Operation Last Chance

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The Sunni Strategy

Unlike Casey, Petraeus seems to have had a moment to seize. A good chunk of the Sunni insurgency has turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq, the fringe group — it comprises no more than 5% of the insurgency, according to U.S. intelligence estimates — that is responsible for the most spectacular bombings. The anti-Qaeda rebellion began in Anbar, formerly the most dangerous province in the country, an area famously described as "lost" to the terrorists in a Marine intelligence report leaked to the press in 2006. "Actually, the first tentative steps in Anbar were taken in 2005," Petraeus told me over dinner one evening. "The Abu Mahal tribe out by the Syrian border turned against al-Qaeda and fought hard — but pretty soon there were five or six dead sheiks." Not just dead, apparently — beheaded and left in the street. "Over time, the word began to get around among the other tribes that al-Qaeda was not only brutal, it didn't even respect traditional burial practices."

Some al-Qaeda elements overplayed their hand in other ways as well, demanding marriage to the daughters of local sheiks, forcibly recruiting teenagers as suicide bombers and imposing Shari'a law — including a ban on Western dress and smoking. "Last fall Army Colonel Sean MacFarland, the brigade commander in Ramadi, was approached by Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi," Petraeus said. "Several of the sheik's relatives had been killed by al-Qaeda. The story is, MacFarland guaranteed Abdul Sattar's security by putting an M1 tank section in [his] front yard and [a] police station across the street." By mid-March, tribal elements were helping clear al-Qaeda from the provincial capital of Ramadi. "Pretty soon, there were Sunnis in other parts of the country who wanted the same deal," the general said.

The current operation, Phantom Thunder, was made possible by the tribal flip. It is not classic counterinsurgency warfare. It is not about protecting a population but about attacking a historically elusive enemy. This is not so easily done in Iraq. On the second day of Phantom Thunder, I flew into Baqubah with Lieut. General Ray Odierno — a massive man, decidedly more blood-and-guts than Petraeus — to check the progress of what was supposed to be the most intense, and symbolic, battle of the offensive. In 2006 al-Qaeda's leader Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi proclaimed Baqubah the capital of the new Islamic State of Iraq. About 500 al-Qaeda fighters were said to be in the city, hunkered down, ready for a fight.

But now Baqubah was strangely quiet as we flashed into town, an otherworldly convoy of dust-colored Stryker vehicles, bristling with gunners. Only a few small explosions could be heard in the distance; there was no small-arms fire. We stopped at a bombed-out medical clinic for a briefing, with operation maps leaned against a white ceramic tile wall, Odierno and his commanders sitting on boxes and camouflage-fabric campaign chairs in a tight semicircle. The news was good. The enemy was said to be caught in a tightening cordon. Local Sunni insurgents — they claimed to be members of the 1920 Revolution Brigades — had helped to clear the Buhritz neighborhood. After the briefing, Lieut. Colonel Bruce Antonia told me, "Usually everybody's shooting at us. This is the first time we've had any of them on our side."

A second briefing, in a joint U.S.-Iraqi command post in the middle of Baqubah, was less optimistic. An Iraqi general said that he was pretty certain that the al-Qaeda leadership had slipped away, north to Tikrit and Samarra, and that many of the fighters were burying their equipment before they left town, hoping to return — as always — when the Americans left. In the days that followed, it became clear that almost all of al-Qaeda's fighters had gotten out. In a guerrilla war, only the stupidest guerrillas allow themselves to be lured into set-piece battles against a superior force.

"If you put your foot in a puddle, the water splashes out," Petraeus' chief counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen said. "The important thing is to secure the neighborhoods they've left." But the puddle analogy wasn't quite right. This puddle had evaporated and would undoubtedly condense somewhere else in Iraq. There simply aren't enough troops to police the entire country.