HOW HE SEES IT How to achieve victory in Iraq

By T.X. HAMMES
WASHINGTON POST
Over the past nine months, the conflict in Iraq has emerged as an insurgency. While that fact is widely recognized, our policies have not adjusted to reflect the much longer time lines inherent to insurgency.
Recent history shows insurgencies span decades. The Chinese Communists fought for more than 25 years, the Vietnamese more than 30, the Sandinistas 18, the Afghans 10 years, the Chechens more than 10 years and the Palestinians more than 25 years -- with no end in sight. Even when the British won in Malaysia, it took 12 years.
Modern insurgencies are long struggles. This is an absolutely critical point. Counterinsurgents need to think in decades, not years.
Why do insurgents dedicate themselves to a struggle lasting so long? The answer is simple: It's the only form of war that has allowed a weak movement to defeat a major power. In the past 50 years, conventional wars have generally ended with a return to the status quo. But most insurgencies have ended with major changes in the strategic, political, economic and social structures. While the changes may not have been for the better, there were distinct changes. Even unconventional wars that the insurgents lost (Malaysia, Aden, El Salvador) led to significant change.
Widening reach
Insurgency has expanded its power and reach with information-age tools. While insurgents still use Mao's basic principle that superior political power can defeat dominant military and economic power, they no longer rely on a Maoist type of hierarchy. They have evolved to make use of loose networks and coalitions of the willing.
As Al-Qaida has demonstrated, networks provide exceptional flexibility and resilience under attack. They also make use of all available networks -- political, economic, social and military -- to convince their enemy's political decision makers that their strategic goals are either unachievable or too costly for any perceived benefit. Insurgents directly attack the will of their opponents.
In Iraq, the pattern of attacks on the U.S. presence, our allies, international aid organizations and cooperating Iraqis shows that our opponents have adopted insurgency. They plan to beat us. A coalition of the willing -- former regime loyalists, international terrorists, criminals and radical elements of Iraqi society -- has become a loose, temporary alliance to drive the U.S.-led coalition out of Iraq.
The impact
They are attacking across the spectrum of human activity. Politically, they are using national, tribal, religious and ethnic differences to attack the legitimacy of the government and create distrust among Iraqis.
Economically, the terrorists have attacked humanitarian organizations, oil pipelines, rail lines, power distribution systems and the people who run them, Iraqi and international alike. They know economic progress will encourage support for the U.S.-led coalition; therefore, they must defeat our efforts to improve Iraqis' standard of living.
They attack the social divisions in Iraqi society to decrease the chances for political and economic stability, while using the media to ensure that their actions are seen directly by coalition decision makers: the voters and their elected representatives. They use the same media to reach their supporters throughout the Middle East.
Militarily, they combine improvised explosive devices, ambushes, and mortar and rocket attacks to maintain pressure on coalition forces without exposing themselves.
Insurgency differs from the short, intense wars envisioned by proponents of high technology and requires a fundamentally different approach to win. Most important, it requires a recognition of the duration of this kind of war.
Unfortunately, in Iraq the accelerated transition of sovereignty and lack of a clearly articulated post-transition plan indicate an early departure by the U.S.-led coalition. While early departure is not our strategy, the mere appearance of "cut and run" thinking reinforces the insurgents' greatest strength -- patience -- and provides them with a powerful weapon -- intimidation. They've been telling Iraqis from the beginning not to side with America, that the Americans will go home and the insurgents will remember who helped them. They don't even have to sell the idea anymore: They simply point to the headlines in U.S. newspapers.
XHammes, an infantry officer recently returned from a two-month assignment in Iraq, is a senior military fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies.