08/24/16 – Daniel Davis – The Scott Horton Show

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Alright, introducing retired Lieutenant Colonel Danny Davis.
He famously was a whistleblower during the Afghan surge and bogus counterinsurgency doctrine and all of that back in the early part of this decade.
And now he writes for the national interest, very importantly, and is on the phone from, I assume, Kurdistan in northern Iraq?
Welcome back to the show, Danny, how are you doing?
Hey, thanks Scott, glad to be back.
And yes, I'm in Erbil at the moment, which is in northern Iraq.
And so what'd you do, join back up the service?
Heavens no.
Okay, just doing a little bit of journalism, huh?
Oh yeah, yeah, and it's really, really interesting what I've seen even so far, and I've still got a few more days here.
Alright, well, so tell me all about it.
So yesterday, first of all, I went to one of the refugee camps, one of the many that have been set up here in response to all the ISIS mess that started last, or in August 2014.
And I found some interesting things.
I was interested in the stories, the people, because we just hear 50,000 people left out of the northern part of Mosul and have been in internment camps here since.
But you're like, well, what does that even mean?
I want to hear some of the stories.
So I talked to one particular family through the contacts that I have here, and it was both heartbreaking but also encouraging, to be honest with you.
Because the situation to me, it feels like, well, there's no solution.
Nothing good can happen.
All it's going to be is perpetual war.
And I tried to think, what would it be like – how would I feel if that was my life instead of the one that I have, where there's plenty of hope for the future, etc.?
And so I visited with this one woman.
She was 26 years old.
You would have thought she was probably in her mid to late 30s just looking at her because she's, well, had a pretty rough life so far.
And she said that they had been trying to stay in Mosul when all this began in 2014 because that was their home.
They'd been there forever, of course.
They had a large extended family there.
But then it became clear that ISIS was physically on the way to their portion of the village.
And so they packed up everything within 15 minutes or actually a little bit less than that, she said.
And then they just started leaving toward the north to the Peshmerga lines to try to get to safety where they had heard about.
Well, they didn't get very far.
The woman, her and her children and a couple of others made it through, and her husband and his brother stayed behind to try to make sure it was clear that they could get through.
And then they were going to join them.
Well, unfortunately, when they started making their way off by motorcycle, one bullet went past the head of the brother and into her husband's head, and he died right there on the spot, of course.
And then to go from that devastation, then to make it through the lines where the Peshmerga was, and then they ended up coming back here to Erbil.
Well, the problem is that they lost everything, and they had nothing more.
And so they've just been staying in an abandoned building, what was here in the middle of town, for like two-plus years.
And I asked her, I said, how do you have hope for the future, and what do you expect things to be in the future?
And she's like, well, it's really hard right now.
She goes, we actually don't even think about that.
We just think, how are we going to get through today?
Where are we going to get food today, or what are we going to do for this day?
And we try not to even think about that.
And I said, well, now, in this camp here, it appears that there are, it's not just Christians, because she was out of a Christian subdivision of Mosul called Karakash.
And she was living in this larger camp here that was for a lot of people.
And I said, well, there's lots of Shia and Sunni and Yazidi and a bunch of other stuff here.
I mean, do you have a hard time living with them?
And she says, oh, no, not at all.
She goes, we had plenty of our neighbors and friends were Arab, Muslim, before all this happened, and there are still some now.
And we all get along fine.
She goes, it's just, it seems to be the leaders that have the problem.
And that kind of showed, I guess, a microcosm of the larger problem here is that it seems that a large percentage of the people would probably be fine.
And the other thing that I've found while I've been here is that there have been many people who are saying, but we are sick and tired of war, conflict, anything.
We just want it to be over.
And this woman was one like that.
And she says, I can live with anybody.
I just want all this stuff to stop.
But it's the leaders, and certainly those of ISIS, but even some of the others, some of the other factions, they don't seem to actually care about what happens to the people.
They just want to keep their sect or their branch of Islam or whatever on the ascendant.
