[Senate Hearing 115-808]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 115-808
IRAQ AFTER MOSUL
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 28, 2017
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web:
http://www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
40-419 PDF WASHINGTON : 2020
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
BOB CORKER, Tennessee, Chairman
JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland
MARCO RUBIO, Florida ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware
CORY GARDNER, Colorado TOM UDALL, New Mexico
TODD YOUNG, Indiana CHRISTOPHER MURPHY, Connecticut
JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming TIM KAINE, Virginia
JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon
RAND PAUL, Kentucky CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey
Todd Womack, Staff Director
Jessica Lewis, Democratic Staff Director
John Dutton, Chief Clerk
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Corker, Hon. Bob, U.S. Senator From Tennessee.................... 1
Cardin, Hon. Benjamin L., U.S. Senator From Maryland............. 2
Lang, Hardin, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress,
Washington, DC................................................. 4
Prepared statement........................................... 6
Knights, Michael, Ph.D., Lafer Fellow, The Washington Institute,
Boston, MA..................................................... 10
Prepared statement........................................... 12
(iii)
IRAQ AFTER MOSUL
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TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2017
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in
room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Bob Corker,
chairman of the committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Corker [presiding], Johnson, Flake,
Gardner, Young, Paul, Cardin, Menendez, Shaheen, Coons, Murphy,
Kaine, Markey, Merkley, and Booker.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BOB CORKER,
U.S. SENATOR FROM TENNESSEE
The Chairman. The Foreign Relations Committee will come to
order. I know we normally start exactly on time. I was told one
of our witnesses was stuck in security and not to show up until
now, so I apologize to any of you who got here exactly on time.
Which one of you was stuck, by the way?
Dr. Knights. I have to own up.
The Chairman. Okay. Well, I am glad you made it through,
and I am glad--what was that? Yes, very good.
So the committee will come to order. I thank all of you for
being here.
I want to thank our witnesses for testifying today. We
appreciate your willingness to come before this committee.
I spent part of last week in Iraq, and I think it is quite
clear that ISIS will soon lose all of its territory in Iraq. I
think we are well on the way to making that happen.
As we sit here, Iraqis are returning to their recently
liberated homes in eastern Mosul and security forces are
fighting through western Mosul. I think it is pretty incredible
to understand what ISIS is doing to booby-trap these homes as
they go back, with bombs under their mattresses, behind the
refrigerator doors. It is a pretty unbelievable situation.
It is worth commending the work the Iraqi security forces
and the Kurdish Peshmerga have done in Iraq. American support
has been crucial, but the Iraqis are liberating their own
country. Their success is what brings us to the topic of
today's hearing, what happens after ISIS.
There is reason for a degree of optimism in Iraq. In many
ways, the unthinkable horrors of ISIS have unified Iraq against
a common enemy.
I spent time in an IDP camp, and I know many of you have
done the same thing, and met with Iraqis and with many
different ethnicities supporting and relying upon each other,
which was great to see.
But the same underlying problems that contributed to the
success of ISIS still remain, and they will remain after the
kinetic activity is underway and the re-stabilizing completes.
Prime Minister Abadi recognizes the need for
decentralization, political reform, and control of the
militias, but he has had trouble implementing solutions, and I
think that trouble is going to continue. I know there is an
election coming up in 2018, and my sense is many of the same
issues that created this will continue.
The Shia militia are an enduring and existential problem
for Iraq as they attempt to turn battlefield success into
political success. Candidly, we are setting the precursor for,
in some ways, a Hezbollah-like entity in Iraq, just like we
have in Lebanon right now.
In many ways, Iran appears to be supportive of U.S. efforts
to defeat ISIS, but I think we are all waiting for the day when
our interests in Iraq no longer align with theirs and Iranian-
supported militias attack American forces. I traveled to
Lebanon after Iraq, and the parallels between Hezbollah and the
Shia militias in Iraq are hard to miss.
With Iraqi elections coming in 2018, I think the big
question is whether Iraq can unify behind their effort to rid
the country of ISIS and finally move forward politically. Or,
in a different scenario, could the underlying and unaddressed
sectarian tensions in Iraq provide the background for an
Iranian-backed militia leader to become prime minister? I think
that is not out of the question.
For us, I think the questions focus on what steps we can
take to ensure Iraq has the best possible chance of success.
Part of that is a longer term security commitment to Iraq.
Another part is the longer term political commitment.
I hope both of you can help us remember the lessons from
the past and recommend what steps we should take going forward.
And with that, I would like to thank you again for
appearing before the committee and turn to my good friend and
ranking member, Ben Cardin.
STATEMENT OF HON. BENJAMIN L. CARDIN,
U.S. SENATOR FROM MARYLAND
Senator Cardin. Mr. Chairman, first, thank you for making
the effort to visit the region, particularly the countries that
you visited that are very important to our campaign against
ISIS, and we look forward to you sharing that information with
the members of this committee.
During the recess, I had a chance to visit Mexico with
Senators Merkley and Markey--we have to put you in different
seats--with Markey and Merkley. And we had a chance to see
firsthand some of the issues concerning that relationship, so
it was, I think, a worthwhile period for us to get some on-the-
ground information.
And I thank you for conducting this hearing. We have
invested a great deal in Iraq. And as we are sitting here,
Iraqi forces and police, Kurdish Peshmerga and Sunni tribal
fighters, and an assortment of other fighters have entered the
next phase of the Mosul campaign.
Having secured the part of the city east of the Tigris,
these forces enabled by U.S. training, weapons, intelligence,
combat support, and coalition air campaigns have entered
western Mosul, a critical stage in a month-long campaign to
push ISIS out of its capital in Iraq.
Secretary Mattis has delivered to the President the plan to
defeat ISIS, and I know we are all looking forward to that
information being shared with us, so that we are all on the
same page as to how we can defeat ISIS.
I must tell you, the Obama administration strategy of
working by, with, and through Iraqi and Kurdish partners on the
ground in Iraq to defeat ISIS is working, and we all hope that
the Trump administration will be able to declare victory in our
campaign to defeat ISIS.
We know that, in part, that will be thanks to the work of
the previous administration's sound strategy of assembling an
international coalition to carry out an air war, standing up
significant programs to train and equip local forces, and
insisting on accountability and inclusive local leadership.
No military campaign against ISIS will be successful in the
long term if U.S. forces do the fighting. Iraqis need to own
this fight, and the United States needs to support Iraqis in
reclaiming their country and then rebuilding it. This is the
only way to prevent the next ISIS.
Moreover, a stable, self-reliant Iraq is the only way to
push back on the Iranian interference in Iraq. Iraq cannot
become another fertile territory for expansion of Iran's
nefarious activities or a land corridor linking Tehran to
Damascus to Lebanese Hezbollah.
However, ISIS's pending defeat in Iraq does not mean that
the Iraqis or we are prepared for the next phase of the fight.
I spoke of my concern last year when we had a hearing and
reiterate it again: the risk of a catastrophic success if we
declare victory when ISIS is defeated on the battlefield. The
war in Iraq will not be over because the underlying causes of
instability in Iraq remain.
Communities are shattered. People are traumatized.
Displaced people cannot return to cities riddled with ISIS
mines and no job prospects, and Iran-backed militias operate
with impunity. There is no social contract in Iraq between the
government and the people, no trust and no confidence.
The government in Baghdad must demonstrate that it can be a
government for all Iraqis regardless of ethnicity, sect, or
geography. This means real power-sharing agreements with the
Kurdistan regional government, decentralized governance that
empowers Iraqi Sunni communities, and a national program of
reconciliation, and reform of Iraqi security forces.
If the Iraqi leaders are willing to move in a responsible
direction, the United States should be ready to support them.
A real plan to defeat ISIS in Iraq requires the Trump
administration to devise, resource, and implement a reasonable,
long-term policy for U.S.-Iraq partnership.
But here is the challenge. We heard just yesterday--we got
a glimpse of what the Trump budget will look like, and I was
extremely disappointed at least by the reports that the
national security budget part and the Secretary of State is
being cut. How are we able to be a partner if we are reducing
our capacity to help in regards to development assistance and
diplomacy?
Also, we hear from the Trump administration inflammatory
statements like take Iraq oil, or dangerous statements like
Muslim bans, which include Iraq, and are targeted at the very
Iraqis that partnered with us to defeat ISIS. We tell them that
they are not welcome in our country.
The President's executive order to the Pentagon asked for
recommended changes in the rules of engagement. That also could
concern the Iraqis, because that, to me, is meaning are we
going to make more civilian casualties a price for getting
ISIS?
So on one side, we are saying we want to partner with the
Iraqis. On the other side, we talk about taking their oil, they
are not welcome in our country, and there may be more civilian
casualties in the way that we conduct our campaign. That is not
a way that I think is conducive to setting up a partnership of
trust that becomes critically important for defeating ISIS.
So I look forward to our discussion today with our
witnesses as we try to come together, and I hope the last phase
of defeating ISIS in Iraq and then working from what we have
learned in that campaign to go after ISIS wherever we find them
anywhere in the world.
The Chairman. Thank you, sir.
We will turn to our outstanding witnesses.
Our first witness is Dr. Michael Knights from the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Thank you so much for being here.
Our second witness is Mr. Hardin Lang from the Center for
American Progress.
I thank you both that we would ask you to summarize your
comments. Without objection, we will enter your written
testimony into the record. If you could take about 5 minutes to
summarize, we look forward to questions.
Again, thanks for coming through our security apparatus and
taking time to be here today.
And if you would start, Dr. Knights, we would appreciate
it.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL KNIGHTS, PH.D., LAFER FELLOW, THE
WASHINGTON INSTITUTE, BOSTON, MA
Dr. Knights. Thanks very much, and apologies for near
lateness. The security was doing a great job today, especially
with suspicious sounding--foreign sounding----
The Chairman. The accent. I realized what happened, yes.
Dr. Knights. Yes, exactly.
So, Chairman Corker, Ranking Member Cardin, and the
distinguished committee members, thank you for inviting me to
testify at today's hearing on Mosul and the campaign against
ISIS.
I am particularly proud to be appearing before you for the
first time as a new American citizen, an immigrant, and an
adopted son of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
At heart, we are here today because we know Iraq is
important. ISIS knows Iraq is important. It has from the very
beginning. Iraq is the center of ISIS's world and will continue
to be so.
Iran also knows that Iraq is important. The regime in
Tehran, the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, has an
ambitious agenda inside Iraq, seeking to establish Iranian-
backed Shia militias as the protectors of the Shia community in
Iraq.
We in this room know that Iraq is important as well, and
that America's role in Iraq is equally important. Just 2.5
years after we withdrew from Iraq, Mosul fell and ISIS took a
third of Iraq, and that is not coincidence.
Now the U.S. is back, and we are some months away from the
full clearance of Mosul. But given the dramatic comeback staged
by ISIS and its predecessors in Mosul in 2004, in 2007, and in
2014, one can justifiably ask what will stop ISIS or a similar
movement from laying low, regenerating, and wiping out the
costly gains of the current war? What can we learn from
history?
The written testimony provides detailed summary of the
findings from my late 2016 report called, ``How to Secure
Mosul: Lessons from 2008 to 2014,'' which draws on some of my
own research in Mosul back then and work in Ninawa Province
since then.
But suffice to say, we know in great detail what went wrong
in Mosul and how to rebuild Iraqi security forces and community
relations to lessen the risk of ISIS's resurgence. The trick is
coaxing and supporting the Iraqi Government to take these right
steps under the difficult political circumstances right now and
going into the 2018 elections.
I really want to focus on the key takeaway, which is that
the mission to destroy ISIS's military and terrorist
capabilities in Iraq must continue under a strong U.S. lead and
under a multinational framework similar to today's Combined
Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve. It could be a
NATO-led mission but CJTF-IR is bigger than NATO right now and
involves a lot of non-NATO contributions. The U.S. lead is an
important part.
So I want to focus on a couple things. Back in the old days
when you would be in Iraq, you know, you had Americans and you
had some Brits. Now when you go to the coalition command
centers, you have the Australians, New Zealanders, Italians,
French, British, Germans, Spanish, Canadians all making a very
significant contribution. Bringing the world's largest
economies and largest security assistance partners together
strengthens our hand as we try to get the Iraqi Government to
undertake political reconciliation and consensus approaches to
security in the liberated areas.
It also ensures a good degree of burden-sharing with our
international partners. Some of them can do things we cannot,
like the Italians providing their specialist training to the
Iraqi federal police, something that we would find difficult to
do.
And also, many of these coalition partners are the very
states that Iran is depending upon to be its major foreign
investors. And to some extent, this makes it more difficult for
Tehran and its militia proxies in Iraq to disrupt the
involvement of the U.S.-led coalition or to threaten U.S.
trainers.
