The End of an Act Approaches in Iraq

While we tend to avoid the topic, we follow the events of Iraq daily. Most Americans don't, they only catch the headlines. If you can find accurate, detailed news sources about events in Iraq, and you read them daily, follow the unfolding events like a play being performed on the stage of history, and observe the trend lines we believe you can get a feel for what is happening. Because most Americans take a casual look at the war, get the made for TV version of events, and are heavily influenced by the political view rather than the strategic view, disinformation on Iraq can drive the conversation.

It isn't an accident House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a surprise visit to Iraq this past weekend, as much as her political opponents would like to present her as a fool, she is very much aware of events as they unfold. We believe the conclusion of this act in the play is at hand, and the next act in the Iraq campaign is about to begin. Since our leadership has never actually discussed victory conditions for Iraq, we observe the conclusion of this act will not be victory, at least by the definition of the official government policy driving the action.

The end of the act we are talking about is the defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which has either already occurred or is at hand. We begin with the view from the ground.

The al-Qaida terror group in Iraq appears to be at its weakest state since it gained an initial foothold in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion five years ago, the acting commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East said Wednesday in an Associated Press interview.

Army Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who assumed interim command of U.S. Central Command on March 28, acknowledged that al-Qaida remains a relentless foe and has not disappeared as a serious threat to stability. But he said an accelerated U.S. and Iraq campaign to pressure al-Qaida has paid big dividends.

However the most important signal came last Friday in a tape released that is reported to be Osama Bin Laden. The tape changes the message for Al Qaeda, and can be interpreted as Al Qaeda's surrender in Iraq as they relocate to new grounds in an effort to rally support.

"Al-Qaida could now be preparing its followers for a strategic failure in Iraq. It therefore needs a rallying cry and Palestine is a no-brainer," Nigel Inkster, director of Transnational Threats and Political Risk at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, told the BBC.

"There is some evidence that support for Osama Bin Laden has been dropping in the Arab world because of revulsion about al-Qaida behavior and especially the killing of Muslims," said Inkster, a former British intelligence deputy chief. "On the other hand, there is still an appetite and ambition to engage in terrorism spectaculars in western Europe and U.S."

The US military has now defeated Saddam's Iraqi military, defeated Rumsfeld's "dead enders", won over the Sunni tribes, reversed the course of a civil war, and all signs are pointing towards the defeat of Al Qaeda. With the government process evolving albeit slowly, including the slow consolidation of power between the factions, there remains one final act in Iraq for the "military" phase of the Iraq campaign, and it appears to be picking up momentum by gathering all the attention.

The top uniformed U.S. military officer told Congress Tuesday that Iran is directly jeopardizing any potential for peace in Iraq, prompting fresh calls from senators that the U.S. pursue diplomatic talks with Tehran.

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that “irresponsible actions” by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard “directly jeopardize” peace in Iraq.

“Restraint in our response does not signal lack of resolve or capability to defend ourselves against threats,” Mullen told the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee.

When Gates discusses Iran, he continues to highlight the need for the US to build leverage for diplomatic action on Iran. We believe this will becomes the new strategy for CENTCOM as Army Gen. David Petraeus becomes CENTCOM Commander. Hearings for General Petraeus's appointment takes place today in the Senate. There is some irony that there will be a political sideshow, because as General Petraeus has become the savior of the nations military actions in Iraq, he is being tapped again, this time to tackle the strategy for Iran.

Indeed, the Senate is expected to eventually approve the two nominations, but not before Democrats get a chance to sharply question Petraeus and Odierno on when more troops might come home and whether the U.S. war effort in Iraq has aggravated the violence there.

When asked by the Senate panel whether a lengthy deployment in Iraq only strengthens Iran's influence in the region, Petraeus responded that the opposite was true. It "has the potential to counter malign Iranian influence against the government of Iraq, build common cause in the region and expose the extent of malign Iranian activities to the world," he wrote.

Any political rhetoric that comes from these hearings will be background noise, and both sides of the aisle will embarrass themselves lecturing someone already proven to be smarter than them. With both Kennedy and McCain absent from the hearings tomorrow, the contrast between the rest of the Senators and the General is striking, as he has clearly contributed more to the national interest of the United States than the sum total of the Senators that will sit on the panel, and I include my Senator Hillary Clinton. That doesn't mean the Senate doesn't have good questions that need to be asked, rather that any political grandstanding at the Generals expense would demonstrate the empty character of politics in America today, the absence of adults in politics.

As CENTCOM Commander, General Petraeus faces a challenge more difficult than the one faced in Iraq, and he starts with a pair of twos facing a full house. Iraq was a classic counterinsurgency, a military problem where Petraeus could draw upon his military experience to execute a successful military solution. He has performed admirably.

We observe the irony, that in a world absent the ignorance bred by American domestic politics, General Petraeus would be the champion of the desired liberal approach to the Iran situation. The Generals only flaw in the political world is also his greatest strength, success, which has made him the champion of the right side of politics for pulling US policy from the abyss in Iraq.
That mantle as champion of the right under the Bush Administration is the primary reason some people are skeptical of this appointment.

