"What is worth noting about Petraeus’ tenure in Mosul is not rehashing the stale debate over whether counterinsurgency is dead (or even whether Petraeus is the one person to blame for the US imperial misadventures). Petraeus’ time in the northern Iraqi city coincided with the disbanding of the Iraqi army by the US proconsul in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer. In Mosul, in order to forestall inevitable public dissatisfaction, the 101st Airborne acted not only as a police force, but also as a border patrol. Petraeus personally distributed vast sums of cash to various local elites in order to secure their acquiescence in US occupation. The purchase of local loyalty and the cultivation of proxies established a pattern that would be repeated nationwide in 2007, when Petraeus was placed in charge of the “surge,” and that was arguably the most significant factor in mobilizing Iraqi paramilitaries (the sahwat or Sons of Iraq) to fight Sunni radical Islamist groups.
The “Mosul miracle,” then, was a blatant case of attempting indirect rule during a conquest, secured through the distribution of imperial largesse and favors. Its relevance to today is only indirect. For where Petraeus failed was in imagining that a conquering military that exploits existing social fissures (ethnic and sectarian) to bolster its own control could also create a national client army ex nihilo. Immediately after leaving Mosul, Petraeus became the commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, which was tasked with training and equipping the new Iraqi army. He saw himself as a veritable T. E. Lawrence, building an allied army from scratch like the British colonel thought he was doing in the Arabian Peninsula during World War I. In a lecture he gave at a center-right Washington think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Petraeus made this notion explicit:"
The “Mosul miracle,” then, was a blatant case of attempting indirect rule during a conquest, secured through the distribution of imperial largesse and favors. Its relevance to today is only indirect. For where Petraeus failed was in imagining that a conquering military that exploits existing social fissures (ethnic and sectarian) to bolster its own control could also create a national client army ex nihilo. Immediately after leaving Mosul, Petraeus became the commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, which was tasked with training and equipping the new Iraqi army. He saw himself as a veritable T. E. Lawrence, building an allied army from scratch like the British colonel thought he was doing in the Arabian Peninsula during World War I. In a lecture he gave at a center-right Washington think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Petraeus made this notion explicit:"
