For U.S., The Goal Is Now 'Iraqi Solutions'

Last year, as Sunni tribes began to turn against al-Qaeda, U.S. officials accepted their offer to sort out the province themselves. Taking a leap of faith, U.S. commanders opened talks with tribal leaders and agreed to let them fight their own battles. But when the U.S. military suggested that the Shiite-led Iraqi government incorporate the Sunni fighters -- many of them veterans of anti-U.S. combat -- into their own security forces, the Iraqis balked.

The Anbar situation has become an example of the reality Washington confronts, as Iraqis have made clear they do not need U.S. permission to do what they want. "We completely, absolutely reject" a permanent Sunni-based security force, Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul-Qadir al-Obaidi told a news conference in late December. As soon as restive Sunni areas are calmed, he said, the local forces will be disbanded.

Talk of Iraqi solutions "is largely a red herring," said Wayne White, who led the State Department's Iraq intelligence team from 2003 to 2005. "This is a catchy phrase aimed at touting -- and exaggerating -- success in Sunni Arab areas," such as Anbar, "while diverting focus away from potential downsides related to same," including the creation of local forces allied with the United States but opposed to the Iraqi government.

Much of the "Iraqi solutions" strategy is taking place on the neighborhood level, where the U.S. military has expressed little interest in reversing the sectarian cleansing that contributed to the recent decline in violence. Joint U.S. civilian-military teams seem steeped in new levels of patience and flexibility. They report ground-level accommodations on such issues as adjusting U.S.-sponsored "micro-loans" to reflect Islamic rejection of interest payments and direct dealings with representatives of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

"Politically, realistically, representatives of . . . Sadr are important," said Paul Folmsbee, a Foreign Service officer who heads the U.S. civilian-military reconstruction team in Baghdad's Sadr City. "There's an office called the Office of the Moqtada al-Sadr, and they also provide many services to the population, and so we work with them." That includes working with Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, elements of which are fighting U.S. forces elsewhere, Folmsbee told reporters last month.

To Crocker, the meaning of "Iraqi solutions to Iraqi problems" is "blindingly obvious. Iraq has got a government. It's got a system. It's got provincial governments. It's got a military and a police. And it has leaders of all of these things who increasingly take themselves seriously as leaders."

Crocker, who co-wrote a 2002 paper predicting a "perfect storm" of things likely to go wrong after an ill-conceived U.S. invasion, was one of a number of U.S. diplomats who urged early caution. Since his arrival in Baghdad in March, he has insisted that the U.S. role is to "steer, push, prod and pound the table" to help Iraqis move forward without trying to do everything for them.

A major challenge for the Iraqi government this year, he said, will be dealing with rampant corruption. "Will it be through a U.S.-style approach to rule of law, under which officials file financial disclosure payments and can't take more than a cup of non-Starbucks coffee?" Probably not, he said.

"We can make some suggestions. We have. We are," Crocker said. "What we need them to do now is say, 'Thanks very much, but we've got a way of our own down which we want to move with this.' "

The approach also seems designed to bypass thorny issues. Direct dealings with Sadr's forces in the Baghdad neighborhoods they control both reverses earlier policy and sidesteps initial U.S. hopes for elected local government. In southern Iraq, U.S. military and civilian officials have refused to become involved in the violence between warring Shiite groups, with Petraeus describing that conflict as something Iraqis must deal with on their own.

The new openness to "Iraqi solutions" also reflects the U.S. military's painfully learned lessons about how to operate in an alien land. Army Col. Robert Roth, who trained Iraqi army commanders in 2005, said it means that the only way to win in a counterinsurgency campaign is "by, with and through the people within that country where the insurgency exists -- they must decide how they want to live and then take action to make it so." The most successful example of that process in Iraq, Roth added, was the turnaround in Anbar.

To the U.S. civilian officials with whom the military has frequently been at odds in Iraq, it is a welcome change. "I have a lot of admiration for my military colleagues," said a senior U.S. diplomat in Baghdad who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly. "A lot of them are really getting this, understanding issues . . . family, culture, values, religion. You don't identify an objective in those areas, like a hill, and say, 'Let's come up with a plan, and we'll take that piece of territory.' "

The traditional military belief, he said, was that "if you just bring enough resources to a problem and get the right approach, the outcome is guaranteed. But it's very, very frustrating for them, as it is for all Americans, for members of Congress, because we are expending so much on this exercise, and we want to know that we're going to achieve something good.

"But we are learning," the diplomat said. "We are a pragmatic people at the end of the day . . . [and] you don't get anybody ever to do something they don't want to do."

Several officers pointed out that the emphasis on local answers simply follows the instructions of the Army's new manual on counterinsurgency. Conrad Crane, an Army historian who co-wrote the manual, noted that it quotes Lawrence of Arabia's famous admonition, "Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly."

Crane said he has seen among U.S. brigade and battalion commanders in Iraq "a growing realization on the ground that Iraqi solutions will best fit Iraqi problems. We have learned some of this the hard way."