Laz
09-02-2006, 03:19 PM
PENTAGON REVIEW | Civil strife is spreading
The Defense Department study is released as Bush is trying to shore up support for the war.
Measuring Security and Stability in Iraq
By DAVID WOOD
The Baltimore Sun
WASHINGTON | Pentagon officials on Friday sketched a bloody Iraq landscape of sectarian violence spreading beyond Baghdad and assassinations and terrorist bombings by increasingly entrenched private militias and death squads.
“This is probably the most complex combat environment we have seen since the war began,” said Rear Adm. William Sullivan, the top strategic planner for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
=============
Hard data
•More than 300 Iraqis have died in sectarian violence this week.
•Attacks have risen from about 400 a week in April-June 2004 to nearly 800 a week.
•Attacks on civilians are rising and now constitute about 15 percent of the total.
=================
The severity and breadth of the Defense Department report, which is required four times a year by Congress, appeared to undercut recent statements by President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that conditions in Iraq are difficult but that steady progress is being made.
The 63-page report concluded that while the sustained violence between ethnic and religious groups is now the greatest threat to Iraq’s security and stability and could lead to civil war, the Sunni insurgency remains “potent and viable.”
“Conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq, specifically in and around Baghdad, and concern about civil war within the Iraqi civilian population has increased in recent months,” it says.
Anthony Cordesman, senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Friday: “This is a report that provides a good deal more realism” than recent administration statements.
“In truth, it’s not a matter of American will that determines whether we win or lose in Iraq, but Iraqi governance, and the most we can do is to support and encourage that effort,” Cordesman said
The grim thrust of the report underscored that even with the establishment of an elected Iraqi government under a new constitution, chaos and bloodshed have increased, driving growing numbers of families from their homes and jobs.
In the period covered by the assessment, roughly mid-May through mid-August, the number of weekly attacks on civilians rose 15 percent from the previous three-month period, while Iraqi casualties shot up 51 percent.
Sunni and Shiite groups, including al-Qaida in Iraq and Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s al-Mahdi army, “are increasingly locked in retaliatory violence and are contesting control of ethnically mixed areas to expand their existing areas of influence,” the report said.
“Death squads and terrorists are locked in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife,” it stated.
Bush and others argue that the bloody conflict is concentrated in Baghdad, where U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces are making a major push to quell the violence. The Pentagon assessment says that sectarian bloodletting “is gradually spreading north into Diyala Province and Kirkuk as Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish groups compete for provincial influence.”
The U.S. strategy for prevailing over the rising violence and worsening conditions in Iraq, as explained this week by Bush and other administration officials, is for the 140,000 American troops in Iraq to train and fight alongside Iraqi security forces while the central government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki gathers control of the fractious nation.
U.S. officials are relying on al-Maliki to get the private militias disarmed and off the streets, a politically tricky business given that government ministries and the Legislature are threaded with powerful politicians connected with sectarian organizations.
The United States will not undertake the potentially dangerous job of dismantling the militias, Pentagon officials said.
Peter Rodman, a top Pentagon policymaker, said the fact that there is a national government in place is encouraging.
Iraqi security forces are operating out on the streets, and Iraq’s economy is forecast to grow 4 percent, he added, citing a World Bank estimate.
But the report suggests a darker picture.
Corruption in government ministries “has hampered” their performance, and the Iraqi government has difficulty prosecuting cases because of a shortage of about 750 judges and because of intimidation of judges and prosecutors.
The number of national police battalions able to lead operations has dropped from six battalions to two since last spring, the report said.
Officials also acknowledged that Iraqi police ranks have been heavily infiltrated by militia loyalists.
•The report on Iraq’s security and stability is online at www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pdfs/Security-Stabilty-ReportAug29r1.pdf
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/front/15422452.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Defense Department study is released as Bush is trying to shore up support for the war.
Measuring Security and Stability in Iraq
By DAVID WOOD
The Baltimore Sun
WASHINGTON | Pentagon officials on Friday sketched a bloody Iraq landscape of sectarian violence spreading beyond Baghdad and assassinations and terrorist bombings by increasingly entrenched private militias and death squads.
“This is probably the most complex combat environment we have seen since the war began,” said Rear Adm. William Sullivan, the top strategic planner for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
=============
Hard data
•More than 300 Iraqis have died in sectarian violence this week.
•Attacks have risen from about 400 a week in April-June 2004 to nearly 800 a week.
•Attacks on civilians are rising and now constitute about 15 percent of the total.
=================
The severity and breadth of the Defense Department report, which is required four times a year by Congress, appeared to undercut recent statements by President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that conditions in Iraq are difficult but that steady progress is being made.
The 63-page report concluded that while the sustained violence between ethnic and religious groups is now the greatest threat to Iraq’s security and stability and could lead to civil war, the Sunni insurgency remains “potent and viable.”
“Conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq, specifically in and around Baghdad, and concern about civil war within the Iraqi civilian population has increased in recent months,” it says.
Anthony Cordesman, senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Friday: “This is a report that provides a good deal more realism” than recent administration statements.
“In truth, it’s not a matter of American will that determines whether we win or lose in Iraq, but Iraqi governance, and the most we can do is to support and encourage that effort,” Cordesman said
The grim thrust of the report underscored that even with the establishment of an elected Iraqi government under a new constitution, chaos and bloodshed have increased, driving growing numbers of families from their homes and jobs.
In the period covered by the assessment, roughly mid-May through mid-August, the number of weekly attacks on civilians rose 15 percent from the previous three-month period, while Iraqi casualties shot up 51 percent.
Sunni and Shiite groups, including al-Qaida in Iraq and Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s al-Mahdi army, “are increasingly locked in retaliatory violence and are contesting control of ethnically mixed areas to expand their existing areas of influence,” the report said.
“Death squads and terrorists are locked in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife,” it stated.
Bush and others argue that the bloody conflict is concentrated in Baghdad, where U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces are making a major push to quell the violence. The Pentagon assessment says that sectarian bloodletting “is gradually spreading north into Diyala Province and Kirkuk as Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish groups compete for provincial influence.”
The U.S. strategy for prevailing over the rising violence and worsening conditions in Iraq, as explained this week by Bush and other administration officials, is for the 140,000 American troops in Iraq to train and fight alongside Iraqi security forces while the central government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki gathers control of the fractious nation.
U.S. officials are relying on al-Maliki to get the private militias disarmed and off the streets, a politically tricky business given that government ministries and the Legislature are threaded with powerful politicians connected with sectarian organizations.
The United States will not undertake the potentially dangerous job of dismantling the militias, Pentagon officials said.
Peter Rodman, a top Pentagon policymaker, said the fact that there is a national government in place is encouraging.
Iraqi security forces are operating out on the streets, and Iraq’s economy is forecast to grow 4 percent, he added, citing a World Bank estimate.
But the report suggests a darker picture.
Corruption in government ministries “has hampered” their performance, and the Iraqi government has difficulty prosecuting cases because of a shortage of about 750 judges and because of intimidation of judges and prosecutors.
The number of national police battalions able to lead operations has dropped from six battalions to two since last spring, the report said.
Officials also acknowledged that Iraqi police ranks have been heavily infiltrated by militia loyalists.
•The report on Iraq’s security and stability is online at www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pdfs/Security-Stabilty-ReportAug29r1.pdf
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/front/15422452.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------