The Surge Is (Or Might Not At All Be) Working

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The Surge Is (Or Might Not At All Be) Working
By Spencer Ackerman - March 15, 2007, 9:27 AM

Is the surge working? It's complicated.

This morning, I interviewed the chief of police for western Baghdad, a one-star general named Saleh Alany. General Saleh, as he's known to the American military police who partner with him, is a hard man, a former Republican Guard officer who parts his hair severely and equates democracy with chaos. He had just wrapped up an extended discourse about how Iraqis needed a refresher course in how to obey authority with some optimistic notes about security returning to Baghdad when a massive boom erupted. Within moments, Saleh's men called him with a report: an Iraqi Army checkpoint less than a kilometer away had been hit with an RPG.

A young U.S. MP lieutenant, Anthony Howell, turned to me and shook his head. That was no RPG. RPG's don't let out a deafening sound from that distance. That was a VBIED -- a car bomb. Almost instantly, the PKC machine guns on the roof of the Karkh Directorate Police Headquarters opened fire, although whom the gunners were shooting at was unclear.

That's the New Baghdad Security Plan for you. The MP Company I embedded with this week is almost uniformly enthusiastic about the diminished number of sectarian murders discovered in its west Baghdad sector. Over the last 45 days -- roughly since the time Prime Minister Maliki put the plan into effect -- the number of bodies showing up at the typical dumping grounds have dwindled into the single digits, and for the first time in memory, some days pass without any being discovered at all. Even better, during my ride-alongs and patrols with the company, their Humvees didn't even take small arms fire. Nearly everywhere in western Baghdad is a maze of cement jersey barriers and concertina wire, with Iraqi Army, Police and National Police units manning ubiquitous checkpoints. "Having momentum on your side is important," says Captain Rob McNellis, the commander of the 57th MP Company, "and that's what we feel right now."

And yet the larger bombings persist. East of the Tigris, in Sadr City, the renewed presence of U.S. forces have been as yet unable to stop the sort of car bombs that exploded near Saleh's office this morning. Last week, during the end of the Ashura holiday, 18 Shiites were killed in the volatile neighborhood. As I made my way to the Green Zone press center this afternoon, the chief military spokesman, Major General William Caldwell IV, stated that the persistence of "high-profile car bombs" would receive invigorated U.S. attention. U.S. and Iraqi troops are sparing no precautions -- I witnessed drivers pulled over at numerous checkpoints due to even vague suspicions of potential car bombs; and during one of my ride-alongs, the Iraqi Police discovered and disabled a VBIED thanks to a tip -- but commanders are quick to invoke the military cliché that the enemy has a vote.

How he's exercising it is the biggest question. Some of the frequent IED hot spots that the 57th has encountered in Baghdad have gone suddenly IED-free. That's a more ominous sign than a hopeful one: it suggests not that the insurgents feel sustained pressure, but that they're biding their time, observing new patterns and adapting. "If I was an insurgent commander, I'd be taking my time to lay low and adjust," McNellis says.

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