The U.S. Counter-propaganda Failure in Iraq

by Andrew Garfield
Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2007

Defeat of the insurgency and terrorism in Iraq requires not only a military approach but also a political component. Although the "surge" may stabilize parts of Iraq and reduce the level of violence while the additional troops remain in place, long-term stability requires a more holistic approach.

Frank Kitson, a retired British military officer whose writings influenced British operations in Northern Ireland, argues that the "main characteristic that distinguishes campaigns of insurgency from other forms of war is that they are primarily concerned with the struggle for men's minds."[1] To defeat the insurgency, coalition forces must persuade the Iraqi population to reject extremism and deny safe haven to those fighting the new Iraqi political order. This will require dialogue, inducements, and the proportionate use of force to win the battle for "hearts and minds."

Effective engagement with key segments of the Iraqi population requires, in turn, a comprehensive information operations campaign. To date, it is this component that is most lacking in coalition strategy. The coalition has failed to counter enemy propaganda either by responding rapidly with effective counter messages or by proactively challenging the messages, methods, and ideology that the insurgents and extremists promote and exploit.

While terminology may vary—some officials refer to information operations as strategic communications, influence operations, psychological operations, perception management, or just propaganda—the intent to influence the hearts and minds of target audiences through the effective use of information remains constant.

In Iraq, while the coalition fumbles its information operations, the insurgents and militia groups are adept at releasing timely messages to undermine support for the Iraqi government and bolster their own perceived potency. They are quick to exploit coalition failures and excesses; they respond rapidly to defend their own actions, often by shifting blame to the authorities; and they hijack coalition successes to argue that change only occurs as a result of their violence. The slow speed of the U.S. military's clearance process—typically it takes three to five days to approve even a simple information operations product such as a leaflet or billboard—creates an information vacuum that Iraqis fill with conspiracy theories and gossip often reflecting the exaggerations or outright lies of insurgents and extremists.

Adversary Capabilities

Insurgent capabilities are advanced. Violence is their most effective propaganda tool. This is not a new strategy. For example, Johann Most, a nineteenth-century German pamphleteer, described terrorism as "propaganda of the deed."[2] In Iraq, violence intimidates the uncommitted, undermines confidence in the authorities, demonstrates potency, and can provoke a disproportionate military response from both the Iraqi authorities and the coalition. For example, in response to a suicide attack or ambush, coalition forces too often respond with disproportionate force, which results in the death of innocent bystanders. The insurgents have also used violence, such as the 2006 bombing of the Askari mosque in Samarra in order to fan the flames of sectarian conflict. Both Sunni and Shi‘i groups use violence to silence critics, creating an information vacuum that they fill.

Recognizing that terrorists use violence to psychological affect, the insurgents in Iraq have adopted both an attritional and strategic approach to its application. Improvised explosive devices (IED), small ambushes, snipers, and mortar and rocket attacks inflict a steady stream of casualties that, while insignificant to coalition combat effectiveness, nevertheless, sap the confidence and morale of both Iraqi society and the coalition domestic publics. The insurgents have a strategy. They use rapid movement to keep the coalition off-balance and stage attacks to coincide with breaking events, prominent visits, or external political timetables. For example, attacks increased in the months of September and October in the U.S. election years 2004 and 2006 but fell from September to October 2005, an off-year in the U.S. election cycle.[3] More precisely, on June 13, 2007, Al-Qaeda in Iraq attacked the Samarra mosque a second time (the first was on February 22, 2006), to divert attention from reports of increased cooperation between Sunni tribes and the coalition. Less than two weeks later, on June 25, 2007, a terrorist bombed the lobby of the Mansour Hotel, killing a number of Sunni and Shi‘i tribal leaders discussing reconciliation.

When insurgents, terrorists, and militiamen do attack, they use multimedia to amplify their actions and convey sophisticated messages to multiple audiences. Their strategy is broad; they employ low technology strategies to permeate their themes down to the grassroots and exploit mosques both to convey their point to the faithful and to suggest religious legitimacy. Extremist graffiti provides a constant reminder of their presence. In Baghdad and Fallujah, for example, slogans scrawled on walls and houses extol the virtues of various groups and leaders and condemn the Iraqi government and/or coalition while, in Kirkuk, militiamen scrawl slogans extolling Shi‘i leader Muqtada al-Sadr on building walls in contested neighborhoods.

Messaging can be diverse. Insurgents and militiamen also utilize the arts, including paintings, poetry, and songwriting, and post flyers, distribute leaflets, author articles, and even publish their own newspapers and magazines.

The insurgents, terrorists, and militiamen are also proficient in high technology messaging. They use SMS text messaging and Iraq's telephone system to intimidate Iraqis and even coalition members. They produce CDs and DVDs, which they distribute widely within communities that U.S. forces and the Iraqi government also seek to influence. To show their prowess, the insurgents often distribute sophisticated videos of an attack on coalition troops within hours of the operation. The Sunni insurgents even have their own television station, Al-Zawraa, which while banned by the Iraqi government, still broadcasts from Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan,[4] even as coalition pressure has forced it to switch satellite hosts several times.[5]

The insurgents, terrorists, and militiamen are adept at the art of manipulation. They need not rely only upon their own terrestrial and satellite stations but can also use foreign journalists and media outlets to ensure that their messages and actions are conveyed to the widest possible audience. By providing Western journalists with access to insurgent leaders and bomb makers,[6] they ensure their message reaches the U.S. and British heartland. They know that videos of atrocities and statements sent to Arabic satellite stations such as Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya will often be rebroadcast, at least in part, by Western televisions stations such as CNN or the BBC.

Perhaps the insurgents' and militias' most important tool, though, is the Internet. It provides not only a mass audience but also enables a quick response to Iraqi government and coalition arguments. Both the Islamic Front for Iraqi Resistance and Ansar al-Sunna, two of the largest and most deadly Sunni insurgent or terrorist groups, for example, maintain websites, which reappear in new forms almost as rapidly as the coalition or Iraqi government can shut them down. The videos these websites carry cascade across the Internet and appear quickly on mainstream websites such as LiveVideo.com and YouTube.com.

Here, U.S. authorities handicap themselves. U.S. military lawyers fear "blowback" to U.S. domestic audiences, which they interpret as a violation of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which prohibited domestic distribution of propaganda meant for foreign audiences.[7] As a result, U.S. commanders forbid coalition authorities to openly engage on the Internet. This decision has ceded this key tool to the Iraqi insurgents. The insurgents now provide, over the Internet, self-starter kits to transform any disaffected Muslim youth, be he in Ramadi, Rabat or Rochester, into an effective propagandist. Such mass mobilization allows the insurgents to overwhelm at minimal cost the expensive, pedestrian, and ineffective strategic advertising campaigns of the coalition. For example, production of a DVD highlighting insurgent attacks on U.S. troops may cost less than US$100 to make using equipment that costs less than $1,000. Maintaining an Internet bulletin board with postings picked up by Al-Jazeera television and then, perhaps, CNN, may cost as little as $1,500 and certainly no more than $10,000. In contrast, the value of the U.S. military's information contracts exceeds $250,000,000 per year, with only a fraction of the effectiveness of their adversaries.[8]

While the impact of insurgent propaganda is obvious, the coalition has yet to monitor enemy messages systematically at the grass roots level. There are no standing orders or central database to record enemy graffiti, for example. Absent such monitoring, any coalition attempt to seize information momentum falls short.

Coalition Information Operations

Coalition information operations are a shadow of their opponents. While the coalition has spent a hundred million dollars on advertising in Iraq,[9] the strategy of re-awarding huge contracts to advertising firms who spend tens of millions of dollars on nationally-broadcast radio and television commercials but who cannot demonstrate effective audience penetration is questionable. Local Iraqi firms have designed the most effective commercials at a relatively low cost. For example, one commercial showing the impact of an improvised explosive device on an Iraqi family cost only $15,000 to make. However, most coalition advertisements, perhaps one hundred times more costly, lack resonance and relevance among ordinary Iraqis, even as they saturate the airwaves.

Some coalition advertisements even do more harm than good. For example, in an attempt to "shock" Iraqi viewers into informing on the insurgents, the coalition has used, at great expense, international advertising agencies to produce commercials that use bullet-time cinematography reminiscent of the movie The Matrix that are meant to convey the horror of a suicide bombing. However, the firm, adhering to Western perceptions, sanitized its product to avoid any portrayal of the bloody and devastating realities of such an attack. The result may have looked cool to U.S. military officials and diplomats, but it had little if any impact upon ordinary Iraqis who are too acquainted with the realities of a bombing's immediate aftermath. Rather than serve its purpose, it became the subject of derision and evidence for Iraqis of the alienation of U.S. authorities.

