On May¹, 2003, on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, President Bush announced the end of the fighting. For most of the American troops on the ground, the war is really over and all that remains, pending the rapid relief, is to help the "freedom-loving" Iraqis to set up new institutions.

Disillusionment is cruel. The majority of Iraqis, thankful to be rid of a disgraced regime, demanded above all the possibility of finally living in security. Inhibited by decades of dictatorship, they do not understand that such powerful Americans do not firmly seize power to restore order and electricity in a matter of weeks.

Of the four American divisions present in the territory, three let this window of opportunity pass. In the most reluctant zone, the famous Sunni triangle, clashes are multiplying. Extremely clumsy reactions, such as the one that kills 13 Iraqi civilians, including 6 children in a demonstration in Fallujah, lead the Coalition into a spiral of failure. In northern Iraq, the 101st Airborne Parachute Assault ^Division, however, tries a different experience. It thus opens the way to an original school of thought in American military culture.

Restoring order

The 101st Division arrives in a Mosul city on the brink of chaos. The country's third largest city (1.7 million inhabitants) is a concentrate of Iraqi problems with its ethnic rivalries and nearby oil. All communities in the country are represented with a Sunni Arab majority disputed by the Kurds. As soon as the central government collapsed, looting began and militias emerged, raising the spectre of the 1959 clashes that had claimed more than 1,000 lives. On 15 April, Marines and special forces men fired on the crowd and killed 12 civilians.

On the 19th, General Petraeus's 101st Division restored order by committing itself both massively, with 8 battalions, and without arrogance. American flags, for example, were removed from the vehicle antennas.

Once security is restored, the first emergency is to fill the political vacuum. Rejecting the idea of imposing a direct military administration, from which it would then be difficult to disengage, General Petraeus organised on his own initiative the first free elections of the "new Iraq". With the help of his operational experience in Bosnia and Haiti, he managed to bring together a convention of 217 delegates representing the different factions. This convention chose a 23-member city council to administer the city and select a mayor from among personalities with no ties to the old regime.

This process culminated, in early May, in the appointment at the head of Mosul of Ghanem al-Basso, a former general whose brother was killed by Saddam Hussein's security services. This Arab is supported by a Kurdish deputy mayor and two assistants, one Turkish and one Assyrian. On the strength of this success, which convinces even nationalist sceptics, councils are established in the four occupied provinces and governors are elected.

4,000 projects

The second axis of the experiment called "Democracy 101" concerns the reconstitution of a socio-economic structure. In Iraq's highly centralized system, the collapse of the state has led to the collapse of the economy, which has completely taken by surprise Americans imbued with the spirit of free enterprise. Paratroopers of the ^{2nd Brigade} thus discovered an abandoned refinery north of Mosul. The personnel were at home waiting for orders from Baghdad. It is hardly surprising in these conditions that hydrocarbon production has fallen by half in two months and that unemployment is affecting hundreds of thousands of men and women.

The labour market then appears to be a confrontation zone where money is the basic ammunition. The Americans are not necessarily the best provided for. In the house of Oudaï and Qoudaï, the two sons of Saddam Hussein, shot dead on July 22nd by the 101st, 1.3 million dollars were found, the equivalent of the monthly salary of 20,000 Iraqis. This cash enables the guerrillas to hire miserable people or criminals to carry out attacks, each of which is rigorously priced according to the danger incurred.

The American military then became aware of the need to act quickly, if only to prolong the state of grace that made them liberators and not yet occupiers. General Petraeus obtained that a special fund be made available to the divisions, called Commander's Emergency Reconstruction Program (CERP), with money confiscated from the Ba'athist leaders. The 101st thus obtained $57 million.

In order to use this money and given the immensity of the problems, the specialised civil-military affairs services (ACM) immediately proved to be undersized. When the reopening of the University of Mosul was considered, the education cell of the division's ACM battalion was no larger than a battle group for a complex of 75 buildings and 4,500 rooms designed to accommodate 35,000 students. A helicopter brigade was therefore assigned to this task, far from its first job.

Given the success of this first initiative, each unit of the 101st Division was ^then associated with an ACM cell and an Iraqi ministry. The signals battalion thus helped representatives of the Ministry of Telecommunications to restore the local infrastructure connecting even Mosul with the international telephone network via satellite link. Since this network has to be paid for, it is a first source of income for the province, which is thus created. The engineer battalion is in charge of public works, the Military Police battalion is working with the Ministry of the Interior, the artillerymen are associated with the Ministry of Petroleum, etc... The inter-service manoeuvre then consists in associating the ACMs, the contact capabilities of the melee units (identification of needs, dialogue) and the technical skills of the support weapons.