We have all the mechanisms in place to continue security
cooperation in Iraq right now: the Combined Joint Special
Operations Task Force, enhanced intelligence coordination, U.S.
presence in the major Iraqi headquarters, and a sturdy train
and equip effort. But we are about to shift now the mission
into what is really the difficult part.
Fighting them as an army was the easy part. Now we are
going to pursue the small ISIS cells into the ungoverned spaces
of Iraq--mountains, deserts, river deltas, even the refugee
camps, prisons, juvenile detention centers, and broken homes.
These are the next places where we will be pursuing ISIS, and
we need to do that through a rigid program with intelligence
support to the Iraqi state, in particular focusing on the
organized crime background, fundraising background, of ISIS,
because that tends to be how ISIS comes back in places like
Mosul, and preventing mass casualty attacks that stoke
sectarian tensions in Baghdad.
Likewise, we need to bulk out the security forces because
they are just too small right now to cover all the missions,
all the borders, all the areas, like the oil-rich hub of Basra,
which is currently being slowly taken over by militia control.
And we also need to advise them on counterinsurgency, policing,
and criminal justice reforms.
So closing with an analogy, the United States in Iraq is
like an exhausted man who has pushed a large boulder up a hill
and he is nearing the crest. It will be tempting to stop
pushing and hope that the boulder's momentum might carry it
over the top. But the lesson of 2011 to 2014 is that if we stop
pushing, the boulder will grind to a halt and it will roll
right back over us.
We have a chance, a very real opportunity, a second chance,
a do-over. With the right formula, I think for thrifty U.S.
involvement in Iraq, we have a very experienced national
security team with masses of hard-won Iraq experience. We have
a strong international coalition to share the load with us.
Now what we need to do is what Americans do best: Stick at
it and make it work.
As Churchill noted, this is not the end or the beginning of
the end, but it might be the end of the beginning. I personally
have never had more confidence that the U.S.-led multinational
coalition can work with Iraq's moderate leaders and security
forces, and I think that our mission to defeat ISIS's military
power and prevent its regrowth in Iraq is achievable.
So thank you very much for the opportunity to share some
ideas with you today.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Knights follows:]
Prepared Statement of Michael Knights
Chairman Corker, Ranking Member Cardin, and the distinguished
committee members: Thank you for inviting me to testify at today's
hearing on Mosul and the campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and
the Levant (ISIL). I'm particularly proud to be appearing before you
for the first time as a new American citizen, an immigrant and an
adopted son of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
At heart, we're here today because Iraq is important.
ISIL has known this all along. Their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is
an Iraqi. Their main base is Iraq and may remain in Iraq in the future.
The territory of Iraq is connected to six of the Middle East's major
states and represents a keystone that buttresses the region's
geography. The population of Iraq incudes the largest body of Sunni
Arabs in the world living under a Shia-led government. As ISIL
degenerates back into a terrorist group unable to hold major towns or
cities it will view Iraq as a safe haven and later as fertile ground
for a comeback.
Iran also knows that Iraq is important. The regime in the Tehran,
the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, has an ambitious agenda
inside Iraq. Tehran seeks to exploit the justifiable fear of ISIL that
is felt by Iraqi Shia majority in Iraq. Iran is trying to convince the
Iraqi Shia that they are alone in their fight against ISIL, and that
only Iranian-backed Shia militias can protect Iraq from ISIL's
resurgence in the future.
We in this room know Iraq is important, and that America's role in
Iraq is equally important. Just two and a half years after the U.S.
military left the country, ISIL took over Mosul and a third of Iraq.
ISIL's success and the complete and hasty withdrawal of U.S. military
support to Iraq was no coincidence.
Three years ago I was testifying to Congress on the rise of the
Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), something I had been warning about since
2011 \1\ when the movement rebooted stronger after we killed their
leaders the year before.
Back in 2013 it was hard to focus attention on Iraq, and it will be
hard to focus attention on Iraq in a year's time, so we need to make
smart choices now while we are still keenly focused on the threats to
U.S. interests that are present in Iraq. These threats include not only
ISIL but also Shia militias groups that parasitically exploit ISIL's
presence and which make up part of the Iranian threat network discussed
in this committee earlier this month.\2\
I've been focused on Iraq my whole career. I'm starting to see the
cyclical nature of our policies.
We wake up to the nature of an urgent threat that has been allowed
to grow unchecked. We make mistakes, then we do the right thing, but
then we lose interest. The cycle starts again.
This is very clear in the case of Mosul and fight against ISIL and
its forerunners. In early 2017, the Iraqi security forces are likely to
liberate Mosul from ISIL control. But given the dramatic comebacks
staged by ISIL and its predecessors in the city in 2004, 2007, and
2014, one can justifiably ask what will stop ISIL or a similar movement
from lying low, regenerating, and wiping away the costly gains of the
current war. What can we learn from history?
stabilizing mosul: lessons from 2008-2014
In a recent Washington Institute policy paper on Mosul,\3\ I took a
close look at the underexplored issue of security arrangements for the
city after its liberation, in particular how security forces should be
structured and controlled to prevent an ISIL recurrence. The paper
draws on my interviews with Mosul security forces in the pre-2011
period, and extensive travel in Ninawa governorate both before and
after ISIL.
Though ``big picture'' political deals over Mosul's future may
ultimately be decisive, the first priority of the Iraqi-international
coalition is to secure Mosul in very practical ways.
As John Paul Vann, a U.S. military advisor in Vietnam, noted
decades ago: ``Security may be ten percent of the problem, or it may be
ninety percent, but whichever it is, it's the first ten percent or the
first ninety percent. Without security, nothing else we do will last.''
\4\
We can learn a lot about the vital next steps in Mosul if we look
at two distinct periods of Mosul's recent history.
Partial success when the U.S. paid close attention. In 2007-2011,
the U.S-backed Iraqi security forces (ISF) achieved significant
success, reducing security incidents in the city from a high
point of 666 per month in the first quarter of 2008 to an
average of 32 incidents in the first quarter of 2011.\5\
Catastrophic failure when the U.S. turned away. In 2011-2014, the
trend reversed, until monthly security incidents had risen to
an average of 297 in the first quarter of 2014. Shortly
afterwards ISIL seized Mosul and a third of Iraq in June 2014.
drivers of successful stabilization in mosul in 2007-2011
Explanations for both the 2007-11 successes and the failures of
2011-14 are easily identified. In the earlier span, Baghdad committed
to Mosul's stabilization and Iraq's prime minister (then Nouri al-
Maliki) focused on the issue, authorizing compromises such as partial
amnesty and a reopening of security recruitment to former regime
officers. Elections produced a provincial council and governor with
whom urban Sunni Arab Moslawis, as Mosul residents are known, could
identify.
While the U.S. military was embedded in Mosul until 2011, the ISF
achieved a basic ``unity of command,'' and key command positions were
allocated to respected officers, including Sunni Arab Moslawis, in part
as a result of U.S. urging. Available government troops in Mosul were
increased, including through significant local recruitment of Moslawis
from poorer Sunni Arab neighborhoods.
the roots of failed stabilization in mosul during 2011-2014
During the 2011-14 stretch, by contrast, ISIL's victory was assured
by chronically deficient unity of effort and unity of command among
Iraqi government, Kurdish, and Ninawa factions. Baghdad and the
Kurdish-backed Ninawa provincial leaders worked at cross-proposes
throughout the 3-year period.
Indeed, the military ``command climate'' set by Baghdad's
politically appointed commanders resulted in security forces conducting
operations intended to humiliate and punish the predominately Sunni
Arab Moslawis. From the outset of Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-
Maliki's second term in 2010, Baghdad tinkered with command and control
in Mosul, undoing the reasonably depoliticized security structure that
existed until that point. The constant shuffling of commanders
destroyed the ISF's remaining cohesion.
a rare second chance: the strategic opportunity in mosul in 2017
Given the strategic opportunity posed by the future liberation of
Mosul--an opportunity that may not come again--digesting and making use
of these lessons is vitally important.
Assuming neither Kurdish Peshmerga nor Shiite militias flood the
city, an outcome the coalition seems to have prevented, Moslawis may
initially be more open to working with the ISF, following two and a
half years under ISIL, than at any point since 2003. But Mosul
residents will also be closely watching their liberators for signs of a
return to 2014, with its punitive measures, restrictive curfews, and
the widespread specter of arrest.
At the political level, Ninawa requires genuine pragmatic governing
consensus, not just a shifting series of ``enemy of my enemy is my
friend'' alliances. It is still early in the process but on this front
the U.S.-led coalition has made a good start by bringing together
Baghdad and the Kurds, plus the Ninawa provincial leadership for
general dialogue.
A compact among these factions should consist of simple ground
rules for future political conduct. In such an arrangement, the
provincial council and any security coordination committee must be a
consensus-based decision-making body.
how to structure mosul security forces
Likewise, the recruitment and management of local government bodies
and police should formulaically reflect the pre-ISIL composition of the
city's population. Major recruitment of urban locals to the police
force, including returning minorities, is a priority.
At the operational level, requirements include stable
nonpoliticized command appointments and much stronger unity and
coordination among federal Iraqi, Kurdish, and local Ninawa security
forces. The Ninawa Operations Command (NiOC), a three-star joint
headquarters active since 2008, remains the most appropriate command-
and-control architecture, but the concept needs to be implemented much
more effectively than in the pre-2014 years.
Just as the U.S.-led coalition has successfully worked since 2014
to encourage Iraqi promotion to high command of talented Counter-
Terrorism Service officers, the coalition should now use its influence
and advisors to optimize NiOC's leadership and setup.
Such efforts should include the establishment of key coordination
bodies on overall security policy, community relations, intelligence
sharing, and checkpoint placement. To aid coordination, Iraq should be
encouraged to locate NiOC as close as possible to the Ninawa Provincial
Council and police headquarters, both in Mosul city.
how to prevent isil resurgence in mosul
The 2007-2014 period provides clear lessons regarding some of the
first steps that Iraq and the coalition should take in Mosul:
Spread reconstruction and economic aid to poorer urban districts.
For more than a decade, the city's reconstruction needs have
been unmet, and the coalition should encourage Iraq to target
reconstruction in the areas most likely to present havens for
ISIL and other militant actors. This means greater focus on the
poor Arab neighborhoods at the city's outer northwest,
southwest, and southeast edges. These areas were consistently
overlooked in the past and ISIL used them as incubators for its
previous recoveries, employing an economic ``class warfare''
approach to recruit the poor.
Don't overlook rural areas. Moreover, urban security must be linked
to stabilization of rural militant ``hotspots'' like Badush,
Ash Shura, and Tal Afar, from which a disproportionate number
of ISIL fighters have come. ISIL's takeover of Mosul in 2014
was partly a rural versus urban backlash. This social schism
needs to be minimized to deny ISIL space to re-grow.
Treat ISIL as a major organized crime threat. Iraq needs to help
develop strong capabilities in countering organized crime and
for local governments in fighting corruption, given that ISIL
will first reemerge in Mosul's criminal underbelly, as it did
after the decimation of its predecessor, the Islamic State of
Iraq, in 2010. The resurgence of ISIL in Mosul will either
success or fail in the markets, the offices and the government
departments where the terrorists will try to threaten, kidnap
and kill their way back to prominence.
the future role of the u.s.-led coalition in mosul and iraq
The U.S.-led coalition can play a critical positive role in
encouraging Iraq to place good leaders in charge of Ninawa security
policies, support those leaders, and build a combined effort to prevent
ISIL resurgence.
First, the U.S.-led coalition needs to itself act in a coordinated
manner. The current coalition against the Islamic State is far more
useful than a unilateral U.S. mission, drawing on key contributors such
as Britain, Australia and New Zealand, Italy, France, Germany, Spain,
and Canada, to name just a handful.
Such an alliance, including some of the world's largest economies
and security-assistance partners, can help amplify diplomatic pressure
in stressing the need for consensus approaches to Ninawa in discussions
in Mosul, Erbil, Baghdad, Ankara, and even Tehran.
The alliance also ensures the fair burden sharing between the
United States and other partners, many of whom are making very
substantive efforts to do things that the U.S. cannot easily do (for
instance, Italian Carabinieri support to Iraq's Federal Police).
extending combined joint task force-operation inherent resolve
If the mandate of Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent
Resolve (CJTF-OIR) were extended, the coalition's leverage could be
expanded beyond the liberation of Mosul. The coalition should commit
the United States to at least three further years of extraordinary
security cooperation, subject to review and extension.
The aim would be to provide a bridge for this enhanced security-
cooperation relationship into the new Iraqi government in 2018-22.
The message should be clear: the United States will not disengage
from this fight after Mosul is liberated. In contrast to the hasty
departure in 2009-11, U.S. officials would be committing to an
intensified security-cooperation relationship with Iraq through the
multinational framework of CJTF-OIR for the mid-term, in order to
permanently defeat IS in Iraq.
