The Fayetteville (NC) Observer January 21, 2007
Retired Gen. Swannack has the model for Iraq
By Kevin Maurer
Retired Maj. Gen. Chuck Swannack’s eight months as military commander in western Iraq could be a model for the Bush administration’s new strategy.
Time will tell whether the president’s plan meets with the success of the former 82nd Airborne Division commander.
In a period that wrapped around the end of 2003 and the beginning of 2004, Swannack led Task Force All American — 18,000 soldiers from various units, including about 4,000 from the 82nd’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team — in Anbar province. The region includes Fallujah and Ramadi, then and now centers of the Iraqi insurgency.
He called his strategy “Iraqization.” The plan, crafted by the 82nd and civil affairs soldiers attached to the division, relied on Iraqi police and Iraqi Civil Defense Corps soldiers to keep the peace while jobs were created and infrastructure was repaired.
In eight months, Swannack’s task force lowered the number of attacks, created thousands of jobs and jump-started the political process, including the creation of a provisional council representing the three main groups in Fallujah.
“Who was the center of gravity for us?” Swannack asked rhetorically in an interview Thursday in his home outside Charlotte. “The Iraqi people. We had to have the Iraqi people want a future for Iraq. Had to have the Iraqi people tolerant of what coalition forces wanted to do on their behalf.”
The Bush strategy in the “surge” of troops in Iraq sounds a lot like Swannack’s from three years ago. The plan includes several million dollars in aid for reconstruction and the insistence that Iraqi forces take a bigger role in operations.
John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a Washington defense policy think tank, said the new surge units must focus on many of the same things as the paratroopers did in Anbar. Pike suggested that job creation — cleaning up Baghdad, for example — is a way to combat the insurgency.
Fighting unemployment
Job creation was a cornerstone of Swannack’s “Iraqization.”
Swannack said in a briefing to reporters in November 2003 that in cities such as Fallujah, unemployment was 60 percent to 70 percent. That left many to resort to smuggling — or getting paid to attack U.S. troops.
“We tried to get individuals with the potential to be recruited to support the insurgency legitimate jobs so they wouldn’t be used against us,” Swannack said Thursday.
In two months, he said, the 82nd task force created almost 9,000 jobs in Anbar province.
The paratroopers started the Al Anbar Trucking Co. in October 2003.
The fleet of more than 150 trucks — driven by Iraqis — took food, water and construction materials to the paratroopers’ forward operating bases all over western Iraq.
The task force used 600 Iraqi workers to clear munitions dumps in the province. It hired Iraqi workers to restore 315 of the 700 mosques in the area before Ramadan, Islam’s holiest month.
Shifting position
After the 82nd left in the spring of 2004, things changed in Anbar — and in all of Iraq. Attacks soared. Fallujah erupted.
“The Iraqi populace — the center of gravity — became intimidated, scared and questioning what it was we were trying to do,” Swannack said.
He believes three events hurt the U.S. position in Iraq and two missteps derailed the reconstruction effort.
The Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the siege of Fallujah after four U.S. civilian contractors were killed and the 2004 revolt by anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf and parts of Baghdad changed how U.S. troops were viewed in Iraq and the region.
Abu Ghraib — where U.S. guards’ abuse of detainees was revealed in pictures circulated worldwide — “caused the whole Arab world to question what coalition forces were trying to do over there,” Swannack said. “It unhinged what 130,000 of us were trying to do.”
In Fallujah, Swannack said, the Marine strategy of laying siege and then battling house to house through the city made innocent people suffer with the insurgents.
“We would have gone after the people who did the killing, instead of subjecting the people of Fallujah to harsh attacks,” he said.
Decisions by Paul Bremer, the civilian administrator of Iraq, to disband the Army and bar Baath party members from positions in the new Iraqi government crippled reconstruction efforts.
“There were huge amounts of work that we could have used the former Iraqi army to do,” Swannack said. “It cost us a lot. It put a lot of former military available to the insurgency.”
Swannack said many of the most talented Iraqis — engineers, doctors, bureaucrats — were Baath Party members who advanced in the party because of their talent.
“We excluded some of the best and brightest from the future of Iraq because of the policy,” Swannack said.
The results have been a stalled rebuilding process, unhappy Iraqis turning increasingly to insurgency, and the continued need for large numbers of American soldiers and Marines. The secondary result has been to stretch the military; many soldiers have already been deployed more than once.
Swannack could be counted a casualty of the deployment pace.
By April 2004, he had been deployed for 16 of the past 24 months, including two stints in Iraq. He admitted then that deployments were taking a toll.
“The division is a little bit tired. I am still tired. You go over there to do the work of our nation 24/7, it takes it out of you,” the general told reporters.
Finding balance
Swannack is one of two former 82nd Airborne Division commanders since the early 1980s who failed to earn a third star. He was offered the job of operations officer at Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East, but turned it down.
“I had to get my life back in balance,” he said Thursday.
Swannack tries to stay busy working as a defense consultant and doing charity work, but misses the Army and would go back to Iraq in an instant.
“I am not staying busy enough or contributing my talents enough,” Swannack said. “I’d volunteer to go back and work for [Lt. Gen. David] Petraeus today. I think he’ll be great for leading our forces in Iraq. He is exactly what we need over there right now.”
Petraeus was nominated by Bush to lead U.S. forces in Iraq.
Swannack wouldn’t say how long he believes U.S. forces will be in Iraq.
“Victory rests with the Iraqis standing up and taking charge of their destiny,” Swannack said. “How do we get there? How long does it take? I don't have a crystal ball.”
© Copyright 2007, The Fayetteville (NC) Observer