And they're willing to continue fighting and whatnot.
So it was encouraging on the one hand, because on the human level, they're willing to live with anybody.
And they just want peace.
And then the downside, of course, was that too many of the leaders don't seem to want it.
Right.
Well, yeah, as they say, war is the health of the state.
It's the same thing for your local militia, I guess, too.
Yeah.
As long as there's something to fight about, that's good for the fighters and bad for everybody else.
Well, so now, what of the imminent attack on Mosul?
They called it, Mark Perry's article in Politico magazine called it the coming October surprise.
The presumably, you know, will be successful sacking of Mosul by the Pesh and the Shiite militias and the Shiite Iraqi army is supposed to be coming up.
I guess, you know, six weeks, something like that.
Is that what they're telling you?
Well, I'm not sure what October surprise he's thinking about, but maybe he'll be the one that's surprised.
Because just a few hours ago, I actually had an interview with the foreign minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Fala Mustafa, and ask him directly about that question.
And he said, well, right now, he said, look, there's several things that have to happen.
Number one is there's no way we can even start this operation until two critical things happen.
There's some other minor points, but one of them was he said, look, you saw those refugee camps.
He said, we have 1.8 million internally displaced people from all over Iraq in our area, within the Kurdistan area.
Because it's the most viable and certainly the safest within all of maybe with all of the Middle East part here, but certainly in Iraq.
And he goes, there's upwards of another million, they say, the U.N. says, within Mosul that once the actual invasion attempt to retake the city begins, we could have literally five, six, seven hundreds of thousands of people all flee again.
He said, and there is no way right now that we're set up to house those people.
And he said, we have a refugee crisis right now.
But if we get this, if we start the operation without first having resourced, not merely planned, but resourced a plan to take care of those people, you'll have a human catastrophe, not a crisis.
And he said, and we want to avoid that at all costs.
The second thing that he said, which may be the more daunting task, is he said that there has to be a political and a diplomatic understanding among all the combatants before one round can be fired, before anybody crosses the line of departure.
He said, for example, you have quite a few different Shia militias, many of which are supported by Iran.
You've got some Sunni tribal militias.
And then, of course, you have the Iraqi security forces and you have the Peshmerga.
And all of those people have to agree on what they're going to do and who's going to do what and who's not going to do what before they go in.
Or he said, then you'll also have a military catastrophe.
And he said, right now, and he was really frank with me.
I was a little bit surprised, but certainly grateful that he was pretty frank about some of the problems.
Because he said, right now, we don't have an agreement.
And if we went in right now, it would be a catastrophe.
He said, and one of the problems is that you have some of these Shia militia who want to go in and basically take areas of Sunni Mosul.
And it's not clear that they are there to liberate it or to take it.
And he said, until we can figure that out, we really can't even start.
And he said, and even the Peshmerga, we understand some of the sensitivities, especially in the Sunni regions.
And that's why we're supportive of the Sunni tribal militia and even of the government Iraqi security forces.
He said, because the Peshmerga, we're not going to go into areas that don't have Christian slash Kurdish population.
Because we don't want to be seen as part of the problem.
But we'll support everybody.
And right now, he said, we have 75% of the front that we're defending against.
But we're happy to work with anybody.
We want to work with everybody for the human condition out there.
He said, but right now, those things are not resolved.
And Baghdad doesn't seem to want to play.
And of course, the militias, some of them also are very stubborn about what they want.
So right now, I don't see how there's going to be an October surprise, except for that maybe there's not the beginning of an operation.
Interesting.
So, if I understand you right, what you're saying is, this is a leader of the Peshmerga who, he's not living in, you know, he doesn't have any fantasies about stealing Mosul.
He's saying, yeah, we're willing to fight for it to liberate the town from the Islamic State.
But he told you he's worried that the Shiite army and the Shiite militias, they might not want to liberate the town.
They might want to just go ahead and take the town.
Is that right?
The sections that they want to go into, right, yeah.
He's not clear that they would basically give it back and win it for the citizens of Mosul.