Such an effort should entail ongoing contribution to a Combined
Joint Special Operations Task Force-Iraq (CJSOFT-I), enhanced
intelligence cooperation, continued U.S. presence in the Combined Joint
Operations Command (CJOC), and a sturdy Build Partner Capacity (BPC)
effort.
what the u.s.-led coalition should do in mosul
The above steps could greatly increase U.S. and coalition leverage
for Ninawa's long-term stabilization. For instance, the coalition could
stay directly engaged in the development of Ninawa-based security
forces.
If the coalition continues to train and equip Iraqi army forces at
the large bases near Baghdad, Taji and Besmaya, then Western
governments will be better positioned to ensure Moslawi and Ninawa
recruits are brought into the army in appropriate numbers, a key
reconciliation metric. Similarly, the Italian Carabinieri training for
the Iraqi Federal Police allows monitoring and influence over the
development of new locally recruited Federal Police forces for Ninawa.
Specialized training initiatives could not only sustain coalition
leverage but also directly assist in Ninawa's stabilization. Examples
might include
special forces and intelligence training for counterterrorism and
counter-organized-crime operations;
development of a ``Counterinsurgency Center of Excellence for the
Iraqi Army and Federal Police''; and
development of border security and logistical capacities to support
operations in ungoverned spaces far from existing logistical
infrastructure, such as the Ninawa-Syria border.
keep paying attention to mosul, ninawa and iraq
The coalition's attention is simultaneously the cheapest and the
most important investment that can be made in Mosul. Keeping the
Baghdad, Kurdistan Region, and Ninawa leaderships focused on
stabilization, and keeping them communicating and coordinating, is the
greatest contribution the coalition can make.
----------------
Notes
\1\ In early 2012 I assessed that the resurgence of Al-Qaeda in
Iraq/Islamic State of Iraq had been underway since the spring of 2011.
See Michael Knights, Back with a vengeance: Al-Qaeda in Iraq rebounds,
in IHS Defense, Security & Risk Consulting, February 24, 2012.
\2\ Defeating the Iranian Threat Network: Options for Countering
Iranian Proxies, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, December 6, 2016.
\3\ Michael Knights, How to Secure Mosul: Lessons from 2008-2014
(Washington DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2016).
\4\ Quoted in Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann
and America in Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1988), p. 67.
\5\ All incident data is drawn from the author's geolocated
Significant Action (SIGACT) data set, which brings together
declassified coalition SIGACT data plus private-security-company and
open-source SIGACT data used to supplement and extend the data set as
coalition incident collection degraded in 2009-11 and disappeared in
2012-14.
The Chairman. Thank you. Thank you very much for that
testimony.
Mr. Lang?
STATEMENT OF HARDIN LANG, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR AMERICAN
PROGRESS, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Lang. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, members of the
committee, thank you for the honor and the opportunity to
discuss the situation in Iraq today.
Indeed, we stand at an inflection point in our policy in
that country. While much of the military task will soon be
accomplished, what comes next will be more complex to help the
Iraqis recover and reconcile.
As we enter this phase, there are four urgent priorities
and two enduring challenges the U.S. will face, and you, sirs,
have both touched on many of those in your opening statements.
The first urgent priority is the humanitarian situation.
The number of those displaced by the Mosul operation stands
roughly at 160,000, far less than many had feared. But over
700,000 civilians remain trapped in areas controlled by ISIS,
and the U.N. estimates that a quarter million could flee.
The ISF needs to secure aid distribution and evacuation
routes for western Mosul, and donors will need to come up with
more assistance. The U.N. is likely to need another $570
million to cover the next phase of the operation.
The second priority is governance in a liberated Mosul.
This was a top concern when I was in northern Iraq with
everyone I spoke with last year. Given the large number of
Iraqi players involved in Mosul's liberation, some of the
clashes along ethno-sectarian lines are probable when the
threat of ISIS recedes and various groups began to vie for
control. An arrangement is needed to deconflict between these
groups and reassure Mosul's population.
One option would be to declare a transitional period and
appoint a high-level committee to oversee the administration of
Mosul and the surrounding areas. The committee could include
representatives from Baghdad and Erbil, and a senior U.S. or
coalition diplomat to help broker.
The third priority is stabilization. Coalition diplomats
point to the return of displaced persons as a key indicator a
liberated area or community has stabilized. But only one-third
of those who have fled the fighting have returned home, so we
are still looking at over 3 million who remain displaced. In
short, stabilization lags dangerously behind the military
campaign.
To date, the U.N. has led on stabilization. And while its
efforts have been commendable, the counter-ISIS coalition
should bolster its role, and the U.S. could deploy additional
civilian contingency assets to support the U.N. effort.
The fourth priority is to reach an agreement with Iraqis
about the residual U.S. or coalition military mission. The U.S.
has more than 5,000 troops in Iraq. With their support, Iraqi
and Kurdish forces have made impressive gains against ISIS, but
these forces will need help to protect these gains for some
time to come.
The follow-on mission should continue to train and equip
our partners, and should maintain a presence in both Anbar and
Ninewa to reassure the Sunni Arab communities that they will
not be abandoned.
Unfortunately, Iraqi leaders are already under pressure to
reduce the U.S. presence. At the moment, we still retain a
tremendous amount of leverage inside of Iraq because of our
military contribution, and we need to start talking to the
Iraqis now about what comes next while we retain that leverage.
Looking beyond the immediate, a central challenge, an
enduring challenge, will remain national reconciliation. Sunni
Arab communities must be offered a tangible stake in the future
of Iraq. To date, the U.S. strategy has been to nurture
reconciliation through support for devolution of authority,
recruitment of Sunni Arabs into the security forces, and
legislation like the amnesty law that passed last August.
The U.S. should also encourage local attempts at
reconciliation. Only 3 percent of donor money for stabilization
has actually been spent on reconciliation initiatives, so there
is clearly room to grow.
For their part, the Kurds have been amongst the most
steadfast and effective partners against ISIS, and they will
want to be compensated for their sacrifice at a time that
aspirations for independence are running high.
A second enduring challenge is something that everyone has
touched on so far, and that would be the Shia militia.
Estimates of total Shia militia in Iraq vary from 100,000 to
120,000 forces at this stage. Most are organized under the
banner of the Popular Mobilization Front and many are backed by
Iran.
The Iraqi Government has passed legislation making the PMF
an official component of the Iraq security forces, but the
implementation process remains unclear. One option includes
turning the PMF into a reservist force. Another is to fully
integrate them into the ISF.
Now the U.S. could support either of these options for
units that are not directly backed by Iran, but those that are
backed by Iran will continue to pose a significant challenge,
and we must be able to balance against them.
In conclusion, I believe that the United States maintains a
significant interest in the future of Iran. The U.S. has spent
over $10 billion to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and our goal
should be to protect that investment and prevent the
reemergence of a similar terrorist threat.
We should also seek to balance Iran's influence inside Iraq
by bolstering Iraqi sovereignty. None of this requires the U.S.
to nation-build, but we need to maintain a pathway for
sustainable engagement.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I look forward to
your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lang follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hardin Lang
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, Members of the Committee, thank
you for the honor and the opportunity to discuss the situation in Iraq.
The battle to retake the country from ISIS is one of the most dynamic
foreign policy challenges confronting the new administration. Iraqi and
coalition forces have already liberated most of their country and are
now engaged in a fierce fight to recapture the western half of Mosul.
But major questions remain regarding what comes next. Indeed, we
stand at an inflection point in our policy on Iraq. Much of the
military task will soon be accomplished. The next phase will be more
complicated--to help Iraqis recover, reconcile and seek solutions to
what at its root has always been a political problem. As we enter this
phase, I want to touch on four urgent priorities and two enduring
challenges the U.S. will now face in Iraq.
The four urgent priorities are:
1) The humanitarian situation
2) Post-liberation governance of Mosul
3) Stabilization in liberated communities
4) Negotiating a follow-on military mission
The two enduring challenges include:
1) National reconciliation
2) The future of Shia militia in Iraq
why iraq matters
First, let me be clear on one point. My remarks are premised on the
assumption that the United States maintains a significant interest in
the future of Iraq--one that merits continuing U.S. leadership and
investment. As of last year, the U.S. had spent over $10 billion to
combat the ISIS in Iraq and Syria and deployed over 5,000 troops in
Iraq alone to support that effort.\1\ We made this investment because
of the terrorist threat posed by ISIS to the United States and our
allies. Once ISIS has been defeated militarily, a key objective should
be to foster the degree of stability in Iraq necessary to prevent the
reemergence of similar transnational terrorist threats. In this case,
an ounce of prevention truly is worth a pound of cure.
A second U.S. objective in Iraq should be to balance Iranian
influence. The 2003 invasion of Iraq ended the U.S. policy of dual
containment of Iraq and Iran. It is not possible to return to the
status quo ante. Iran will maintain significant sway inside Iraq for
the foreseeable future, however, we can take steps to reinforce Iraqi
sovereignty and independence and minimize the opportunity for Iraq to
disintegrate or serve as a proxy in the regional competition for power.
Working with long-standing partners in the Middle East to ensure that
we are developing regional support for efforts to reinforce Iraq's
sovereignty is vital for long-term U.S. interests.
None of this requires the U.S. to nation build or reconstruct Iraq,
but it does mean that we should be prepared to protect the significant
investment of the last two years through a continued military presence
and targeted civilian assistance. We should share this burden by
leveraging the resources of extensive membership of the counter-ISIS
coalition and our partners in the region. This will only be possible if
the U.S. remains engaged and willing to lead.
four urgent priorities
1) The humanitarian situation: While the number of those displaced
by the Mosul operation has not been as high as many feared, the
humanitarian situation remains serious. To date, roughly 160,000
civilians have been displaced due to fighting to retake the eastern
half of Mosul and surrounding villages. Some 700,000-750,000 civilians
remain trapped in areas still controlled by IS. The U.N. estimates that
as many as 250,000 people could flee escalating fighting in the west of
the city.\2\
Two weeks ago, U.N. relief operations were temporarily paused to
the liberated eastern half of Mosul because of a deterioration in the
security situation. Significant shortages of drinking water remain a
primary humanitarian concern in eastern Mosul. The U.N. has also
announced that food, fuel, and other humanitarian supplies are unable
to reach western Mosul and ongoing military operations have closed off
possible access points for aid.
More needs to be done to address the immediate humanitarian needs
of those impacted by the fighting. First, the Iraqi Security Forces
need to secure the distribution of aid in and provide evacuation routes
from western Mosul as the offensive continues.\3\ Second, international
coalition partners and other donors will need to increase their
humanitarian assistance. The good news is that 97 percent of the July
2016 Mosul Flash Appeal has been funded. But the U.N. estimates it will
need another $570 million for the next phases of the Mosul
operation.\4\
2) Post-liberation governance of Mosul: Perhaps the biggest
challenge facing a liberated Mosul will be governance. The plan to
restore governance is to be led by the current Ninewa governor in
exile. This mirrors the process in other liberated cities, but he is
not from Mosul and has no indigenous powerbase. Former governor Najafi
remains a controversial and possibly disruptive figure. The Government
of Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government have discussed post-
liberation arrangements at length, but have not yet reached a shared
understanding, and Turkey's presence has complicated the situation. The
lack of an agreed plan creates incentives for those fighting to create
facts on the ground from whence they can negotiate on the day after.
The key will be to find an arrangement that gives the people of
Mosul confidence, restores the relationship with the government in
Baghdad and reassures the KRG that Kurdish equities will be protected.
One option would be for the Iraqi government to announce a political
transitional period lasting up to 18 months once combat operations have
ceased. A high-level committee could then be established to support the
governor and help oversee the administration of Mosul and surrounding
areas during this period. That committee could include representatives
from Baghdad and Erbil. A senior U.S. official--probably of
Ambassadorial rank--should support the committee and help serve as a
broker.
3) Stabilization in liberated communities: ISIS has left much of
Iraq in ruins. Iraqis returning home have found their communities
destroyed. The Iraqi government is overwhelmed by the task of
rebuilding in areas already liberated from ISIS. As Special Envoy Brett
McGurk stated last year, ``Stabilizing areas after [ISIS] can be even
more important than clearing areas from [ISIS].'' \5\ He's right: After
the fighting stops, there will be a crucial window to begin
humanitarian aid and establish some basic services and governance.
Failure to do so risks squandering battlefield sacrifices.
Coalition diplomats often point to the return of displaced people
as the metric of success for stabilization. The total number of people
displaced by the ISIS crisis grew to 3.3 million people in 2016 and now
hovers at just over three million. While ISIS has lost over half its
territory in Iraq, only one-third of those who fled their homes appear
to have returned. This suggests that efforts to stabilize liberated
areas lag dangerously behind the military campaign. To date, the U.N.
has led on stabilization, and while its efforts have been commendable,
the counter-ISIS coalition should bolster its role in this line of
effort.