Other media strategies have resulted in only limited success. The coalition sought to induce Iraqi journalists to provide balanced reporting and commentaries. Contrary to the assumption of some Western commentators, no planted stories were untruthful. Rather, in a media environment in which forces opposed to the new Iraqi government saturated media with cash, payments to journalists became necessary to even the playing field. Nevertheless, the program was poorly executed. The coalition also distributed millions of leaflets, displayed hundreds of billboards, and sent out hundreds of thousands of text messages. It has deployed loudspeakers on armored Humvees throughout Iraq and established radio stations, but saturation does not correlate to effectiveness.

The insurgents still maintain the information initiative. Part of the problem lies in deteriorating security and the failure of the coalition or Iraqi government to restore essential services and to provide a minimum acceptable level of security for ordinary Iraqis. Messaging about a better life loses effect when sewage remains in the streets, electricity is only available six or seven hours per day, and life is cheap. However, it would be irresponsible to exculpate coalition information operations simply because the situation makes their job difficult. They have neither won hearts and minds nor have they kept Iraqis on the side of the coalition and the Iraqi government. Shortcomings in the coalition influence strategy include a lack of central coordination; campaigns focused too much on abstract concepts without relevance for ordinary Iraqis; undue focus on generic audiences; a cumbersome approval process prior to product release; a shortage of qualified personnel; failure to utilize and manage private contractors; metrics focused on performance rather than effectiveness; failure to develop local spokesmen; and a failure to convince the U.S. public about the importance of information operations.

Poor Process

The failure to coordinate the information campaign has undercut the coalition's mission. There is an interagency process meant to coordinate the coalition's information campaign but, in reality, this becomes a forum for information sharing rather than a mechanism for command and control.

The key to a successful information campaign is to develop an overarching campaign theme with a limited number of culturally relevant messages projected to all contested audiences. A single command authority should guide and supervise all information and psychological operations and public affairs staff. In Iraq, however, competing organizations located in different headquarters and combatant commands and answering to different departments and agencies in the U.S. government each have a finger in the information operations pie. These organizations often failed to coordinate. In some cases, separate groups answering to various organizations and commands within the Defense Department and the State Department each sought to contract the same firms, resulting in duplication of effort and waste. Often, these competing organizations would also saturate the airwaves and print media but confuse the Iraqi audience with conflicting messages and ever changing themes.

Here, the coalition handicaps itself with its own approval process. Senior officials take days if not weeks to clear information operations products, even excellent products developed by Iraqis for their own ethnic groups. To approve an advertisement aimed at the readers of a newspaper with a circulation of less than 50,000—a smaller circulation, for comparison, than the local newspapers in U.S. cities like Lubbock, Texas, and Fargo, North Dakota—numerous information and psychological operation staffs, lawyers, and senior officers up to the rank of three-star generals must approve the text. Imagery of critical events filmed by the coalition's electronic news gathering agents and sent to coalition headquarters in close to real time—which could be used to highlight insurgent atrocities more effectively than a million dollar commercial—take days to win approval, by which time, the window of opportunity is lost. Unless the approval process is overhauled so that release approval takes only hours or, better yet, minutes, the coalition will lose the battle for the hearts and minds of Iraqis. The insurgents do not encumber themselves in the same way. Here, the model of major U.S. satellite networks might be adopted. In these 24-hour media operations, reporters, editors, and producers follow agreed upon operating procedures pre-approved by their own internal legal counsel in order to clear material for immediate release. Where some doubt exists regarding, for example, the veracity of a report, the sensitivity of an issue, or a potentially libelous statement, specialist lawyers are on call to give immediate guidance. The system works, and breaking news is aired rapidly. If the coalition adopted similar procedures, it could direct messaging and the debate, rather than only respond to insurgent and terrorist narratives.

The coalition also handicaps itself by failing to gauge the competency of those tasked to execute the coalition's information operations campaign. While psychological operations officers tend to be well trained, many information operations and public affairs officers are seconded from other branches of service and have not received much if anything beyond the military's basic introductory courses. Shortfalls of qualified personnel are compounded by the constant rotation of key personnel, often removing those experienced through "on the job" training with a new group of officers forced to reinvent the wheel.

Coalition efforts to utilize the private sector have faired little better. The U.S. government often allows contractors to provide inadequate services. The government's requests for proposals (RFPs), the basic job descriptions which private companies bid to fill, are often poorly written and reflect a lack of understanding of the operational requirements of commanders, the complexities of the information operation mission, and the abilities of the private sector. Government personnel adjudicating the selection process often lack the technical knowledge and business experience necessary to determine if a contractor's proposal is achievable and whether its claims regarding capabilities are genuine. No commercial organization would award a contract worth tens of millions of dollar without basic due diligence, but the coalition does.

The lowest bid selection process compounds the problem. Companies underbid their competitors to secure new contracts even though they have neither the resources nor competencies to implement their programs. This either leads to cost cutting or failure to complete, in either case, resulting in substandard work or failure. In wartime, one of the worst crimes a commercial enterprise can commit is to attempt to secure profit above declared margin by shortchanging funds or personnel committed to the execution of the conflict. Under the present system, however, these companies still remain at a competitive advantage. Many contractors fail to provide promised services or to achieve desired impact, but their poor performance is rarely challenged or recorded. As a result, because the government requires evidence of past performance in the bidding contract, poorly performing outfits continue to trump new companies that may have fresh ideas and experienced personnel but have yet to work for the government or military.

If the coalition is to reverse its failing information operations, it should prioritize effectiveness over performance. Too often, the U.S. military measures contractor performance in ways irrelevant to the mission: for example, counting the number of commercials aired on Iraqi television or billboards erected rather than gauging the effectiveness of such advertisements. Performance-based indicators confirm only that a message has been seen or heard, not its impact. There has been some success, but this is most often achieved at the battalion level by psychological operations and information operations subunits. These units have undertaken grassroots campaigns using loudspeakers, meetings, leaflets, billboards, comics, and newspaper placements promoting issues that matter to the people in their area of operation.

Abstract Messaging

Democracy promotion, or at least its rhetorical support, is the cornerstone of the Bush doctrine.[10] Too often, the coalition has used democracy promotion, citizenship, legitimacy of the Iraqi security forces, or demonization of the insurgents as their major themes. None of these, however, have direct relevance for most Iraqis. They are, therefore, unlikely to change their attitudes, let alone behavior. On an individual level, Iraqis care about personal security, jobs, and utilities. More broadly, they are influenced by the political positions of their ethnic groups, tribes, or clans and become engaged in discussions of the actions or inactions—rather than the legitimacy—of the Iraqi government, coalition, or insurgents. Public campaigns promoting a utopian vision have little resonance when Iraqis face the reality of a divided country on the verge of civil war, if not collapse.

Compounding this shortcoming is coalition political correctness. Terms deemed proper in Western capitals are often the subject of derision, delude the coalition's own troops, and hand propaganda victories to our adversaries. The coalition, for example, labels insurgents as anti-Iraqi forces. But, most Iraqis do not consider the insurgents to be anti-Iraq; indeed, many Iraqis consider the coalition itself to be anti-Iraqi. Terminology matters. Until 2006, the coalition referred to Iraqi men as MAMs, military aged males, a category of suspicion. This both angered Iraqis and desensitized coalition troops to the fact that not all young Iraqi men are insurgents. Both coalition officials and the troops still refer to the insurgents as jihadists or the muj (short for mujahideen). Both terms backfire for, while negative in the Western context, many religious Iraqis consider the terms to bestow a dignity and religious legitimacy. Alternatively, reference to all Iraqis as hajjis—as U.S. troops once referred to Vietnamese as gooks—backfires by treating an important religious term in a derogatory way. Even if some Iraqis did not once care, insurgents point to such examples to build a wedge between the coalition and local society.

The key to success with Iraqis is similar to the maxim of Western political campaign mangers: Think strategically but act locally. Instead, the coalition undercuts its information campaigns by relying overly on a generic Iraqi audience that does not exist outside the coalition imagination. The assumption that all Iraqis are broadly similar is incorrect. There are no messages or emotional appeals that resonate across society. Overarching, national-level campaigns are ineffective except when executed for informational purposes, for example, in advance of an election.

For the same reasons, campaigns targeting each of the three main ethnic or sectarian groups will fail to resonate with all their members. There are too many intra-group divisions, whether tribal, political, or ideological. Shi‘i supporters of the Badr Organization, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, do not internalize the same messages as members of Shi‘i demagogue Muqtada al-Sadr's Jaysh al-Mahdi (Mahdi Army). Even in the relative peace and stability of Iraqi Kurdistan, the unity between the two dominant parties—Masoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan—is ephemeral.

The challenge of developing focused "grass roots" campaigns is a difficult one. The dominance of national television and international satellite stations makes it difficult to direct precise messages to specific audiences. For example, developing an information campaign intended to undermine Sunni support for Al-Qaeda must vary among tribes and locales because the level of support among the Sunni main tribes varies from active involvement to violent opposition. No single theme will appeal to or resonate with all Sunnis. National television advertising, consequently, is not an ideal medium to convey nuanced messaging to multiple audiences.

