Mansoor - The British Army and the Lessons of the Iraq War BAR Summer 2009

7/15/2019 Mansoor - The British Army and the Lessons of the Iraq War BAR Summer 2009

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The British Army

and the Lessons

of the Iraq WarPeter R Mansoor

"I am tempted to say that whatever

doctrine the armed forces are working

on now, they have got it wrong. I am

also tempted to declare that is does

not matter... What does matter is

their ability to get it right quickly,

when the moment arrives... When

everybody starts wrong, the advantage

goes to the side which can most

quickly adjust itself to the new and

unfamiliar environment and learn

from its mistakes."

Sir Michael Howard

As U.S. and British forces overran Iraq in the

spring of 2003, victory in a quick war

seemed assured. Indeed, the unquestionable

superiority of western military forces in high

tech, conventional operations was manifest

by their rapid advance to Basra and Baghdad,

the collapse of the Iraqi armed forces, and

the destruction of the Ba'athist regime thathad ruled Iraq for more than a generation.

Beyond these accomplishments, however,

U.S. and British armed forces approached

the subsequent phase of operations in Iraq

influenced by widely different doctrine,

organizational culture, and history. The U.S.

Army operated under a concept known as

"rapid, decisive operations" that posited

quick victories using high-tech weaponry

and agile maneuver forces. Its existing

doctrine was thin gruel to counter the

insurgency that would soon erupt. The

British Army, on the other hand, was heavily

influenced by its three decade-long strugglein

Northern Ireland and peacekeeping

operations in the Balkans. As a result of

these influences, the subsequent conduct of

the coalition partners varied widely. Their

operations had one element in common,

however - they were both unsuited to the

circumstances of the Iraq War after thecollapse of the Ba'athist regime, a war that

by 2006 the United States and its allies were

well on their way to losing.

Task Force Tarawa's 2nd Force Reconnaissance in

central Iraq, April 8, 2003. Locals piled into vehicles

to cheer and thank the Marines. U.S. Marine Corps

(Cpl. Shawn C. Rhode)

Those leaders who staked the outcome of the

Iraq War on rapid, decisive operations failed

to understand that advanced sensors and

precision guided munitions are tactical and

operational capabilities - they are not a

strategy. The failure to plan adequately for

the

occupation of Iraq once regime change

occurred reflects the a historicism of too

much of the American political leadership

and officer corps. U.S. mistakes in Iraq were

in large measure the result of a pervasive

failure to understand the historical

framework within which insurgencies takeplace, to appreciate the cultural and

political factors of other nations and people,

and to encourage the learning of other

languages. In other words, the United States

managed to repeat many of the mistakes that

it made in Vietnam, because America's

political and military leaders managed to

forget nearly every lesson of that conflict.

For more than three and a half years -longer

than American involvement in the war

against Germany and Italy during World War

II - the U.S. Army and Marine Corps sought

victory in Iraq by conducting offensiveoperations to kill and capture terrorist

leaders and insurgent operatives and by

creating Iraqi security forces that could

assume responsibility for security

operations and thereby enable U.S. and

other coalition forces to depart the country.

Although certain units, such as the 3rd

Armored Cavalry Regiment in Tal Afar in 2005

and the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division in

Ramadi in 2006, conducted

counterinsurgency operations to secure the

Iraqi people and thereby insulate them from

insurgent and terrorist intimidation and

violence, U.S. forces in Iraq on the whole

lacked an overarching concept of

operations. The publication of an interim

counterinsurgency manual in the fall of

2004, heavily focused on codifying tactics,

techniques, and procedures in use in the

field, was a stopgap measure at best. The

inability of U.S. military leaders to adjust

their thinking to the situation at hand was a

failure of imagination and leadership that

nearly led the United States and its allies to

defeat in Iraq.

This situation changed dramatically at the

end of 2006 with the publication of a new

counterinsurgency doctrine - Field Manual 3-

24 - and the implementation

The British Army Review

Op Telic 2003



FM 3-24

of its concepts during the surge operations

in Iraq in 2007-2008. This historically

grounded doctrine emphasized the security

of the population in order to inhibit the

ability of insurgents and terrorists to use the

people as a base of support. To accomplish

this goal, U.S. forces would conduct

decentralized operations while living among

the people whom they would secure. The

doctrine also emphasized, among other

priorities, the provision of advisors to assist

in the development of local security forces;

the critical importance of governance,

economic development, and an

Gen. David H. Petraeus and Secretary of Defense

Robert M. Gates listen to a briefing by Iraqi

commanders

information campaign; and the splintering of

insurgent movements through local cease-

fires and the provision of amnesty. Leaders

such as General David Petraeus and

General J ames Mattis, along with a small

group of innovative colonels and other junior officers, led the way in beginning the

transformation of American military forces

away from their conventional war mindset

and better preparing them for the wars they

were waging in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These were not the type of wars that U.S.

military institutions wanted to fight, but they

were the wars that they had to fight if U.S.

national security goals were to be achieved

early in the 21st century.

