Michael Knights is the Jill and Jay Bernstein Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute and cofounder of the Militia Spotlight platform, which offers in-depth analysis of developments related to Iran-backed militias.
Articles & Testimony
Operation "Iraqi Freedom" encompassed the full range of modern military missions, beginning with a transition from the "not peace, not war" prosecution of no-fly zones to high-intensity warfare, followed by a security and stabilisation phase that has involved counterinsurgency and counterterrorist operations. Both during and since the war, the Coalition has had to cope with varied levels of violence in different parts of the battle space, including simultaneous high-intensity armoured warfare in the centre and security and stabilisation operations on the peripheries. Coalition forces have also had to adapt to a changing enemy. Indeed, a characteristic of military operations in Iraq since 1991 has been the co-evolution of Coalition and Iraqi operations, from the pre-war "cat-and-mouse" execution of no-fly zones to the asymmetric guerrilla warfare features of "Iraqi Freedom" and the challenging post-war period. As a part of this co-evolution Coalition forces have made efforts to capture the experiences of units rotating out of Iraq by documenting, analysing and applying the lessons of recent military operations. Iraq's insurgent fighters, as well as other potential adversaries of the USA, will also doubtless draw lessons from the Coalition's performance as "Iraqi Freedom" passes its first anniversary....
