In big shift, U.S. is seen as winning war in Iraq

http://tinyurl.com/697emg

ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 27, 2008

In big shift, U.S. is seen as winning war in Iraq
By Robert Burns and Robert H. Reid

BAGHDAD – The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost.

Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years.

But the Iraqi government and the United States are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace – a transition many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.

Despite the occasional bursts of violence, Iraq has reached the point where the insurgents, who once controlled whole cities, no longer have the clout to threaten the central government's viability.

That doesn't mean the war has ended or U.S. troops have no role in Iraq. It means the combat phase is ending, years past the time when President Bush optimistically declared it had.

The new phase focuses on training the Iraqi army and police; restraining the flow of illicit weaponry from Iran; supporting closer links between Baghdad and local governments; pushing the integration of former insurgents into legitimate government jobs; and assisting in rebuilding the economy.

Scattered battles go on, especially against al-Qaeda holdouts north of Baghdad. But organized resistance, with the steady drumbeat of bombings, kidnappings, assassinations and ambushes that once rocked the capital daily, has all but ceased.

This amounts to more than a lull in the violence. It reflects a fundamental shift in the outlook for the Sunni minority, which held power under Saddam Hussein. They launched the insurgency five years ago. Today, they're either sidelined or have switched sides to cooperate with the Americans in return for money and political support.

Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told The Associated Press last week that there are early indications the senior leaders of al-Qaeda may be considering shifting their main focus from Iraq to the war in Afghanistan.

Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, said in an interview Thursday that the insurgency as a whole has withered to the point where it's no longer a threat to Iraq's future.

“Very clearly, the insurgency is in no position to overthrow the government or, really, even to challenge it,” Crocker said.

“It's actually almost in no position to try to confront it. By and large, what's left of the insurgency is just trying to hang on,” Crocker said.

Shiite militias, notably the Mahdi Army of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, have lost their power bases in Baghdad, Basra and other major cities. An important step was the routing of Shiite extremists in the Sadr City slums of eastern Baghdad this spring – now a quiet although not fully secure district.

Al-Sadr and top lieutenants are in Iran. Still talking of a comeback, they are facing major obstacles, including a loss of support among a Shiite population weary of war and no longer as terrified of Sunni extremists as they were two years ago.

Despite the favorable signs, U.S. commanders are leery of proclaiming victory or promising that the calm will last.

The premature declaration by the Bush administration of “Mission Accomplished” in May 2003 convinced commanders that the best public relations strategy is to promise little, and couple all good news with the warning that “security is fragile” and the improvements, while encouraging, are “not irreversible.”

Iraq continues to face a mountain of problems: sectarian rivalries, power struggles within the Sunni and Shiite communities, Kurdish-Arab tensions, corruption. Any one of those could rekindle widespread fighting.

But the underlying dynamics in Iraqi society that blew up the U.S. military's hopes for an early exit, shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, have changed in important ways in recent months.

Systematic sectarian killings have all but ended in the capital, in large part because of tight security and a strategy of walling off neighborhoods purged of minorities in 2006. That has helped establish a sense of normalcy in the streets of Baghdad.

Iraqis are expressing a new confidence in their security forces, which in turn are exhibiting a newfound assertiveness with the insurgency largely in retreat.

Statistics show violence at a four-year low. The monthly U.S. death toll appears to be at its lowest of the war – four killed in action this month as of Friday, compared with 66 in July a year ago. From a daily average of 160 insurgent attacks in July 2007, the average has plummeted to about two dozen a day this month. On Wednesday, the nationwide total was 13.

Beyond that, there is something in the air in Iraq this summer.

In Baghdad, parks are filled every weekend with families playing and picnicking with their children. That was unthinkable a year ago, when the first, barely visible signs of a turnaround emerged.

A moment has arrived for the Iraqis to try to take those positive threads and weave them into a lasting stability.

The questions facing both Americans and Iraqis are: What kinds of help will the country need from the U.S. military, and for how long?

The questions will take on greater importance as the U.S. presidential election nears, with one candidate pledging a troop withdrawal and the other insisting on staying.

Iraqi authorities have grown dependent on the U.S. military after more than five years of war. While they're aiming for full sovereignty with no foreign troops on their soil, they don't want to rush. In a similar sense, the Americans fear that after losing more than 4,100 troops, the sacrifice could be squandered.

U.S. commanders say a substantial U.S. military presence will be needed beyond 2009. But judging from the security gains that have been made over the first half of this year – as the Pentagon withdrew five Army brigades sent as reinforcements in 2007 – the remaining troops could be used as peacekeepers more than combatants.

As a measure of the transitioning U.S. role, Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond said that when he took command of U.S. forces in the Baghdad area about seven months ago, he was spending 80 percent of his time working on combat-related matters and about 20 percent on what the military calls “nonkinetic” issues, such as supporting the development of Iraqi government institutions and humanitarian aid.

Today, Hammond estimates those percentage have been almost reversed.

Robert Burns is AP's chief military reporter, and Robert Reid is AP's chief of bureau in Baghdad. Reid has covered the war from his post in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in March 2003. Burns, based in Washington, has made 21 reporting trips to Iraq; on his latest during July, Burns spent nearly three weeks in central and northern Iraq, observing military operations and interviewing U.S. and Iraqi officers.

© 2008 Union-Tribune Publishing Co