One of the advantages of working with a Private Security Company is that you can get out and about in Iraq, visiting the provinces and districts where the really important local dynamics are unfolding. Every village and every checkpoint in Iraq offers a partial microcosm of national-level trends. Getting into local communities can be a much more accurate way of understanding the future trajectory of Iraq than any amount of time spent in the corridors of power in Baghdad. With this in mind, I recently toured six Iraqi provinces – from Basrah in the deep southeast to Al-Qaim on the Syrian border in the northwestern elbow of Iraq. The objective of the visit was to gauge how well the Iraqi security forces are functioning as the US draws down.

Basrah provided a mixed bag of indicators. On the one hand, the 14^th Iraqi Army division has not relaxed its grip on the province since the defeat of Moqtada al-Sadr’s forces in Basrah in March 2008. Whereas other parts of Iraq are witnessing a degradation of security force capabilities as the US draws down, the Basrawi security forces have been operating largely independently of the United States since 2008 yet have maintained a high degree of effectiveness. In part this is due to effective leadership by Basrah’s senior generals, in part because of the future political significance of Basrah. The present government in Baghdad is aware that control of Basrah is vital to the economic stability of the country and the political control of the Shia. Basrah was where Maliki began his triumphant “Iraqi surge” and the area could be a future powerbase for him if he is removed from the premiership. This should be a concern for any future prime minister because undue influence over Basrah would be a powerful card for Maliki to hold.

The Iraqi Army and its partners – the blue-camouflaged Emergency Police and the other police and border forces – can take care of overall security and prevent the militias from returning. More worrying are the trickle of disquieting lower-level incidents against foreigners. Rocket attacks on the airbase are more regular, slightly more frequent than once a fortnight now. Insurgents are becoming a little more active in northern Basrah city, on the main road outside the Basrah Air Station, and on the roads linking the Rumailah and Zubayr oilfields. It is apparently still hard to dig out these tiny cells, even when they are operating in fairly open desert settings, often no more than a few hundred metres from a government checkpoint.  Solving these kinds of problems is an imperative for the companies seeking to work in Basrah but may be relatively far down the list of priorities for the Iraqi security forces and the near-invisible US military presence.

In Baghdad, there is an even stronger sense that the United States military has already gone. Except for the nighttime beat of helicopter blades, one very rarely hears or sees an American in Baghdad’s streets, and then only on the outer perimeter of the city as convoys ceaselessly shuttle US equipment out of the country. As in Basrah, the Baghdad security forces have been marching to their own beat for a while. Unlike in Basrah, however, the tempo of the Baghdad security forces has undoubtedly dropped. Compared to the relatively crisp standard of security forces in Basrah, the Iraqi soldiery and armed police in Baghdad appear to be worn out. It is easy to forget the intensity of the long drawn out battle for Baghdad that has raged since 2006. Understandably, the ISF have dropped their activity levels during the summer months, manning Baghdad’s key checkpoints but deactivating many smaller outposts and reducing the level of proactive patrolling and arrest operations. Maliki’s efforts at behind-the-scenes coalition-building have also brought a cessation of arrest operations against Shia militants in the capital. The Sunni Arab police auxiliaries – the Sons of Iraq – have suffered for their support of Iyad Allawi, experiencing rapidly declining levels of support from the government security forces and enduring a veritable storm of intimidation and retribution attacks from their Sunni co-religionists in remaining insurgent and terrorist cells.

Baghdad security forces are also re-discovering some decidedly bad habits. They are making life very hard for Western Private Security Companies. Every license document for vehicles, weapons, equipment and personnel may be minutely queried at any checkpoint. Multiple firms have vehicles or equipment – even personnel and clients – impounded on a daily basis. Most worryingly, even so-called “elite’ units have begun to take the opportunity of shaking down the security teams, initially for water and soft drinks, but increasingly for cash, watches and equipment. Pretty soon, this cancerous problem will begin to impact the market entry of major foreign companies by adding a new level of uncertainty to business dealings in Iraq.  Western investors – particularly oil companies – should not be silent when such incidents occur.