Well, see, this is exactly what I'm worried about, too.
Jonathan Landay is coming up on the show to talk about what's been going on in Fallujah lately.
He has a new one for Reuters about the Shiite militias.
And of course, this is the same story ever since Bush invaded Iraq for the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution back in 2003.
America, we're basically the sock puppets of the Bata Brigade, not the other way around.
We're doing their dirty work this whole time, and now we still are.
Yeah, it's really a mess.
Whoever started with Bush or whatever, the bottom line is right now, we're in just an incredibly difficult place.
And this is also what I asked Kim, and part of the concern is, who's going to show the leadership to fix this?
Because it doesn't look like it's going to be President Obama, because he's on the way out.
He's already dropped his mic and said, peace out, kind of thing.
So it's not likely he's going to show the resolve to show some real leadership in addressing these issues on the ground.
So it's going to be left to the incoming administration.
I'm not sure which of those two possibilities would he also be willing to expend a lot of political capital, diplomatic capital to try to do that.
And we're still only even talking about the Eastern Front and the future of Mosul.
But we have the exact same problem, only multiplied in Western Islamic State around Raqqa and the surrounding towns in what used to be Eastern Syria.
I guess maybe we'll be Eastern Syria again one day.
But we have just as much division with the Syrian Arab Army and the YPG, which is backed by the U.S. and the Russians, but who are the deadly enemies of our NATO allies, the Turks, who are sometimes the friends of ISIS and sometimes their victims still.
What a damn mess over there.
I mean, how's anybody supposed to...
Is it basically the policy is, well, whatever, anybody but the Islamic State and then we'll work it out and we'll have a war with Turkey later or whatever?
Well, there's something to that.
That was one of the other questions I asked you on pulling back from just the Mosul fight but to the larger political issue within all of Iraq.
And I said, now what happens in the post-ISIS world?
I said, because Kirkuk is one of the big hotspots because you have President Barzani who's basically gone in and went in in 2014 and cleared that out of ISIS and now is providing security and whatever else.
But Baghdad says, no, no, no, that's ours.
And once this is all over, you're going to give it back.
And his very staunch position, Foreign Minister Mustafa, his position was, no, no, no, that's Kurdish.
It's historically been Kurdish.
We have cleared it.
He said, and that's going to be ours.
He said, we're happy to do a plea decision and let the people make a decision.
He said, but what's not going to happen is that the Iraqi security forces are going to come in and take it because that's not going to happen.
So in other words, we could have a war between Shiite Iraq in the south and Kurdistan, our allies and the two who have been allies against the Sunni minority since 2003.
Well, and not to mention between Shia and Sunni itself, which has its own whole list of them.
So that's really the problem that I see is it doesn't even – it almost doesn't matter what happens in Mosul because ISIS is going to go out.
They're not strong enough to maintain that.
But what happens the day after that, forget about the horrible thing with the refugees, but politically, those folks might all be ready to go right back at it again.
And that's a real, real problem.
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Yeah, they're just going to melt away.
I mean, they can go from being a state to right back to being al-Qaeda in Iraq, the insurgency again, no problem.
And this is something I learned from – I should have – it's amazing how long it took me to pick this up.
But it's something that Mitchell Prothero had explained to me about how you can't just tell from the political map.
But Kirkuk, even though – especially now, after – since 2003 war, is a majority Kurdish city.
It's way out there in the desert, out on the plain.
It's not up in the mountains in traditional Kurdistan where they live because they're safe there in the mountains from everybody else.
But they've used American cover to cleanse at least a good number of Arabs out of the city of Kirkuk since 2003, making it now, again, a much more clearly majority Kurdish city.
But Prothero explained it in the sense of like this may be Barzani's dream of Kirkuk as our Jerusalem and all this.
This may be biting off way more than they can chew because it really – you could go back to before Saddam and other leaders had moved a bunch of Arabs up to Kirkuk and go back to the 19th century and say, yeah, it always was a Kurdish city or something like that.
