Kimberly Kagan

When the "Surge" - a combination of troop increases and tactical changes designed to take the offensive against the anti-government terrorists in Iraq - was first mooted, critics confidently declared that it couldn't work and that the war was, in Senator Harry Reid's words, "already lost". A year and a half later, when it became obvious that al-Qa'eda, Ba'athist dead-enders and Shia extremists were a spent force, many of the same critics assured us that victory had been inevitable all along and that the Surge had nothing to do with it.

Although Kimberly Kagan was an early advocate, indeed an architect, of the new strategy, her book is not about how much credit her ideas deserve. It is, as the subtitle indicates, a straightforward military history, recounting what happened on the ground in Iraq between the latter part of 2006 and early 2008. The focus is strategic and operational: what the Coalition command sought to accomplish, how it went about it, what the enemy did or tried to do in response. (One important theme is that terrorism was not random violence; enemy attacks on civilians and government officials were planned, purposeful attempts to thwart the Coalition's advances.) There are no accounts of firefights, on the one hand, or of high-level political deliberations, on the other.

Central to the work are three key areas: Baghdad, Anbar and Diyala. Prior to the Surge, all three housed major enemy strongholds. After it, they were firmly under the control of the elected Iraqi government. This turnaround was not, the author emphasizes, the simple effect of throwing more soldiers at the problem. Rather, the Surge embodied military, diplomatic and economic components. Above all, it aimed not just to kill enemy fighters but to give the local population assurance that it was safe and sensible to take the government's side. "Winning hearts and minds" is not the precise formulation; it was more a matter of removing fear, so that hearts and minds could follow their natural inclinations.

The absence of action will disappoint many readers. Were it not for mentions now and then of gunfire, bombs and casualties, we might be reading about an intense competition between rival francishors. At the author's chosen level and subject to the problems noted below, the narrative is clear. The maps - sadly unusual these days - are comprehensive and useful.

Unfortunately, the book seems to have suffered some kind of production glitch. Judging by internal evidence, the manuscript was complete in March 2008 (some portions, strangely not updated, earlier than that). Yet well over a year passed before publication, a year not devoted to fine-toothed editorial revision. The end product could have been much improved by a more vigorous prose style (too many paragraphs read like excerpts from official press releases or Army field manuals), the elimination of a number of repetitions, more detail about how operations were carried out (e. g., the way in which the very important Combat Outposts and Joint Security Stations functioned), and a clean-up of fuzzy points in the chronology.

An odd sign of this editorial weakness is that the highly informative final chapter, "Iran's Proxy War in Iraq", demonstrating the extent to which Tehran has participated in the fighting, isn't listed in the table of contents!

Notwithstanding its dry approach and inadequate "production values", The Surge is a book that anyone with a genuine interest in counterinsurgency warfare and the West's ongoing conflict with Islamic extremism will find worth his attention.… (mehr)