To develop effective programming, the coalition's cultural comprehension must also include awareness of audience preferences. Such knowledge mandates extensive social science and attitudinal research not available consistently to coalition planners. The coalition should refocus its efforts to develop nuanced "grass roots" campaigns, reinforced by regional and only limited national messaging. Unfortunately, the Multi-National Forces-Iraq, the major contracting authority for information operations, appears unwilling to adjust. In June 2007, it re-awarded a $199 million per year contract to Bell Pottinger, an international advertising company that for three years has been unable to show traction in the war of ideas. The company will pay over $100 million to Arab satellite TV stations to air 30- and 60-second commercials, most of which fail to resonate with Iraqis. Such paid advertisements will air on the same stations that air for free the messages and images of the enemies of the Iraqi government and the coalition.

Lack of Iraqi spokesmen undercuts the effectiveness of coalition information operations as well. Efforts to recruit, train, and support Iraqi spokesmen have been an abject failure. As a result, U.S. military public affairs officers continue to be the public face of the coalition in Iraq, speaking in English and hoping that Iraqis understand and are not influenced by misleading Arabic translations of their messages. There is no substitute for Iraqis thinking and speaking in Arabic and using terminology and narratives understood by Iraqis.

Nor should the U.S. military limit Iraqi spokesmen to the Iraqi audience. While senior military officers focus their briefings on the U.S. and international media, Iraqis see these briefings, translated and rebroadcast by such outlets as Al-Jazeera or the Lebanon Broadcasting Corporation. Sometimes, Arabic satellite stations edit and clip with hostile intent.

Making the Case for Information Operations

The final failure in the war of ideas is the U.S. government's inability to win domestic support to use information as a weapon. The November 2005 press controversy over payment to Iraqi journalists[11] demonstrated the failure to make a compelling case to engage in counter-propaganda in Iraq and elsewhere. It is ironic that the largely left-leaning American press and some politicians are more comfortable advocating the use of violence than reasoned arguments and inducements to defeat an adversary.

Washington should make a compelling case to the American public that information operations are indispensable tools. Whether the public agrees or disagrees with the Iraq war, winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi public is vital to achieving peace. A successful strategy will not only counter enemy propaganda but also seize and hold the information initiative. First, the U.S. administration and all its component departments and agencies should recognize that coalition forces are engaged in an influence war in which Washington should deploy in a coordinated manner all available levers of soft and hard power. These include coercive force and a combined military and civilian effort to restore stability and essential services, leading to a perceptible rise in standards of living. While the establishment of an effective and representative government, even at the expense of democratic ideals, will have far greater impact on Iraqi attitudes than any information campaign, this cannot occur without the establishment of information dominance.

Coalition counterpropaganda can be used to explain motives and actions, set expectations and, when necessary, apologize for missteps. It can be used to restore and bolster morale, hope, and pride. And most importantly, it must be used to denigrate adversaries and counter their words and deeds.

To restore coalition dominance, the U.S. military must create a single command authority to command and control the information operations effort at the strategic level and to provide the direction and command guidance to all subordinate levels. This requires cessation of the needless infighting between the State Department, CIA, and Pentagon; there must also be an end to the corollary squabbling between the military's information operations, psychological operations, and public affairs officers.

The coalition should begin a comprehensive propaganda monitoring and collection effort to capture all enemy propaganda, whether DVDs, leaflets, sermons, or gossip. Without such a single, integrated database, psychological and information specialists cannot determine the intended audience, the propagandists' desired effect, or their success in reaching it. They need such a database to establish the audiences reached; insights into the adversaries' perceptions, capabilities, vulnerabilities, and intent; the intentional or unintentional inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and deceits in adversary messaging, and effective counterarguments.

Insurgent and terrorist attacks should be assessed through a similar prism to determine the desired psychological effects and impact. Such analysis is vital because the physical target of attack is not always the actual target. For example, the two attacks on the Samarra mosque[12] were not aimed at the building or the worshippers who use it but rather at inflaming sectarian conflict. Only with this knowledge and a detailed understanding of the human terrain is it possible to develop a counter-propaganda campaign effective in both message and timing.

Such a dialogue should extol the virtues of the Iraqi government and the coalition and bolster morale shaken by three years of violence while also highlighting the insurgency's vices. It should also challenge enemy propaganda. The coalition has yet to assemble the capabilities, skills, and resources to execute such a campaign, nor has it prepared the political and public will to do so. The army's new counterinsurgency doctrine issued by General David Petraeus, the U.S. Army senior commander in Iraq, states that, "The IO [Information Operations] Logical Line of Operation (LLO) may often be the decisive LLO. By shaping the information environment, IO also makes significant contributions to setting conditions for the success of all other LLOs."[13] And yet, information operations still do not have the full support of many senior officials and commanders. While the political and military officials struggle to overcome these critical challenges, insurgents, militias, and terrorists continue to erode Iraqi support for a new order. The initiative in the information war in Iraq has already been lost. The same problems now replicate in Afghanistan and other battlefields in the global war on terrorism. Whether the United States, NATO, and other coalition countries will learn lessons from Iraq remains an open question.

Andrew Garfield is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a founding partner of Glevum Associates, a strategic communication consultancy. He has worked in information operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

[1] Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency, and Peacekeeping (New York: Stackpole, 1971), p. 290.
[2] Johann Most, "Action as Propaganda," Freiheit, July 25, 1885.
[3] See "Iraq Coalition Casualty Count," iCasualties.org, accessed July 5, 2007.
[4] Adnkronos International (Rome), Feb. 26, 2007.
[5] The Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 17, 2007.
[6] "The Enemy's New Tools," Time Magazine, June 25, 2007.
[7] Public Law 402, Jan. 27, 1948.
[8] This figure is based on U.S government contracts awarded since January 2007, including a $199 million contract to the British public relations company Bell Pottinger and one for $26 million to Leone Industries for information operations services.
[9] In 2006, the coalition awarded contracts to various U.S. and British strategic communications and public relations companies including Bell Pottinger, Lincoln Group, SY Coleman, and SOSi. The awards which totaled several hundred million dollars varied in size from $5-7 million to Lincoln Group for information operations and polling management services to well over $15 million for national advertising campaigns executed by Bell Pottinger to promote coalition themes including the concept of Iraqi citizenship.
[10] George W. Bush, inaugural speech, Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, 2005; George W. Bush, address, Prague, June 5, 2007.
[11] Los Angeles Times, Nov. 30, 2005.
[12] The first attack on Feb. 22, 2006, destroyed the golden dome, and the second on June 13, 2007, destroyed the mosque's two minarets. The New York Times, Feb. 22, 2006; The New York Times, June 13, 2007.
[13] Counterinsurgency, U.S. Army, FM (Field Manual) 3-24, Dec. 2006, pp. 5-8.

The U.S. Counter-propaganda Failure in Iraq

by Andrew Garfield
Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2007
http://www.meforum.org/article/1753

Defeat of the insurgency and terrorism in Iraq requires not only a military approach but also a political component. Although the "surge" may stabilize parts of Iraq and reduce the level of violence while the additional troops remain in place, long-term stability requires a more holistic approach.

Frank Kitson, a retired British military officer whose writings influenced British operations in Northern Ireland, argues that the "main characteristic that distinguishes campaigns of insurgency from other forms of war is that they are primarily concerned with the struggle for men's minds."[1] To defeat the insurgency, coalition forces must persuade the Iraqi population to reject extremism and deny safe haven to those fighting the new Iraqi political order. This will require dialogue, inducements, and the proportionate use of force to win the battle for "hearts and minds."

Effective engagement with key segments of the Iraqi population requires, in turn, a comprehensive information operations campaign. To date, it is this component that is most lacking in coalition strategy. The coalition has failed to counter enemy propaganda either by responding rapidly with effective counter messages or by proactively challenging the messages, methods, and ideology that the insurgents and extremists promote and exploit.

While terminology may vary—some officials refer to information operations as strategic communications, influence operations, psychological operations, perception management, or just propaganda—the intent to influence the hearts and minds of target audiences through the effective use of information remains constant.

In Iraq, while the coalition fumbles its information operations, the insurgents and militia groups are adept at releasing timely messages to undermine support for the Iraqi government and bolster their own perceived potency. They are quick to exploit coalition failures and excesses; they respond rapidly to defend their own actions, often by shifting blame to the authorities; and they hijack coalition successes to argue that change only occurs as a result of their violence. The slow speed of the U.S. military's clearance process—typically it takes three to five days to approve even a simple information operations product such as a leaflet or billboard—creates an information vacuum that Iraqis fill with conspiracy theories and gossip often reflecting the exaggerations or outright lies of insurgents and extremists.

