On the left, there are three fairly common narratives that attempt to explain the drastic reduction in violence. 1) is ethnic cleansing and relocation of religious sects, 2) is the Mahdi Army stand-down, and 3) is the least frequent; that the operational tempo has dropped dramatically, exposing fewer Americans to attack.
On the right, there is really only one that can be placed on a graph, which suggests that the troop surge is responsible for the reduction in violence entirely (see Gateway Pundit link). This assertion is generally made citing evidence that it was surge tactics that allowed the Awakening movement to take hold, and that the relatively intangible elements of a change in on-the-ground strategy has pushed the situation forward.
So, here's that graph (yes, I labeled it with MS Paint. Leave me alone.):
I won't be addressing the idea that the Mahdi Army's stand-down is responsible for the gains, because I've already debunked that idea here, but for the record it's really just as simple as the fact that violence was trending down well before the Mahdi clammed up, and even then, the Mahdi can only really take credit for not murdering so many civilians.
The assertion that op-tempo is down should seem to be ridiculous on it's face, as it runs completely counter to the counterinsurgency basics outlined in FM 3-24. The whole idea behind the new strategy is to decrease force protection and increase common touch; that means more patrols, or at least putting American soldiers in contact with the public for longer periods of time. I'm going to go ahead and suggest that this claim is outright false.
If you're wondering if I'm calling Pepe Escobar a liar, well yes. Yes I am. And the Brookings Institute would likely agree with me.
According to this report by the Brookings Institute dated October 1st, 2007, Iraq saw a 10,000-patrol increase in the first week of the Baghdad Security Plan, these patrols being carried out by American and Iraqi forces. The second week saw yet another 12,000-patrol increase over the previous week - in two weeks in February, the number of patrols tripled.
On the same page (9) is another graph, detailing the steady increase in the number of Joint Security Stations and Combat outposts - these are the checkpoints and such where the Americans are actually mentoring the Iraqis, and these are all a long way from a super-base designed around force protection. On February 14th, there were only 10 such stations in Baghdad. By June 27th, the number was 68. It would take the willing suspension of disbelief to assume that after June, we decided to reverse these efforts. This, by the way, entirely contradicts the notion of increased force protection as being responsible for the fall in violence. This is a minority view for a reason.
So what's left on the left is perhaps the most popular argument: ethnic relocation and cleansing have separated Sunni and Shi'a to the point where violence is no longer necessary. If that were the case, I would imagine we would have seen a brief rise in violence after the Golden Mosque bombing of 2006, and then a steady tapering off of sectarian bloodshed as the two groups slowly divided into their own respective areas. But that's not what the trends show.
At icasualties.org, the recent decrease in violence, in relative terms, happened very quickly. As would be predictable, violence ramped up after February of 2006, and remained high until... What, exactly? Until collectively, the people of Iraq decided to partition themselves by neighborhood, and do so in an unprecedentedly spontaneous manner? Sorry, but the data says otherwise. The nature and speed of the decrease don't lend themselves to interpretation as ethnic cleansing or exodus - those would take much longer.
On the right, then, is the overly-broad claim that the surge is responsible for all of the recent decrease. I'm going to take issue with that as well. As is apparent from the graph, there are two other things to consider: first, violence was trending down unevenly before the surge was complete; and second, the Mahdi stand-down, however motivated, has also contributed a decrease in civilian deaths.
It's also worth noting that the Awakening movement, especially the Anbar Awakening, actually predates the surge and occurs outside of the troop buildup's target, which was exclusively Baghdad. I should note here however that Baghdad was the target of the troop buildup only; that's not to say that operational tempo across the country wasn't increased; in fact, it probably was, but the numbers aren't readily available.
Perhaps more importantly than all of that is the constant confusion as to what, exactly, is meant by "the surge". Common usage apparently dictates that the surge means the change in grand strategy espoused by Petraeus and Odierno. That's not correct. Originally, "the surge" was a clumsy, media-given name to supplant the even clumsier "Fardh al-Qanoon," which is also known as the Baghdad Security Plan, the operative word of which is "Baghdad". The grand strategy's only given name was given by the White House, and it's called "The New Way Forward".
At the end of the day, gains can't really be attributed to one cause. They are likely a composite of all of the ideas given above (except the force protection theory, that's just idiotic) and a number of events that haven't been considered here. But, if credit must be given to any single party for any single act, it has to go to the Iraqis for stepping up to defend their families and communities, which has in turn given them a safer country. It wasn't long ago when some thought they could only unite against the Americans, to drive us out of their country so they could have thier civil war. Time has proven those people wrong. Hopefully, time will prove them wrong again, as those same parties are claiming that reconciliation and political independence are impossible.
If I were an Iraqi, I'd take pretty serious offense to comments like that.
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