The British Army in Iraq trod a different

path. Its relevant experiences leading into

the Iraq War were peacekeeping and

counterterrorism in Bosnia and Northern

Ireland. For the majority of the officer corps,

memories centered on the relatively benign

later phases of the campaign in Northern

Ireland, with little recollection of the more

difficult operations much earlier in the

conflict. As was the case with the U.S. Army,

the lack of formal professional military

education in counterinsurgency operations

resulted in over-reliance on faulty

institutional memory, rather than on a more

nuanced understanding of

counterinsurgency warfare solidly groundedin historical study.

As the eminent military historian SirMichael Howard has so eloquently noted, the

key for any military institution is to be able

to adjust its operations once faced with the

realities of warfare at odds with prevailing

institutional doctrine. Adaptation after

initial failure was a hallmark of the British

Army's operations in Malaya, often regarded

as its most successful counterinsurgency

campaign. Regrettably, this same level of

situational understanding and adaptation

failed to occur in Iraq, with severeconsequences.

The peacekeeping model used by the British

Army in Basra worked - for a while. Early in

the war uninformed commentators held up

the soft touch of

the British forces as a model for other

coalition forces. British troops patrolling in

berets and without body armor were seen to

"get it" - as if the experiences of Britain's

imperial past had somehow made them

inherently suited to stability operations. Thisconceit led to a serious misunderstanding of

the situation in southern Iraq. In fact, Shi'itemilitias such as the J aish al-Mahdi began to

form as soon as the heavy hand of Ba'athist

dictatorship was removed and if they failed

to contest coalition forces for control of the

streets in Basra, this was due to their

temporary weakness or because they were

able to achieve their objectives without

fighting, and not because British forces had

won themover with exemplary conduct.

2nd Lieutenant Robin Martin and Rifleman Andy

Walker of the 1st Battalion, The Royal Green J ackets,

Belfast, 1969 (IWM)

By 2006, the situation in Basra had

deteriorated significantly. British forces

attempted to clear militia forces from the

city in the "Sinbad" series of operations, but

without the ability to hold terrain once

cleared, the operations proved futile. By the

end of the year the under resourced British

forces were besieged in Basra Palace andat the Basra Airport, subject to frequent

mortar and rocket fire. The J aish al-Mahdi

and other militias controlled Large parts of

Basra and inflicted on .the inhabitants their

severe brand of Shari'a law. In 2007 British

forces departed Basra Palace,

Summer 2009



Abu at Khasib, Near Basrah, Iraq, May 2003. Gunner Andrew Walsh 3 RHA takes to the streets of on the British Army's first bicycle patrols in Iraq. The Battery has been stationed

in the area for several weeks now and in an effort to become more involved with the local people.

thereby ceding the last vestige of coalition

control over the city. British commanders

argued that they were handing contralto

Iraqi security forces, but these forces - just

three Iraqi Army battalions - were too weak

to contest control of the city. The situation

was comparable to the U.S. withdrawal

from forward operating bases inside

Baghdad in the spring of 2004, which left

large swaths of the Iraqi capital in the

hands of insurgent and militia groups. In

Basra in 2007, security force weakness wascompounded by the British refusal to

embed advisors in Iraqi units. The Iraqi

Army's 14th Division was left on its own in

the city, with no ability to access coalition

air support or other assets in an emergency.

As a consequence, when ultimately stressed

in battle in March 2008, at least one brigade

of this

division dissolved rather than fight.

Iraqis viewed the withdrawal of British

troops from Basra as a victory for the Shi'ite

militias. These irregular forces had

contested control of the city; the British

withdrawal left them in possession of the

streets. Rather than protecting the Iraqi

people in Basra and thereby insulating them

from militia violence and intimidation,British political and military leaders had

abdicated responsibility for their security -the exact opposite of what was happening in

Baghdad and elsewhere, as U.S. forces were

moving off their large forward operating

bases to position themselves among the

Iraqi people where they lived.

There was at least one person in Iraq who

clearly understood the meaning of

the British withdrawal from Basra. Prime

Minister Nouri al-Maliki was determined to

extend Iraqi governmental control

throughout Iraq, to include militia safe-

havens such as Basra, Sadr City, and al-

Amarah. In a surprise move in late March

2008, Maliki ordered several Iraqi Army

brigades to move to Basra to regain control

of the city. The Prime Minister personally

led the operation, a politically risky move

that could easily have backfired. Indeed, for

a time the poorly planned operationseemed on the verge of failure. The

commanding general of Multi-National

Force-Iraq, General David Petraeus, was

determined not to let this happen. He piled

on support to include staff and planning

assistance, air support, attack helicopters,

intelligence assets, armed reconnaissance,

logistical support, advisors, and an airborne

The British Army Review

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infantry battalion which was broken down

into smaller elements to .thicken Iraqi forces

and provide them access to coalition fire

support. These reinforcements helped to

turn to tide of battle in Basra. In the

following weeks the Iraqi Army regainedcontrol of Basra's streets and earned for

Prime Minister Maliki well-deserved

accolades from across the Iraqi political

spectrum (with the notable exception of

Muqtada al-Sadr's followers). Iraqi Army

operations in Basra in the spring of 2008

were a critical turning point in the Iraq War

- the point at which the government in

Baghdad was willing to confront sectarian

militias in the Shi'ite heartland. These

events completely changed the political

dynamics in Baghdad and coalesced

political support around Prime Minster

Maliki when he badly needed it. But thiswas a victory with limited and belated.

