5 years later, searching for hearts and minds

MOSUL, Iraq — More than five years into the war in Iraq, its outcome may hinge on whether the U.S. can accomplish what it failed to do in an earlier war in Southeast Asia — win the hearts and minds of the people by improving their living conditions.

That was the message Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey heard during an unannounced three-day visit to Iraq as America’s most divisive war since Vietnam reached a critical turning point, with the so-called military surge that began 18 months ago ending amid signs that sectarian violence is ebbing, Iraqi security forces are growing in size and ability, and Iraq’s political situation is stabilizing.

{mosads}Casey, who commanded multinational forces in Iraq for three years before assuming his new post in April 2007, concluded a whirlwind visit here Tuesday by meeting with many of the U.S. troops who have been battling insurgents, suicide bombers and al Qaeda throughout northern Iraq. He also met with two top officers of the embattled Iraqi army.

Casey, who last visited Iraq in December, said attacks by insurgents against U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces, as well as between rival Sunni and Shiite factions, are sharply down in recent months. He told U.S. troops at a half-dozen bases in and around Baghdad, Tikrit and Mosul that the dispatch of 30,000 troops to Iraq last year has provided some badly needed breathing room in the fight against Islamic militants. But he cautioned that the apparent gains from the surge are fragile and reversible, a point reinforced by many of the soldiers he met.

“My biggest struggle is developing the local economy,” Lt. Col. Thomas Dorame, a young officer from California, said during a briefing at a remote base in rural Ninevah province, where the outside temperature hovered around 120 degrees. “I see the indicators, I see the hope in the future. But the No. 1 issue is that the men in the villages are not employed. They’ve had three years of drought and no support from the government to create employment. And as long as there’s unemployment, there will be men willing to work for the insurgency.”

And Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling, the commander of multinational troops in northern Iraq who accompanied Casey on Tuesday, said that while the number of attacks by al Qaeda forces in the region have decreased by half since February and many top al Qaeda leaders have been captured or killed, “We think 50 percent of the attacks are caused by unemployed people who are being paid to do something.”

Casey was expected to deliver that message to President Bush Wednesday afternoon when the president was to meet with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon to consider future U.S. strategy in Iraq, including the possibility of further troop reductions in the fall and sending some of the more than 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq to Afghanistan.

Earlier, on Monday, Casey backed up his assertion that the security situation has improved by visiting an open market adjacent to Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood, a sprawling slum that has been the scene of some of Baghdad’s worst violence. Surrounded by armed security forces, he walked several blocks through the teeming market without incident as Iraqis looked on. An aide later described the visit as “extremely dangerous.”

Casey’s visit was overshadowed by soon-to-be Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama of Illinois, who stopped in Baghdad Monday with fellow Sens. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) during a high-profile trip to Afghanistan, the Middle East and Europe.

Casey was in Baghdad at the same time but did not meet with Obama, and he was careful to avoid commenting on Obama’s call for setting a 16-month deadline for ending the U.S. combat role in Iraq while shifting some U.S. troops to battle the resurgent Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “I’ll read about it when I get home.”

Casey began his final day in Iraq by meeting with his successor as commander of coalition forces in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, the architect of the surge strategy, at the U.S. military headquarters at Camp Victory in Baghdad. Although Petraeus declined The Hill’s request to comment on the meeting — as did Casey — it was clear that the main subject of the meeting was future U.S. strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Many of the soldiers Casey met with expressed concern about the welfare of their families, their pay and benefits, their future in the Army, and whether they would have to serve more than one tour of duty in Iraq.

Casey emphasized at his meetings with the troops that even though the surge “has been a great success,” it has also stretched the Army to the breaking point. “When I took this job, I was hearing a lot in the press that the Army was hollowing out,” he later told The Hill. “That’s not the case yet, but we certainly are stretched thin, and it’s going to take us a year or so to recover our flexibility in our personnel system.”

He added, “We’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the type of Army the country needs, and we believe that it’s an Army that has the capability of operating across the whole spectrum of conflict, from major combat operations through irregular warfare. … What I personally am seeing on this visit is how we have learned as an Army over the last five years or so in our understanding of irregular warfare.”

On Casey’s final stop at the giant American base at Mosul before flying back to Washington, Maj. Gen. Hertling arranged for a cake to celebrate Casey’s 60th birthday. “I can’t think of a finer group of people to spend my 60th birthday with,” Casey declared.

Editor’s note: Gen. Casey is married to Sheila Casey, The Hill’s chief operating officer.