The first step would be for counter-ISIS coalition to strengthen
its leadership for stabilization efforts. Currently, the coalition
working group in charge of stabilization has few responsibilities
beyond information sharing. One option would be to appoint a Baghdad-
based coalition ambassador to serve as the civilian lead for
stabilization on the ground. A coalition civilian lead could help
integrate stabilization into coalition military campaign plans to
ensure that there is a plan for the day after liberation.
Second, the United States should lead by example in supporting
stabilization. The administration should deploy civilian contingency
assets like the State Department's Bureau for Conflict and
Stabilization and USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) to
support U.N. efforts. OTI, in particular, has extensive experience
working next to the military and through local authorities in conflict
zones.
4) Negotiating a follow-on military mission: Finally, the single
most pressing decision will be whether to keep U.S. soldiers in the
country for a follow-on mission. The U.S. military presence in Iraq has
expanded incrementally since mid-2014, and now includes more than 5,000
personnel at three air bases in Anbar and Ninewa and two Joint
Operations Centers in Baghdad and Erbil.\6\ The overall mission has
also expanded to include close air support, fire support, logistical
assistance, high-value targeting, and embedded U.S. forces behind the
frontlines.
But even after Mosul has been liberated, Iraq will still require
U.S. support to ensure enduring security. With help from the American-
led anti-ISIS coalition, the Iraqi security forces have made impressive
gains against ISIS after suffering a breathtaking collapse in mid-2014.
But Iraqi forces will need help to protect both their battlefield and
organizational gains for some time to come. Unfortunately, negotiations
over a U.S. follow-on force will take place at a time of declining
American leverage. Iraqi leaders are already under pressure to reduce
the U.S. military footprint. Prime Minister Al-Abadi has signaled his
intent to do so immediately after the liberation of Mosul, so we need
to start talking to the Iraqis now about the future of a U.S. military
presence.
A follow-on mission should continue to train and equip our
partners--especially the Counter Terrorism Service. But the final troop
number must carefully balance military requirements against political
realities in Baghdad. Insistence on a large force with a broad mandate
and expansive rules of engagement could trigger Iraqi political
backlash. A force somewhere between 3,000 to 5,000 troops should be
sufficient. The key will be to maintain the U.S. footprint in both
Anbar and Ninewa to reassure Sunni Arab communities that they will not
once again be abandoned. The timeline for agreement is short: Iraq's
2018 elections could produce a prime minister less willing to cooperate
with Washington.
two enduring challenges
1) National reconciliation: Over the long term, the key to lasting
victory over the Islamic State and stability in Iraq will be national
reconciliation. We have learned the hard way that American troops
cannot provide long-term stability if Iraqi leaders cannot heal their
divided politics. Sunni Arab communities must be offered a tangible
stake in the future of the country. To date the U.S. strategy has been
to nurture reconciliation through support for the devolution of
authority to local government, the mobilization of Sunni Arabs into the
security force, and legislation like the amnesty law that passed last
August.\7\
Ultimate success or failure for reconciliation will rest with
Iraqis. Outside actors like the United States should approach such
efforts with humility and measured expectations. And yet the fact that
these non-military dimensions are so vital to Iraq's future security
and the fight against ISIS means that much more must be done.
First, the administration should consider additional resources to
accelerate government decentralization.\8\ Second, it should also
accelerate efforts to recruit Sunni Arabs into the security forces
through the U.S. Department of Defense's Iraq Train and Equip Fund.
Finally, the embassy in Baghdad should encourage recent local attempts
at reconciliation. Two Shia leaders and a Sunni Arab political bloc
have launched competing reconciliation initiatives. If these efforts
are genuine, the United States should be prepared to nurture them where
possible through increased diplomatic engagement and presence in Iraq.
For their part, the Kurds have been amongst the most steadfast and
effective partners against ISIS. They will want to be rewarded at a
time that aspirations for independence are running high. While this
ultimate Kurdish objective does not appear realistic at this time,
there needs to be a channel of communication with the KRG to discuss
how they can be compensated for their sacrifice.
2) The future of Shia militia in Iraq: One of the biggest threats
to reconciliation remains sectarian Shia militias. Estimates of the
total Shiite militiamen in Iraq vary widely from 100,000-120,000--
mostly organized under the banner of the Popular Mobilization Front
(PMFs). Roughly half of the PMF units were formed out of pre-existing
Iraqi militias, while the rest are new formations mobilized in response
to Grand Ayatollah Sistani's 2014 fatwa.\9\ A large proportion receives
direct Iranian backing. Many of the Iranian-backed militia were
responsible for killing some 500 U.S. troops from 2003-2011.\10\
U.S. policy towards the PMF has evolved. In 2014, U.S. refused to
provide them military support, but since mid-2015, American policy has
evolved to include air and other support for those PMF units not
beholden to Iran.\11\ On November 26, the Iraqi government passed
legislation making the PMF an official component of Iraq's security
forces with equal status to the army,\12\ but there has been little
movement by the Iraqi government to implement the November legislation.
Iraq's president has indicated that there are several possible options
including turning the PMF into a reservist force, or full integration
into the existing structure of the Iraqi armed forces.
However, PMF leaders exercise considerable political influence
inside Iraq. There is a very real risk that the PMF could take root as
a Hezbollah-style Iranian proxy. Such a development would threaten
Iraqi sovereignty and undercut attempts at national reconciliation.
There are no easy solutions to managing the threat posed by Iranian-
backed PMF units, but the U.S. could play a constructive role in
facilitating the demobilization or integration of the remaining PMF
units into the ISF.
----------------
Notes
\1\ ``The Islamic State and U.S. Policy'', Christopher M.Blanchard
and Carla E. Humud Congressional Research Service February 2, 2017.
\2\ International Organization for Migration, ``IOM Iraq:
Displacement Tracking Matric Counts 133,302 Displaced from Mosul
Operations,'' January 6, 2017.
\3\ Emily Anagnostos, ``The Campaign for Mosul: February 1-21,
2017,'' Institute for the Study of War.
\4\ OCHA Iraq, ``Iraq: Mosul Humanitarian Response,'' February 17,
2017.
\5\ Brett H. McGurk, ``Global Efforts to Defeat ISIS,'' Testimony
before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, June 28, 2016.
\6\ Nancy Youssef, ``U.S. Pushes for More Bases to Fight ISIS in
Iraq,'' The Daily Beast, April 7, 2016.
\7\ The White House, ``Joint Statement by the United States of
American and the Republic of Iraq,'' Press release, April 14, 2015.
\8\ USAID Iraq, ``The Path to Stability and Security: A Lesson in
Decentralization, Cooperation, and Coordination From North Babil.''
\9\ Jack Watling, ``The Shia Militias of Iraq,'' The Atlantic,
December 22, 2016.
\10\ Kenneth Katzman, ``Iran's Foreign and Defense Politics,''
Congressional Research Service, February 6, 2017.
\11\ Kenneth Katzman, ``Iran's Foreign and Defense Politics.''
\12\ Asharq al-Awsat, ``Iraq Parliament Passes a Law Legalizing
PMF,'' November 27, 2016.
The Chairman. Thank you both.
Just based on the people you talk with, you get no sense
that there is not a longer term commitment, do you?
Every U.S. official I am talking to understands what you
just said about the fact that we have to be there for some
time. You get no sense of that from any one you talk with, do
you, to the contrary?
Mr. Lang. No, sir. I guess the question is the need to
actually sequence and start the negotiations as soon as
possible while we are still at this moment of high-level
leverage.
The Chairman. I think they understand what needs to be left
behind. I think those conversations are underway, and I get no
sense, just for what it is worth, that there is anyone who
wishes to have another 2011 type activity.
I would just like to ask, are you all getting any different
signals from anyone?
Dr. Knights. So it is true that there is a new
understanding and willingness to continue the mission,
including with the coalition partners as well as U.S.
The Chairman. Yes, no question.
So let me ask you this. The Kurds are obviously moving
toward independence. We spent a great deal of time with them. I
know they are not quite as strident with their conversations
with Abadi, but they are very strident when it comes to us here
and certainly very strident in Kurdistan.
Give us a sense of the impact of that, should they move to
further cause themselves to be independent from Baghdad.
Dr. Knights. So at the moment, the discussion in Kurdistan
around independence I think has a very economic flavor. There
is an understanding that, if relations with Baghdad break down,
the Kurds would lose access to a number of economic aid
supports.
They would also potentially have more complicated access to
international security assistance and that they might well face
greater legal challenges exporting their oil.
I do not detect inside the Kurdish leadership a near-term
ambition to push quickly for independence, nor to negotiate a
kind of amicable divorce over a period of 5 to 10 years with
the Baghdad government.
The Chairman. Do you want to say anything to that?
Mr. Lang. No, I would only add that, at the moment, when
one spends time in Kurdistan, you get the feeling that there is
a tremendous amount of internal housecleaning that needs to be
done. There is a lot of political friction and difficulties
between the different Kurdish parties, and much of the economic
state-building program in Kurdistan is on hold.
So in terms of Kurdistan becoming a viable state any time
in the immediate future, again, there seems to be a separation
between the rhetoric that we hear from the Kurds and then the
closed-door conversations about what they really think is in
the realm of the possible.
The Chairman. I think the fact that they would have to ship
their oil through Turkey and could very well become a sub-state
of Turkey, if they are not careful, obviously causes concern.
And so to have a nonamicable relationship with Iraq would be
very much not in their interests.
Let me ask you, the PMF, one of you mentioned those that
are aligned with Iran certainly should not be a part--look,
most of them are aligned with Iran, so, I mean, there is a law
that has been passed relative to the Popular Mobilization
Forces. It looks like they are going to be a part of the
security infrastructure there. They are very much aligned with
Iran, most of them. There are a few that are not, as you
alluded to, Mr. Lang.
But I mean, this is a fact of life there. I am just
wondering, I do not see this not being a fact of life. Are you
guys sensing there is some different outcome that may occur
with the PMF other than them being part of the security
infrastructure there?
Mr. Lang. I think the real danger at this stage would be if
you see the PMF or elements of the PMF, particularly the three
or four large ones that are backed directly by Iran, to the
extent to which they remain outside of the ISF, and I think
that there probably is a degree of intention inside of them to
do so, that becomes a danger point.
And then for us, it is the nature of the investment that we
make in Iraqi security forces going forward to serve as a
balance against that that becomes crucial.
Dr. Knights. And I would add that the PMF are very
splintered. They are very difficult to consolidate under one
electoral banner or under one command and control arrangement.
So splintering them down into their irreconcilable
elements, like Katai'b Hezbollah or Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, versus
other elements related to the shrine militias, and even Badr--
there is always the potential that a group like Badr, which is
the largest PMF entity, could be mainstreamed over time and
could be broken down into subcomponents with a clever policy.
Also anywhere where the Iraqi security forces are present,
they are able to effectively counterbalance the PMF presence.
In a place like Basra, for instance, where there have been no
major Iraqi army units since 2013, we have seen true break down
and true militia control.
The Chairman. Senator Cardin?
Senator Cardin. I want to thank both of our witnesses.
There is no question that we have made a great investment
in Iraq, and it is in our national security interests to make
sure that Iraq becomes a stable country and does not become an
Iranian client state, which is one of the fears I think many of
us have.
We do not want to see the type of collapse we saw in the
Iraqi security forces that we saw in 2014. So it does require
the attention of the United States and our coalition partners
in order to give Iraq a chance for a national government to
represent all of its people and a security force that can
maintain the security in the region.
So I want to point out a couple challenges we have and then
see what you think we should be doing.
One challenge is whether we will get Iraqi cooperation on
the maintaining of our troops or our military presence in their
country. There are political considerations here.
When the President's executive order named Iraq as one of
the countries where we would not accept refugees, that makes it
difficult for the Iraqi Government to work with the United
States on the continued military presence. Or when statements
are made about taking Iraqi oil, that certainly is not
conducive to the type of political support that we need from
the Iraqi Government.
I might also add the January 28th executive order that is
reviewing the rules of engagement, because it is clear that as
you change the rules of engagement, the chances of more
civilian casualties become greater, which again raises the risk
factors of the ability of the Iraqi Government to cooperate
with our coalition partners.
So I put that out there as challenge one, and whether we
are moving in a direction that is going to make it impossible
or difficult for us to get the type of cooperation from the
Iraqis for a continued presence.
And secondly, the trust factor, we spend a lot of money on
military. That seems safe under the Trump proposed budget that
we will see soon. But the other side of that coin is how do we
help them rebuild their nation? How do we help them get an
economy that is moving for all of its people? How do we deal
with governance support from the point of view of our
development assistance, whereas we now see budgets that are
being suggested by this administration that could have deep
cuts in that aspect of our national security?
So with those two challenges, how do you see us dealing
with this challenge so that we can, in fact, be a partner to
Iraq?
Mr. Lang, if you would start? Or, Dr. Knights? Whoever
wants to start.
Mr. Lang. On the question of Iraq cooperation, I mean this
really is the fundamental issue in terms of maintaining a
residual force for a follow-on mission.
