Even out of uniform Colonel H R McMaster, one of the architects of the US make-or-break surge strategy in Iraq, is unmistakably a military man. Arriving at what he calls the “situation room”, his face takes on the look of mission accomplished. “The main thing is they have snacks here,” he says, smiling.
McMaster has the direct manner of a soldier but is far more personable than the textbook version. The bare room where we meet in London is filled by his passionate determination to explain how the American “surge” – the controversial campaign that has seen the deployment of 30,000 more troops to quell the Baghdad insurgency – can still work.
It is his, and the Bush administration’s, biggest challenge since US-led coalition forces toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.
McMaster, 44, was part of an elite team of military men, academics and diplomats who were gathered together late last year in Baghdad by General David Petraeus, the American commander of forces in Iraq, to brain-storm as the country deteriorated into internecine bloodletting.
They were charged with coming up with a strategy to stop Iraq descending into chaos and gain time for the fractious Iraqi government to resolve rivalries between Sunni, Shi’ite and Kurdish factions and begin governing, and to train an Iraqi army. They came up with the surge.
“The idea was to break the cycle of violence, provide basic services to people so that they would see an improvement and rekindle hope, and strengthen the Iraqi forces,” says McMaster, whose thick neck speaks of years of soldiering. “Underlying our whole approach is the need to give Iraqis time to move to a political accommodation.”
Their theory was that the coalition forces could then hand over to the Iraqis and withdraw from an increasingly unpopular war. The surge was memorably controversial as it called for sending in tens of thousands more US troops at a time when opposition to the war was gaining traction.
“What is going on now is not just an insurgency but a communal struggle incited by Al-Qaeda,” McMaster says. “Al-Qaeda jumpstarted tensions to incite chaos and succeeded. That allowed them to establish bases where they could move freely, train and pursue their agenda.”
The lack of rule of law, and insecurity, meant that Iraqis sheltered Al-Qaeda, most of whom are foreigners. “Al-Qaeda drew on the fears of a community [the Sunnis, a minority who had been in power under Saddam] that they would be destroyed or powerless. They persuaded a certain portion of the population to regard them as protectors.”
Disillusioned angry young men joined them. As field commander, McMaster saw Al-Qaeda’s tactics: “These guys, many of them teenagers, were brainwashed. They were sodomised and brutalised. They kept them ignorant and dehumanised these kids by putting them in beheading units. At the same time they gave them a sense of belonging. This is really child abuse.”
McMaster is self-effacing about his role, but it was crucial in the fundamental shift in the course of the Iraq war made by the Bush administration at the beginning of 2007.
The surge strategy was based on an operation commanded by “HR”, as he likes to be called (no wonder; the initials stand for Herbert Raymond), in 2006 as the commanding officer charged with pacifying Tal Afar, a lawless Iraqi town on the Syrian border which had been taken over by insurgents. The strategy was “clear, hold and build”, now echoed as a virtual mantra.
McMaster cut off Tal Afar, divided it into small neighbourhoods, cleared each of insurgents and established permanent posts in each district, instead of defeating insurgents and then leaving, as had been the earlier American practice. After earlier operations, the insurgents returned as soon as the Americans left; in Tal Afar, under McMaster’s reign, the town came back to life.
Tal Afar clearly seared his soul and fuelled his determination to fight. “I saw the most unimaginable horrors,” he says. “Things you can’t even imagine another human thinking of. In one case, the terrorists murdered a young boy in his hospital bed, booby-trapped the body, and when the family came to pick up the body they detonated the explosives to kill the father.”
In another case, a retarded 13-year-old girl was strapped with explosives, given the hand of a three-year-old toddler to hold, and told to walk into a line of police recruits. They pressed the button when the girls were amid the waiting men.
He did, however, see the tide turn against the insurgents, who were mostly Saddam supporters bitter at their loss of power. “Shops opened, kids went back to school, there were people on the streets again,” he says.
“It happened with astonishing speed. Once we had lifted the pall of fear, we began getting a wave of human intelligence.”
He learnt a lot about how Iraqi society worked and how the close family and tribal ties could be used. Bush, on announcing the “new way forward”, pointed to McMaster’s success in Tal Afar as “the outlines of the Iraq we’ve been fighting for”.