This policy of involvement is extended down to the lowest echelon and the 18,000 men of the division end up being involved in 4,000 projects as varied as painting white lines on roads (Operation Easy Rider) at repairing petrol stations (Operation Pit Stop) , supporting football teams or rehabilitating hundreds of schools, with the only watchword at the entrance to the bases: "What Have You Done To Win Iraqi Hearts and Minds Today?"»).

This policy has not been without its problems. The first was the reluctance of many American officials to accept such practices as being inconsistent with their warrior culture. As a result, the division commander was forced to become personally involved and impose the idea, ordering that the same enthusiasm be put into repairing a school as into mounting a helicopter raid.

Paradoxically, the problem that then arose was the over-involvement of the paratroopers. After the initial reluctance, the soldiers tended to do everything by themselves, sometimes with a certain contempt for the Iraqis. This typically American voluntarism did not correspond to the final goal, which is to make the Iraqis take their fate into account, in the spirit of Lawrence of Arabia who declared that "it is better to let the Arabs do things in an acceptable way than to do them perfectly yourself. This is their war, and you are here to help them, not win it for them. "The effort is therefore focused on the work of the Iraqis, like this battalion of the 502nd Regiment ^that managed to provide 10,000 jobs. The ^{2nd Brigade} is creating a small business center in Mosul.

The results obtained and the satisfaction of the need for action eventually overcame the reluctance and most of the cadres, despite many disillusions and exasperatedThe results achieved and the satisfaction of the need for action finally overcome the reluctance and most of the managers, despite many disillusionment and exasperation with the dysfunctions, double-dealing or corruption of the administration, understood that taking an interest in the population could prove to be a multiplier of effectiveness.

Virtuous circle

However, security is not neglected, it is even considered as the essential parameter to win the population's support. The difficulty is that the guerrillas benefit from a double asymmetry. For it, the targets are easily identifiable: American soldiers, elected officials, administrative buildings, oil installations, whereas it is very difficult for the Coalition troops to detect rebels drowned in an urban population. Moreover, it is usually enough for the guerrilla to demonstrate that the authorities cannot ensure the security of the population to convince the latter. A guerrilla that does not lose, wins.

This difficulty is generally compensated for by an asymmetry of means, i.e. a concentration of several dozen fighters for a single rebel. It is then obvious that the 18,000 paratroopers of the 101st ^are insufficient to protect 4.5 million inhabitants, while guarding the oil fields and the Syrian border. It is therefore necessary for them to be supported and eventually replaced by local forces, which no longer exist since Governor Paul Bremer's decision to abolish the army and police of the former regime.

Under the aegis of the ground-air artillery battalion, a training plan for 20,000 policemen and soldiers of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (Iraqi National Guard) has beenlaunched in coordination with the rise in power of the various ministries, if only to ensure their salaries. These men serve primarily to protect sensitive points and the border in order to free American forces from these tasks. Mixed patrols also appeared from May onwards. This mix preserves American legitimacy and limits the blunders that are common in other American sectors.

Any use of violence provokes resentment among the victims' relatives. Massive, indiscriminate violence thus arouses many vocations for resistance. In the Sunni triangle whole tribes have thus fallen into rebellion as a result of blind operations or American over-reactions. Each force action of the 101st is thus subject to a cost/benefit analysis, trying to determine whether it will reduce the number of rebels or, on the contrary, increase it.

After opposing an entire combat-oriented ethos in order to redirect efforts toward action with the population, General Petraeus must then impose precision in the use of force. In a night operation on 35 targets in Mosul, 23 of them were captured with one or two shots and a broken door. Explanations were given to neighbours. During the capture of Udayi and Quusai, a dozen anti-tank missiles were fired into the house, after evacuating it and after calling for surrender. Three American soldiers were wounded before the first missile fire. As soon as the operation ended, the neighbours were compensated and the building was fully repaired.

It is at the price of all these efforts that a virtuous circle can be established. The rebuilding of a socio-economic fabric, political stability, an end to riots, the elimination of many "high-value targets" of the former regime, gave American troops a chance to rebuild their country's social and economic fabric.This intelligence authorises targeted operations which in return allow American units to remain below the threshold beyond which they are perceived as enemies.

Relief

After the units in combat in Iraq, the American military with the greatest incentive to innovate are those preparing for the next generation in the United States. There is a hesitation between a line

"The 101st Division is seeking ^the confidence of the same population and a hard line, rather "Israeli", which advocates the body count, i.e.-that is, the physical extermination of all the rebels, and thinks of isolating the guerrillas by retaliating against the population (destruction of the insurgents' houses, arrest of their families, artillery response to mortar attacks).

It was General Chiarelli's 1st Cavalry ^Division (the "First Cav"), destined toe to operate in Baghdad, which went the furthest in preparing for the "war among the people". The division was deeply restructured for this mission, transforming many of its artillery, tank and helicopter units into a single unit.The infantry is the queen of the "battle of hearts and minds", so much so that it appears that the infantry is the queen of the "battle of hearts and minds". The infantryman is himself, in the words of General Schoomaker, Chief of Staff of the US Army, transformed into a "decathlete" capable of fighting, talking to people, providing information, refurbishing a school, etc....

Above all, during the winter of 2003-2004, the divisional staff was immersed in the offices of the city hall of Austin, the capital of Texas, to learn all aspects of managing a large city, from garbage collection to organizing elections. Some officers also take courses at the Jordanian Peacekeeping Institute or in Great Britain.

A game of Go

In the war that has been going on in Iraq since May 2003, the "effects" are therefore not only to be produced on the enemy, but also on the population, and these two actions interact. We can then summarize this problem in a diagram.

Humanitarian action without fighting (zone I) is powerless, the population's primary need being security. This humanitarian aid can even serve as logistics for the enemy. The situation is similar to that of the Blue Helmets in Bosnia.

Simply seeking the destruction of the enemy (Zone III), a natural tendency of the American forces, can be terribly counterproductive, leading to resentment and a spirit of revenge. The ensuing loss of legitimacy dries up intelligence and operations become increasingly blind. The unit is then engaged in a spiral of isolation like the 82nd Airborne Division in the Fallujah region.

This isolation, suffered or sought (by taking refuge from large bases, for example), in turn leads to blindness that renders operations ineffective. We then enter a phase of rejection (zone IV).

The only effective route is therefore the one that simultaneously combines positive action on the enemy and on the population (zone II).

In this last field, operations resemble more Go actions than movements on a chessboard. As on a Go board there are no immediately apparent enemies, no King to kill but anonymous pawns whose accumulation ends up having effects. There is asymmetry only when one continues to play Chess against Go players.The 4,000 projects or the 300 raids and patrols of Operation Eagle Curtain (November 2003) are all "chits" deposited by the 101st Air Assault Division in its action ^area.

These actions can be conducted simultaneously or not, sequentially or not, but they must be integrated into a system in order to achieve tactical objectives, such as deThese actions can be conducted simultaneously or not, sequentially or not, but they must be integrated into a system to achieve tactical objectives, such as destroying a network in an area or restoring fuel supplies, which in turn serve higher objectives of advancing towards "normalisation".

This systemic thinking combining very different actions, the necessary overcoming of purely tactical logics of crushing a particular enemy or force protection, is the mark of true operational-level thinking.

In this type of warfare, the weakest is not necessarily the one you believe. Guerrillas have significant resources to deal with American power. With its tens of millions of dollars in cash, it can "buy" $100 attacks for years. The available "manpower" is abundant and is probably the first in recent history to be self-sufficient in arms and ammunition.

On the Coalition side, American commanders have had the greatest difficulty in finding funding for their projects. CERP, for example, did not allow them to fund projects worth more than $10,000 so as not to encroach on the reconstruction programme managed by the State Department. Men are scarce, less than one brigade per million civilians.

In this context, and as in the game of Go, the first moves often determine what happens next. Where the other American divisions have remained on hold, the 101st has launched ""We are in a race to win over the people" before the window of opportunity closed. In this "battle of 100 days", it was possible to create a virtuous circle in the north of the country. After this deadline, it is very difficult to go back as the Marines understood it in March 2004, when they relieved the 82nd Parachute Division in Fallujah^, which had become a rebel stronghold, while Mosul in the North was the model city of liberated Iraq.

References :

Paul Watson, Setting up Mosul for an election, Los Angeles Times, May 4, 2003.

Marc Semo, Mossoul, cité modèle de l'occupation américaine, Le Figaro, 10 June 2003.

Dennis Steele, Helping Iraq: A Block-by-Block Battle, Army, September 2004.

Dennis Steele, Sreaming Eagle Oil Gas and Power Company, Army, November 2003.

General David H Petraeus, Learning Counterinsurgency: Observations from Soldiering in Iraq, Military Review, January-February 2006.

John Lynn, Patterns of insurgency and counterinsurgency, Military Review, January-February 2006.