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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (206615)	10/20/2006 12:12:10 PM
From: geode00	Respond to of 281500

Baghdad operation backfires on US Correspondents in Baghdad October 21, 2006 THE US-led campaign to curb violence in Baghdad suburb by suburb has failed and has actually contributed to a spike in American deaths, a top US military official admitted yesterday. Major General William Caldwell said US officials were looking for a new strategy after the failure of the two-month campaign, codenamed Operation Forward Together. The operation "has not met our overall expectations of sustaining a reduction in the levels of violence", Major General Caldwell said. "We are working very closely with the Government of Iraq to determine how best to refocus our efforts." In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Mark Ballesteros called Major General Caldwell's assessment "accurate and candid". His comments are a rare public admission that an American strategy in Iraq hasn't worked, and it came as Republicans and Democrats in Washington press the Bush administration to devise a new approach. Operation Forward Together was considered a last-ditch effort to tame Baghdad, where violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims has reached unprecedented levels. The plan was to pull 12,000 US soldiers from elsewhere in Iraq and team them with Iraqi troops to go door-to-door in Baghdad's most troubled suburbs and root out armed groups. The suburbs were then to be the focus of economic development campaigns. Shortly after the operation began on August 7, Major General Caldwell hailed it, saying Baghdad's murder rate had dropped by 52 per cent. But statistics from the Baghdad morgue suggested a much smaller decrease in violent deaths. Baghdad police reported that 27 bodies were found around the city yesterday - 11 in suburbs originally targeted in the security plan. The number of US soldiers and marines killed in Baghdad has skyrocketed, and October is on course to be the third-deadliest month for American service members since Saddam Hussein was toppled in April 2003. US officials announced the deaths of three more soldiers and a marine yesterday, bringing the month's death toll to 74. "The violence is indeed disheartening," Major General Caldwell said despondently. US officials were reassessing the assumptions they'd made before implementing the Baghdad security plan, he said. There was "no question" that sectarian violence had increased in the suburbs targeted under the plan. "We find the insurgent elements - the extremists - are in fact punching back hard. They're trying to get back into those areas," he said. The general didn't say how American officials might adjust their plans. But he said US troops were re-entering the southern Baghdad suburb of Dora, one of the capital's most violent areas. Dora was among the first suburbs swept, and it's now the site of daily discoveries of tortured bodies. The gloomy assessment came amid tensions between the US and the nearly five-month-old Government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Frustration at Mr Maliki's failure to crack down on sectarian groups could be exacerbated by revelations that he ordered US troops to release Mazin al-Sa'edi, a top organiser in western Baghdad for radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army. Major General Caldwell said Mr Sa'edi was freed after being detained on Wednesday with five aides for suspected involvement in Shia violence. The Mahdi Army has been blamed for sporadic attacks and for inspiring groups kidnapping and killing Sunnis. Major General Caldwell said the spike in violence was in line with past increases during Ramadan. But he also said a more aggressive stance toward insurgents was leading to more engagements - and more US deaths. As US troops focus on crushing insurgent and militia activity in central Iraq, the northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk have seen a significant rise in violence. Most attacks have been blamed on Sunni Arab militants fighting to block the cities' feared integration into the Kurdish-controlled region in the north. theaustralian.news.com.au