Hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee Subject: The Petraeus-Crocker Report on Progress in Iraq

Interview

HEARING OF THE SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE
SUBJECT: THE PETRAEUS-CROCKER REPORT ON PROGRESS IN IRAQ

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SEN. JACK REED (D-RI): Well, thanks very much, Mr. Chairman.

General Petraeus, have you ever recommended or requested the extension of troop tours to 18 months or the accelerated deployment of Guard and Reserve forces?

GEN. PETRAEUS: I have certainly never recommended extension beyond 15 months. I fact, General Odierno and I put out a letter that said that, I mean, unless things got completely out of control, that we would not even think of extending beyond 15 months.

SEN. REED: Having done that, doesn't that virtually lock you into a recommendation of reducing troops by 30,000 beginning in April and extending through the summer, regardless of what's happening on the ground?

GEN. PETRAEUS: It -- depending -- except depending on what can be taken out of the Reserves. Again, I don't know what is available in the National Guard and the Reserves. I do know that the active Army in particular, that the string does run out for the Army to meet the year-back criteria.

Now, what we have done of course as I mentioned, Senator, is actually in fact to take some elements out short of their 15-month mark, because of our assessment of the situation --

SEN. REED: No, I understand that. And I think basically my sense is that the overriding constraint you face is not what's happening on the ground in Iraq but the reality, unless you did recommend, request and succeed that unless tours were extended, 30,000 troops are coming out of there beginning in April next year regardless of the situation on the ground.

GEN. PETRAEUS: Again, certainly the active brigade combat teams were going to come out of there.

Again, I'm not aware of what is available in terms of battalions, brigades or what have you.

SEN. REED: My sense is that the Reserve and National Guard forces are not available to --

GEN. PETRAEUS: I think that's the case, but again, I don't know because I have not asked.

SEN. REED: Let me go to an issue which I think is essential to not only where we are but where we're going.

It's -- that the reversibility of the progress you've reported with respect to the surge, and I think in that context I look at the situation in Basra, which the chairman alluded to. The British conducted Operation Sinbad for about six months, goals very similar to the surge: reduce the violence in Basra, the second-largest city in Iraq; bring down the level of violence; prepare for redeployment of forces. And they've begun their redeployment, and yet the situation in Basra, I think, has become -- deteriorated significantly.

Is that accurate?

GEN. PETRAEUS: Actually, in the last month it has -- the level of violence has come down fairly significantly in part because of the -- as I mentioned, there's been a four-star general put in place there several months ago, changed the police chief, and again, reached some political accommodations among the three parties that are down there, and also did some release of some Jaish al-Mahdi detainees as well, who are not ones, by the way, who are in league with Iran.

SEN. REED: But the presence there of Iran is quite significant in the southern part, particularly in Basra.

GEN. PETRAEUS: There is a very real concern about Iranian activity in the southern provinces and in Basra in particular, certainly.

SEN. REED: And yet you've agreed, as you said to the chairman, that the reduction of British forces was appropriate. And in that regard, too, the current British forces have a population protection mission?

GEN. PETRAEUS: They do not.

And really, Operation Sinbad was very different from our surge in the sense that it was conducted to reach some relatively short-term goals, and actually all along intended to, in fact, come back to their basis.

They did, then, train, for example, the force to secure the palace over the course of the last couple of months, certified, took it over, and, in fact, has done an adequate job in maintaining security of that palace. There has been the stand-up of some additional Iraqi forces down there, including Iraqi special operations forces. And there are additional forces, literally as we speak, that are moving there to strengthen the position of General Mohan, the four-star general there.

SEN. REED: If the British forces are operating there with essentially a force protection mission and you describe, in your terms, progress because of political adjustments, why can't U.S. forces begin to adopt a force protection counterterrorism mission, non-population protection mission? Or, alternatively stated, why do certain elements in your command, American units, have a population protection mission and the British don't?

GEN. PETRAEUS: Well, it's largely because that's a Shi'a area, and there has not been the kind of sectarian violence. There's just basically one sect. There is a pocket of Sunnis down there, but there has been general coexistence down there, by and large.

