U.S. Officials Call Baghdad Plan Workable

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Los Angeles Times
January 16, 2007
Past efforts have failed, but Iraqi politicians are on board this time, they say.
By Borzou Daragahi, Times Staff Writer
BAGHDAD — U.S. officials here said Monday that the latest plan to calm war-addled Baghdad, where dozens more were killed or found dead in political violence during the day, will succeed because Iraqi politicians will come through this time.
Despite widespread doubts about the efficacy and loyalties of Iraq's Shiite-dominated government and armed forces, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. said at a news briefing that American officials had put Iraqis at the helm of security operations. "We will support them, but the Iraqis will be in the lead," Khalilzad said.
U.S. officials have voiced frustration over the failure of the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to confront Shiite militias that have ties to political parties in the government. U.S. commanders say Iraqi officials forbid them from going after suspected gunmen in Shiite neighborhoods. Some voiced outrage when Maliki appointed a relative unknown, Lt. Gen. Abud Qanbar, to head the Baghdad security plan, passing over the Americans' choice for the post.
The new plan follows two efforts last year to quell the violence in the capital, which U.S. and Iraqi officials acknowledge have been failures. The number of civilian deaths spiraled upward as Shiite militias rampaged through Sunni neighborhoods and Sunni insurgents bombed Shiite marketplaces, police patrols and U.S. military convoys.
Khalilzad and Casey said the new plan had a greater chance of success because it was part of a broad strategy that includes billions in reconstruction spending, the controversial addition of 21,500 U.S. troops proposed by President Bush and confrontation with Iranian and Syrian elements that U.S. officials allege are sowing chaos in Iraq.
The plan also involves additional training of Iraqi security forces and a revamped command-and-control structure, which will have Qanbar at the helm. However, Casey said the American forces would take orders only from U.S. commanders.
"Our forces, frankly, will not be at greater risk, although the more forces you bring here, the greater the risk of casualties," he said. "But they won't be put at risk because of command relationships."
The plan is part of an effort by the White House to revamp its Iraq policy based on a new set of assumptions, according to public documents outlining the strategy.
Though it long considered the Sunni insurgency the main threat in Iraq, it now acknowledges "violent extremists from all communities." Before, the Bush administration assumed political progress would calm violence. Now it acknowledges that little political or economic progress can be made without a minimum of security.
The new strategy also advocates paying attention to political actors outside Baghdad's high-security Green Zone. But political figures more hostile to the U.S., such as radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr and the Sunni Muslim Scholars Assn., already vehemently reject Bush's proposal to increase the number of troops in the country.
Khalilzad and Casey, who will be replaced within weeks, said this plan has the support of Iraqi political figures.
"There's a strong political commitment from the government to the plan, including the will to act, and including the will not to impose constraints on coalition and Iraqi security forces," Casey said.
Some Iraqi officials said the new plan includes far more input by Iraqi leaders than did the previous ones.
"The last operations that were carried out were American operations, not Iraqi operations," said Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's foreign minister. "They were doing their things, they blew it up and they blame us for it. This is an Iraqi plan."
Violence continued across much of Iraq on Monday. Authorities in the capital discovered the bullet-riddled bodies of at least 30 men, most of them in west Baghdad. Four homemade bombs targeting Iraqi security forces killed at least seven and injured eight in the capital. A suicide bomber struck an Iraqi army checkpoint in west Baghdad, killing four soldiers and injuring three.
Two car bombs in downtown Kirkuk killed at least 12 civilians and injured 14, police said. A Katyusha rocket struck a house in the contested oil-rich northern city, killing one person. Farther north, in Mosul, a suicide car bomber targeting an Iraqi army patrol killed six and injured 28, a police spokesman said.
An Iraqi contractor supplying food to a U.S. base near the southern city of Kut was slain. Authorities there also discovered the bodies of three Iraqi soldiers killed with bullets to the head and chest.
Times staff writer Louise Roug and special correspondents in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Kut and Mosul contributed to this report.
 
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