But in real life in the 21st century, it could be really hard for the Kurdish government up there in the north in Erbil to really hold on to Kirkuk for the long term or at least have a stable security situation there when it's that far really from home base.
It's like the Alamo out there on the frontier or something.
Yeah, but he seemed very emotionally firm that that was not going to go back to Baghdad control.
So that could be a real fight.
And Baghdad and Erbil have been fighting a little bit over oil revenue sharing and that kind of thing.
But yeah, it comes to a real battle over Kirkuk.
Let's hope they can figure out a way to negotiate that sovereignty and not have a whole new war break out there.
Yeah.
Incredible.
All right.
Well, so tell me all about the CIA and Marsock and everybody running around there killing people.
Well, that I actually don't know much about because I don't remember if I mentioned it, but I'm now working for the Defense Priorities, a new defense tank in the D.C. area.
And we tried to get permission to visit with the American units and talk to the American leaders.
And they absolutely just stonewalled us.
I mean, they wouldn't give me clearance or even an invitation to come talk to anybody.
So I've not been able to talk to anyone American.
I can talk to all these other folks over here, but I can't talk to my own countrymen.
Yeah, that's too bad.
Well, I mean, I guess it's most of them at least are, you know, ostensibly secret.
They're the spies and special forces.
But then again, they talk to some journalists and reporters, you know.
Exactly.
You get the right access.
I'm willing to bet your reputation precedes you a little bit.
This guy likes to tell the truth, whether his commanding officers like it or not.
Yeah, I didn't think that'd go over very well.
Yeah.
Well, man, so...
There is one other issue.
Yeah, sure.
There is one other issue to be concerned with.
And so you have really three different levels.
You have one is the tactical fight around Mosul.
Then you have the political dynamics between all of the major players within Iraq.
But then you also have the diplomatic level of all those outside of Iraq who have stakes in there.
And that was one of his frustrations as well, because he goes, you've got Iran, who of course has this big stake in keeping control of things that are going on in Iraq.
And that's why they fund and support the Shia militia.
And so they're funding other things as well, covertly, to try to keep things stirred up.
He goes, meanwhile, on the other side, you've got the Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and some of the other Sunni countries that are doing the same thing for the Sunnis, and potentially even behind closed doors, even with some of the ISIS.
Because the last thing that the Sunni nations, like Saudi Arabia, want is for there to be peace in Iraq, but with an Iranian bent.
Likewise, Iran has no interest in letting things work out peacefully if it doesn't land with them on top, and with the Sunnis having more sway than they have right now.
So it's like both of those are working to keep things destabilized, because they both benefit if it stays stirred up like this.
They would both like to win both of those blocks, but they're okay with it continuing to be stirred up.
So you've got people on the outside that are basically working against a peaceful solution, and they'll keep these people hardened and firm in their positions to not want to negotiate.
And that was part of my discouragement, because I'm like, well then, what's the basis for even a hope for any kind of near-term solution here, way outside of the tactical fight, which is huge.
Right.
Yeah, you know, this reminds me, I remember interviewing Greg Pallast, the BBC reporter who, his specialty is energy and that kind of thing, but he's a real, well, I don't want to say hawk, that's the wrong term, eagle eye on the Saudis, I guess you could put it.
And I remember him explaining back in Iraq War II and say, I don't know, 2005, 2006 probably, that this is a proxy war between Iran and Saudi, and America is on the side of its enemies, the Iranians, because George Bush listened to Richard Perle, who listened to Ahmed Chalabi, who was doing what the Ayatollah wanted.
And our allies, the Saudis, are financing this Sunni-based insurgency against our occupation.
So the 4,000 or so of the 4,500 Americans who died in Iraq War II died fighting the Sunni-based insurgency, which was being backed by our allies, the Saudis, even back then.
Yeah, it's frustrating, but it's also angering when you realize that.
And I just don't understand why we're doing what we're doing, because it seems like what we want is stability and to protect our people, rather than to inflict them with damage, especially our military, knowing that we're going to suffer casualties at the hands of our allies.
