Iraq: Raveling or Unraveling?

Iraqis gather at the site of a car bomb attack in western Baghdad. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

Either assessment is pure speculation at this point. The future of the Iraq conflict will be determined in the aftermath of the national elections along with the composition of the new Iraqi government and its internal policies.

The LongWarJournal's Threat Matrix blog has a new posting to counter Tom Ricks' "Iraq: The Unraveling" series. In his graphic, Bill Ardolino lists three years of statistics covering primarily violence-related stats and two infrastructure-based categories. I asked him why November was chosen as the watermark month to show the changes from 2007 to 2009. If you look at the Iraqi Security Forces deaths for 2008 and 2009 you will notice that November was the lowest for both years.  Here is his response:

Abu Nasr -

No significant reason - I referenced November because that happens to be the month the New York Times used in the year-over-year-over-year comparison in the chart I was commenting on.

I assume that lower November totals have to do with the occurence of the Hajj and Eid al-Adha in that month. This could be a consequence of lower insurgent activity, the Iraqi Army's liberal leave policy, or both.

Aside from the seasonality in absolute monthly totals, November 09 showed a 33.3% decline in ISF deaths, whereas September showed a 36.7% decline, October showed a 27.1% decline, and December showed a 54% decline. The year-over-year trend among all months is fairly consistent, which of course is good news.

This type of statistical measurement of success, while having its obvious flaws is very necessary and a strong starting point.

The listed categories are:

Iraqi Civilian Deaths from War
Iraqi Security Forces
Iraqi Security Force Deaths
Former Sunni Insurgents Hired by Iraqi Government
US Troops in Iraq
US Troop Deaths
Electricity Production
Telephone Customers

Alternatively:

Violence
Security counterbalance
Violence
Security counterbalance / political reconciliation
Security counterbalance
Violence
Infrastructure
Infrastructure

To quote the late Bernard Fall, "When a country is being subverted it is not being outfought; it is being out-administered." David Galula and Mao Zedong both note that a revolutionary war or "people's war" is 80% political and 20% military.

The best metrics would start from prior to the war, not the peak of violence. This will only demonstrate that we are no longer at the worst point. It would also be dominated by motivators for violence, not violent actions.  For example, instead of electricity production which is a national metric, measure the consistency of electricity flow by province.

Other metrics I would like to list for comparison of pre-war status to today would be:

Electricity consistency
Sanitation pickup
Water purification / availability
Employment
Postal Service
Tax Collection

If it is a local or national grievance it should be measured. These legitimate grievances are used in insurgent propaganda to build popular support. Measuring these should give us a better read on progress for the overall campaign, not just from the peak of violence. Until then, we cannot claim progress since the start of the war, but rather only state we are currently no longer in its most violent phase.