Adversary Capabilities

Insurgent capabilities are advanced. Violence is their most effective propaganda tool. This is not a new strategy. For example, Johann Most, a nineteenth-century German pamphleteer, described terrorism as "propaganda of the deed."[2] In Iraq, violence intimidates the uncommitted, undermines confidence in the authorities, demonstrates potency, and can provoke a disproportionate military response from both the Iraqi authorities and the coalition. For example, in response to a suicide attack or ambush, coalition forces too often respond with disproportionate force, which results in the death of innocent bystanders. The insurgents have also used violence, such as the 2006 bombing of the Askari mosque in Samarra in order to fan the flames of sectarian conflict. Both Sunni and Shi‘i groups use violence to silence critics, creating an information vacuum that they fill.

Recognizing that terrorists use violence to psychological affect, the insurgents in Iraq have adopted both an attritional and strategic approach to its application. Improvised explosive devices (IED), small ambushes, snipers, and mortar and rocket attacks inflict a steady stream of casualties that, while insignificant to coalition combat effectiveness, nevertheless, sap the confidence and morale of both Iraqi society and the coalition domestic publics. The insurgents have a strategy. They use rapid movement to keep the coalition off-balance and stage attacks to coincide with breaking events, prominent visits, or external political timetables. For example, attacks increased in the months of September and October in the U.S. election years 2004 and 2006 but fell from September to October 2005, an off-year in the U.S. election cycle.[3] More precisely, on June 13, 2007, Al-Qaeda in Iraq attacked the Samarra mosque a second time (the first was on February 22, 2006), to divert attention from reports of increased cooperation between Sunni tribes and the coalition. Less than two weeks later, on June 25, 2007, a terrorist bombed the lobby of the Mansour Hotel, killing a number of Sunni and Shi‘i tribal leaders discussing reconciliation.

When insurgents, terrorists, and militiamen do attack, they use multimedia to amplify their actions and convey sophisticated messages to multiple audiences. Their strategy is broad; they employ low technology strategies to permeate their themes down to the grassroots and exploit mosques both to convey their point to the faithful and to suggest religious legitimacy. Extremist graffiti provides a constant reminder of their presence. In Baghdad and Fallujah, for example, slogans scrawled on walls and houses extol the virtues of various groups and leaders and condemn the Iraqi government and/or coalition while, in Kirkuk, militiamen scrawl slogans extolling Shi‘i leader Muqtada al-Sadr on building walls in contested neighborhoods.

Messaging can be diverse. Insurgents and militiamen also utilize the arts, including paintings, poetry, and songwriting, and post flyers, distribute leaflets, author articles, and even publish their own newspapers and magazines.

The insurgents, terrorists, and militiamen are also proficient in high technology messaging. They use SMS text messaging and Iraq's telephone system to intimidate Iraqis and even coalition members. They produce CDs and DVDs, which they distribute widely within communities that U.S. forces and the Iraqi government also seek to influence. To show their prowess, the insurgents often distribute sophisticated videos of an attack on coalition troops within hours of the operation. The Sunni insurgents even have their own television station, Al-Zawraa, which while banned by the Iraqi government, still broadcasts from Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan,[4] even as coalition pressure has forced it to switch satellite hosts several times.[5]

The insurgents, terrorists, and militiamen are adept at the art of manipulation. They need not rely only upon their own terrestrial and satellite stations but can also use foreign journalists and media outlets to ensure that their messages and actions are conveyed to the widest possible audience. By providing Western journalists with access to insurgent leaders and bomb makers,[6] they ensure their message reaches the U.S. and British heartland. They know that videos of atrocities and statements sent to Arabic satellite stations such as Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya will often be rebroadcast, at least in part, by Western televisions stations such as CNN or the BBC.

Perhaps the insurgents' and militias' most important tool, though, is the Internet. It provides not only a mass audience but also enables a quick response to Iraqi government and coalition arguments. Both the Islamic Front for Iraqi Resistance and Ansar al-Sunna, two of the largest and most deadly Sunni insurgent or terrorist groups, for example, maintain websites, which reappear in new forms almost as rapidly as the coalition or Iraqi government can shut them down. The videos these websites carry cascade across the Internet and appear quickly on mainstream websites such as LiveVideo.com and YouTube.com.

Here, U.S. authorities handicap themselves. U.S. military lawyers fear "blowback" to U.S. domestic audiences, which they interpret as a violation of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which prohibited domestic distribution of propaganda meant for foreign audiences.[7] As a result, U.S. commanders forbid coalition authorities to openly engage on the Internet. This decision has ceded this key tool to the Iraqi insurgents. The insurgents now provide, over the Internet, self-starter kits to transform any disaffected Muslim youth, be he in Ramadi, Rabat or Rochester, into an effective propagandist. Such mass mobilization allows the insurgents to overwhelm at minimal cost the expensive, pedestrian, and ineffective strategic advertising campaigns of the coalition. For example, production of a DVD highlighting insurgent attacks on U.S. troops may cost less than US$100 to make using equipment that costs less than $1,000. Maintaining an Internet bulletin board with postings picked up by Al-Jazeera television and then, perhaps, CNN, may cost as little as $1,500 and certainly no more than $10,000. In contrast, the value of the U.S. military's information contracts exceeds $250,000,000 per year, with only a fraction of the effectiveness of their adversaries.[8]

While the impact of insurgent propaganda is obvious, the coalition has yet to monitor enemy messages systematically at the grass roots level. There are no standing orders or central database to record enemy graffiti, for example. Absent such monitoring, any coalition attempt to seize information momentum falls short.

Coalition Information Operations

Coalition information operations are a shadow of their opponents. While the coalition has spent a hundred million dollars on advertising in Iraq,[9] the strategy of re-awarding huge contracts to advertising firms who spend tens of millions of dollars on nationally-broadcast radio and television commercials but who cannot demonstrate effective audience penetration is questionable. Local Iraqi firms have designed the most effective commercials at a relatively low cost. For example, one commercial showing the impact of an improvised explosive device on an Iraqi family cost only $15,000 to make. However, most coalition advertisements, perhaps one hundred times more costly, lack resonance and relevance among ordinary Iraqis, even as they saturate the airwaves.

Some coalition advertisements even do more harm than good. For example, in an attempt to "shock" Iraqi viewers into informing on the insurgents, the coalition has used, at great expense, international advertising agencies to produce commercials that use bullet-time cinematography reminiscent of the movie The Matrix that are meant to convey the horror of a suicide bombing. However, the firm, adhering to Western perceptions, sanitized its product to avoid any portrayal of the bloody and devastating realities of such an attack. The result may have looked cool to U.S. military officials and diplomats, but it had little if any impact upon ordinary Iraqis who are too acquainted with the realities of a bombing's immediate aftermath. Rather than serve its purpose, it became the subject of derision and evidence for Iraqis of the alienation of U.S. authorities.

Other media strategies have resulted in only limited success. The coalition sought to induce Iraqi journalists to provide balanced reporting and commentaries. Contrary to the assumption of some Western commentators, no planted stories were untruthful. Rather, in a media environment in which forces opposed to the new Iraqi government saturated media with cash, payments to journalists became necessary to even the playing field. Nevertheless, the program was poorly executed. The coalition also distributed millions of leaflets, displayed hundreds of billboards, and sent out hundreds of thousands of text messages. It has deployed loudspeakers on armored Humvees throughout Iraq and established radio stations, but saturation does not correlate to effectiveness.

The insurgents still maintain the information initiative. Part of the problem lies in deteriorating security and the failure of the coalition or Iraqi government to restore essential services and to provide a minimum acceptable level of security for ordinary Iraqis. Messaging about a better life loses effect when sewage remains in the streets, electricity is only available six or seven hours per day, and life is cheap. However, it would be irresponsible to exculpate coalition information operations simply because the situation makes their job difficult. They have neither won hearts and minds nor have they kept Iraqis on the side of the coalition and the Iraqi government. Shortcomings in the coalition influence strategy include a lack of central coordination; campaigns focused too much on abstract concepts without relevance for ordinary Iraqis; undue focus on generic audiences; a cumbersome approval process prior to product release; a shortage of qualified personnel; failure to utilize and manage private contractors; metrics focused on performance rather than effectiveness; failure to develop local spokesmen; and a failure to convince the U.S. public about the importance of information operations.

Poor Process

The failure to coordinate the information campaign has undercut the coalition's mission. There is an interagency process meant to coordinate the coalition's information campaign but, in reality, this becomes a forum for information sharing rather than a mechanism for command and control.

The key to a successful information campaign is to develop an overarching campaign theme with a limited number of culturally relevant messages projected to all contested audiences. A single command authority should guide and supervise all information and psychological operations and public affairs staff. In Iraq, however, competing organizations located in different headquarters and combatant commands and answering to different departments and agencies in the U.S. government each have a finger in the information operations pie. These organizations often failed to coordinate. In some cases, separate groups answering to various organizations and commands within the Defense Department and the State Department each sought to contract the same firms, resulting in duplication of effort and waste. Often, these competing organizations would also saturate the airwaves and print media but confuse the Iraqi audience with conflicting messages and ever changing themes.