Armed with a Ph.D. in International Relations from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, General Petraeus represents the best education taxpayer money can buy to deal with this specific situation. With a successful record at all levels as a broker of national power toward the national interest of the United States, General Petraeus once again finds himself as the best hope for a nation looking for a successful resolution to a complex problem where no good solutions are easily discerned from the public perspective.

The struggle against Al Qaeda will continue across the theater, but with the appointment of General Petraeus to CENTCOM on Thursday, the confrontation between the United States and Iran begins.

Congratulations Yankee Sailor

Congratulations Yankee Sailor, good to see your name on this list.

Details of the Sea Basing Evolution Off Monrovia

The full transcript is here (PDF). This was the question I've been wanting to ask since we first observed the evolution, because the answer tells the story of a capability that expands the possibilities for addressing disaster relief and humanitarian operations in the future.

Galrahn: This is a great conversation. I want to talk about the evolution of Liberia, which has got a lot of attention. It seems that -- five ships, sounds like $3.4 million worth of equipment, $100,000 worth of humanitarian. Can you describe in detail a little bit of the why you did it, how you did it, and what you accomplished there?

CAPT. NOWELL: Sure. And that is a really good question.

There's some elements of Liberia that probably have not gotten as much exposure as they could. But first of all, certainly we believe that Liberia has a special relationship with the United States. And I probably don't need to expand any more than saying that with you, because I'm certain that you get it. And they are eager to continue that partnership.

And so as we look -- one of the things that we talk about with APS is that we're not just engaging with folks wearing navy uniforms or coast guard uniforms, because maritime safety and security is very, very broad. Now, right now Liberia does not have a coast guard, but they are in the process of kind of conceptualizing and looking at how they are going to here, near-term, start their coast guard back up. But what they do have is a very -- you know, some very positive progress from the Armed Forces of Liberia side with respect to their soldiers.

So the ambassador had asked us to engage with Africa Partnership Station as a show of partnership, had asked us what areas we might be able to do training for those soldiers that the U.S. government has been working very hard. And as you look at some of the training that we're able to provide, such as noncommissioned officer leadership training, officer leadership training, logistics or the martial arts -- there were many areas where we able to provide training and in fact did for about a hundred AFL students, as well as the ability to take this multi-agency and multinational team and talk to some of the ministries that were there in Monrovia, like the ministry of fisheries or customs, about what they needed to key on as they look at the refurbishment of the port, as they look at putting protocols in place, you know, for environmental protection, for protection of the fisheries and as they look at forming a coast guard.

Now, the other piece that we executed, while off of Monrovia, was a seabasing demonstration. And the Navy has a new system. It's called the Navy's Improved Navy Lighterage System.

And in simple terms, this is a floating dock, that you can build offshore and you can then use to take stuff off, maritime prepositioning ships, and then get them on to, you know, connectors, high-speed connectors notionally to then get them to the beach. And so we wanted to do a demonstration there, where we also use that capability to get some of this humanitarian assistance type of equipment inland.

And so just to expand on that a little bit for you, we pulled two maritime prepositioning ships, plus Fort McHenry and Swift. We all converged -- it was right around Easter -- off of Monrovia. The prepo ships offloaded this floating -- these floating dry-docks. We put them together.

And then the day before Easter Sunday, we moored one of the maritime prepositioning ships. And we had the Bobo and the Wheat there. They were the MPS ships. But we offloaded seven Marine vehicles, humvees and trucks onto -- they call it -- an RRDF, which is really just a -- now that I'm saying it, I can't think of what the acronym stands for.

But the bottom line is, it's a roll-on, roll-off discharge facility, so RRDF. And we then take them, using a powered section of that, into the well deck of the Fort McHenry. We put those vehicles together, married them up with their Marines, who had flown into Senegal and then come down on the prepo ships. And we sent the Swift up to get them.

So we then finished putting the vehicles together, married them up with their Marines and then took them back out, got them on the RRDF. Swift pulled up to the RRDF. The vehicles went onboard Swift and went into the Port of Monrovia.

And then the next morning, we did a convoy to four different sites, hospitals and schools there in Monrovia, to drop off this equipment.

So we think that it's a great example of a capability that you could use in an austere environment. Again, if you had a -- some kind of a natural disaster, you know, or any other event that made the ability to bring things like the prepo ships into port, the ability to do that seven miles out worked and it worked well. And so we layered that as part of the whole APS engagement there.

And so as we look at that in general -- again the, you know, more than 100 AFL soldiers trained, $3.4 million worth of, you know, HA equipment. You know, we had the president -- President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf actually came out and spent a half-day on Fort McHenry and had the chance to participate in the graduation ceremony for her soldiers. And in fact, she said it was the first time that she'd ever seen her country from the sea.

So we're pretty proud of what we did in Liberia. Again, it shows you that the inland reach that you can get from something like an APS effort is pretty substantial. I mean, I just kind of gave you that example. In some other places we might have Fort McHenry or Swift at anchor or in-port. And for instance, in Cameroon we did maritime law training in the capital of Yaounde, which is more than five hours inland from where the ship was anchored in Limbe. So a lot of flexibility there.

But at any rate, those were some of the details from the Liberia piece. Does that help a little bit?