The Iraqis security forces are tired after years of war and they are standing almost entirely on their own feet now. In almost all cases, they are not standing up in many of the ways that the United States would have expected. They are not a like-for-like replacement for US forces. In some ways, they may be better than the Americans. Though they do not restlessly patrol, they understand how to dominate Iraqi streets and towns without breaking a sweat and they gain a great deal more information from the public than the US ever did. They do not preempt attacks the way US forces are trained to do but they can be effective at catching and punishing culprits. For foreign companies in Iraq, adjusting to this approach may be hard but Iraq’s security forces expect investors and visitors to be realistic about their inability to prevent every outrage.

As the above observations note, many parts of Iraq are already operating in a post-US mode, and some have done so for years already. In Basrah, the style of security is well-organized, visible and heavy-handed, reflecting the importance of the area to key federal decision-makers. In Baghdad, it is perhaps unrealistic to expect Surge-era levels of security operations to be maintained year after year, particularly in light of a reduced US role. In many rural areas like Anbar, the federal government has largely ceded day-to-day control of security to the locals. The old rules have gone out the window: in Anbar – where Al-Qaeda ruled until 2007 – the slightly shabby Sunni security forces are now far friendlier to foreign faces than their slicker Shia counterparts in Basrah and Baghdad. The difference between a good unit and a bad one is usually the quality of their commander; the distance separating good and bad units can be tiny and the dividing lines are invisible to the uninitiated. As in all other matters, having the right intelligence allows you to be attuned to such fault lines and gives you a better chance of achieving your business aims in Iraq.

Profile

Dr Michael Knights is Vice President and lead Iraq analyst at Olive Group, the  first security company to operate in Iraq.  He has  worked on Iraqi political and security risks since the mid-1990s, first as an oil and gas journalist and later as an academic, receiving his PhD on Iraq at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London.  Since 2003,Dr Knights has run the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Iraq programme, advising US government agencies on Iraq policy and publishing a series of books on local politics and security in Basrah, Maysan, Dhi Qar and the northern provinces including Kirkuk.  Since joining Olive Group in 2006, he has produced in-depth social and political analysis of 26 of Iraq’s major oil and gas fields and keeps a close eye on national security and politics.

He can be contacted at mknights@olivegroup.com

For those who have followed Iraqi security on a daily basis since 2003, if not before, the current security situation in Iraq is nothing short of a miracle. In the dark days of 2006, the daily listing of violent incidents was 150 or 200-long, and we all knew that much of the sectarian cleansing was not even being counted. Nowadays, Iraq suffers about twenty reported incidents a day, which probably captures at least half of the serious acts of violence that occur. It is hard not to be staggered and relieved by the improvement.

That said, there is no hiding the fact that we have hit a plateau in the levels of violence in Iraq. In the latter parts of 2008, the number of violent incidents in Iraq rapidly declined. In 2009, the incident levels continued to reduce, albeit at a far slower rate, and some months the totals even rebounded upwards. Those with access to the details of the daily incidents agreed that the effectiveness of militant attacks was steadily declining, but it had to be faced that the major leaps forward were behind us and the future was instead going to be a long slow slog to stabilization. In 2010, the situation has looked even more tenuous, with national levels of incidents swinging up and down on a monthly basis. The lack of a new government has deepenedthe sense of unease. So what is really happening in Iraqi security and how should potential investors view the future?

To critically assess the nature of security in Iraq, it is important to review both the quantitative metrics of security incidents and also the qualitative details of everyday violence across Iraq. When these approaches are combined, it is clear that progress has slowed . In May 2010, 595 security incidents were reported to the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), compared to 637 in April; 810 in March; 576 in February; and 618 in January. The 595 incidents are a major improvement on the same month in previous years, such as May 2009 (1,040 incidents); May 2008 (2,335 incidents); and May 2007 (3,930 incidents). Even so, there has been no security improvement in a year.  Growing tension in Baghdad is a key driver of the increase in incidents; in May 2009 there were 241 incidents compared to 233 in April and an average of 204 each month in the first quarter of 2010. Though this is far better than previous years – 848 incidents in May 2008, for instance – it does mean that Baghdad is basically at the same level of insecurity it suffered a year ago (254 incidents in May 2009).  Though most parts of Iraq are either improving or are largely stabilized already, the stasis or slight slippage in security in Baghdad is unsettling.