And you raised the issue of the executive order and the ban
on seven countries. The Iraqi Parliament responded to that and
pushed quite hard for a similar ban inside of Iraq on
Americans, and it put Prime Minister Abadi in a very difficult
position where he was forced to sort of override the Parliament
and to not action that piece of legislation.
Prime Minister Abadi is already in a reasonably weak
position, and the last thing that we need to do is to sort of
fan the flames of anti-American sentiment inside of Iraq,
particularly for those political forces that are backed by Iran
and that would like to see us leave.
So I could not agree more that those kind of statements
have been deeply unhelpful, not just from a political sense,
but also morale. There was one point where the sort of
commander of the counterterrorism service, which is one of our
most valuable partners inside Iraq, his family is living in the
United States. And when the order came down, it was unclear to
him whether he would even be able to come back to visit.
So these sorts of things probably they do more harm than
good, in terms of our negotiations going forward.
On the trust factor for rebuilding, yes, at this stage, we
are at an inflection point. There are going to be some critical
issues, particularly short-term stabilization, that are going
to need work to follow-on and lock in some military gains.
Those are activities that should fall to civilians. There are
key offices like the Office of Transition Initiatives in USAID
or CSO in the State Department that do this kind of stuff.
There is about $2 billion pledged to do some of this work
over the last summer, but it hasn't as of yet made its way into
a pipeline to actually impact on the ground. And it is hard to
see that, if we are not there to lead with economic assistance
going forward, how we are going to be able to rally the rest of
the coalition to do the same.
Senator Cardin. Dr. Knights?
Dr. Knights. So very quickly, it is clear that we must have
no more self-inflicted wounds when it comes to Iraq. We need to
leave no opening for the Iranian-backed movement to cut us out.
But it is also clear, the fact that we survived this
January problem shows our value to the Iraqis.
If we are going to continue our presence and our mission
there in Iraq, we need to stress the continuity of the
mission--not a new mission, not a new mandate, not a new
agreement, the same one that we are operating on right now. If
we create even an inch of daylight between us and the Iraqis,
we will get thrown out again. We need to maintain and stress
the continuity of the mission.
And one of the things that Prime Minister Abadi has
learned, I think, over the last couple years is it is much
easier to do things informally than formally in Iraq. So
anything that we can do to keep it quiet is good.
In terms of rules of engagement, I maybe would push back a
little bit. There is a difference between prompt civilian
casualties that happen because you drop a bomb on them by
accident and a very large number of civilian casualties that
often happen if you let a battle drag on for months rather than
weeks. A place like Ramadi is a great example of that.
I think, in many ways, by loosening the rules of engagement
slightly, you might well save more lives in the long term. And
I think we have definitely seen that since 2014.
Senator Cardin. Thank you.
The Chairman. Senator Johnson?
Senator Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I just want to do some rough numbers. I do not need
anything specific.
But you talked about in your testimony, Mr. Lang, the PMF
force is somewhere between 100,000 and 120,000. What is the
size of the Iraqi security force? Similar? Just rough numbers.
Dr. Knights. No, the Iraqi security forces would be far
larger than that when you add them all together, maybe around
530,000.
Senator Johnson. 530,000. How many are engaged in the
battle of Mosul right now?
Dr. Knights. So the battle of Mosul should be around
70,000.
Senator Johnson. Okay. We have about 5,000 U.S. troops.
Dr. Knights, you were talking about what a really expanded,
committed coalition we have. How many troops do we have of our
committed coalition partners?
Dr. Knights. I do not have an exact figure on that.
Senator Johnson. A couple thousand?
Dr. Knights. Yes, it would be a couple thousand. It would
probably be slightly smaller than the U.S. when you added
everything together.
Senator Johnson. The committed coalition is probably under
10,000.
Dr. Knights. Yes, absolutely.
Senator Johnson. What do we have in terms of the number of
Peshmerga involved or available?
Dr. Knights. ``Involved'' is a difficult concept because
they are running the entire frontline between the Syrian border
and the Iranian border. But in terms of being involved in
active combat operations, it is almost zero right now.
Senator Johnson. Okay. So how many are involved right now,
in terms of holding the line, then?
Dr. Knights. There is probably say about 200,000 Peshmerga
on the frontline.
Senator Johnson. Okay. And ISIS, what are the current
estimates of their fighting force now?
Dr. Knights. It is only ever a guess, but maybe under 8,000
up in the Mosul area.
Senator Johnson. Okay. So we literally have hundreds of
thousands massed against about 8,000, so we should be able to
win that battle.
So then we do talk about the residual force. Going back to
2011, which I think is still just a blunder of historic
proportions, bugging out of there, the talk was leaving
somewhere around 20,000 troops.
In hindsight, would that have stabilized the situation?
Would that have been enough U.S. troops to help stabilize--
again, look, you both are testifying that Iraq is incredibly
important for the region. It is surrounded by all these
countries. Stabilizing Iraq, leaving a stabilizing force, I do
not think things would have spun out of control.
So would that have been enough to stabilize that situation?
Dr. Knights. I think it would have done, because
ultimately, when you look at the kind of impact that a small
number of advisers are having right now in a number of key
headquarters, we can have a pretty transformative effect with a
fairly small number of people put in the right place.
And basically, ISIS taking Mosul was a fluke. ISIS taking a
third of Iraq was a fluke. They thought they were just going to
do a prison breakout. They ended up accidentally taking over a
third of Iraq.
You know, that rottenness might not have been as extreme
within the Iraqi security forces if we had a residual mission.
Senator Johnson. So is our residual mission more of a
challenge today than it would have been in 2011? Or because we
have the committed coalition, we have the Peshmerga, in many
respects we have a common enemy in ISIS right now, is it going
to be easier to have a residual force?
Dr. Knights. I think we have some factors playing to our
advantage. The Sunni community in Iraq I think is seeing
exactly how bad ISIS is and there is not a lot of sympathy left
for them.
I think, likewise, we have created a breakpoint between the
2003 to 2011 experience, invasion, occupation, et cetera, and
this new mission of helping the Iraqi security forces against
the common enemy of pretty much all Iraqis.
So I think we are in a slightly better position now, and
particularly having the international coalition there, all
those nations, whereas before it basically was just U.S., U.K.,
and a couple small countries.
Senator Johnson. Have Iraqis understood and also learned
the lesson as well, that if they do not come up with an
agreement, if we do not have a stabilizing force and committed
coalition, things are going to just fall apart again? Or do
they think they built up there, the Iraqi security forces are
going to be able to take care of this without a committed
coalition of the West?
Mr. Lang. Senator, just to break down a couple points
there, my sense of this would be that within the Iraqi security
forces and in certain members of the national security
establishment inside of Iraq, and also the Peshmerga, clearly,
there is an understanding and an appetite for the U.S. to
remain.
The question is, as that question moves into the political
realm and into the political crisis in Baghdad, where Prime
Minister Abadi is sort of straddling these----
Senator Johnson. Okay. I have limited time.
What do you think is the estimated size of a residual force
of U.S. troops to stabilize that situation? Do you think 5,000
is going to do it? Ten thousand total coalition partners?
Dr. Knights. I would say around 5,000 with an equal number
of coalition partners could have a very significant effect and
could be sustainable.
Senator Johnson. And then, finally, when we talk about
development and potential U.S. foreign aid, the oil is flowing
in Iraq now, correct? What percentage of the oil fields are
open and producing revenue that ought to pay for that
redevelopment itself?
Dr. Knights. Pretty much all of them. You know, there are a
few very small ones that were under ISIS that are still
damaged, but pretty much everything else is operating. And the
Iraqis are now bringing in about $5 billion a month, which
allows them to meet their operating budget and their payroll.
Senator Johnson. So maybe they can even fund the
stabilizing forces as well? They have revenue coming in. This
is not a failed economy anymore. They stabilized what is their
primary economic resource: oil. And the first goal of
stabilization is to make sure that oil stays flowing.
Dr. Knights. And that is why we have to build up the
security forces again, so they can protect things like Basra,
the one and only main oil exporting hub for federal Iraq.
Senator Johnson. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Menendez?
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate our witnesses. Let me just make a prefatory
remark that while these hearings of private citizens who come
from very distinguished backgrounds and think tanks are
important and illuminating, I hope that sometime soon the
administration will nominate individuals that the committee can
consider, so we can actually get people from the State
Department to speak to what some of our strategy and plans
moving forward are, because, in the absence of that, it is very
difficult to think about how one formulates policy here.
So I hope that that will happen soon.
Moving back to Iraq, let me just say that President Trump
inherited a campaign that has made some significant gains to
oust ISIS from its strongholds. And while we may, indeed, be on
the verge of some major military successes to liberate cities
and people from ISIS's brutal stranglehold, lasting peace and
stability can be far more elusive.
And while the President has previously claimed to know more
about ISIS than the generals, the Pentagon's view in its new
plan requested by the President indicate there is a lot of work
to be done.
Now both of you have indicated this work requires
significant attention, resources, and commitment from Iraqis,
the United States Government, and coalition partners. I think
everyone on this committee, and I think you, would recognize
the importance of leadership and critical decision-making.
We have yet to see anyone nominated for critical positions
at the State Department, including a Deputy Secretary. The
Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs currently has an Acting
Assistant Secretary and no principal Deputy Assistant
Secretary.
With these critical positions vacant, there has been no
policy guidance for dedicated, nonpartisan civil servants and
Foreign Service Officers to execute.
Equally if not more troubling, the administration is
reportedly weighing devastating cuts to the foreign assistance
budget, which would include cuts to Iraqi programs, including
police training, judicial reform, education, economic
development programs that make the Iraqi population more stable
and resilient to ISIS's warped ideology.
With the recent announcement of the Principals Committee
reviewing the Defense Department's revised ISIS strategy, it
looks alarmingly like the State Department, our agency tasked
with leading diplomacy and policymaking, is being undermined
and sidelined.
So my question is, what impact does that have on our
ability to execute plans successfully in Iraq? Will significant
cuts to the State Department and USAID undermine efforts to
promote long-term stability in Iraq? And I invite either one of
you to speak to that.
Mr. Lang. Last year, in my last trip to Iraq, and then also
again going down to CENTCOM and speaking to folks, one of the
things that was quite notable was the extent to which the
campaign, the military campaign, the way in which it was being
conceived, stopped at the kinetics. So the rest of it, the
stabilization, the development, the key pieces that need to
come next to sort of lock in what the military is doing, is
just not a set of issues that the military was prepared to deal
with or function on.
And there was very little sort of connectivity back through
the State Department. They had to go all the way up the chain
of command and down to start having that conversation.
In much of my testimony, one of the things we were talking
about recommending was, in essence, a little bit of a
diplomatic surge into Iraq. We are probably going to need some
additional people of ambassadorial rank to sort of serve in key
positions to help manage some of these problems going forward.
And the idea that the State Department does not have the
kind of budget that is required to do this, we are looking at
budget cuts where we might not have the staff to help execute
this, may explain why some of these elements of engagement
along civilian lines of effort have taken some time to kick in,
probably too long at this stage.
Senator Menendez. Dr. Knights, are you interested in----
Dr. Knights. Well, I am not the expert on this, but we
should only focus on the State Department civilian lines of
effort if we are going to be able to do them right. And from
having been in Iraq a long time, if you cannot get out of the
Embassy, if you cannot move, if you cannot meet people, it is a
waste of time anyway.
So in some ways, if we are going to do the diplomatic
surge, it has to include accepting risk. It has to include
perhaps reestablishing out-stations in places like Hilla, where
we killed off our little sort of consulate there back during
the withdrawal days. And it left us with gaps all over the
country by pulling these things in Kirkuk and Hilla and other
places back.
So if we are going to do a civilian surge, we need to
really do it seriously because there is no in between. It is
either an ineffective mission that costs a lot of money, or it
is an effective mission that is going to cost a lot of money
and require risk. Try to do the in between, and you get
nothing.
Senator Menendez. I cannot imagine, at the end of the day,
doing all of the military elements necessary and then what you
need to do to hold ground, to continue to create the authority
over those jurisdictions that you have reacquired, and not to
have the civilian entity that is necessary for the follow-on of
governance in those areas that can hopefully lead to a better
day.
In the absence of that, we are just talking about a
perpetual engagement in Iraq that seems to me has no follow-on.
So I understand what you are saying about safety and security
in order to be able to do it. But at the end of the day, if we
do not provide the wherewithal for that to happen, I cannot
imagine us doing anything but having troops on the ground for a
very long period of time.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Young?
Senator Young. Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you for your testimony, gentlemen.
The title of today's hearing, ``Iraq After Mosul,'' we need
to develop a strong plan. We have to properly resource that
plan.
Mr. Lang, you hit on two prongs, the two most obvious
prongs of proper resourcing--we need money, sufficient
financial resources. We also need personnel, so we need to
nominate appropriate personnel. And then we need to
expeditiously consider those nominations and move them through
the hearings.
