phoenix80
Banned
How troops struggle in a war raging on five fronts
By Oliver Poole in Baghdad
(Filed: 16/09/2005)
In the town of Tal Afar, Col H R McMaster stood among bullet-scarred buildings and proclaimed that his men had finally secured a victory for the good guys.
"The enemy here did the most horrible things you can imagine," he said of the nine months it had been under rebel control.
"In one case they murdered a child, placed a booby trap in the body and exploded it to kill the parents when they came to retrieve the child."
On Saturday 8,500 American and Iraqi troops entered the city and, by Wednesday, had won a major victory in the campaign to restore peace and stability to Iraq.
On the same day in Baghdad 12 suicide bombs were detonated, killing more than 154 people and wounding 542, showing that Col McMaster's enemy was far from beaten.
Two and a half years after their invasion, American and British forces are in danger of winning the battles but losing the war. The military plan to force insurgents out of their havens and train Iraqi forces to replace coalition forces is credible but has yet to provide signs of lasting achievement.
When American troops stormed the insurgents' original stronghold, Fallujah, last November, most of Mosul fell to rebels at the same time.
In the western Euphrates valley, where US control barely extends outside the limits of its bases, troops have repeatedly moved into a city and forced the rebels out. When the American units withdraw to their bases, the rebels return.
Storming an extreme Sunni nationalist stronghold such as Tal Afar disrupts enemy safe houses but risks providing propaganda to inspire further foreign jihadists. The multi-faceted nature of the war now being fought means that a victory against one element can merely help another.
There are at least five conflicts of varying intensity across the country, all of which only loosely overlap and require different tactics to combat.
There is the fight between coalition forces and Sunni insurgents and foreign fighters; the attacks on police and army recruits; the struggle between Shia and Sunni elements, with tit-for-tat killings and kidnappings; the al-Qa'eda onslaught on Shia through suicide bombings; and the distrust between Iraq's Arabs and Kurds, which is at present limited militarily to Kirkuk.
Links do exist between some of these elements. American successes in killing many former members of Saddam Hussein's regime have forced some Sunni insurgents to forge closer ties with foreign fighters, most notably in Baghdad. But elsewhere these two groups are shooting at each other.
Fighting between Sunni rebel tribesmen and jihadists in the Syrian border towns around Qaim has gone on for months, with almost daily mortar or rocket-propelled grenade attacks. Similar skirmishes have been reported in Ramadi.
One suggested solution - the withdrawal of all foreign troops - would be likely to diminish the conflict with al-Qa'eda and possibly lead to Iraqi nationalist elements accepting the credibility of the government.
But despite more than a year of intensive training, the police and army are in no position to control the Sunni-Shia struggle, let alone confront the heavily-armed militias that effectively police vast regions of the south and north.
The operation in Tal Afar involved Iraqi forces but these were peshmerga, the Kurdish freedom fighters battle-hardened by decades of war with Saddam.
Some of the new units in the security forces may also pose more of a problem than a solution. Almost all are drawn from the Shia community and have been repeatedly accused by Sunni groups of torture and murder.
In the early hours of Wednesday a group dressed in police uniforms entered the Sunni village of Taji, north of Baghdad, and killed 17 unarmed men and looted buildings. They may have been criminals in stolen uniforms but few Sunnis would believe that.
Iraq's interior minister is a member of Sciri, a party that spent two decades in exile in Iran and whose 10,000-strong paramilitary wing has been infiltrated by Iranian agents, according to US intelligence.
As Washington and London struggle to stop the bombers, they do so while fighting a war conducted on numerous fronts and with allies whose motives cannot be trusted.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...16.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/09/16/ixnewstop.html
By Oliver Poole in Baghdad
(Filed: 16/09/2005)
In the town of Tal Afar, Col H R McMaster stood among bullet-scarred buildings and proclaimed that his men had finally secured a victory for the good guys.
"The enemy here did the most horrible things you can imagine," he said of the nine months it had been under rebel control.
"In one case they murdered a child, placed a booby trap in the body and exploded it to kill the parents when they came to retrieve the child."
On Saturday 8,500 American and Iraqi troops entered the city and, by Wednesday, had won a major victory in the campaign to restore peace and stability to Iraq.
On the same day in Baghdad 12 suicide bombs were detonated, killing more than 154 people and wounding 542, showing that Col McMaster's enemy was far from beaten.
Two and a half years after their invasion, American and British forces are in danger of winning the battles but losing the war. The military plan to force insurgents out of their havens and train Iraqi forces to replace coalition forces is credible but has yet to provide signs of lasting achievement.
When American troops stormed the insurgents' original stronghold, Fallujah, last November, most of Mosul fell to rebels at the same time.
In the western Euphrates valley, where US control barely extends outside the limits of its bases, troops have repeatedly moved into a city and forced the rebels out. When the American units withdraw to their bases, the rebels return.
Storming an extreme Sunni nationalist stronghold such as Tal Afar disrupts enemy safe houses but risks providing propaganda to inspire further foreign jihadists. The multi-faceted nature of the war now being fought means that a victory against one element can merely help another.
There are at least five conflicts of varying intensity across the country, all of which only loosely overlap and require different tactics to combat.
There is the fight between coalition forces and Sunni insurgents and foreign fighters; the attacks on police and army recruits; the struggle between Shia and Sunni elements, with tit-for-tat killings and kidnappings; the al-Qa'eda onslaught on Shia through suicide bombings; and the distrust between Iraq's Arabs and Kurds, which is at present limited militarily to Kirkuk.
Links do exist between some of these elements. American successes in killing many former members of Saddam Hussein's regime have forced some Sunni insurgents to forge closer ties with foreign fighters, most notably in Baghdad. But elsewhere these two groups are shooting at each other.
Fighting between Sunni rebel tribesmen and jihadists in the Syrian border towns around Qaim has gone on for months, with almost daily mortar or rocket-propelled grenade attacks. Similar skirmishes have been reported in Ramadi.
One suggested solution - the withdrawal of all foreign troops - would be likely to diminish the conflict with al-Qa'eda and possibly lead to Iraqi nationalist elements accepting the credibility of the government.
But despite more than a year of intensive training, the police and army are in no position to control the Sunni-Shia struggle, let alone confront the heavily-armed militias that effectively police vast regions of the south and north.
The operation in Tal Afar involved Iraqi forces but these were peshmerga, the Kurdish freedom fighters battle-hardened by decades of war with Saddam.
Some of the new units in the security forces may also pose more of a problem than a solution. Almost all are drawn from the Shia community and have been repeatedly accused by Sunni groups of torture and murder.
In the early hours of Wednesday a group dressed in police uniforms entered the Sunni village of Taji, north of Baghdad, and killed 17 unarmed men and looted buildings. They may have been criminals in stolen uniforms but few Sunnis would believe that.
Iraq's interior minister is a member of Sciri, a party that spent two decades in exile in Iran and whose 10,000-strong paramilitary wing has been infiltrated by Iranian agents, according to US intelligence.
As Washington and London struggle to stop the bombers, they do so while fighting a war conducted on numerous fronts and with allies whose motives cannot be trusted.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...16.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/09/16/ixnewstop.html