Though the situation bears close and constant evaluation, there is no need to panic. The key check on destabilization – the ISF- remain strong.  Though the US draw down has slowed the rate of improvement in the ISF, the security forces continue to function effectively and show no signs of disintegrating along communitarian or political lines.  Likewise, the insurgency continues to disintegrate into a soup of isolated quasi-criminal groups. The quality of attacks initiated by militant groups remains low and many incidents are unsuccessful attacks, foiled attacks or amateurish attention-grabbing incidents.  Across the federal-Kurdish line of control, the indicators are hopeful rather than concerning, with signs that the US will continue to underwrite confidence-building and joint patrolling up to and beyond formal US military withdrawal in December 2011.

The tension in Iraqi politics is evident for all to see and the political atmosphere has been toxic for months. Yet whilst the slowness of government formation is a contributing factor to increased violence, Iraqis are not attacking each other in greater numbers just to make some abstract political point. The details of each day’s violence tell the story:  a Sons of Iraq leader faces a doorstep assassination attempt; a municipal worker finds a bomb attached to the underside of his car;  a drive-by shooting kills a soldier at a checkpoint; a policeman disappears on his way home from a shift. The sheer availability of weapons and military explosives mean that Iraqi citizens can resolve even petty feuds with high levels of armed force. And at the tail-end of decades of dictatorship and a long counter-insurgency campaign  there are many many scores to settle.  This is why the Sons of Iraq are so concerned about government attempts to disarm them whilst insurgents still wait in the wings to exact vengeance on the US-recruited militiamen.

Such deep-seated issues are more important drivers of violence than delayed government formation, and thus the eventual seating of a new government is unlikely to significantly improve security in Iraq. The easily-detached elements of the militant community are gone; the hard core that remains will take far longer to grind down and will likely dissolve into  well-armed organized criminal networks rather than disappear. As there will likely not be either a breakthrough or a breakdown in security for the next few years, investors need to accept that Iraq will continue to face an Algerian-type model of insecurity, whereby risks are graduated in different parts of the country and are increasingly criminal in nature. Baghdad will continue to be an expensive place to visit due to the need to take sensible precautions about security in the capital. Some parts of northern Iraq will face the same severe insurgent threats as the more dangerous  rural parts of Sudan, Algeria, Nigeria or other conflict zones. Other parts of Iraq – notably Basrah, the Kurdistan Regional Government and pockets of southern, central and western Iraq – may be far more permissive to the discerning investor who takes the time to look closely at the local political and security situation. The devil is increasingly in the detail when it comes to Iraqi security, creating competitive opportunities for those prepared to dig a little deeper than their competitors.

Until next time,

Mike

Profile

Dr Michael Knights is Vice President and lead Iraq analyst at Olive Group, the  first security company to operate in Iraq.  He has  worked on Iraqi political and security risks since the mid-1990s, first as an oil and gas journalist and later as an academic, receiving his PhD on Iraq at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London.  Since 2003, Dr Knights has run the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Iraq programme, advising US government agencies on Iraq policy and publishing a series of books on local politics and security in Basrah, Maysan, Dhi Qar and the northern provinces including Kirkuk.  Since joining Olive Group in 2006, he has produced in-depth social and political analysis of 26 of Iraq’s major oil and gas fields and keeps a close eye on national security and politics.

He can be contacted at mknights@olivegroup.com

If a week is a long time in politics, it is a very long time in Iraq. The first day of this week in Iraqi politics witnessed a Sunday 23 May meeting between Iraqiyya leader Iyad Allawi and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. On the same day, the Washington Post released a new interview with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that gave excellent insight into the premier’s current mindset. So what’s going on behind the scenes and how far away  is the ratification of a new prime minister and cabinet of ministers?

The overarching trend is that we are headed towards a sprawling “unity’ government that might be described as “a government of everyone and no-one.” This means a government in which almost everyone is a participant to some extent, but no-one has signed on to an agreed manifesto regarding how the government will act. Such a government would not be a meeting of equals; a sub-set of three political coalitions would form the core of the government and would hold the balance of votes in the cabinet – the forum at which many key decisions would be made.