I find it ironic that anyone would criticize this
administration for not putting forward people to properly staff
up the State Department yet we continuously delay consideration
of some of these nominees.
To his credit, President Trump signed a presidential
memorandum on January 28th directing the development of a
comprehensive plan to defeat ISIS. Defense Secretary Mattis
reportedly briefed top Trump administration officials yesterday
on that plan. You know, I trust Secretary Mattis and his
military counsel.
However, we know that a sound military plan is not enough.
Just yesterday, the leaders in the House and the Senate
received a letter you no doubt are familiar with from over 120
general and flag officers indicating that we have to elevate
and strengthen our diplomacy and development efforts if, in
fact, we are going to keep America safe and secure.
I will quote from that letter. ``The military will lead the
fight against terrorism in the battlefield, but it needs strong
civilian partners in the battle against drivers of extremism--
lack of opportunity, insecurity, injustice, and hopelessness.''
So in short, a strategy that fails to address the
political, economic, and ideological conditions that are really
sort of root causes of so much of this conflict is a
shortsighted strategy. It is one that will not be successful in
the long term.
Do you both agree with that assessment? Yes or no? You can
elaborate very briefly, if you would like.
Mr. Lang. Yes, I would agree.
Dr. Knights. I think you have to have security first and
then you do the rest. Without security, you have nothing. You
have no basis to work off.
I think the best that the U.S.--the thing they are best at
is security cooperation. That is what the Iraqis value the
most. That is what gives us the most punch and value there.
So even though I do believe we do need to put nonmilitary
aid into Iraq, I do not think we are good at it. And unless we
get good at it, that should not be our main focus.
Senator Young. Which is a fantastic point, and all the more
reason that this committee needs to continue to work on
reforming our efforts in a bipartisan way over at the State
Department. I know we have dealt with human trafficking, rights
of women and girls, trade and energy in Africa, made numerous
strides, but there is much more to be done. I think everyone
recognizes that on this committee.
Would you both agree that promoting effective and
representative governance in Iraq is an essential element of a
strategy for the sustainable defeat of ISIS? Yes or no is fine.
Mr. Lang. Of course.
Dr. Knights. Yes, but it is more important to have
representative local security forces than to have some kind of
perfect local or national system of government. Iraqis want
security above anything else. We can handle other stuff down
the line.
Senator Young. You acknowledge we are not seeking
perfection. We are seeking to manage a very difficult situation
right now.
And would you both agreed that disrupting the flow of
foreign fighters outside of Iraq and Syria, providing
humanitarian relief, working with regional partners to disrupt
ISIS's finances and exposing ISIS's true nature are all
important elements of a successful strategy with the due
understanding that there could well be other important
components as well?
Dr. Knights. Yes.
Senator Young. Okay.
Mr. Lang. And these are elements that will take on
increased importance as the sort of major military aspects of
the campaign in Iraq and then hopefully in Syria begin to wind
down.
Senator Young. And you no doubt agree that the plan should
address public diplomacy, information ops, cyber strategies to
isolate and delegitimize ISIS and its radical Islamist
ideology.
Dr. Knights. Yes, but defeating them on the battlefield is
more important.
Senator Young. In the near term?
Dr. Knights. I think in all terms, because, ultimately,
what made them so attractive was the fact that they were seen
as winners. Us defeating them on the battlefield and keeping
them from reemerging on the battlefield is critical.
The thing you are getting from me is it is important to
attack their ideology, et cetera, et cetera. That is important.
But what is more important is to show them to be losers, to
beat them on the battlefield publicly, and to prevent them
from----
Senator Young. Which undermines their ideology.
Yes, Mr. Lang?
Mr. Lang. Absolutely. I think the military success is the
critical piece of the puzzle. It robs them of the content.
The piece on the cyber strategy and exposing their true
nature, it is just something that we have never been
particularly great at, and we need to probably do a little more
work.
But also, there is a real question of, are we the right
entity to do that, the United States? And how much more of that
needs to be done by partners in the region who may have a
little bit more credibility with those audiences?
Senator Young. So you have acknowledged to varying degrees
in various ways that we have to fully fund all instruments of
national power to sustainably defeat ISIS, the scourge of this
barbaric ideology. And presumably, to close here, you would
agree with now-Secretary Mattis' formulation when he was
commander of CENTCOM that if you do not fully fund the State
Department, then he is going to need to buy more ammunition. Do
you agree?
Dr. Knights. Yes.
Mr. Lang. Yes.
Senator Young. All right. Thank you.
I yield back.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Senator Shaheen?
Senator Shaheen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you both for being here today.
Mr. Lang, you alluded to the reaction to the President's
travel ban in response, I think, to a question from Senator
Cardin. But I want to just phrase it another way.
Do you think that this kind of a travel ban makes it harder
for Prime Minister Al-Abadi to resist those hardliners within
Iraq, particularly those who seek closer relations to Iran, as
being something that they believe is preferable to the U.S.?
Mr. Lang. Ma'am, I think it particularly undermines his
ability to push back politically against that very group,
because, in essence, what many of those political leaders are
saying, or representatives of the sort of PMF who are
associated with Iran, is, see, we told you so. This really is
where the Americans are.
That coupled with the talk of taking the oil has
reverberated inside the Iraqi body politic.
Secretary Mattis did yeoman's work in terms of pushing back
against that on his recent visit, but it would probably be a
good thing if we could hear that also from the Commander in
Chief.
Senator Shaheen. And, Dr. Knights, you are nodding. Do you
agree with that?
Dr. Knights. Absolutely.
Senator Shaheen. Thank you. And again, this is territory
that has also been covered, but I think it is worth repeating
in terms of the proposal from the administration to increase
defense spending by $54 billion and take a lot of that funding
out of the State Department and other nondefense agencies, many
of whom who are responsible also for security.
Several years ago, Secretary of Defense Mattis, who at that
time was serving as the commander at CENTCOM, was testifying
before the Senate Armed Services Committee. And he said, I
quote, ``If you do not fund the State Department fully, then I
need to buy more ammunition.''
So in your opinion, if we are really serious about
defeating ISIS, does it make sense for us to weaken the State
Department and their ability to help follow up on the military
campaign? Either one of you.
Mr. Lang. Senator, I think it will undermine our ability to
carry forward the next elements of the campaign in a
significant fashion.
I would sort of caveat that remark and a point that Dr.
Knights made about the need to be able to move outside the wire
on the part of the----
Senator Shaheen. Sure.
Mr. Lang. --civilian agencies. And there are organizations
inside the U.S. Government who are pushing to do that sort of
thing.
But I think that if we do not do this, we are going to get
locked into sort of a long-term counterterrorism mission that
really does not have a political end to it.
Senator Shaheen. And just to go back to your point, Dr.
Knights, about defeating ISIS on the battlefield, what happens
to that effort, that goal, if we continue to have the conflict
in Syria, the civil war there, that provides an opportunity for
ISIS to go back across the border. And so even though we may
have pushed them out of territory, as we did earlier, they have
the ability to come back.
So how should we be thinking about that as we are thinking
about our efforts on the battlefield?
Dr. Knights?
Dr. Knights. So it is clear that when we lost Mosul, or
when the Iraqis lost Mosul in the summer of 2014, that had a
significant cross-border element to it, and that is going to
continue. They are going to have a safe haven over in Syria for
a while longer than they have it in Iraq, which means that we
need to prioritize the creation of border security forces in
Iraq again, and it means that we need to be able to support
them to do things like wide area surveillance and quick
reaction force out in the western desert of Iraq and on the
Syrian border with Ninawa Province where Mosul is.
That is one of the ways we need to evolve the security
cooperation program from where it is now, fighting conventional
battles, to where it is then, being able to do these kind of
long-range operations in the desert and other remote areas.
Senator Shaheen. Should we take any special significance
from the visit by the Saudi Foreign Minister to Baghdad this
past weekend? So the first visit by a Saudi Foreign Minister in
almost 27 years?
Dr. Knights. I think the Saudis are reaching out in a
number of directions to try and calm down their regional
environment, and Iraq would be one of those areas. But I do not
think anything really goes very far between Iraq and Saudi
Arabia for very long. They are probably just doing the absolute
minimum.
Mr. Lang. Senator, the only caveat I would offer to that
observation, I do think it is significant that the Foreign
Minister made the visit, and I think it is something that we
should reach out to and try to cultivate and continue.
One of the things that I think we would like to see going
forward is that the Gulf states help to pay or play a more
significant role in stabilization of the development and
recovery activities inside of Iraq.
Now, of course, this is going to be difficult, and they
have a dim view, obviously, of the sort of association of
government in Baghdad and Iran. But the fact that the trip was
made is not insignificant.
Dr. Knights. Debt forgiveness is really what the Saudis and
the GCC need to do with Iraq, fully finishing off that old
debt. But I think Saudi presence on the ground or involvement
is kind of toxic in Iraq when done at the local level.
Senator Shaheen. Thank you all.
The Chairman. Just for what it is worth, I think people on
the inside viewed it as a very significant trip. Iran has tried
to execute him three times. He risked his life to be there. And
I think it was viewed as far more significant than is being
stated today.
Secondly, just in response to what is happening in Syria,
General Townsend is conducting both operations and, I will say,
is most impressive. So I think the questions relative to what
is happening there, I mean, it is being looked at as one, it is
being conducted as one, and my sense is they understand full
well the essence of Senator Shaheen's question.
Senator Paul?
Senator Paul. Thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Lang, you mentioned in your testimony there was no real
need for nation-building, and yet you also say we need to take
a lead on economic assistance. How does that go together? That
sort of sounds like the same thing to me.
Mr. Lang. Senator, I understand the question.
The piece of this that I am talking about most deliberately
and immediately is the line of effort on stabilization, and
these are sort of short-term, immediate quick impact projects
that are designed to basically get communities to start to talk
to each other and provide a little bit of governance, a little
bit of assistance, a little bit of employment in the immediate
wake of the fighting.
I mean, these are things the military will tell you are
required to sort of lock in any sort of gain that they are
making.
Senator Paul. So you are differentiating short-term
economic assistance from long-term, in saying that nation-
building is long-term assistance and short-term is not. You
know, I think that could be a distinction. It might be a
definitional thing.
But we have been there 10 years, so we have given quite a
bit of aid. It is hard to argue that a little bit of short-term
assistance is not on top of a trillion dollars' worth of
nation-building, both military and nonmilitary. We have spent a
lot of money over there, which goes back to a couple points.
One point, they are not a destitute country. They have oil,
and, by golly, they ought to rebuild their own country. We can
be of some help stabilizing things, but it is not our
responsibility to rebuild everybody's country.
Look, we are out of money. We are $20 trillion in the hole,
so everybody comes forward and says how great it would be if we
rebuild every country. Look, I have a bridge that is 50 years
old in my state I would like to replace. We build and bomb so
many bridges around the world, we do not have any money left
over for ourselves.
So we do have problems at home that we need to think about,
and we need to think about how long are we going to keep doing
this. A decade, two decades, three decades, 50 years, 100
years?
Dr. Knights, you mentioned that there were a lot less
attacks during 2007 to 2011. I am guessing we were probably
averaging, what, 50,000 troops or more? We had a bunch of
people there during that period of time. The surge was
basically 2000, going on in 2007 still.
And then when we had less people there in 2011 to 2014, the
sectarian differences came forward. You know, Sunnis were
pushed out of the army, out of positions, government, et
cetera. I think all of that is true, which goes back to my
question again.
The sectarian differences have been there for a thousand
years, and we can paper over them maybe when we are there.
Maybe we are of assistance in that. But you think at some point
their own self-interests in saying that--you know, one of the
points you made about regionalizing police and/or military
makes perfect sense. In the Sunni regions, you ought to have a
Sunni colonel overseeing a Sunni region. In the Kurdish region,
the Kurds should oversee it. In the mixed regions, maybe a more
mixed force. You think they would know that. And they had the
disaster.
I guess, how long are we going to do it? And can we do it?
You know, can we paper over the differences of a thousand
years? Or maybe it is going to take them kind of sorting out
their differences.
You know, the longer we stay, the more Americans are seen
with disregard, you know? We say we do not want too many
because they will not like us interfering in their stuff. Well,
maybe we need to have a lot of diplomats be of assistance, but
maybe we do not need to have large troop forces in the country.
I mean, look, I do not understand. There are 8,000 ISIS
left. You have 500,000 in the Iraqi army and they cannot take
care of 8,000 soldiers? You have 200,000 Peshmerga. You have
another 600,000 Turks. You have armies everywhere. And you have
8,000 people and somehow Americans have to be in the middle of
it?
We become a target, and we end up engendering sometimes
more than we accomplish. So I would just say we ought to think
through how long this is going to be.
And I guess to Dr. Knights, how long do you think we have
to stay? And are they not going to learn lessons about the
sectarian strife that ends up bringing them down?
Dr. Knights. I think on both economic assistance and on
security assistance, we have reached a place where maybe we are
doing things the right way right now.
