victory could be
snatched from the jaws of defeat. A decade later, the situation in
Anbar Province is dramatically different. Beginning in 2014, much
of the province fell to the AQI's successor organization, ISIS,
which swept through the region with shocking ease. ISIS quickly
took Ramadi, the province's main city and the locus of the 2006
Awakening. In The Shadow of Anbar, Carter Malkasian looks at the
wreckage to explain why Americans' initial optimism was misplaced
and why victory was not sustainable. Malkasian begins by tracing
the origins of the Awakening of the sheiks against AQI, which by
2005 dominated the province. Capitalizing on the feuding among
traditional sheik leaders, AQI used Islam as a unifying ideology
and initiated a reign of terror that cowed opponents into
submission. With some help from the US, the sheiks rebounded by
unifying against AQI through the Awakening movement. That, coupled
with an increased American troop presence beginning in 2006,
ultimately led to the defeat of AQI. After chronicling how this
transpired, Malkasian turns his attention to what happened in its
wake. The US left, and in a naked power play the Shiite government
in Baghdad sidelined Sunni leaders throughout the country. AQI,
brought back to life by the Syrian civil war as ISIS, expanded into
northern and western Iraq in 2014 and quickly found a receptive
audience among marginalized Sunnis. In short order, all of the
progress that resulted from the Awakening evaporated. Malkasian
draws many lessons from what is clearly now a failed experiment at
nation building, but a few stand out. US counterinsurgency
techniques, no matter how adept, cannot substantially change
foreign societies and cultures, particularly ones that have existed
for centuries. The American people will not tolerate a long-term US
military presence in foreign lands, and what the US builds while
there is likely to be temporary. Finally, the debacle reminds us
that US military intervention always has a strong potential to
generate instability and harm. Ultimately, the US invasion upended
society and let sectarian, tribal, and religious dynamics run their
course. As The Shadow of Anbar shows, the people of Anbar Province
would have been better off if the United States had never invaded
Iraq in the first place. Sadly, the residents there are living with
the terrible fallout of the 2003 invasion to this day.
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