The NYT and the rest of the MSM will continue to frame our
efforts in Iraq as negatively as they can. From: LindyBill
MILITARY ANALYSIS
A Goal Is Met. What's Next?
By ERIC SCHMITT
ASHINGTON, Nov. 14 - American military commanders say the weeklong assault that has wrested most of Falluja from insurgent control has achieved nearly all their objectives well ahead of schedule and with fewer pitfalls than anticipated.
But where do the United States and the government of the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, go from here?
In the coming weeks, the two allies must still combat a resilient and dangerous insurgency outside Falluja, accelerate a huge economic reconstruction effort and lay groundwork for elections to be held in January.
One goal of the offensive in Falluja was to eliminate a major safe haven for insurgents in Iraq, a hub for assassinations, car bombings and ambushes from Ramadi to Baghdad and beyond. Another was to allow the city's 250,000 residents to take part in elections.
Registration is already under way elsewhere in Iraq, so commanders will face pressure to secure areas to permit Iraqi electoral commission employees to conduct their work. Commanders and American diplomats in Iraq are hoping that once rid of insurgents, cities in the Sunni heartland north and west of Baghdad will join the political process, despite calls by some Sunni groups last week to boycott the elections.
But enormous obstacles remain to meeting these military and political targets. "The Falluja operation will be a military success, but whether it's the key to political success will remain to be seen," said Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat on the Armed Services Committee who visited Iraq on Friday and Saturday, in a telephone interview. "The insurgents are working hard to derail this, and commanders are expecting widespread violence leading up to the elections in January."
Military commanders point to several accomplishments in Falluja. A bastion of resistance has been eliminated, with lower than expected American military and Iraqi civilian casualties. Senior military officials say up to 1,600 insurgents have been killed and hundreds more captured, altogether more than half the number they estimated were in the city when the campaign began.
The offensive also shut down what officers said was a propaganda weapon for the militants: Falluja General Hospital, with its stream of reports of civilian casualties.
But American and Iraqi officials still face daunting tasks in the aftermath of retaking the city.
"Falluja clearly will require a lot of effort even after the final pocket of insurgents is eliminated in the city," one senior American general in Iraq said in an e-mail message on Sunday. "Lots of challenges - infrastructure, basic needs for returnees, security forces, and governance, not to mention elections. Assume the insurgents will continue to try to make life tough there as well."
Outside Falluja, the insurgency rages on, amid intelligence reports that the battle has become a big recruiting draw for young Arab men in mosques from Syria to Saudi Arabia. American commanders acknowledge that hundreds of fighters and their commanders, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant whose network has carried out many of the kidnappings, beheadings and bombings, slipped away before the offensive.
American commanders say they expected that the fight for Falluja, coinciding with the end of the holy month of Ramadan, would set off a surge in violence across the country. But the scope and size of the attacks in Mosul last Thursday stunned American officers who were scrambling Sunday to regain the initiative.
"Our experience is that, after battles in which they lose many fighters, the insurgents require some days to gather, treat their wounded and try to figure out what to do next," Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, commander of Task Force Olympia, charged with controlling northern Iraq, said Sunday in an e-mail message. "Our job is to work to not let them rest and to not allow them time to reset."
In Baghdad, where attacks were increasing even before the Falluja offensive, Army soldiers said insurgents in at least one part of the capital had shifted their tactics this week, massing in limited numbers in their attacks on Americans, instead of shooting from the shadows and rooftops, or carrying out ambushes with roadside bombs.
But commanders say they are baffled over how to combat an effective intimidation campaign that insurgents are waging against Iraqis, from political leaders and police chiefs to the women who do the laundry for troops at American bases.
"People are affected every day by criminality," said Senator Reed, a West Point graduate and former 82nd Airborne Division officer. "The situation has not - is not - turning around."
American officials boast that about 100,000 Iraqi security forces have been trained and equipped, and many are fighting side by side with American forces, including 2,500 Iraqi forces in Falluja.
"The good news is that significant numbers of Iraqi security forces are standing their ground and fighting all over north-central Iraq," Maj. Gen. John Batiste, commander of the First Infantry Division based in Tikrit, said Saturday in an e-mail message. "Our hard work is paying off."
But not everywhere. Last week, scores of police officers in Mosul fled their stations under attacks, allowing militants to loot half a dozen stations and steal police vehicles and uniforms and hundreds of weapons - all enough to set up an imposter police force, American officers fear.
Military commanders say providing security is only part of what is needed to achieve Iraqi prosperity.
Many senior officers grumble that reconstruction aid in Iraq, while beginning to flow to finance nearly 1,000 projects, is still slowed by bureaucratic wrangling.
With most international aid organizations having withdrawn from Iraq because of the conditions, and many contractors skittish about sending workers into areas nominally controlled by American or Iraqi troops but still vulnerable to insurgent attacks, more United States troops will be called on to provide security to allow reconstruction to move ahead.
The Pentagon has extended the tours of about 6,500 troops to help with security, and senior commanders say that for now, the more than 140,000 American forces in Iraq should be enough. But enough for what, exactly? The experience of Falluja in the next few weeks may be instructive.
"The operational lesson is that 'taking' cities is comparatively easy, but that 'holding' them is harder and ultimately decisive," said one Army officer who just returned for a year's duty near Falluja. "And that fight is largely one for Iraqis, not Americans, to win."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