Here, the coalition handicaps itself with its own approval process. Senior officials take days if not weeks to clear information operations products, even excellent products developed by Iraqis for their own ethnic groups. To approve an advertisement aimed at the readers of a newspaper with a circulation of less than 50,000—a smaller circulation, for comparison, than the local newspapers in U.S. cities like Lubbock, Texas, and Fargo, North Dakota—numerous information and psychological operation staffs, lawyers, and senior officers up to the rank of three-star generals must approve the text. Imagery of critical events filmed by the coalition's electronic news gathering agents and sent to coalition headquarters in close to real time—which could be used to highlight insurgent atrocities more effectively than a million dollar commercial—take days to win approval, by which time, the window of opportunity is lost. Unless the approval process is overhauled so that release approval takes only hours or, better yet, minutes, the coalition will lose the battle for the hearts and minds of Iraqis. The insurgents do not encumber themselves in the same way. Here, the model of major U.S. satellite networks might be adopted. In these 24-hour media operations, reporters, editors, and producers follow agreed upon operating procedures pre-approved by their own internal legal counsel in order to clear material for immediate release. Where some doubt exists regarding, for example, the veracity of a report, the sensitivity of an issue, or a potentially libelous statement, specialist lawyers are on call to give immediate guidance. The system works, and breaking news is aired rapidly. If the coalition adopted similar procedures, it could direct messaging and the debate, rather than only respond to insurgent and terrorist narratives.

The coalition also handicaps itself by failing to gauge the competency of those tasked to execute the coalition's information operations campaign. While psychological operations officers tend to be well trained, many information operations and public affairs officers are seconded from other branches of service and have not received much if anything beyond the military's basic introductory courses. Shortfalls of qualified personnel are compounded by the constant rotation of key personnel, often removing those experienced through "on the job" training with a new group of officers forced to reinvent the wheel.

Coalition efforts to utilize the private sector have faired little better. The U.S. government often allows contractors to provide inadequate services. The government's requests for proposals (RFPs), the basic job descriptions which private companies bid to fill, are often poorly written and reflect a lack of understanding of the operational requirements of commanders, the complexities of the information operation mission, and the abilities of the private sector. Government personnel adjudicating the selection process often lack the technical knowledge and business experience necessary to determine if a contractor's proposal is achievable and whether its claims regarding capabilities are genuine. No commercial organization would award a contract worth tens of millions of dollar without basic due diligence, but the coalition does.

The lowest bid selection process compounds the problem. Companies underbid their competitors to secure new contracts even though they have neither the resources nor competencies to implement their programs. This either leads to cost cutting or failure to complete, in either case, resulting in substandard work or failure. In wartime, one of the worst crimes a commercial enterprise can commit is to attempt to secure profit above declared margin by shortchanging funds or personnel committed to the execution of the conflict. Under the present system, however, these companies still remain at a competitive advantage. Many contractors fail to provide promised services or to achieve desired impact, but their poor performance is rarely challenged or recorded. As a result, because the government requires evidence of past performance in the bidding contract, poorly performing outfits continue to trump new companies that may have fresh ideas and experienced personnel but have yet to work for the government or military.

If the coalition is to reverse its failing information operations, it should prioritize effectiveness over performance. Too often, the U.S. military measures contractor performance in ways irrelevant to the mission: for example, counting the number of commercials aired on Iraqi television or billboards erected rather than gauging the effectiveness of such advertisements. Performance-based indicators confirm only that a message has been seen or heard, not its impact. There has been some success, but this is most often achieved at the battalion level by psychological operations and information operations subunits. These units have undertaken grassroots campaigns using loudspeakers, meetings, leaflets, billboards, comics, and newspaper placements promoting issues that matter to the people in their area of operation.

Abstract Messaging

Democracy promotion, or at least its rhetorical support, is the cornerstone of the Bush doctrine.[10] Too often, the coalition has used democracy promotion, citizenship, legitimacy of the Iraqi security forces, or demonization of the insurgents as their major themes. None of these, however, have direct relevance for most Iraqis. They are, therefore, unlikely to change their attitudes, let alone behavior. On an individual level, Iraqis care about personal security, jobs, and utilities. More broadly, they are influenced by the political positions of their ethnic groups, tribes, or clans and become engaged in discussions of the actions or inactions—rather than the legitimacy—of the Iraqi government, coalition, or insurgents. Public campaigns promoting a utopian vision have little resonance when Iraqis face the reality of a divided country on the verge of civil war, if not collapse.

Compounding this shortcoming is coalition political correctness. Terms deemed proper in Western capitals are often the subject of derision, delude the coalition's own troops, and hand propaganda victories to our adversaries. The coalition, for example, labels insurgents as anti-Iraqi forces. But, most Iraqis do not consider the insurgents to be anti-Iraq; indeed, many Iraqis consider the coalition itself to be anti-Iraqi. Terminology matters. Until 2006, the coalition referred to Iraqi men as MAMs, military aged males, a category of suspicion. This both angered Iraqis and desensitized coalition troops to the fact that not all young Iraqi men are insurgents. Both coalition officials and the troops still refer to the insurgents as jihadists or the muj (short for mujahideen). Both terms backfire for, while negative in the Western context, many religious Iraqis consider the terms to bestow a dignity and religious legitimacy. Alternatively, reference to all Iraqis as hajjis—as U.S. troops once referred to Vietnamese as gooks—backfires by treating an important religious term in a derogatory way. Even if some Iraqis did not once care, insurgents point to such examples to build a wedge between the coalition and local society.

The key to success with Iraqis is similar to the maxim of Western political campaign mangers: Think strategically but act locally. Instead, the coalition undercuts its information campaigns by relying overly on a generic Iraqi audience that does not exist outside the coalition imagination. The assumption that all Iraqis are broadly similar is incorrect. There are no messages or emotional appeals that resonate across society. Overarching, national-level campaigns are ineffective except when executed for informational purposes, for example, in advance of an election.

For the same reasons, campaigns targeting each of the three main ethnic or sectarian groups will fail to resonate with all their members. There are too many intra-group divisions, whether tribal, political, or ideological. Shi‘i supporters of the Badr Organization, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, do not internalize the same messages as members of Shi‘i demagogue Muqtada al-Sadr's Jaysh al-Mahdi (Mahdi Army). Even in the relative peace and stability of Iraqi Kurdistan, the unity between the two dominant parties—Masoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan—is ephemeral.

The challenge of developing focused "grass roots" campaigns is a difficult one. The dominance of national television and international satellite stations makes it difficult to direct precise messages to specific audiences. For example, developing an information campaign intended to undermine Sunni support for Al-Qaeda must vary among tribes and locales because the level of support among the Sunni main tribes varies from active involvement to violent opposition. No single theme will appeal to or resonate with all Sunnis. National television advertising, consequently, is not an ideal medium to convey nuanced messaging to multiple audiences.

To develop effective programming, the coalition's cultural comprehension must also include awareness of audience preferences. Such knowledge mandates extensive social science and attitudinal research not available consistently to coalition planners. The coalition should refocus its efforts to develop nuanced "grass roots" campaigns, reinforced by regional and only limited national messaging. Unfortunately, the Multi-National Forces-Iraq, the major contracting authority for information operations, appears unwilling to adjust. In June 2007, it re-awarded a $199 million per year contract to Bell Pottinger, an international advertising company that for three years has been unable to show traction in the war of ideas. The company will pay over $100 million to Arab satellite TV stations to air 30- and 60-second commercials, most of which fail to resonate with Iraqis. Such paid advertisements will air on the same stations that air for free the messages and images of the enemies of the Iraqi government and the coalition.

Lack of Iraqi spokesmen undercuts the effectiveness of coalition information operations as well. Efforts to recruit, train, and support Iraqi spokesmen have been an abject failure. As a result, U.S. military public affairs officers continue to be the public face of the coalition in Iraq, speaking in English and hoping that Iraqis understand and are not influenced by misleading Arabic translations of their messages. There is no substitute for Iraqis thinking and speaking in Arabic and using terminology and narratives understood by Iraqis.

Nor should the U.S. military limit Iraqi spokesmen to the Iraqi audience. While senior military officers focus their briefings on the U.S. and international media, Iraqis see these briefings, translated and rebroadcast by such outlets as Al-Jazeera or the Lebanon Broadcasting Corporation. Sometimes, Arabic satellite stations edit and clip with hostile intent.

Making the Case for Information Operations

The final failure in the war of ideas is the U.S. government's inability to win domestic support to use information as a weapon. The November 2005 press controversy over payment to Iraqi journalists[11] demonstrated the failure to make a compelling case to engage in counter-propaganda in Iraq and elsewhere. It is ironic that the largely left-leaning American press and some politicians are more comfortable advocating the use of violence than reasoned arguments and inducements to defeat an adversary.