So on economic assistance, we are not in there rebuilding
all the bridges and building the whole power sector. We are
helping them to get an IMF economic reform program. We are
helping them to get bonds from the international community, so
they can borrow at decent rates without bond guarantees. These
things do not cost the sorts of amounts they used to when we
were trying to rebuild the actual infrastructure of the
country, but they help Iraq a lot. So it is a lot of bang for
the buck.
Senator Paul. Is their economy not able to borrow money?
Dr. Knights. No, because of the major political risk
associated with being in the midst of a huge war.
But also, when it comes to the security cooperation, Iraqis
down at the local level do understand that you have to have
mixed security forces that reflect the local population. But
when you are interacting with federal agencies at the center of
the country and you get down to the nitty-gritty of who ends up
being the police chief in that place, that is where sometimes a
little bit of U.S. involvement can make a lot of difference in
the picking of the right people to run the right places. And
this only requires a couple of core people based out of this
headquarters, a hundred people based out that headquarters.
We are not talking about the huge numbers of people or the
huge amounts of money there used to be. We have learned a new
way to operate, and it has been very effective since 2015.
The Chairman. Senator Murphy?
Senator Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me just quickly maybe try to put a finer point on a
concern that continues to be raised about President Trump's
budget blueprint that proposes cutting State Department and
USAID by somewhere in the neighborhood of one quarter to one
third of its present funding. Two things are happening this
week. One, this budget blueprint is being released. And second,
General Mattis' recommendation on a new counter-ISIS strategy
is being delivered to the President.
The Chairman. Yesterday.
Senator Murphy. Yesterday, right.
And so there are really only two options here. Either
Secretary Mattis recommended a massive cut in State Department
and USAID funding and it is being implemented by the President
in this budget recommendation, or he did not recommend a
massive cut to USAID and State Department funding that will
have an effect on Iraq and the President is ignoring those
recommendations.
Those are effectively your two alternatives, and both of
them are deeply disturbing. Both of them run contrary to almost
every piece of advice this committee has gotten from people
that understand what is going on, on the ground.
So I just want to put this in context, and I assume we will
figure out the answer to that question as the President reviews
the plan and makes it known. But neither option looks terribly
palatable.
To both of you, on this question of the importance of
military activity versus political reconciliation, you both
said things in your testimony that interest me, and I will put
them both to you and let you respond.
Dr. Knights, you have repeatedly emphasized the priority on
military success as a key to destroying ISIS's narrative and to
getting to all the other things we want to do. But we have had
two big military successes in Iraq since 2003. We defeated
Saddam Hussein, and then, through the military surge in 2007,
we effectively rendered Al Qaeda in Iraq sort of temporarily
impotent. But because there was no political reconciliation,
those forces sprang back to life.
And so does that not speak to the fact that, in fact, the
most important thing is being able to achieve some long-term
political reconciliation?
And to Mr. Lang's point, you made an interesting comment
about the fact that the United States might not be the
appropriate interlocutor to try to bring the two sides
together. But if not the United States, who is? Because all the
other players in the region have a dog in the fight between
Shia and Sunni, right? They have a favorite player in that
contest.
So I love the idea of outsourcing political reconciliation
to someone else, but I am not sure who that is. And, to me,
that argues for a much bigger presence and a prioritization on
political reconciliation, contrary to what Dr. Knights is
suggesting, which his recommendation seemed to end,
effectively, with achieving military success.
Dr. Knights. So I will frame it this way. As you know, I
have spent a lot of time in Iraq. I have seen what effect
politics have on local and national security.
You talk about sequencing. My point is that we can do
security cooperation right now. We are quite good at it, and we
can deliver it right now, and it is needed right now, and it is
what gives us leverage right now. And it is what probably
allows us to maintain a residual presence in the country and to
span over perhaps into the next Prime Minister's term in Iraq
from 2018 onward. So that is why we have to get that bit right,
right now.
Building Iraqi security forces is about more than winning
battles, defeating this ISIS now. It is about preventing them
from coming back. It is about preventing the Shia militias from
taking over.
It is a little bit controversial to say this, but I think
the reason why ISIS took over a third of Iraq, took over Mosul,
is not because of Sunni disenfranchisement. It is not because
of alienation at the local level. It is because the Iraqi
security forces were not good enough. That is the reality. That
is what happened. I watched it day after day after day.
And we lost control of local security in Iraq between 2009
and 2014. That is the problem. Local people looked at ISIS and
they said they are strong. The security forces are weak. They
did not say ``I wish the constitution could be amended so the
Baath Party was not illegal anymore.'' You know, they were
focused on nuts and bolts local issues.
We need to develop security forces first to control the
place, stop ISIS from coming back, stop the Shia militias from
taking over, stop people from being afraid, then move to the
next stage of some finer points of the politics and the
building of the nation.
Senator Murphy. Mr. Lang, just quickly on that second
point?
Mr. Lang. Sir, let me just clarify. What I meant is that we
need to be humble in terms of the role that we can play as an
external actor on facilitating reconciliation. I clearly think
the U.S. is going to have a key role in this going forward, and
it is one that we are already playing through various civilian
assistance programs, on decentralization, et cetera.
The only issue is we could probably be doing more of it if
we had a bigger diplomatic presence, and we can do it in a way
that may bring in other actors and quietly be behind the
scenes, as opposed to sort of taking responsibility for it.
Senator Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, sir.
Senator Gardner?
Senator Gardner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, to Dr. Knights, I thought that was a very well-stated
answer when you talked about what happened in 2009 through
2014. So thank you for sharing with us your thoughts.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding this
hearing.
I wanted to talk a little bit about--and I apologize if
this has been discussed already--about a report that RAND
Corporation released earlier this year, in January 2017. They
said this in the report: ``In 2016, violent Sunni extremists
have more groups, members, and safe havens than at any other
point in history. To date, U.S. efforts have not reduced the
Islamic State's terrorism capability and global reach.''
Do you agree with that statement? And if so, could you
provide some additional detail?
Mr. Lang. I think it is hard to argue that the ability of
the Islamic State to both mount attacks outside of its area of
operation and to influence others to undertake those kind of
operations does not decrease as they lose the territory they
control in Iraq and Syria.
So my sense of it is that, at least that part of the
report, that particular section, may sort of overstate the case
in terms of the significance of the kinds of military defeats
that they are suffering inside of Iraq. That said, obviously, a
tremendous amount of attention needs to be paid to other
theaters in which ISIS is operating.
I mean, we have seen engagement on what is happening in
Libya. There are issues in Egypt and elsewhere. We have to be
truly concerned about foreign fighters heading back to Tunisia.
So there is a lot of work to be done.
But I think it would be a mistake to underestimate the
impact that robbing them of a capital of a caliphate in Iraq
has had.
Senator Gardner. Dr. Knights?
Dr. Knights. So the war in Iraq and Syria has sucked in a
number of combatants that might have otherwise been used on
other theaters. But at the same time, it has also boosted
global recruitment for the movement. So it has offset each
other in a way.
Now if we have Iraq shutting down perhaps as a very active
theater for them, and something happening in Syria, you have
people saying, when ISIS implodes in Iraq and Syria, it will
explode internationally. Where will those people go? They will
stay in the host nations, and they will activate there instead,
maybe using less sophisticated means, whatever they have
available.
Senator Gardner. So, I mean, the report, it is pretty clear
in their thinking that the efforts have not reduced the Islamic
State's terrorism capability and global reach. I mean, why
would RAND develop that--how did you reach a different
conclusion than they have?
Mr. Lang. I guess the only point, Senator, that I would
emphasize here is, again, I think that their ability to recruit
internationally and to inspire internationally is closely
linked to their ability to control large swaths of territory
and to project themselves as the caliphate inside of Iraq and
Syria.
Of course, we should never let down our guard about their
ability to inspire and conduct these kinds of operations out of
theater, including that they have shown a capacity to do that.
I guess I would just wonder, over the long term, whether or not
they are going to be able to maintain that capability if really
we have sort of given the lie to the promise of the caliphate.
Senator Gardner. Dr. Knights, in your testimony, you
stated: ``We wake up to the nature of an urgent threat that has
been allowed to grow unchecked. We make mistakes, then we do
the right thing, but then we lose interest. The cycle starts
again.''
You talk about that in your statement. In your opinion, how
can this administration avoid that same dangerous cycle that
you described?
Dr. Knights. So the first thing that you need to do is do
not declare victory ever under any circumstances in any
conflict, and that is especially true here.
As I said, we do not want to create any kind of gap, any
daylight at all between the mission we are currently
undertaking and the next phase of the mission where we need to
help Iraq stabilize liberated areas, build the security forces
against both the ISIS threat and the Iranian-backed militia
threat. If we create a sense that there is a gap between the
two, that we are ending one thing and starting another, it
makes it very difficult for the Iraqi Prime Minister to keep
this relationship going.
So that is why I recommend the continuation of Combined
Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve the way it
currently is, to create no gap whatsoever. We do not create a
gap like in 2008-2009, where we said to the Iraqis take it to
your Parliament and get us an ironclad, written--if we try to
do that again, it is all over. So that is one of the things we
need to avoid.
Senator Gardner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Kaine?
Senator Kaine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to
continue in a similar line. I am interested in the political
circumstance in Iraq, assuming success in Mosul, that would
allow the United States to play the kind of role that you are
suggesting.
So Senator Johnson was asking you some questions along this
line too, and we have had a lot of debates in this committee
and in the Armed Services Committee about, at the end of 2011,
did the U.S. bug out of Iraq or were we thrown out of Iraq? And
there is a lot of back-and-forth about that. We do not really
need to go into it.
But the circumstance that we have to ask ourselves is, I do
not think there is an appetite of anybody on this committee
that we get to a point where, on the battlefield it is going
pretty well, and then we stay as occupiers, or we stay against
the will of the Iraqi Government.
If we stay, we would define how we stay. I think it is only
tenable that we stay with the Iraqi Government's support rather
than against their wishes.
So right at the end of Senator Johnson's questions, as he
was running out of time, you started to talk about,
politically, what is necessary for a Prime Minister, Abadi or a
future Prime Minister, or a Parliament, to accept the role of
the U.S.? Because we have been hearing kind of rumors from
inside Iraq that say, after a big success in Mosul, then Iran
will start really pushing Iraq, okay, you do not need the
United States around anymore. They were useful to have here to
beat ISIL back, but now that ISIL is on the run, you can throw
the U.S. out again and let us, your next-door neighbor, be your
friend.
What, politically, needs to happen to provide space for the
U.S. to have a post-Mosul role that is the right role for us to
play?
Dr. Knights. So it would be impossible for us to stay
without the full support of the Iraqi Government, and we would
never try to do that.
I keep talking about this. I believe security cooperation
is the key to our staying. In other words, demonstrating
outstanding, unique value as an ally and a partner. That is
what we do through our intelligence cooperation, through things
like our embed with the Baghdad Operations Command, helping
Baghdad to get aerostats with balloons with sensors up over the
city again, helping them to get their vehicle scanning
technology back up and running, helping them to develop a
Baghdad security plan so that Baghdad is not being hit with a
major mass casualty attack every 2 weeks or 1 week, eventually.
This is of extraordinary value to the Iraqi Government, and
they see the direct impact of our involvement. That is the kind
of thing we need to do. And this only takes 20, 30, 40
Americans to have this kind of impact.
So that is what we need to do, I think, to help him keep us
in the loop, in the operation.
Also, the economic reform support, you know he was on the
finance committee of the Iraqi Parliament, the economic
committee, for many years. The economy is his thing. Anything
we can do to help the Iraqi Prime Minister turn the economy
around, and the electricity sector as well, which we are, is
very valuable to him and to the country.
Senator Kaine. Mr. Lang?
Mr. Lang. Senator, I think the first thing that we can do
is stop rhetoric like talking about taking the oil and
executive orders that sort of pick out the Iraqis in a way that
would suggest that we do not value their contribution to the
fight.
Second, Prime Minister Abadi, again, is in a very difficult
position. He is straddling an intra-Shia political crisis
inside Baghdad. And to the extent to which we can provide him
with some deliverables and some quiet support, we do him
favors. And we extend the ability for us to have a negotiating
partner.
Again, I think the extent to which we are seen and
understood to be by, with, through, and behind the Iraqis in
undertaking these types of operations, and not sort of adopting
a wider sort of counterterrorism mandate where we have our own
operators doing their own thing, that is going to be quite
important for Prime Minister Abadi to be able to sell this
going forward.
Senator Kaine. I kind of, in my own mind, use the phrase
``partner.'' You used ``partnership.`` Partner, not protector,
and trying to kind of look at it that way.
I know that Senator Corker asked you some questions before
I came in about Kurdistan. While I agree with Senator Menendez
that we do eventually need to have our State Department folks
here, sometimes they are going to follow the party line. And
one of the good things about the independent guys is they do
not have to follow the party line, and sometimes there is some
virtue in actually hearing from both. Down the road----
Senator Menendez. Sometimes it is good to know what the
party line is.
