Audio Thursday, October 19, 2006
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U.S. to Review Baghdad Plan, General Says
BAGHDAD, Oct. 19 — The American military’s stepped-up campaign to staunch unrelenting bloodshed in the capital under an ambitious new security plan that was unveiled in August has failed to reduce the violence, a military spokesman said today.
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Mohammed Ameen/Reuters
Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the senior spokesman for the American military in Iraq, speaking today in Baghdad.
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Instead, attacks have actually jumped more than 20 percent over the first three weeks of the holy month of Ramadan, compared to the previous three weeks, said Gen. William Caldwell, the military’s chief spokesman in Iraq.
In an unusually gloomy assessment, General Caldwell called the spike in attacks “disheartening” and added that the American military was “working closely with the government of Iraq to determine how to best refocus our efforts.”
It is unclear, however, what other options might be available to American military commanders if their current efforts fail. Over the past year, American forces had begun withdrawing from large areas of the capital, encouraging Iraqi Army and police forces to take the lead. That policy, however, was followed by escalating levels of sectarian attacks, particularly after the bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine in Samara in February.
In August, military commanders reversed course and returned troops in force to the neighborhoods they had once patrolled. Officials at the time made clear the urgency of the task, saying that whatever unfolded in Baghdad could very well determine the outcome of the war.
American troops, along with their Iraqi counterparts, began conducting concentrated neighborhood-by-neighborhood sweeps of troubled areas, searching homes, setting up checkpoints and systematically clearing the areas of insurgents and militants participating in sectarian death squads.
Those sweeps have made a difference in some areas, General Caldwell said, but ultimately have not met military commanders’ “overall expectations of sustaining a reduction in the levels of violence.”
In a worrisome development, General Caldwell revealed today that American troops had to return last week to Dora, a troubled southern Baghdad neighborhood that had been a showcase of the new security plan and was one of the first areas to be cleared.
A key concern from the outset of the stepped-up patrols in the capital was the difficulty of holding onto areas after they had been cleared. In other troubled areas of the country that American forces have sought to “clear and hold,” like towns along the Euphrates River corridor from west of Baghdad to the Syrian border, military officials have struggled to deal with insurgents simply melting away prior to the arrival of troops, only to return stronger than ever after focused military offensives have been completed.
In Baghdad, the military has been observing a marked increase recently in sectarian attacks in so-called cleared areas, General Caldwell said, noting that insurgents were “punching back hard.”
“They’re trying to get back into those areas,” he said. “We’re constantly going back in and doing clearing operations again.”
General Caldwell also raised the possibility that insurgents have intentionally increased their attacks in recent weeks as a way of influencing political events in the United States.
“We also realize that there is a midterm election that’s taking place in the United States and that the extremist elements understand the power of the media; that if they can in fact produce additional casualties, that in fact is recognized and discussed in the press because everybody would like not to see anybody get killed in these operations, but that does occur,” he said.
By almost any measure, the situation in the capital is in a downward spiral. Last month, General Caldwell said in a briefing that suicide attacks were at an all-time high. October is also on track to be the third-deadliest month of the conflict for the American military, with a large portion of the deaths occurring in Baghdad.
The military today announced the deaths of two more American troops—a Marine in Anbar province from “enemy action” and a soldier north of Balad from a roadside bomb — bringing the month’s total to at least 72.
American commanders had predicted a spike in violence during Ramadan, but previous Ramadans have been nowhere near as deadly for American troops as October has been so far.
Deaths in Baghdad specifically have leaped this month. Anbar province also continues to be deadly for American troops who are trying to root out Sunni insurgents there.
Today, dozens of black-clad gunmen, toting assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, paraded down a main street in Ramadi, one of the most troublesome cities in Anbar province for American troops. They waved banners identifying them as members of the Shura Mujahideen Council, an umbrella group for insurgents. The council had recently announced the creation of an Islamic state in the area, independent of the Iraqi government.
“The problem is that the government is weak,” said Sheikh Fassal al-Guood, a former governor of Anbar province, on the brazen demonstration. “This issue takes time, training and weapons. The police force in Anbar now cannot stand up to Al Qaeda fighters.”
Elsewhere, the northern city of Mosul saw an outbreak in violence today, with suicide bombers targeting a police station and an American convoy, killing at least 22 people and injuring dozens more, mostly civilians, a hospital official said.
The first attack came about 7:30 a.m. when a pair of suicide bombers detonated their vehicles near al-Thakafa police station in the neighborhood of Nargal. An hour later, another suicide bomber struck an American convoy. Just before, another police station in the al-Rifaee neighborhood was attacked by mortars and gunmen in a clash that lasted for 45 minutes, according to a witness.
In Baghdad, a pair of roadside bombs wounded two people near the National Theater in central Baghdad, Reuters said.
A car bomb exploded in New Baghdad, targeting an Iraqi police patrol, killing one person and wounding four others, an Interior Ministry official said.