Washington should make a compelling case to the American public that information operations are indispensable tools. Whether the public agrees or disagrees with the Iraq war, winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi public is vital to achieving peace. A successful strategy will not only counter enemy propaganda but also seize and hold the information initiative. First, the U.S. administration and all its component departments and agencies should recognize that coalition forces are engaged in an influence war in which Washington should deploy in a coordinated manner all available levers of soft and hard power. These include coercive force and a combined military and civilian effort to restore stability and essential services, leading to a perceptible rise in standards of living. While the establishment of an effective and representative government, even at the expense of democratic ideals, will have far greater impact on Iraqi attitudes than any information campaign, this cannot occur without the establishment of information dominance.

Coalition counterpropaganda can be used to explain motives and actions, set expectations and, when necessary, apologize for missteps. It can be used to restore and bolster morale, hope, and pride. And most importantly, it must be used to denigrate adversaries and counter their words and deeds.

To restore coalition dominance, the U.S. military must create a single command authority to command and control the information operations effort at the strategic level and to provide the direction and command guidance to all subordinate levels. This requires cessation of the needless infighting between the State Department, CIA, and Pentagon; there must also be an end to the corollary squabbling between the military's information operations, psychological operations, and public affairs officers.

The coalition should begin a comprehensive propaganda monitoring and collection effort to capture all enemy propaganda, whether DVDs, leaflets, sermons, or gossip. Without such a single, integrated database, psychological and information specialists cannot determine the intended audience, the propagandists' desired effect, or their success in reaching it. They need such a database to establish the audiences reached; insights into the adversaries' perceptions, capabilities, vulnerabilities, and intent; the intentional or unintentional inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and deceits in adversary messaging, and effective counterarguments.

Insurgent and terrorist attacks should be assessed through a similar prism to determine the desired psychological effects and impact. Such analysis is vital because the physical target of attack is not always the actual target. For example, the two attacks on the Samarra mosque[12] were not aimed at the building or the worshippers who use it but rather at inflaming sectarian conflict. Only with this knowledge and a detailed understanding of the human terrain is it possible to develop a counter-propaganda campaign effective in both message and timing.

Such a dialogue should extol the virtues of the Iraqi government and the coalition and bolster morale shaken by three years of violence while also highlighting the insurgency's vices. It should also challenge enemy propaganda. The coalition has yet to assemble the capabilities, skills, and resources to execute such a campaign, nor has it prepared the political and public will to do so. The army's new counterinsurgency doctrine issued by General David Petraeus, the U.S. Army senior commander in Iraq, states that, "The IO [Information Operations] Logical Line of Operation (LLO) may often be the decisive LLO. By shaping the information environment, IO also makes significant contributions to setting conditions for the success of all other LLOs."[13] And yet, information operations still do not have the full support of many senior officials and commanders. While the political and military officials struggle to overcome these critical challenges, insurgents, militias, and terrorists continue to erode Iraqi support for a new order. The initiative in the information war in Iraq has already been lost. The same problems now replicate in Afghanistan and other battlefields in the global war on terrorism. Whether the United States, NATO, and other coalition countries will learn lessons from Iraq remains an open question.

Andrew Garfield is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a founding partner of Glevum Associates, a strategic communication consultancy. He has worked in information operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

August 29, 2007
Iraqi Cleric Halts Militia Activities for 6 Months

By STEPHEN FARRELL and CHRISTINE HAUSER
BAGHDAD, Aug. 29 — The radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr suspended all activities of his widely-feared Mahdi Army for six months, a move that was widely taken to be acknowledgment of a backlash in Iraq against his fighters for fighting street battles with government forces in the sacred city of Karbala during one of its holiest festivals.

Mr. Sadr’s senior aides announced the freeze after an indefinite curfew ended two days of pitched fighting between Shiite forces that left 52 people dead and 279 injured, according to health officials in Karbala.

Thousands of pilgrims who were celebrating the birth of a revered 9th-century Shiite imam were forced to flee through bloodstained streets on Tuesday to escape what witnesses said was gunfire exchanged between Mahdi Army fighters and official government security forces. These are dominated by the Sadrists’ chief internal rivals, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and its armed Badr movement.

Mr. Sadr’s statement was issued from his office in Najaf. Besides declaring the suspension, it also ordered a formal period of mourning over the events in Karbala and urged the government to investigate.

Ahmad Al-Shaibani, the head of the media department in Mr. Sadr’s office in Najaf, accused security forces of opening fire on pilgrims and Sadrists.

“This decision will have great advantage: It will distinguish and isolate those who claim to be working for J.A.M. and they are actually not part of it,” he told reporters in Najaf, using the initials of the Arabic for the Mahdi Army, Jaish al-Mahdi. “J.A.M. is a huge and active body in Iraq, but there are some intruders who want to create rifts. We don’t have masked men working with us. There are people even from the forces of occupation who work and say that they are from J.A.M.”

Mr. Shaibani added, “We announce our readiness to cooperate with the state to end those intruders, who are considered members of J.A.M.”

He said the order meant there would be a halt to military operations, including a conditional halt to actions directed against the occupation forces.

“If there will be any provocative actions by them, we will consider this later,” he said. “People should not understand that we are resorting to peaceful resistance. This is not our strategy. We followed that in the past and it didn’t work. Our participation in the political process does not mean ending the resistance to the occupier, but we will stop for six months.”

The government forces in Karbala and other towns in southern Iraq are dominated by the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and its armed wing, the Badr Organization. Many Badr fighters are veterans trained by Iran when they lived there as exiles under Saddam Hussein’s rule.

Tensions between the Mahdi Army and the Badr Organization have simmered for months. Both are vying for control of the overwhelmingly Shiite regions of central and southern Iraq. Two provincial governors belonging to the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council were assassinated in southern Iraq this month, although the Sadrists deny involvement.

The showdown will prove embarrassing for Mr. Maliki if his security forces cannot control the Mahdi Army and restore order in a holy city in his own Shiite heartland.

The violence appeared to spread to other cities, although attacks on mosques and offices linked to the Badr Organization were on a much smaller scale. In Baghdad, five people were killed and 20 wounded in clashes between militiamen in the Sadr City neighborhood, a Shiite stronghold, the police said.

Mr. Maliki, who went to Karbala today, ordered the dismissal of the former commander of military operations in Karbala, Maj.Gen Saleh Khazaal, pending an investigation.

An Iraqi army captain in Karbala who declined to give his name said today that the fighting started between the Mahdi Army and the guards of a major shrine.

“All of a sudden we saw J.A.M. snipers on rooftops of the nearby hotels, and weapons in the hands of pilgrims,” the captain said. “It seemed as if they deliberately started the fight to attack the security forces, because this prompt reaction does not make sense".

Hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims had descended on Karbala in the past few days to celebrate the birth of Muhammad al-Mahdi, the 9th-century saint and the last of 12 imams revered by Shiites.

The tensions in Karbala began Monday, with confrontations between Sadr supporters and the Badr-dominated security forces around the city’s twin golden-domed shrines. Those forces have been on a constant state of high alert because of suicide bombings by Sunni insurgents at Shiite religious festivals in previous years.

Witnesses said on Tuesday that as pilgrims gathered in a plaza between the shrines, the Mahdi Army fighters took up positions around the shrines and traded fire with the police. Pilgrims, whom officials had ordered to leave the city, fled in panic, but many could not get transportation out of the area as the police set up roadblocks to prevent Mahdi Army fighters from entering.

Sadrists said the police who carried out body searches and magnetic scans at checkpoints provoked their followers by beating pilgrims who chanted pro-Sadr slogans. Other reports said that Mahdi Army followers accompanying pilgrims and claiming to be protecting them were prohibited from taking weapons into the shrines.

Iraqi officials said those initial clashes escalated Monday night when the police attacked the Mukhayam mosque, a Mahdi Army stronghold in Karbala, and arrested about 20 fighters. The Mahdi Army retaliated Tuesday morning by attacking security force positions, the police said.

Gunmen also attacked Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council offices and mosques in the Baghdad districts of Sadr City, Shuala, Jadriya, Husseiniya, Khadimiya and Diwaniya.

On Tuesday, Haydar Abbas, a lecturer in law at the University of Babil in central Iraq, said it was significant that the confrontation took place when the Sadrists appeared to feel increasingly marginalized. Mr. Sadr’s followers left the government this year over a disagreement with Mr. Maliki about the continued American troop presence in Iraq. The Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council is the largest Shiite party in the government.

Mr. Abbas said the Supreme Islamic Iraq Council’s influence had been growing. “They have a lot of power over Maliki,” he said. “What is going on is a message from the Sadrists that we are here and we will not withdraw easily.”

He continued: “If we read the history of the two movements, the Badrists and the Mahdi Army, we see that both were military factions turned into political powers. This means that they might revert at any time to their military nature.”