I don't understand that.
Well, and especially, like you say about the diplomatic thing now, who could cut a deal between the Iranians and the Saudis over the future of Iraq?
They're just not going to.
It's not Prince Turki al-Faisal, it's another Prince Turki.
I forgot exactly which Turki over there.
He told John Kerry, hey, listen, ISIS is our response to your support for the Dawa.
So George Bush fought an eight-year war, basically, to cleanse the capital city of Baghdad of all the Sunnis.
It's now 85% or 90% super-majority Shiite city.
And that's something that the Saudis will never accept.
And so their goal, I guess, is to fling suicide bombers at Baghdad from now on.
They can't kick all the Shiites back out again, but they're not going to settle for the status quo ever.
Right?
And we're just going to keep having this thing, even if America wasn't there.
It was just keep going and going.
Which brings up a good point of, you know, should America be there?
Well, yeah, that's a real one.
Okay, so let me ask you this now.
We talked about how, okay, so you smash the Islamic State, you get rid of them, and they just turn back into an insurgency again.
But so what about, you know, quote-unquote, more or less, official power in Iraqi Sunnistan?
Without, never even mind the so-called surge troops or anything.
Is it possible, do you think, Danny, to do some kind of awakening where the tribes are put back, you know, in the position of primacy in alliance, probably with the Ba'athists, and then the jihadists then become the low man on the total pole instead of it being the jihadists and the Ba'athists against the tribes, which is the way it is now?
Is that even possible for some to work?
It's theoretically possible, but the only way it happens is if the Sunni tribes, as they did last time, believe that the resulting Baghdad government will keep anything close to their word to them and allow them some amount of autonomy.
But right now, because I talked to an expert on this just last week before I left, who knows the Sunnis inside and out, and he says right now the Sunnis themselves are all fractured because they don't trust each other.
He said, and there's no unifying figure like there was in the awakening program originally with Abu Risha, I believe his name was.
There's no unifying figure like that, so they're kind of all against each other.
He said they could pull together, but right now what does unify them all is the distrust of the Shia government.
So if they don't trust the government or that they're not even honoring their word, then they're not going to risk their lives and everything else to back them, because they paid a huge price.
In Mosul, there were thousands of them that were executed when ISIS came through and said, oh yeah, you backed the Shia government against your own people and then they just had these large-scale pogroms.
They're not going to do that anymore.
Yeah, and we saw that when we had the surge and the benchmarks and all the celebrated everything in 2007-8 and all that, and if Petraeus couldn't convince Maliki to keep his promises to the Sunni militias, the sons of Iraq and concerned local citizens, etc.
Back then, how's Hillary or Obama or anybody supposed to convince them to or Trump's new group or whatever supposed to be able to convince them that, yeah, no, really, the new Dawah leader in Baghdad is much more amenable than Maliki and he will hire you all into the government.
I mean, that ship already sailed almost a decade ago now.
Yeah.
And so there's just no rational basis for hope that's going to happen.
And my friend also pointed out that was done with Petraeus, when we had like 60,000-80,000 troops on the ground where we had a lot of leverage over Maliki, but right now we've got a handful.
So whoever comes into the White House in November, they're not going to have any leverage like that.
Yeah.
Oh, what a mess, man.
It's going to stay like this.
Alright, well, listen, I really appreciate you making some time to talk with us today.
How long are you going to still be there in Kurdistan?
I'll be here through Saturday.
Okay, well, I guess let's keep in touch by email.
And you have anything else really important to let us know?
Let us know or otherwise I'll just interview you once you write your big article when you get back.
Perfect.
Look forward to it.
I'll do that.
Thank you.
Alright, well, thank you very much again for your time, Danny.
Appreciate it.
Okay, talk to you later.
Alright, y'all, that is retired Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis.
He is at Defense Priorities and also writes for The National Interest.
Lots of really great stuff at The National Interest.
And here he's reporting for us live from Erbil, Kurdistan.
That's The Scott Horton Show.
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