So you literally just don't have the same -- that particular challenge in Basra or in the other southern provinces. There is intra-Shi'a fighting that goes on, but that is something that, in general, the Iraqis have shown an ability to resolve in a way that they have not been able to deal with the very heightened sectarian violence in particular that took off into mixed areas in the wake of --

SEN. REED: Let me return to my initial -- you've argued that -- lately, at least -- that progress in the south seems to be taking some hold, principally because of the non-sectarian elements. Yet where you are operating, where you will reduce forces next spring, there is a significant sectarian Shi'a-Sunni clash. And yet you're still confident that these gains will stand up?

GEN. PETRAEUS: There are a number of areas in which we are actually doing fine in mixed areas or in which it's better, more accurate, to say that Iraqi security forces are holding their own, are shouldering their share of the burden.

Again, not to come back to Anbar, but Anbar is one of them, certainly. And you can see -- I mean, we've actually -- not only were we going to bring the (MEW ?) home out of there and not ask for it to be replaced, but we earlier actually moved an Army battalion out of Anbar province as well to another area, in fact, where it was needed more.

But there are other locations like that -- Kirkuk; Mosul, to a degree; other locations where you can thin, because of the additional, in many cases, local volunteers, who have seen what has happened in Anbar province and have sought to have some of that in their areas.

SEN. REED: Any strategy has objectives and resources to gain those objectives. Included in that is time and troops. So given the present strategy that you've adopted, how long and at what maximum strength do you anticipate American forces being in Iraq?

GEN. PETRAEUS: Well, what I can see so far with any clarity in terms of time, as I said, is to the mid-July figure of 15-brigade combat teams. We have the concepts to take us beyond that. But as I mentioned in my testimony, I can't, with any confidence or clarity, then project beyond that time other than to say that we will draw down. What I cannot say is the pace of the drawdown beyond that 15- brigade combat team structure.

SEN. REED: Ambassador Crocker, to date, the nation-building effort in Iraq has faltered dramatically. And it seems the emerging strategy is one based on tribalism. Do you think that is, long term, an appropriate approach to stabilize the country?

AMB. CROCKER: Again, Senator, it's hard to do nation-building or reconciliation in the face of widespread sectarian violence, which has been the situation over the last 18 months. And as you've seen from General Petraeus's charts, it's really just been in the last few months that we've seen a significant reduction in that.

I think that nation-building reconciliation in Iraq is going to take a lot of forms. In certain areas, the tribal dimension is key. If you're dealing with Anbar, you're dealing in tribal terms. And what is interesting and somewhat encouraging to me there is those tribal elements that have emerged have shown a considerable interest in linking up with the central government in Baghdad.

About 10 days ago, the leader of the Anbar awakening, Sheikh Abdul Sattar, came to Baghdad. I spent some time with him. And his main purpose, though, was to meet with the prime minister and kind of establish a relationship and see what might develop out of that.

In other parts of the country, it's going to be a somewhat different story. Diyala, for example, the Baqubah area, you have tribal elements. But given the intermixture of Sunni, Shi'a and Kurds, unlike Anbar, which is all Sunni, you've also got a very complex sectarian element. So the dynamic is going to work differently in Diyala.

Similarly in the south, there is a tribal dimension there. It has a different form and shape than the tribal dimension in the predominantly Sunni areas. But there, too, we are seeing some signs of a desire on the part of southern Shi'a tribes to connect with us, to connect with their own central government, in the face of violent extremism practiced by elements of Jaish al-Mahdi.

In Baghdad, the tribal dimension is less dominant, although in many areas still present. But we're also seeing, as General Petraeus has pointed out, in some Sunni-Baghdad districts the same kind of backlash against al Qaeda, the same desire to step up and cooperate with our forces, and then to go the next step for these neighborhood watches to link up with their own central government and come under the authority of the Ministry of Interior. So, again, it's very complex, and it's going to vary from place to place. The tribes are part of it. Different areas are going to have different dynamics.

SEN. REED: Thank you.

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