Gee, in Australia it doesn't seem like the Iraqi war is going really smoothly yet. Twelve of eighteen provinces are involved in the insurgency fighting. Why is it that there aren't as many frank articles like this one in America:
Iraq rebels gun down minister
Stephen Farrell
December 18, 2004
AN Iraqi government minister has been shot dead in Baghdad, fuelling fears that the insurgency will escalate out of control in the build-up to elections.
Kassim Imhawi, the Deputy Minister of Communications, was killed and eight of his bodyguards injured as he travelled to work in the capital just a day after the muted launch of campaigning for the January 30 poll.
The Soviet-trained engineer, who spent almost 20 years in Saddam Hussein's jails, had been instrumental in setting up Iraq's mobile telephone network, one of the few infrastructure advances since the war.
Meanwhile, Saddam met his lawyers ahead of next week's planned start of the trials of his lieutenants. The defence team, based in Amman, said later the former dictator appeared to be in good health.
Mr Imhawi's death - which followed the claimed execution on Thursday of Italian aid worker Salvatore Santoro - comes after a bleak assessment by British officers, who believe that without an effective and rapid improvement in Iraq's own security forces the insurgency will gain the initiative.
US commanders have also sounded alarm bells a month after marines claimed to have "broken the back of the insurgency" in Fallujah. Lieutenant-General Lance Smith, the deputy chief of US Central Command, conceded the enemy was striking at US supply routes, saying: "He is becoming more effective. And as we adapt, they adapt."
Among the coalition's principal concerns are attacks and intimidation directed at Iraq's security forces, upon which the insurgents have focused attention since US forces assumed a lower profile after the handover of limited sovereignty in June. The militants also target officials of the Iraqi Government and create public disaffection by disrupting oil and power infrastructure.
There are also reports of gunmen intimidating party workers and shopkeepers who distribute electoral registration cards, and there are fears of strikes on polling stations.
Hussein Hindawi, chairman of Iraq's electoral commission, admitted on Wednesday that the security situation "is really threatening our work".
Lieutenant-General David Petraeus, the US general charged with training Iraq's security forces, recently confirmed that 12 of Iraq's 18 provinces were affected by the insurgency, mainly around Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle.
However one Western diplomat said the seizure of Fallujah had denied the insurgents a vital base. Holding the city had enabled the guerillas to outgrow the initial hit-and-run and safe-haven stages of insurgency and begin challenging the government militarily.
Nonetheless, there is concern the military, political and reconstruction strategy that defused the Mahdi army threat - attacking its Najaf stronghold, buying back weapons in Baghdad's Sadr City slum and coaxing its leader Moqtada al-Sadr into entering candidates in the elections - has not been repeated further north.
To toughen Iraqi troops, commanders had introduced new "boot camp" regimes to weed out infiltrators and time-servers, said Colonel Jani Marok, a Royal Marine serving as chief of plans for development of Iraqi Security Forces. "Part of the difficulty for us is identifying leaders who can talk a good fight and those who can fight one."
theaustralian.news.com.au |
