Rebuilding Unhindered by Attacks, Bremer Says
U.S. soldiers use an Abrams tank to provide security in a busy neighborhood of Baghdad. U.S. forces continue to be the target of attacks. (Saurabh Das -- AP)
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 30, 2003; Page A09
BAGHDAD, June 29 -- The top U.S. civil administrator here insisted today that the spate of deadly attacks on American troops would not impede international efforts to rebuild Iraq, despite a recent increase in hostility toward American and Iraqi civilians working on postwar reconstruction.
"We're not going to get deflected off our direction by an attack every now and then, tragic as it may be," the administrator, L. Paul Bremer, said in an interview.
Although 23 U.S. military personnel in Iraq have been killed -- and dozens more wounded -- in attacks since major combat was declared over on May 1, Bremer maintained that the massive programs to reconstruct the country's shattered infrastructure, resuscitate the economy and form a new government were proceeding apace. He also played down the impact of recent sabotage of gas pipelines and the electricity transmission network. The flow of power into the capital has been sharply reduced, depriving residents of fans and air conditioning as daytime temperatures approach 120 degrees.
"We're certainly not panicked," Bremer told a small group of American reporters. "The reconstruction goes on. . . . There's a lot of stuff happening."
In an effort to stem attacks by foes of the American-led occupation, the U.S. military said soldiers carried out 23 raids today under the cover of darkness across an arc of territory north of Baghdad populated by Sunni Muslims, the traditional rulers of Iraq and a crucial pillar of support for the ousted president, Saddam Hussein.
The raids, conducted by the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division, began at 2 a.m. U.S. Central Command said soldiers detained 61 people and confiscated 14 AK-47 rifles and two shotguns. There was no word on whether fugitives from Hussein's government were part of the roundup. The number of detainees was far lower than the hundreds arrested in earlier raids in northern Iraq and a region along the Euphrates River west of Baghdad.
The U.S. military said there were no reports of casualties, but that the operation, dubbed Sidewinder, was ongoing. Many of the raids occurred near the town of Samarra, about 70 miles northwest of Baghdad, in a region the military said was "the nexus of paramilitary activity in central Iraq."
Iraqi police said they received reports of raids in the village of Ishaqi, about 12 miles south of Samarra, and the larger town of Balad, about 20 miles southeast of Samarra. But they said the thrust of the activity had ended by early afternoon.
By nightfall, winds kicked up dust in the orchards and farms irrigated by the Tigris River. But the road from Baghdad to Samarra -- the scene of daily ambushes and hit-and-run attacks -- was notable for its lack of U.S. soldiers and military convoys. A day earlier, checkpoints set up along the road had backed up traffic for miles as soldiers searched cars and trucks for weapons.
Iraqi police ostensibly working with the U.S. occupation authorities were blunt in warning that the raids would inspire more resentment. "No one is happy with the Americans, no one in this entire area," said Thamer Feisal, a police major in Samarra. "They are occupiers, and they act as occupiers. It's a military force and we don't want to have any relations with them."
U.S. forces have said they are targeting loyalists of Hussein's Baath Party and former Iraqi military officials. But some U.S. officials have acknowledged that religious issues may have prompted at least some of the militant activity.
In Mosul, a key Sunni city in northwestern Iraq, Central Command said soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division raided homes of suspected Wahhabi extremists, who practice a strict branch of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia. The U.S. military said 15 people were detained in the raids, carried out Saturday, and four AK-47 rifles, a pistol, a grenade and an artillery round were seized.
Speaking in his office in one of Hussein's former palaces on the Tigris, Bremer called the attacks a "symptom of weakness" among Hussein's loyalists. "By their choice of targets, they're trying to undo the victory we won militarily," he said.
Bremer, a counter-terrorism expert and former diplomat who was dispatched here by President Bush to take over the faltering postwar reconstruction, said the attacks on U.S. forces appear to be the work of former soldiers and paramilitary fighters who are probably working in small, independent cells.
"They are professional, but we still don't see any central organization," he said, adding that the attacks were "not strategic."
Even so, Bremer said the assaults have grown in sophistication. Several recent attempts to shoot soldiers in the neck, above their flak jackets but below their helmets indicate "a clear understanding of how the body armor works," he said.
Bremer also expressed concern that Hussein loyalists may be targeting Iraqi civilians "as a way to intimidate people from working on reconstruction." On Thursday, two workers from the Iraqi electric utility were killed when a bomb on a highway median near Baghdad was detonated as their vehicle, accompanied by two U.S. military Humvees, passed. A day before, a senior electrical engineer working with U.S. military engineers to restore power to Baghdad was killed.
Bremer said neutralizing the attacks would require "better intelligence about who these guys are and what are they doing." He said valuable new information about opposition activity has come from Iraqi civilians, who have provided more tips to U.S. forces over the past 10 days.
"A number of plain old citizens are now confident enough, they're willing to provide us with information," he said. "It has been important in some of the operations" U.S. troops have conducted recently.
Appearing haggard after a two-day trip to northern Iraq, Bremer suggested that the reconstruction effort has proved to be a more challenging undertaking than many in the U.S. government had predicted.
"It's just damn hard," he said. "It's going to take a lot of money. It's going to take time. It's going to take dedicated people. We're just going to have to keep plugging away at it."
Shadid reported from Samarra.
URL:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48956-2003Jun...
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