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thedrifter
11-29-05, 11:28 AM
December 05, 2005
U.S. may shift focus to insurgents in Baghdad
By Greg Grant
Special to the Times

When American military planners crafted a strategy to invade Iraq and take down the regime of Saddam Hussein, their biggest fear was the possibility of a protracted, bloody, house-to-house fight through Baghdad’s streets. To the military’s relief, that battle never happened. The Iraqi capital fell quickly after a series of armored raids into the city.

But the real battle for Baghdad may only have been delayed.

There is a growing recognition in the Bush administration and among military experts that the U.S. military must, at some point, focus on clearing insurgent strongholds in Iraq’s largest urban area.

“The insurgency is concentrated in Baghdad,” said Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Most of the media coverage of military operations in Iraq focus on operations in the west and ignore the fact that Baghdad is the center of the fighting in Iraq.”

A recent suicide bomb attack in Baghdad that killed 40 people highlighted the continued violence and the seeming inability of American and Iraqi security forces to prevent it. Every day, the city sees sectarian killings, kidnappings, unremitting attacks on Iraqi police and Army patrols, and rocket and mortar attacks on the American bases and Iraqi government buildings inside the Green Zone.

Army Maj. Gen. William Webster, who commands military forces in Baghdad, told reporters Oct. 21 that the city sees 20 to 25 attacks each day, and the number is rising steadily despite increased patrols by Iraqi police and Army troops. Webster said 18 Iraqi Army battalions are actively fighting in Baghdad, up from just one in January.

Recently, Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, said U.S. military strategy must shift to systematically clearing insurgent strongholds in the city, beginning around the airport, then moving into the center of the city, according to a Nov. 7 Washington Post story.

The U.S. strategy of raiding towns in the Sunni triangle to kill or capture insurgent fighters has come under criticism, because once the U.S. forces leave, the insurgents return.

The plan is to continue with offensive operations in the western provinces until after December’s parliamentary elections, then shift to a strategy focused on clearing and holding Baghdad, a source said.

Speaking Nov. 7 at an event sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, Army Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, former commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, said the strategy is focused on clearing the largely Sunni tribal areas that sit astride the Euphrates River in western Anbar province. These areas are an important conduit for weapons and fighters smuggled in from other parts of Iraq or neighboring nations.

The U.S. military now will move town to town to clear out insurgent pockets of support and sanctuaries, and put in place Iraqi security forces to prevent the re-emergence of guerrilla fighters, said Marine Col. John Ballard, with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict.

How the military will clear and hold cities remains a key question. Ballard said one reason the military was successful in Fallujah a year ago was that it cleared out the civilian population, freeing the military to use its superior firepower.

Greg Grant is a staff writer for Defense News.

Ellie