What are the indicators that point to this conclusion? The first and most important is the difficulty of getting Maliki and Allawi in the same room, despite behind-the-scenes US and Gulf Arab pressure to make such a meeting occur. For many policy-makers in Washington and the Arab world, the ideal solution would be a Maliki-Allawi tie-up. In theory, this would assure a strong federal state, a more favourable investment climate, cross-sectarian balance and curtailed Iranian influence. Personality and alliance dynamics, plus insistent prodding from Tehran, make it unlikely that a nationalist super-coalition will emerge.

In the absence of such a nationalist alliance, it is equally unlikely that Allawi’s primarily Sunni Arab bloc will be excluded from government completely. The United States, Ayatollah Sistani and the Kurds have all been vocal on the need for an inclusive government. On 23 May, Maliki noted: “How could the government be formed without Iraqiyya whether as a bloc or as Sunnis?” Maliki added a further inducement to Allawi’s bloc members, noting: “the Iraqiyya list and the Sunni component must be in the sovereign posts, not in secondary posts.”

The comment shows that Maliki retains a clear-headed appreciation of Allawi’s weaknesses. Maliki correctly divines that Iraqiyya is struggling to hold together and may be easy to fragment. On 23 May, the premier noted: “I read the real situation and I see Allawi’s path as difficult; he has many problems ahead of him. I don’t say that I have no problems but mine are less. I have a coherent list unlike the others. So, imagine the problems for Allawi and the others.” Maliki has been consistent in rebuffing all possibility that Allawi will lead a new government and the Sunday meeting between Allawi and Sistani failed to produce any favourable outcome for the Iraqiyya leader.

A greater challenge for Maliki is to reassure Shia, Kurdish and Sunni partners that he can be trusted to take a less authoritarian stance during a second term. Some elements of the pan-Shiite Iraqi National Alliance (INA) such as the Sadrists will require very significant inducements to accept Maliki as prime minister, including so-called “service ministries” such as health, labour and transport. The Kurds and Sunni Arab factions also have a strong bias against the premier. Though Maliki can offer many tempting pay-offs to allies in the form of ministries, there is an under-current of antipathy that suggests Maliki will be shunted aside at a very late stage in government formation and a more acceptable (and weaker) prime ministerial candidate placed atop the sprawling “unity” government.

Whether Maliki remains or is removed, the resultant government may be unlikely to emerge before the start of Ramadan in mid-August. Whenever the government does emerge, we can expect significant churn in the ministries, with most or all of the ministerial portfolios redistributed during the summer negotiations. The aforementioned sovereign ministries – Finance, Interior, Oil, Defence, Foreign Affairs – may be split between political appointees of five main factions. This could result in some favourable results for investors, such as an Iraqiyya or Maliki pragmatist in the Ministry of Oil or a Kurd in an Arab-KRG confidence-building role at the Ministry of Finance. The shuffle could also see unsavoury characters implanted in key positions. In the lottery of government formation, only one statement can be made in confidence — that many existing relationships will be rendered null and void, requiring the work of commercial positioning to begin afresh.

Profile

Dr Michael Knights is Vice President and lead Iraq analyst at Olive Group, the  first security company to operate in Iraq.  He has  worked on Iraqi political and security risks since the mid-1990s, first as an oil and gas journalist and later as an academic, receiving his PhD on Iraq at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London.  Since 2003, Dr Knights has run the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Iraq programme, advising US government agencies on Iraq policy and publishing a series of books on local politics and security in Basrah, Maysan, Dhi Qar and the northern provinces including Kirkuk.  Since joining Olive Group in 2006, he has produced in-depth social and political analysis of 26 of Iraq’s major oil and gas fields and keeps a close eye on national security and politics.

He can be contacted at mknights@olivegroup.com

By Dr Mike Knights

Is Iraq getting more secure or is it stuck in a violent rut or even slipping backwards?   Getting a straight answer to this question is one of the biggest frustrations for those who are considering visiting Iraq or investing in the country. US and Iraqi leaders cite ongoing improvements in security yet security incident metrics seem to be stuck month after month at around 600 events of various kinds per month. Of course, the strongest impressions are always left by the mass casualty bombings, which may be relegated to the tail end of the news or plastered across the front page depending on whether they contain a new sensational aspect or just coincide with a quiet news day in the West. So how can you tell what is really going on and whether you need to adjust your business plans as a result?

