Iraq: DoD Briefing with Lt. Gen. Fry

Lt. Gen. Sir Robert Fry did a teleconference from Iraq on May 12th. I recommend the full briefing report. Fry is the senior British military representative in Iraq, and is the deputy commander of Multinational Forces Iraq [i.e., he is Gen. Casey's deputy].

…As I say, I’ve been here two months… I think three things really stick in my mind about this period.

The first one is the scale of the enterprise that we’re involved in here in Iraq. To take a nation from dictatorship to plural democracy, in terms of its political structure; to take its security sector from something which is part — something which unifies the nation, binds it together, rather than being an instrument of repression; and to take what was an entirely moribund state socialist economic system and begin to introduce it to the disciplines of the market is a huge undertaking.

And of course that’s all set against the backdrop of a complicated insurgency and a complicated post-conflict situation.

So the first thing, I think, that I take away from this experience is just the scale of the enterprise, where we are actually trying to transform a whole society.

The British have some experience in counterinsurgency and in post-conflict operations, but I have to say that nothing in either our wars of post-colonial disengagement or in Northern Ireland in any way prepared us for the scale of what we’re doing here.


[...]

Q General, Tom Bowman with National Public Radio. You’ve been quoted as saying that if the Iraqi government doesn’t disband the militias, military action may have to be taken. Can you expand on that a little bit? How much time should a new government have to deal with the militia question?


GEN. FRY: Oh, it should have a fair amount of time. And in fact, if the quote that I gave to the London Times was reproduced in its full form, it would have said that before any form of military action was to have been taken, you first of all need political and public consultation.



I think it goes something like this. The new Maliki government comes in — and this is not a policy that I’m trying to put into Prime Minister Maliki’s mouth, it’s one he has already stated, and also, interestingly enough, enjoys the support of Grand Ayatollah Sistani in putting forward. But I think the first thing he will need to do is engage the political constituencies which are connected to the main militias, lay out quite clearly what his political objectives are, and invite those political leaders to enter the legitimate political process and not remain outside it.



The next thing that will need to happen is that there will have to be a certain amount of wider public consultation so that the nation at large knows exactly what the political intentions are. And then, and only then, would you contemplate some form of military action. And in the first instance, I think that would be cooperation rather than coercion. But it may be that a certain degree of military coercion has to be used during the course of this process, but only after the environment has been entirely shaped by the preceding moves.



And at the end of that process, the next important thing is to resettle the people currently employed by the militias in gainful employment elsewhere within Iraqi society. Some of those may find jobs inside the army or inside the police force, but not all of them will. And therefore, one of the things that we necessarily will have to have is an accompanying structure to make sure that people can be reintegrated into civil life once they’re disbanded from the militias.



So I see this as a long game. I don’t see this as happening quickly. I certainly don’t see it being brought about purely as a result of the application of military force. As I said to you in my opening statement, I see military force only as the thing which holds the ring, never being decisive in itself. And what I look for here is decisive political intervention.