ORDER, THEN RIGHTS:

The Way of the Commandos (PETER MAASS, 5/01/05, NY Times Magazine)

The program we were watching was Adnan's brainchild, and in just a few months it had proved to be one of the most effective psychological operations of the war. It is reality TV of sorts, a show called ''Terrorism in the Grip of Justice.'' It features detainees confessing to various crimes. The show was first broadcast earlier this year and has quickly become a nationwide hit. It is on every day in prime time on Al Iraqiya, the American-financed national TV station, and when it is on, people across the country can be found gathered around their television sets.

Those being interrogated on the program do not look fearsome; these are not the faces to be found in the propaganda videos that turn up on Web sites or on Al Jazeera. The insurgents, or suspected insurgents, on ''Terrorism in the Grip of Justice'' come off as cowardly lowlifes who kill for money rather than patriotism or Allah. They tremble on camera, stumble over their words and look at the ground as they confess to everything from contract murders to sodomy. The program's clear message is that there is now a force more powerful than the insurgency: the Iraqi government, and in particular the commandos, whose regimental flag, which shows a lion's head on a camouflage background, is frequently displayed on a banner behind the captives.

Before the show began that evening, Adnan's office was a hive of conversation, phone calls and tea-drinking. Along with a dozen commandos, there were several American advisers in the room, including James Steele, one of the United States military's top experts on counterinsurgency. Steele honed his tactics leading a Special Forces mission in El Salvador during that country's brutal civil war in the 1980's. Steele's presence was a sign not only of the commandos' crucial role in the American counterinsurgency strategy but also of his close relationship with Adnan. Steele admired the general. ''He's obviously a natural type of commander,'' Steele told me. ''He commands respect.''

Things quieted in the office once the episode of ''Terrorism in the Grip of Justice'' began. First, a detainee admitted to having homosexual relations in a mosque. Then several other suspected insurgents made their confessions; two of them had been captured by Adnan's commandos in Samarra, and their confessions were taped, just hours before, in this very office. Adnan sat smoking Royals and watching the show like a proud producer.

''It has a good effect on civilians,'' he had told me, through an interpreter. ''Most civilians don't know who conducts the terrorist activities. Now they can see the quality of the insurgents.'' Earlier he said: ''Civilians must know that these people who call themselves resisters are thieves and looters. They are dirty. In every person there is good and bad, but in these people there is only bad.''

The episodes of the program I have seen depict an insurgency composed almost entirely of criminals and religious fanatics. The insurgency as understood by American intelligence officers, is a more complex web of interests and fighters. Most of the insurgency is composed of Sunnis, and it is generally believed that Baathists hold key positions. But the commandos, who are the stars of ''Terrorism in the Grip of Justice,'' are also led by Sunnis and have many former Baathists in their ranks, so the Sunni and Baathist aspect of the insurgency is carefully obscured.

Of course, propaganda need not be wholly accurate to be effective. The real problem with the program, according to its most vocal critics -- representatives of human rights groups -- is that it violates the Geneva Conventions. The detainees shown on ''Terrorism in the Grip of Justice'' have not been charged before judicial authorities, and they appear to be confessing under duress. Some detainees are cut and bruised. In one show, a former policeman with two black eyes confessed to killing two police officers in Samarra; a few days after the broadcast, the former policeman's family told reporters, his corpse was delivered to them. The government's human rights minister has initiated an investigation.

''Terrorism in the Grip of Justice'' is a ratings success because it humiliates the insurgency, satisfying a popular desire for vengeance against the men who spread terror and death. Yet the program plyas rough not only with its confessing captives but also with the rules and laws that govern the conduct of war. As I learned in Samarra, this approach was not just for television. It was Adnan's effective yet brutal way of conducting a counterinsurgency.

Building a Home-Grown Counterinsurgency

Most of the Pentagon's official statements in the past two years about the ability of Iraqis to police their own country have been exaggerated. But now reality is beginning to catch up with rhetoric. In the months that followed the January elections in Iraq, attacks on allied forces reportedly fell to 30 to 40 a day in February and March, from 140 just before the vote. It's hard to tell whether this trend will continue; in late April the insurgency showed signs of renewed strength. But the successes that the counterinsurgency has enjoyed are in no small part because of Adnan's commandos. With American forces in an advisory role, the commandos, as well as a few other well-led units, like the Iraqi Army's 36th Commando Battalion and its 40th Brigade in Baghdad, inflicted more violence upon insurgents than insurgents inflicted upon them. That is much of what fighting an insurgency amounts to. But successful counterinsurgencies, if history is a guide, tend not to be pretty, especially in countries where violence has been a way of life and rules governing warfare and human rights have been routinely ignored by those in uniform.

The template for Iraq today is not Vietnam, to which it has often been compared, but El Salvador, where a right-wing government backed by the United States fought a leftist insurgency in a 12-year war beginning in 1980. The cost was high -- more than 70,000 people were killed, most of them civilians, in a country with a population of just six million. Most of the killing and torturing was done by the army and the right-wing death squads affiliated with it. According to an Amnesty International report in 2001, violations committed by the army and its associated paramilitaries included ''extrajudicial executions, other unlawful killings, 'disappearances' and torture. . . . Whole villages were targeted by the armed forces and their inhabitants massacred.'' As part of President Reagan's policy of supporting anti-Communist forces, hundreds of millions of dollars in United States aid was funneled to the Salvadoran Army, and a team of 55 Special Forces advisers, led for several years by Jim Steele, trained front-line battalions that were accused of significant human rights abuses.

There are far more Americans in Iraq today -- some 140,000 troops in all -- than there were in El Salvador, but U.S. soldiers and officers are increasingly moving to a Salvador-style advisory role. In the process, they are backing up local forces that, like the military in El Salvador, do not shy away from violence. It is no coincidence that this new strategy is most visible in a paramilitary unit that has Steele as its main adviser; having been a key participant in the Salvador conflict, Steele knows how to organize a counterinsurgency campaign that is led by local forces. He is not the only American in Iraq with such experience: the senior U.S. adviser in the Ministry of Interior, which has operational control over the commandos, is Steve Casteel, a former top official in the Drug Enforcement Administration who spent much of his professional life immersed in the drug wars of Latin America. Casteel worked alongside local forces in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, where he was involved in the hunt for Pablo Escobar, the head of the Medellin cocaine cartel.

Both Steele and Casteel were adamant in discussions with me that they oppose human rights abuses. They stressed that torture and death-squad activity are counterproductive. Yet excesses of that sort were endemic in Latin America and in virtually every modern counterinsurgency.

Succesful counterinsurgency.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 2, 2005 12:00 AM