U.S. Conceding Rebels Control Regions of Iraq
By Eric Schmitt and Steven R. Weisman
The New York Times
Wednesday 08 September 2004
WASHINGTON - As American military deaths in Iraq operations surpassed the 1,000 mark, top Pentagon officials said Tuesday that insurgents controlled important parts of central Iraq and that it was unclear when American and Iraqi forces would be able to secure those areas.
As of late Tuesday night, the Pentagon's accounting showed that 998 service members and three Defense Department civilians had been killed in Iraq operations.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference that the American strategy in retaking rebel-held strongholds hinged on training and equipping Iraqi forces to take the lead.
Mr. Rumsfeld said Iraqi officials understood they must regain control of the insurgent safe havens. "They get it, and will find a way over time to deal with it," he said.
But General Myers said the Iraqi forces would probably not be ready to confront insurgents in those areas until the end of this year.
Their comments, which came after a two-day spike in violence in Iraq led to a surge in American military deaths, represented an acknowledgment that the Americans had failed to end an increasingly sophisticated insurgency in important Sunni-dominated areas and in certain Shiite enclaves. Fighting raged on Tuesday in Sadr City, in Baghdad, as Shiite militiamen loyal to Moktada al-Sadr ended a self-declared cease-fire. [Page A14.]
The officials' assessment also underscored the difficulty of pacifying Iraq in time for elections scheduled for January. The cities of greatest rebel control are Ramadi, Falluja, Baquba and Samarra, in the so-called Sunni triangle, west and north of Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein remains popular and many forces loyal to him have gathered strength.
There is increasing concern in the administration over plans for the election, with some officials saying that if significant parts of the Sunni areas cannot be secured by January, it may be impossible to hold a nationwide balloting that would be seen as legitimate. Putting off the elections, though, would infuriate Iraq's Shiite majority. The elections are for an assembly that is to write a new constitution next year. Mr. Rumsfeld warned that the violence would intensify as elections approached.
Mr. Rumsfeld said that Prime Minister Ayad Allawi recognized that his government could not continue to allow rebel control in crucial areas of the country, but that it would take time for him to determine how to proceed.
"The prime minister and his team fully understand that it is important that there not be areas in that country that are controlled by terrorists," he said, adding that Dr. Allawi would deal with the problem by "negotiation and discussion" in some cases and by force in others.
Other administration officials, amplifying the secretary's comments, said the administration had decided to let Dr. Allawi try to persuade rebel leaders to join the process of reconstructing Iraq, or suffer the consequences if they did not.
"Allawi's strategy is to try to find people on the sidelines and wean the moderates away, to give them courage and a hope of reward for themselves," said an administration official. "He's telling them: 'I'm giving you an opportunity to meet your local concerns. You're going to be my guy, and together we'll try to isolate the extremists.' "
Administration officials say no decision has been made yet for American forces to attack those strongholds. The preference is for Iraqi forces to do the job, as they were said to have been poised to do last month in Najaf, the Shiite holy city.
But the record of the Iraqi security forces has not been inspiring, although some Iraqi forces fought well in Najaf, American officials said. While 95,000 soldiers have been trained and equipped up to American commanders' satisfaction, General Myers said, they will not be ready until the end of the year to join American forces in any assault against insurgent strongholds and then keep the peace afterward.
"While U.S. forces or coalition forces can do just about anything we want to do, it makes a lot more sense that it be a sustained operation, one that can be sustained by Iraqi security forces," General Myers said. "By December, we're going to have a substantial number of Iraqi security forces equipped, trained and led to conduct the kind of operations I was talking about."
A senior American official said force would be tried by the Iraqi government only after a couple of months' discussions with rebels.
"Force is the ultimate sanction, but let's exhaust the other ones first," he added.
A two-month hiatus before major force is applied to rebel areas would also mean a delay until after the American presidential election, but senior officials insist there is no domestic political calculus in the decision to wait - only a conviction that time is needed for negotiation and for Iraqi forces to gain strength.
"This is ultimately about building an Iraqi government which works for all of Iraq," said the official. "To the degree that we can wait a couple months and let Iraqi politics work, so much the better."
In describing the Iraqi forces, one American general in Iraq said in an e-mail message that their "capabilities are still uneven, but they're improving as we arm and equip them better, improve their infrastructure, give them additional training, and help them weed out the weak leaders." Mr. Rumsfeld added that Iraqis had recently conducted effective counterterrorism operations.
To buy time, General Myers said, Gen. George Casey, the top American commander in Iraq, is working with the Iraqi government to develop a strategy to retake the cities. General Myers said that strategy included trying to "isolate certain communities," hampering the insurgents' ability to rearm and resupply, and curtailing attacks against American forces. He said the strategy would also try "to set the conditions for the successful use of force later," military wording for preparing the battlefield by bombing safe houses and weapons caches, and encouraging residents to provide fresh intelligence on the location of insurgents.
Over the weekend, Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the land commander in Iraq, told The Associated Press that an American assault is likely in the next four months. "I do have about four months where I want to get to local control," General Metz said. "And then I've got the rest of January to help the Iraqis to put the mechanisms in place."
Maj. Gen. John R. Batiste, the commander of the Army's First Infantry Division, whose area north of Baghdad includes Tikrit and Samarra, disputed reports that the United States had given up in Samarra.
"Samarra is a city where Iraqis are taking charge to throw out anti-Iraqi forces," he said in an e-mail message on Tuesday. "No one has ceded the city to insurgents and there is no cordon. What we have in Samarra is the good people of Iraq, led by far-sighted provincial and city leadership, senior sheiks, and clerics, standing up to the enemy."
Residents, however, say insurgents effectively control Samarra.
General Batiste and other commanders gave an upbeat assessment, noting that "the messages at Friday Prayer are becoming more and more moderate" and that American forces "keep continuous pressure on the enemy" while they help Iraqis with reconstruction. In an unusual step for a Pentagon that tends to avoid citing body counts as a measure of success, Mr. Rumsfeld said American and allied forces had probably killed 1,500 to 2,500 insurgents last month.
But other American officials are more pessimistic about the prospects for regaining control of those areas. One noted, for example, that attacks on American forces rose to 2,700 in August, from 700 in March.
General Myers conceded that American forces faced a tough, adaptive foe. "The enemy is becoming more sophisticated in his efforts to destabilize the country," he said.
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