On Tuesday night, each side blamed the other for the fighting. The Sadr office in Najaf initially issued a statement from Mr. Sadr appealing for calm.

“We want to clear up the misunderstanding that happened in Karbala,” it said. “This crisis is not connected with the Mahdi Army or Sadr movement. The incidents that happened were between the pilgrims and the government forces.”

Mr. Maliki’s office issued a statement calling its opponents “armed criminals and followers of the old regime” and saying that order had been restored to the streets.

Stephen Farrell reported from Baghdad and Christine Hauser from New York. Ali Adeeb contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Karbala and Najaf.

From www.danielpipes.org | Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/4868

Ban Islam?
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
August 29, 2007

[NY Sun title: "Keep the Koran Legal"]

Non-Muslims occasionally raise the idea of banning the Koran, Islam, and Muslims. Examples this month include calls by a political leader in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders, to ban the Koran — which he compares to Hitler's Mein Kampf — and two Australian politicians, Pauline Hanson and Paul Green, demanding a moratorium on Muslim immigration.

What is one to make of these initiatives? First, some history. Precedents exist from an earlier era, when intolerant Christian governments forced Muslims to convert, notably in 16th-century Spain, and others strongly encouraged conversions, especially of the elite, as in 16th- and 17th-century Russia. In modern times, however, with freedom of expression and religion established as basic human rights, efforts to protect against intolerance by banning the Koran, Islam, or Muslims have failed.

In perhaps the most serious contemporary attempt to ban the Koran, a Hindu group argued in 1984–85 that the Islamic scriptures contain "numerous sayings, repeated in the book over and over again, which on grounds of religion promote disharmony, feeling of enmity, hatred and ill-will between different religious communities and incite people to commit violence and disturb public tranquility."

The taking of this demand, known as "The Calcutta Quran Petition," to court prompted riots and deaths in Bangladesh. The case so alarmed New Delhi that the attorney general of India himself took part in the proceedings to oppose the petition, which, not surprisingly, was dismissed.

Pim Fortuyn (1948-2002) led the most consequential effort so far to end Muslim emigration, in his case, to the Netherlands.
This early petition set the standard in terms of collecting objectionable Koranic verses. Other efforts have been more rhetorical and less operational. The most consequential was by Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands to end Muslim emigration. Had he not been assassinated in 2002, he might have ridden his issue to the prime ministry.
The coordinator of Italy's Northern League, Roberto Calderoli, wrote in 2005: "Islam has to be declared illegal until Islamists are prepared to renounce those parts of their pseudo political and religious doctrine glorifying violence and the oppression of other cultures and religions."

A British member of Parliament, Boris Johnson, pointed out in 2005 that passing a Racial and Religious Hatred Bill "must mean banning the reading — in public or private — of a great many passages of the Koran itself." His observation prompted a Muslim delegation to seek assurances, which it received, from the Home Office that no such ban would occur. Patrick Sookhdeo of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity in 2006 called for prohibiting one translation of the Koran, The Noble Koran: A New Rendering of its Meaning in English, because "it sets out a strategy for killing the infidels and for warfare against them."

Other Western countries witnessed lesser efforts: Norway's Kristiansand Progress Party sought to ban Islam in 2004 and Germany's Bundesverband der Bürgerbewegungen sought to prohibit the Koran in 2006, arguing for its incompatibility with the German constitution. "Stop the Islamification of Denmark" demanded in early 2007 the prohibition of parts of the Koran and all mosques, calling them unconstitutional. Australia's Catch the Fire Ministries argued in 2004 that because "The Koran contradicts Christian doctrine in a number of places and, under the blasphemy law, [it] is therefore illegal."

Elsewhere, writers have made the same demands. Switzerland's Alain Jean-Mairet is the strategist of a two-part plan, popular and juridical, with the goal that "all the Islamic projects in Switzerland will prove impossible to fulfill." In France, an anonymous writer at the Liberty Vox Web site wishes to ban Islam, as does Warner Todd Huston in the United States.

The 2006 movie V for Vendetta portrays a future Britain in which the Koran is banned.

My take? I understand the security-based urge to exclude the Koran, Islam, and Muslims, but these efforts are too broad, sweeping up inspirational passages with objectionable ones, reformers with extremists, friends with foes. Also, they ignore the possibility of positive change.

More practical and focused would be to reduce the threats of jihad and Shariah by banning Islamist interpretations of the Koran, as well as Islamism and Islamists. Precedents exist. A Saudi-sponsored Koran was pulled from school libraries. Preachers have gone to jail for their interpretation of the Koran. Extreme versions of Islam are criminally prosecuted. Organizations are outlawed. Politicians have called for Islamists to leave their countries.

Islam is not the enemy, but Islamism is. Tolerate moderate Islam, but eradicate its radical variants.

From www.danielpipes.org | Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/4868

Spencer: Thanks, Jamie. I am a great admirer of your work and it is always good to talk with you.

FP: Likewise sir.

What inspired you to write this book?

Spencer: For six years now, almost invariably when I would talk about the elements of Islam that jihadists use to justify violence and make recruits among peaceful Muslims, people would respond by referring to violence in the Bible and the sins of Christianity. Over time I came to see that the all-pervasive sense of guilt and self-hatred that blankets the West in this age of the dominance of multiculturalism is the single greatest obstacle keeping us from meeting the ideological challenge that the jihadists present. Insofar as Westerners are ashamed of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and so many are, they will not defend it.

This is not a matter of faith. Whether or not one is Jewish or Christian, Judeo-Christian civilization has given the world numerous ideas of human rights that the jihadists directly challenge: freedom of conscience, the equality of dignity of men and women, equality of rights before the law for all, and more. Islamic Sharia offers a radically different model of society. We in the West need to recognize this and stand up for our own civilization, culture, and heritage. If we are too paralyzed by guilt and consumed with self-hatred to defend our own civilization, we certainly won't keep it.

FP: Ok, so let's build on these themes. Can you talk a bit about why the lib-Left wages war on Christianity and keeps quiet about Islam? This is a pathology in the context of Islamic jihadists being the real threat to free societies.

Spencer: Well, Jamie, this phenomenon is so all-pervasive that I thought it deserved book-length treatment. Ayaan Hirsi Ali said it well to a Leftist interviewer in Canada a few weeks ago: "You grew up with freedom, and so you think you can spit on freedom." They take it for granted, without realizing how severely it is imperilled. Would Leftists prefer to live in an Islamic society rather than in one that is or was Judeo-Christian? If they would, they will be, eventually, quite unpleasantly surprised: they will discover that many of the liberties they enjoyed were made possible by core assumptions of the Judeo-Christian civilization they helped to subvert, and that those liberties are not upheld under Islamic law.

FP: I disagree with you in the sense that I think that the Left realizes very well how severely imperilled our society is in the face of radical Islam. Just like in the days of communism, the Left venerates tyranny and yearns for submission under it. The Left knows exactly what it is doing when abetting and supporting an entity that it knows it itself will be consumed by. There is a logic to why leftist intellectuals support societies that butcher intellectuals, why leftist feminists support societies that mutilate women and why leftist homosexuals and minorities worship societies that barbarize homosexuals and minorities. It's a death wish based on self-loathing. But perhaps this deeper discussion between us belongs in another forum.

Let's continue: in what ways is Christianity a religion of peace and Islam not a religion of peace?

Spencer: In terms of your disagreement with me, I think you have a fascinating thesis, and I think it is well worth exploring. It is noteworthy, as you yourself have pointed out elsewhere, that both the Left and the jihadists envision an earthly utopia enforced by terror: the Left has demonstrated this every time it has gained power, and Sharia is a recipe for a totalitarian reign of terror in the name of justice and right, as the Taliban showed. I look forward to discussing this further with you and getting your thoughts on this.

So getting back to Christianity and Islam: Islam is unique among religions in having a developed doctrine, theology, and legal system mandating warfare against unbelievers. This is found in the Qur'an and Sunnah, as well as in Islamic jurisprudence. Many like to point to violent passages in the Bible as an alleged equivalent to this, but actually the Bible contains no open-ended, universal command for believers to wage war against unbelievers, as does the Qur'an (9:5, 9:29, 2:190-193, etc.). The violent passages in the Bible are also spiritualized by most exegetes, while mainstream Muslim commentators going back to Muhammad's first biographer, Ibn Ishaq, and including many modern authorities (such as Imran Ahsen Khan Nyazee of the International Islamic University and many others) see the Qur'an's violent passages as taking precedence over other, relatively peaceful passages.

Jesus taught, "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44). The Qur'an tells Muslims to be "ruthless to unbelievers" (48:29). When one commits violence in the name of Christianity, he is transgressing against Christ's teachings, but the jihadists make and sustain the case among their fellow Muslims that they are the believers who are being truly faithful to Islamic teaching.

FP: Why is there no distinction between Church and State in Islam? What are the consequences of this reality?

