Gauging the Aftermath.

• Author: O'Hanlon, Michael
• Position: Post-war Iraq

SINCE WE last wrote for The National Interest--in the Winter 2003/04 issue ("Scoring the Ira Aftermath"), presenting data on security and economic trends in Iraq from the fall of Baghdad through autumn 2003--the news coming out of Iraq has worsened.

In our article, we observed:

A successful counterinsurgency must have security and economic dimensions. In the security sphere, it is necessary to try to assess progress in the counterinsurgency: namely in neutralizing resistance forces, reducing crime rates and building Iraqi security forces.

And here, the news appears to be bad More Americans have died in Iraq in the six months from November 1, 2003 through April 30, 2004 (371 in total) that in the preceding eight. April 2004 was deadlier for American forces than even the invasion months of March and April 2003. And death totals among Iraqi security personnel have been roughly comparable in number.

Central Command's current estimate of the number of hardened insurgents still facing U.S. troops has not diminished even after six months during which more than 10,000 Iraqis have been arrested or killed by U.S. forces. And while coalition military forces are getting better at finding improvised explosive devices before the detonate, insurgents are getting better at building the explosives and at using car bombs, meaning that casualty rates have not declined but have gone up--way up.

The above will not surprise most Americans. Excepting the capture o Saddam in December, the daily new from Iraq has been almost uniformly bad in recent months. American troop levels, once scheduled to diminish this spring, are now greater than anytime since last August, with scant signs of greater troop contributions from coalition partners. Indeed, there has been a gentle trend in the opposite direction, with the announced withdrawal of forces from Spain, Honduras and Costa Rica.

Compounding the problem is the woeful lack of training for both the new Iraqi military and police force. By April 2004, only some 6 percent of the number of soldiers expected to staff a new Iraqi army had been trained. Only 22 percent of Iraqi police had even started an eight-week training course.

In the end, there can be no successful Iraq strategy without better security--and increasingly the Iraqi people sense it. April's scenes from Fallujah of American forces bringing down an Iraqi city to save it caused the coalition significant strategic damage, whatever tactical benefit might have been...