Galrahn: Very much. Those ships couldn't make port in Monrovia; is that true?

CAPT. NOWELL: The Swift could. The Fort McHenry could not, nor could the MPS ships.

Monrovia has about half a million people, no port facilities for large ships, and yet the Navy became the logistical enabler for a non-governmental organization that delivered massive loads of material, including the vehicles for distribution of the material.

This evolution highlights an interesting technology and technique towards the ends of connecting to otherwise disconnected large coastal cities and populations. In this case the Navy prepared the materials that were delivered in Monrovia by HSV Swift 7 miles off the coast.

The application of this technology for military purposes is interesting on its own, but the seven vehicles could have just as easily not been military, and the materials were prepared and donated by a non governmental organization, being both medical and humanitarian in nature. The potential for using sea power for this type of proactive engagement is limited only by the imagination, desired payloads, and available skill sets of the planners and participants for each specific evolution.

It has been suggested the NGOs only participate with the Navy so they can use the Navy for their logistics capabilities. My answer to that is... so what? The Navy doesn't need credit, the NGOs do because their donations are primarily driven by accomplishments. The Navy's objectives are met if the NGOs are effective, not whether or not credit is duly given to the Navy for being the logistical enabler.

Connectivity Must Start Somewhere

Over the weekend Somalian pirates grabbed a Jordanian ship carrying aid to Somalia. Eagle1 has the details of the hijacking. Today there is a bit of news regarding the event, apparently 10 members of the crew are Indian, and the latest act of piracy has prompted a bit of regional interest.

India has sought the help of Jordan to secure the release of a ship, carrying 10 Indian crew members, that was hijacked off the coast of the Somalian capital of Mogadishu on Saturday. The US Navy has offered all help to free the vessel and crew.

"Indian authorities are in touch with Jordan's foreign ministry and transport ministry regarding the hijacked ship MV Victoria," a diplomatic source told IANS from the Jordanian capital Amman.

"Contact with Jordanian authorities over the issue was established today (Tuesday)," the source said.

It is unclear what help India wants from Jordan in this case, isn't India supposed to be the regional power? Maybe not yet.., but what is clear is the report the US Navy is also offering assistance regarding the incident.

According to a statement issued in Mumbai by the Directorate General of Shipping (DGS), the Maritime Liaison Office Commander, US Naval Forces-Central Command, Bahrain, has offered all possible help to free the vessel and the crew members held hostage.

That would be interesting, but other news reports tend to indicate that the US Navy isn't the primary concern for the pirates, the locals are getting a bit restless.

Somali Islamist insurgents will attack pirates holding a Jordan-flagged vessel if calls to release the ship and its crew are ignored, local elders involved in mediation efforts said Tuesday.

The elders said the MV Victoria, seized last week off the Somali coast, was being held near a coastal village, around 500 kilometres (310 miles) north of the capital Mogadishu.

"The ship is docking around the coastal village of Murgane and the elders in Haradere town are calling the pirates to release it or face an attack from Islamic fighters in the region," local elder Ismail Adan Nile told AFP.

Mohamed Hassan Yusuf, another local elder, said a team of elders was planning to hold talks with the hijackers to obtain the unconditional release of the ship and its crew.

"Otherwise, the Islamic fighters have vowed to attack," he said.

According to the news reporting, negotiations between the ship owner and the pirates for releasing the hostages have not begun yet, so the pirates are currently stuck between the US Navy at sea and a pissed off group of Islamic fighters in port. We might be observing the beginning of a trend, this wouldn't be the first time some local elders and Islamic fighters have taken action against pirates. It hasn't happened enough to be a trend yet, but the signs point to a shift in local popular opinion against pirates.

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds. If the local population is rejecting piracy in the region, that opens the door with a shared mutual interest worth the effort to start a meaningful discussion.

India To Join the Expeditionary Era

The rhetoric regarding the possible sale of the USS Nashville (LPD 13) to India has all but disappeared over the last few months. We observe this bit of news might explain why.

Having cleared the decks for the manufacture of large aircraft carriers indigenously, the navy is now proposing to venture into building huge ship landing docks to give it the capability to carry heavily armed troops and armaments over oceans.

The Naval Design Bureau has now finalised plans to manufacture over 20,000 tonne displacement landing ship docks patterned on INS Jalashva, which it recently acquired from the US Navy.

The report did not include information regarding the desired size of this future amphibious force, but it did drop a few names regarding who the contenders are.

In order to build the country's first ever blue water troop carrier, the navy is looking at a number of designs, including American and French.

Interesting. The press may not be accurate in reporting "patterned on INS Jalashva" at 20,000 tons, but it would depend on requirements. It is interesting this comes the day after a visit by South Korean navy chief Admiral Jung Ok-keun, who no doubt discussed his own developing blue water expeditionary capability. It is very possible the Dokdo class is part of the competition.

Northrop Grumman was showing off the LPD-17 in India earlier this year, and the Mistral was involved in exercises with India just prior being ordered to the Myanmar coast following the cyclone disaster. We look forward to observing which metrics a growing regional power like India finds most appealing for a future expeditionary force in this competition.