Spencer: The ideas of the non-establishment of a state religion, and the equality of rights of all before the law, both of which are essential to any viable republican government, arose in a Christian context. The philosopher and cultural analyst Roger Scruton observes that Christ's "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22:21) "contrasts radically with the vision set before us in the Koran, according to which sovereignty rests with God and His Prophet, and legal order is founded in divine command."

From a Muslim perspective, this is a virtue. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a professor at George Washington University and author of many books about Islam, suggests that Christianity was incomplete because, unlike Islam, it offered no comprehensive system for governance. Nasr asserts that because Christianity "had no Divine legislation of its own, it had to absorb Roman law in order to become the religion of a civilization." Therefore "in Christian civilization law governing human society did not enjoy the same Divine sanction as the teachings of Christ. In fact this lack of a Divine Law in Christianity had no small role to play in the secularization that took place in the West during the Renaissance." By contrast, "Islam never gave unto Caesar what was Caesar's. Rather, it tried to integrate the domain of Caesar itself, namely, political, social, and economic life, into an encompassing religious worldview."

The jihadist Sayyid Qutb stated this idea more bluntly in 1948. After criticizing both the Communist world and the West for their materialism, he continues: "But Christianity.cannot be reckoned as a real force in opposition to the philosophies of the new materialism; it is an individualist, isolationist, negative faith. It has no power to make life grow under its influence in any permanent or positive way..Christianity is unable, except by intrigue, to compete with the social and economic systems that are ever developing, because it has no essential philosophy of actual, practical life. On the other hand, Islam is a perfectly practicable social system in itself.It offers to mankind a perfectly comprehensive theory of the universe, life, and mankind." In short, it offers a totalitarian, theocratic vision -- which might be quite attractive to true believers like Qutb, but remains less appealing to dissenters.

Scruton notes that in contrast to this theocratic framework within Islam, "the fifth-century Pope Gelasius I made the separation of church and state into doctrinal orthodoxy, arguing that God granted 'two swords' for earthly government: that of the Church for the government of men's souls, and that of the imperial power for the regulation of temporal affairs." While the understanding of the relationship between the two has been the source of a great deal of controversy, "throughout the course of Christian civilization we find a recognition that conflicts must be resolved and social order maintained by political rather than religious jurisdiction." One reason why this is so important is for the protection of minorities and dissenters -- freedom of conscience, Scruton says, "requires secular government."

Scruton, of course, is not referring to the aggressively anti-religious secularism that has dominated the public discourse on religion in the United States for several decades now, but simply to the non-establishment of a state religion. Only a state in which there is no established religion can people of differing religions live together in harmony, enjoying equality of rights before the law. Freedom of conscience can only be guaranteed where one is free to change his religion, or to have no religion at all, without incurring a death sentence or any other legal penalty.

FP: Many Muslim extremists love to paint the West as being rampant with "immorality" and the Islamic world as being somehow "pure." But is the Islamic world really more "moral" than the West?

Spencer: Jihadists routinely deride Western freedom as libertinism: "In essence," one explained, "the kufr [unbelief] of Western society can be summed up in one word which is used over and over to justify its presence, growth, and its glorification... Freedom. Yet what such a society fails to comprehend, is that such 'freedom' simply represents the worship and enslavement to desires, opinions, and whims, a disregard for what is (truly) right, and a disregard for the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth."

However, as much as American conservatives may deplore the depravity of pop culture today, they should not allow themselves to be placed on the defensive by the Islamic moral critique - and not just because of the hypocrisy of the jihadists in making this critique. In reality, the freedom at which the jihadists sneer is an essential component of any genuine morality. "Australian law guarantees freedoms up to a crazy level," remarked the controversial Australian Mufti, Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali - but without freedom, even "up to a crazy level," morality is hollow. The secular West, with all its irreligion and debauchery, provides the only authentic framework for genuine virtue. Without the freedom to choose evil, the freedom to choose what is good actually amounts to nothing more than coercion. If an individual is forced to be good, he may display an outward conformity, but this conformism bears no other resemblance to the genuine virtue that is manifested in a choice to do good when one could just as easily choose the opposite.

Yet this coercion is a fundamental element of Sharia law, with its stonings and amputations. The Ayatollah Khomeini admitted this without apology: "Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for the Holy Warriors!"

The alternatives are not to try to appease the jihadists by deriding permissiveness in accord with their cultural critique or to turn a blind eye to the genuinely revolting aspects of pop culture. In fact, one of the most potent recruiting tools the jihadists have today is their ability to present themselves as those who are loyal to God, as opposed to a Western world full of blasphemers and libertines. Thus a shrewd response to the jihadists' ideological critique of the Western world would be to point out that the Judeo-Christian tradition, with its principle of individual freedom as a prerequisite for virtue, offers a superior (yes, superior) vision of God and the world than that offered by the Ayatollah Khomeini and his sword as the key to Paradise. Certainly there is great moral evil in the West, as there is everywhere else in the world, but that moral evil is an unavoidable byproduct of the freedom without which there can be no genuine adherence to moral norms.

Such a response would give content to the oft-repeated avowal that America is offering "freedom" to the Islamic world. Rather than allowing the jihadist characterization of that freedom as mere libertinism to go unanswered, an explanation of the elements of genuine virtue would take the substance out of the jihadist moral critique altogether.

FP: Who is threatened by militant Islam? Who are the potential victims?

Spencer: Everyone is threatened by the Islamic jihad in various ways, except the Muslim male jihadists themselves. The Islamic law the jihadists want to institute institutionalizes the subjugation of women and non-Muslims, denies freedom of conscience, inhibits freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry. So who is not among the potential victims?

FP: Overall, what role is the Left playing in this terror war?

Spencer: One of obfuscation and denial, with a smattering of outright identification with those who would destroy us. There is plenty of denial and wilful ignorance about the jihad threat on the Right also. It is long past time for both sides to stop playing politics with this threat, and to take steps to secure our national survival.

FP: What are Islam's and Christianity's disposition toward reason? What are the effects of these dispositions?

Spencer: Nietzsche once noted that "there is no such thing as science 'without any presuppositions.' A philosophy, a 'faith,' must always be there first, so that science can acquire from it a direction, a meaning, a limit, a method, a right to exist." It may be jarring to those who believe that faith and reason are at odds, and that religions are all the same, but it is nevertheless a historical fact that modern science took its presuppositions from Christianity, and that Islam gave modern science no impetus at all.

The Qur'an explicitly refutes the Judeo-Christian view of God as a God of reason when it says: "The Jews say: Allah's hand is fettered. Their hands are fettered and they are accursed for saying so." (5:64) In other words, it is heresy to say that God operates by certain natural laws that we can understand through reason. This argument was played out throughout Islamic history. Muslim theologians argued during the long controversy with the Mu'tazilite sect, which exalted human reason, that Allah was not bound to govern the universe according to consistent and observable laws. "He cannot be questioned concerning what He does." (Qur'an 21:23).

In contrast to the dogmatic stagnation of the Islamic world, science was able to flourish in Christian Europe during the same period because Christian scientists were working from assumptions derived from the Bible, which were very different from those of the Qur'an. The Bible assumes that God's laws of creation are natural laws, a stable and unchanging reality-a sine qua non of scientific investigation. In the 13th century, St. Thomas Aquinas even went so far as to assert that "since the principles of certain sciences-of logic, geometry, and arithmetic, for instance-are derived exclusively from the formal principals of things, upon which their essence depends, it follows that God cannot make the contraries of these principles; He cannot make the genus not to be predictable of the species, nor lines drawn from a circle's center to its circumference not to be equal, nor the three angles of a rectilinear triangle not to be equal to two right angles." (Emphasis added)

Such ideas could never have taken root in the Islamic world. They would have been tantamount to saying that Allah's hand was fettered.

FP: What reactions do you expect to your book? What reactions have there been to your book?

Spencer: I expect the usual venom and distortion of my thesis from Muslim and non-Muslim apologists for jihad in the U.S. I'd like to begin a dialogue with those who believe, like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, that religion itself is the problem. John Derbyshire has begun this with an elegantly written review at Pajamas Media, to which I have been invited to reply. I have written a reply, and hope PJM will publish it soon.

FP: What do you hope to achieve with Religion of Peace?

Spencer: I hope that all those people -- Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, secular Muslims, atheists, etc. -- who enjoy the benefits of Judeo-Christian Western civilization will be moved to mount a more spirited defense of that civilization in its hour of greatest peril.

FP: Robert Spencer you are a true soldier. Thank you for having the nobility and the courage to tell the truth and for your priceless contribution to the West's fight for freedom. We hope to talk to you again soon.

Spencer: Thank you, Jamie. I admire your courage and that of everyone at FP for your willingness to discuss these issues openly and freely, despite the political correctness that blankets us and the smears and intimidation that are at this point virtually the only non-lethal weapons remaining to the politically correct Left and the apologists for jihad.