Senator Kaine. I completely agree.
But down the road, as I have been in the region and in
Kurdistan, the dream or professed dream of Kurdish independence
seems very strong, unlikely to die in the northern part of the
country. Down the road, how does that affect the prospects for
the future of Iraq, whether it is in 5 years or 10 years or 15,
the Kurds pursue a path toward independence?
Dr. Knights. It is in the U.S. interests, I think, to back
whatever the Iraqi Government and the Kurds agree between
themselves. We cannot want a united Iraq more than Iraq wants
it itself. Our role should be to help the two sides come to an
arrangement.
We are an honest broker. We are trusted by both sides, or
at least equally distrusted. And so we need to help them talk
to each other about the disputed areas, about the oil, about
confederalism, oil independence, or whatever model they choose,
because when it comes down to it, it is in the strong U.S.
interests to have two strong U.S. allies next to each other who
are also allied with each other.
And as you can imagine, when one country becomes two, there
is very strong economic synergies between the two, naturally.
That is the case between Iraq and Kurdistan, and it is
happening under the surface right now.
Senator Kaine. Great. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
The Chairman. Thank you, sir.
Senator Coons?
Senator Coons. I would like to thank you, Chairman Corker,
Ranking Member Cardin, for convening this hearing.
And my thanks to both witnesses today as we try to confront
the path forward in Iraq against ISIS.
As has been mentioned by several other Senators, President
Trump has inherited a successful strategy that is moving
forward. We have both Americans deployed in the field and a
wide range of coalition partners, and they are currently making
real progress in the battle to retake Mosul. But we have
unresolved and important issues going forward.
It is in our national interests to secure a positive,
productive, long-term partnership with Iraq, and a strong
bilateral relationship will allow Iraq to serve as an effective
counterterrorism partner and, hopefully, a bulwark against
Iranian influence in Iraq and the whole Middle East. Achieving
that goal is going to require a responsive, whole-of-government
response.
I share the concern expressed by several others here that
the suggested request from President Trump to cut tens of
billions of dollars out of our diplomacy and development budget
in order to fund an expansion in defense spending is unwise and
ill-considered and may, in fact, lead to the wrong outcome.
So let me turn, if I could, to a few questions about
stabilizing Mosul after this military campaign, given the other
questions that apparently have already been asked by members of
the panel.
Is it possible to stabilize Mosul if Shia militia are not
just allowed to enter Mosul but to remain in Mosul? And do we
have any options?
Mr. Knights first, if I might, do we have any options to
prevent the Shia militia from entering Mosul in the first
place? I think in your written testimony, you referenced the
very dark, but real possibility that they will turn into
something more akin to Hezbollah, a long-term, malignant
presence forward-projecting Iranian influence into Mosul and
Iraq in the long term. What options do we have to prevent them
from entering and then destabilizing Mosul, should they do so?
Dr. Knights. So our problem is not in Mosul city itself or
the immediate outskirts where the very, very small numbers of
Shia population mean that it is going to be pretty much
impossible for the Shia militias to maintain any kind of
presence there, and they have not played a significant role so
far in the urban combat operations.
What they have done is create a major expeditionary base to
the west of Mosul, Tal Afar airport, which we probably should
have held onto back in 2014. And they now have an outpost right
next to the Syrian border, which they are probably going to try
to hang onto.
They are also getting their claws into all sorts of micro-
minorities around the Mosul area, Shabaks and Yazidis and all
sorts of others.
Really, the Shia militia PMU threat is most active around
Baghdad, Basra, the southern areas, the mainly Shia areas, and
some of the mixed Sunni-Shia areas around Baghdad.
The option really I think is to build up the Iraqi
counterterrorism service and Iraqi army as a counterbalance to
these militias, to help Iraq to develop a reserve system, which
it could use to suck a lot of these elements into the formal
security forces, and then slowly pick them apart and actually
institutionalize them.
We need Prime Minister Abadi or an Abadi-like figure to
continue leading Iraq, bringing that kind of moderate politics
at the center.
And we need to build the security forces volume, I mean
literal numbers of units, number of active brigades, because
right now, they do not have enough to do Baghdad, to do Mosul,
to do the borders, to control Basra where all the oil is. They
need to build more forces.
They do not have to be remarkably capable. They just need
to be warm bodies in uniforms that can resist Shia militia
infiltration or pressure.
Senator Coons. Mr. Lang? And if you might also add sort of
how do you view the critical safeguards--size, training, other
institutionalized safeguards--that will prevent the security
forces more broadly, as well as the Shia militia, from becoming
a sectarian actor?
Mr. Lang. A great deal of this has to do with the political
leadership at the top of these institutions. So we have seen
Prime Minister Abadi actually manage to get some of his
appointments through in January, which was a hopeful sign.
But one of the core focus that is going to need to be going
forward, in terms of the leverage that we maintain with Prime
Minister Abadi and with his government, is to ensure that the
leadership of these institutions do not revert to the kind of
sectarian policies that we saw under Prime Minister Maliki.
Again, I think a strategy in which you are trying to build
the capability of the counterterrorism service and other
elements of the Iraqi army will be critical as a counterweight.
The Iranians, for a series of different Popular Mobilization
Fronts, they are not going to stop what they are doing, but we
can balance that.
So it is both a political piece at the top and then balance
in terms of capability inside of the formal security
structures.
Senator Coons. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Markey?
Senator Markey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Last June, Brent McGurk, the Special Envoy for the Global
Coalition to Counter ISIS, testified before this committee. At
that time, the military operation to clear ISIS from Fallujah
was coming to a close.
I told him that I was concerned that tactical military
successes will not bring about the strategic defeat of ISIS
unless accompanied by simultaneous political initiatives to
bring divergent groups together and local governments willing
and able to represent and protect all of the people who live in
areas cleared by ISIS.
While Mr. McGurk agreed that such efforts are essential, it
is not clear that they have been made a real priority.
On February 22nd, the Washington Post reported that, ``So
far, the U.S.-backed campaign has focused on defeating ISIS
militarily rather than addressing the reason so many of Iraq's
minority Sunnis initially turned to the group.''
Given President Trump's rhetoric and budget plans that
would cut diplomacy and development assistance, I am even more
concerned that political efforts will fall by the wayside.
On January 31st, the Al-Monitor reported that Shia-
dominated popular mobilization units ``have established at
least 10 offices in the past few months in areas that were
thought to be cleared of ISIS by tactical military operations,
including Fallujah and Ramadi.''
And the New York Times and Washington Post have reported in
the past 2 weeks that ISIS continues to threaten people in
areas where post-clearing governance and security efforts
appear insufficient, including Fallujah, Ramadi, and Tikrit.
Now in your prepared testimony, each of you called for the
U.S. to take specific measures to create viable political
arrangements in Mosul after it has been cleared.
And I believe you, Mr. Lang, believe there would be great
value in a formal transition period, during which a high-level
governing body, advised by a full-time U.S. senior diplomat
empowered to broker disputes, would support and oversee local
administration.
So could you each briefly address what are the lessons from
Fallujah, what are the lessons from Ramadi, what grade would
you give what has already been taking place there in terms of
ensuring that there is an inclusive, welcoming political
environment for the Sunnis? Otherwise, we are just going to
have a repetition syndrome where we reenact the past year after
year, over and over again, in a never-ending cycle where there
actually has never been a political solution to this problem
that does not give a breeding ground for ISIS to return and
repeat history.
Mr. Lang?
Mr. Lang. Senator, thank you for the question. There are a
couple points that are interesting here. In my prepared remarks
and sort of oral testimony, one of the things that I
highlighted was the fact that you still have 3 million people
displaced by the conflict. Many of these people, in fact, the
vast majority of those who have been displaced, are displaced
from areas that have been ``liberated'' quite some time ago.
And this is highlighting the fact that many of the Sunni Arabs
do not feel comfortable going back to these communities yet,
where they are not able, because they have not been cleared of
mines, or politically they feel insecure where there is the
presence of PMF.
So I think there is a great deal more work that needs to be
done in a number of these areas.
Senator Markey. Why has it not been done?
Mr. Lang. To a certain extent, the actors and the resources
that have been mobilized against the problem are insufficient.
So the United Nations, again, is in charge of stabilization in
the wake of the military operation. I actually worked with the
U.N. at one point in Iraq, and so I think they have been doing
great work inside of their capability. But the----
Senator Markey. But not great work in general? ``Inside of
their capability'' means that they are meeting expectations for
what their capability is, which is not going to match the task.
Is that correct?
Mr. Lang. Senator, I think that we can probably bring more
to bear on the problem.
Senator Markey. What does ``more to bear'' mean? What do we
need to do here? Because otherwise the political instability is
a recurring cancer that just keeps coming back because you do
not have the intervention. You do not have the treatment.
So what is needed here, because it is just a preview of
coming attractions otherwise in Mosul and other places in Iraq?
Mr. Lang. I could not agree more. I would think some of the
practical steps that we could take, for example, USAID's Office
of Transition Initiatives could deploy onto the ground
undertaking stabilization programs in many of these
communities. They can get outside of the wire faster than the
U.N. can, and they know the country well. They were operational
there behind the U.S. military in many of these places during
the last decade.
There is a lot of money that has been raised for
stabilization, about $2 billion, in a conference last summer.
But that has not sort of trickled down into actual
implementation.
Senator Markey. Why not?
Mr. Lang. It is a good question.
Senator Markey. Who do you blame?
Mr. Lang. My sense is that the donors, that we do not
really have the mechanisms for implementation on the ground.
Senator Markey. But who do you blame for not having--the
donors put up the dough, and who is not implementing? Who is
blocking the implementation?
Mr. Lang. I am not sure it is a question of blocking
implementation. But my sense is that we do not have the
capacity yet. I am not sure the U.N. has the capacity to
distribute all that assistance. And I think some of the donors
have not made that money available, so I think it is a twin
problem.
Senator Markey. Okay. Well, again, desperate people do
desperate things. If you have the aid there and you are helping
them, then they are more likely to move in our direction. And
if it is not there, then it just creates an environment where
ISIS can return and say, see, we told you. You know, trust in
the Shia, trust in this government, is just not a good idea.
So I think that is a good lesson for us. And I know my time
is up, Mr. Chairman.
But I am taking your warnings very seriously, and we have
to find a way of ensuring that the donors' money is collected
and then it is distributed in a way that does deal with that
underlying sense of isolation and fear, which they justifiably
have, given what has happened in that country.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, sir.
Senator Cardin?
Senator Cardin. I just really wanted to thank our two
witnesses. I find that there is more unity in their comments
than division. And it really points out so many threads have to
come together for Iraq to be a successful state and be able to
maintain stability in representing all of the communities.
You mentioned one of the critical points: the Kurds. We met
with the Kurds. They are not going to give up their desire for
independence. That is clear. They want an independent state.
And, Dr. Knights, I agree completely with you. That is not
our decision. The Iraqis and the Kurds have to reach a
conclusion.
But then when they get some autonomy or independence, how
does that deal with the security of Iraq itself? And how does
the Popular Mobilization Forces integrate into the Iraqi
security forces in a way that the Sunni communities feel that
they are protected and does not open up again the opportunities
for extremist groups to see a security vacuum and, therefore,
an ISIS or something similar to ISIS forms again? So it is so
many complications.
So, Mr. Chairman, I just point out that I look forward to
getting a briefing in regards to Secretary Mattis' plan. And it
is going to have to have a major role for the jurisdiction that
comes under this committee. That is, how do you rebuild Iraq
into a country that not only can provide the short-term
stability to the communities but the long-term confidence of
the communities that will allow the country to stay stable for
the foreseeable future?
And after we have had that material made available and
briefings to this committee, I would be very interested in
getting Mr. Lang and Dr. Knights' view in regard to how the
Trump administration sizes up the continuing role for the
United States and our coalition partners to a successful
completion of Iraq.
That would be, I think, helpful for us to have your
expertise moving forward after we have been briefed on the
Trump administration's strategy.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you. Again, I appreciate your comments.
I do think, amongst the principles that are working through
this, there is a strong acknowledgment of the State
Department's role here. I know that the Secretary of State is
very aware of that and has been far more involved in much of
what has been happening than I think has been reported. I hope
that what we will do very soon is have a full committee sit
down with him.
I just have to say, I think things from the standpoint of
him strategically thinking about not only this issue but
numbers of issues around the world are way further along than
anybody might realize.
So thank you both for being here today, providing valuable
insights. As the ranking member mentioned, I hope we have you
back again. We will try to make sure there are no security
hitches the next time.
And with that, if you would, there will be some additional
questions. We are going to accept questions to the close of
business Thursday. To the extent you can answer those fairly
quickly, we would appreciate it.
The Chairman. Thank you again for your testimony and for
being here in service to our country.
And with that, the committee is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:40 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
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