While Baghdad is too big to be isolated in the way that Tal Afar was, the surge plan being implemented has used the same tactics – sealing off districts of the capital, clearing out insurgents and leaving American units in place to stop the insurgents from reinfiltrating.
McMaster’s blueprint for his successful Tal Afar operation, and later the surge, was informed by his critical analysis of the joint chiefs of staff’s role in the defeat in Vietnam, which resulted in a book called Dereliction of Duty. It is also fed by what one senses is his innate common sense, practical experience and study of the Iraqi people that few in the military have bothered with. He has been seconded as a research fellow to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
Like Petraeus, he is one of America’s brightest, a soldier scholar who graduated from the US Military Academy and then earned a doctorate. But is it the right formula, too late?
There have been similar promises. Operations Together Forward and Together Forward II last summer also envisaged Iraqi forces taking the lead in Baghdad. Only two of the six battalions promised by the Iraqi government turned up. The plan failed and Baghdad descended into the worst bloodletting yet seen.
The number of Iraqi civilian deaths have fallen since the surge reached full strength on June 15, but the number of American casualties has risen. US generals have said they expect attacks to increase in September, when Petraeus is due to report on the surge’s progress.
It does not look good but McMaster makes it possible to see a break in the doom-laden fog of war. For example, a report ordered by the increasingly recalcitrant US Congress found mixed progress at best. Of 18 benchmarks meant to measure progress in Iraq, eight, mostly in military and security sectors, showed improvement.
“The enemy understands the importance of General Petraeus’s testimony, then, and will do all they can to murder more innocents and create a sense of hope-lessness,” McMaster says.
Many Iraqis think it is too late. But McMaster does not see US forces leaving for at least two years, although there may be a drawdown in the numbers. “All is feasible, but it all takes time,” he says, sipping a coffee.
“You are beginning to see what can be achieved, like local ceasefires and agreement between family elders in one town.” He believes that is the way forward – building a local consensus and translating it into a broader working agreement: “Everyone is focused on the big national solution, like there is this big magic wand. Local agreements are something you can build up from.”
He believes the big difference now is the Iraqis “have learnt what happens to their lives when Al-Qaeda comes”. It’s important to him that people understand how the insurgency evolved – essentially he sees three wars in Iraq today: the internal battle between Shi’ite and Sunni communities; the battle being waged by Al-Qaeda and its allies against the coalition forces; and the meddling by Iran and Syria. There is no easy solution.
“We have already seen what can happen if forces withdraw from an area without setting conditions for enduring security – a capable and legitimate police, a functioning local government, reconciliation between tribes and sects that had succumbed to Al-Qaeda’s effort to incite a cycle of violence,” he says.
“The chaos this cycle of violence represents prevents anything positive happening – no economic development, no development of security forces or establishment of the rule of law, no strengthening of local government or delivery of basic services.
“Because countries in the region are likely to be party to what would become a destructive civil war, there seems little prospect for the conflict burning out on its own after which there could be a peaceful settlement. The conflict could easily bleed over. Those who speak theoretically about outcomes like a ‘soft partition’ really know very little about Iraq.”
McMaster holds no illusions that the democratic Iraq that was the euphoric vision of many in Washington after Saddam was toppled will emerge in time for presidential elections in 2008, or any time soon. The picture is dark, even when painted by a believer. “It depends on how you define success,” he says. “This internal war will not end short of a generation.”
In the near future the best that can be hoped for is what he calls “sustainable stability” – a low level of violence that would allow US troops to withdraw and Iraqis to live relatively normal lives while hoping that their government and armed forces eventually get control.
“If we leave now, there would be chaos,” he says.
Sectarian violence would increase, Iraqis would be more fearful of their future and a besieged Iraqi government would be less likely to go ahead with political reconciliation.
What is refreshing about McMaster is that unlike so many of his US military brethren who ruled like conquerors after the fall of Baghdad, and alienated Iraqis not just by killing them at checkpoints but also with their rudeness, McMaster knows and cares about them.
“So many of us have great Iraqi friends now,” he says. “We know their families. As soldiers, we go there and we’re at risk but nobody complains. These people are caught in the violence; they don’t deserve it. The war will not stop if we leave. It will get worse. We can’t allow that to happen.”
If there had been more McMasters in Baghdad in the beginning, and less US hubris, Iraqis might be in a far better position.