I don’t intend to tackle the issue comprehensively in this inaugural blog entry, but this quest for clarity will be a thread running through all the entries on this page. Put simply, is Iraq becoming riskier, less risky or staying the same? An important first step is to put the large bombings into perspective. Taking Baghdad as an example, throughout the last six months there have been an average of six to seven mass casualty attacks undertaken each month. About a third of attacks typically take place at high-visibility locations like ministries and hotels, and are intended to command international attention and discredit claims that Iraq is stabilizing. Every new headline, every image of a bombing, shakes investor confidence in Iraq and makes businesses second-guess their decision to enter the Iraqi market.

This is a natural reaction but not a particularly useful one. I’ll put my cards on the table by stating that I have only seen one major bombing cause strategic effects in over seven years of consecutive monitoring of daily security trends in Iraq (that occasion being in February 2006, see next paragraph).  The sad truth is that there will continue to be a sprinkling of bombings in Iraq’s main cities for years to come, in part because such attacks are the easiest way for collapsing militant groups to maintain their profile and appear relevant. Yet the vast majority of bombings have no tangible effect on the international investor or the business traveler visiting Iraq.  The chances of being present at a targeted location during such an attack are infinitesimally small and the presence of a professional security company can greatly reduce the impact of an event if you are near the affected area. Iraqis continue to go about their business in spite of a handful of bombings spread across a city of seven million people each month; so can you.

Setting aside the high-visibility bombings, most mass casualty attacks take place at markets, public gatherings and security checkpoints in residential areas where no foreign enterprise or business traveler will ever visit. Yet the fear is that such bombings could re-spark sectarian tensions that might result in a general breakdown of security, including sectarian cleansing, disruption of government, and unworkable security restrictions on travel and business operations. The 22 February 2006 bombings of the al-Askariya shrine in Samarra sparked just such a civil war at a moment when government formation was stalled after the January 2005 elections. Couldn’t it happen again?

Whenever Western analysts believe that Iraq is on a “glide path” to stability, the conservative observers amongst us are quick to point out how such assessments have been wrong before (notably at the start of 2006). They usefully point out that even an improving situation will be strewn with potholes that will give Iraq and its international partners a bumpy ride. Even so, most of those who have watched Iraq every day since 2003 are skeptical that mass casualty bombings can take the country back to the abyss of 2006-2008. Many analysts believe that the 2006-2008 sectarian clashes released pent-up energy and saw all sides emerge exhausted and sickened. Others believe that the power of the Iraqi state and particularly the Iraqi security forces are now a far more effective brake on destabilization than the United States military, which is fast ebbing out of Iraq.

To avoid being complacent we need to ask: how would we know if something were going badly wrong in Iraq’s security?  At Olive’s Analysis and Assessments (A2) unit, we try to focus not only on the inputs (the bombings) but also, principally, on the outputs (reaction to the bombings). What matters most in Iraq at this juncture is the effectiveness of the security forces; their ability to mostly maintain a monopoly of force; and their commitment to the broad federal government rather than to any single faction. From our perspective, one of the key indicators of a switch back to 2006 would be the presence of armed Iraqi civilians, openly carrying weapons on the street, with the tacit approval of nearby Iraqi security forces. If we routinely see this kind of militia activity, we will know that Iraq has taken a major step backwards. Until we see such a step, we need to tread carefully in our analyses, pay attention to underlying trends as well as today’s headlines, and greet each new act of violence with a critical eye.

Until next time,

Mike

Profile

Dr Michael Knights is Vice President and lead Iraq analyst at Olive Group, the  first security company to operate in Iraq.  He has  worked on Iraqi political and security risks since the mid-1990s, first as an oil and gas journalist and later as an academic, receiving his PhD on Iraq at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London.  Since 2003, Dr Knights has run the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Iraq programme, advising US government agencies on Iraq policy and publishing a series of books on local politics and security in Basrah, Maysan, Dhi Qar and the northern provinces including Kirkuk.  Since joining Olive Group in 2006, he has produced in-depth social and political analysis of 26 of Iraq’s major oil and gas fields and keeps a close eye on national security and politics.

He can be contacted at mknights@olivegroup.com