British participation, and indeed only

necessitated by serious British mistakes

made in the conduct of operations over the

previous five years.

The British failure in Basra was not due to

the conduct of British troops, which was

exemplary. It was, rather, a failure by senior

British civilian and military leaders to

understand the political dynamics at play in

Iraq, compounded by arrogance that led to

an unwillingness to learn and adapt, along

with increasing reluctance to risk blood andtreasure to conduct effective

counterinsurgency warfare. As the British

people lost the will to fight at home, British

forces were hampered by political

constraints thrust upon them by an

unsympathetic government, which insisted

on running operations from Whitehall rather

than nesting them into the Multi-National

Force-Iraq campaign. Instead, British

commanders attempted to cut deals with

local Shi'ite leaders to maintain the peace in

southern Iraq, an accommodation that was

doomed to .failure since the British

negotiated from a position of weakness - a

fact well known to the Shi'ite leadership.

The failure to adopt an alternative

approach, one that relied on the conduct of

operations based on protecting the Iraqi

people, led to a defeat that thankfully was

not permanent.

British participation in the Iraq War is at an

end, but the involvement of the British Army

in counterinsurgency warfare is not. Militaryleaders should conduct a thorough

assessment of what went-wrong in Iraq,

place the failure there in its historical

context, and then make the required

institutional, doctrinal, and organizational

changes to fix the identified problems.

Common wisdom states that military

organizations that study the last war are

doomed to failure in the next. Nothing could

be further from the truth; indeed, perhaps in

no field of human endeavor is the study of

the past as useful as in warfare. The

problem is not that military organizations

study the last war and therefore fail torevise their doctrine and equipment

sufficiently to fight the next; rather, the

problem arises when military organizations

ignore the lessons of wars past, or worse

yet, use selective evidence to support pre-

conceived notions about future combat.

Above all, the British Army today should not

yield to the temptation to gloss over its

recent experience in Iraq, for armies that

ignore the lessons of the past often fare

poorly when again tested in the crucible of

war. Two examples will suffice. The British

army exited World War 1 determined to

return to its historical role as imperial

police. The Imperial General Staff did not

even establish a committee to examine the

lessons of the Great War until 1932 (The

Kirke Report - republished as a BAR

Special in 2001 - Ed.). When the committee

finally rendered its findings, the Chief of the

Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal

Archibald Montgomery-Massingberd,

suppressed the report because it was too

critical of army performance. Likewise, the

institutional response of the U.S. Army to

the Vietnam War was to wish it away. Forthree decades after the war ended the

American professional military education

system all but ignored counterinsurgency

operations. Instructors from the U.S. Army

Command and General Staff

College,;tryingc to create-a course on low

intensity conflict in the 1980s, looked in

vain for help from the U.S. Army Special

Operations Center at Fort Bragg, North

Carolina, only to find that Army leaders had

ordered the staff there to throw away theircounterinsurgency files, since the United

States would supposedly never fight that

kind of war again.

The issue is pressing, for the British Army

is already engaged in another

counterinsurgency conflict in Afghanistan.

Although the conditions there are different,

the lessons of Iraq are still relevant. The

United States deeply values its special

relationship with Great Britain, just as U.S.

military leaders hold a genuine and deep

respect for their British counterparts. Only

by working together can we-succeed in thedifficult missions that lie ahead, but a

common understanding of

counterinsurgency doctrine would make

this cooperation much more successful. For

far too long in Iraq coalition political and

military leaders failed to examine the

assumptions on which they based their

doctrine and strategy, and then to adapt

them to the reality of the war they waged -

not as they wished it to be, but with a clear-

eyed view of what was actually occurring

on the ground. Only through a thorough

appreciation of the mistakes it made in Iraq

can the British Army turn defeat into victory

as it fights the untidy wars of the early 21st

century.

Dr. Peter Mansoor, Colonel, U.S. Army

(Ret.), is the General Raymond E. Mason,

J r. Chair of Military History at the Ohio

State University. His 26 year military career

included two tours in Iraq, to include service

as executive officer to the commanding

general of Multi-National Force-Iraq,

General David Petraeus. He is the author of

Baghdad at Sunrise: A BrigadeCommander's War in Iraq (Yale University

Press, 2008) -(reviewed in BAR 146 by

Gerry Long -Ed.)D

Summer 2009

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Mansoor - The British Army and the Lessons of the Iraq War BAR Summer 2009