By Nick Wadhams
The Associated Press, 01 February 2006
The Iraqi police colonel listens as his American counterpart, Maj. Richard Greene, explains American strategy in this northern Iraqi city. U.S. soldiers will start by making one neighborhood secure. Then, security will spread, like an oil stain.
"It's like we start with a base and then we spread out," Greene tells the colonel. "The main problem is not the terrorists, it's the people who give them information. But if we're there with a presence, they'll see us there and will be less likely to cooperate with the terrorists."
Anyone looking to understand the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq in the last few months need look no farther than Andrew Krepinevich, a prominent analyst who came up with the "oil stain" theory.
Both by explicit instruction and by nature of the battlefield they face, Iraq has become a laboratory of sorts to test Krepinevich's belief that the United States must shift from battling insurgents directly to establishing security and winning over regular Iraqis.
Once security and goodwill have been established in one place, the theory holds, they will spread like an oil spot. This is "hearts and minds" — a term much maligned in the Vietnam War — at its most basic.
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, is an advocate of the theory, as are many leading commanders in the field, some of whom have passed around Krepinevich's writing to their officers. In the last few months, the military has launched a counterinsurgency training program in the Iraqi city of Taji where company commanders are schooled specifically in Krepinevich's "oil-spot" strategy.
Evidence of Krepinevich's influence is immediately apparent during time spent with soldiers. They mimic his language and cite Britain's use of similar strategies in the 1950s in Malaysia when it was a British colony. Their focus is not so much on battling terrorists but making nice with the population.
"Kill them with kindness," said Capt. Sean Troyer, with the 1st Squadron 61st Cavalry Regiment in eastern Baghdad. "We're going to wave at them, treat them nicely, with cultural sensitivity, with respect."
Even many captains, lieutenants and sergeants who have no idea who Krepinevich is have adopted his philosophy. They say it's not because of some larger strategy, but because most of Iraq is a far different place than it was a year or 18 months ago, when U.S. troops waged open gunbattles in the streets with insurgents.
Now, with the exception of some cities like Ramadi and Fallujah, the main threat is roadside bombs, and insurgents do not dare challenge the Americans directly. Troops who have arrived in places like Mosul and Baghdad recently do not know the Iraq of those days, when winning hearts and minds meant "a bullet through the heart and two through the mind."
"Oil spot or whatever, it's pretty much from the hip," said Sgt. James Jenner, 27, of Louisville, Ky. "It didn't take us that long to realize people here weren't that bad. You get it in your head before you come here that everyone's a terrorist, but there are good people here. You want to do what you can for them."
U.S. troops wave incessantly to children and adults. They gather intelligence by listening to mosque sermons from afar. They conduct more foot patrols, which often involve knocking on — rather than knocking in — a door and sitting down for tea.
Their medics examine — and sometimes hospitalize — Iraqis wounded by both sides, or elderly who have fallen ill. When they order supplies for their units, they sometimes order a few extra for Iraqi police as a gesture of goodwill.
Krepinevich is a retired Army officer and executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonprofit policy research institute. He has been in the news recently for his report, written under a Pentagon contract, that concluded the Army cannot sustain the pace of troop deployments to Iraq long enough to break the back of the insurgency.
Krepinevich said he is friends with Khalilzad but did not know that U.S. soldiers were using his teachings on the ground. He had no idea that some, like Col. Michael Shields, the commander of the 172nd Stryker Brigade in Mosul, were passing out copies of his writings.
"I'm certainly flattered that he thinks well of my work," Krepinevich said, adding: "It doesn't make any difference who gets the credit as long as we win."
Whether that will happen is far from clear. While American troops are getting out more, their greater visibility coincides with efforts by top brass to build up Iraqi security forces and route money through the government rather than disbursing it directly. That has diminished the power of U.S. troops.
In the meantime, Iraqis are still crying out for the basic security that Krepinevich's strategy proposes.
"When we leave work we go straight home," said a woman named Gulizar, who did not want to identify herself fully out of safety fears. "At six o'clock in the evening, everyone goes home and they don't go out again. Things are not better. Just the opposite."
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Citation: Nick Wadhams. "U.S. Troops in Iraq Adopt Oil Strategy," The Associated Press, 01 February 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060201/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_oil_stain_strategy
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