US army concedes failure in Baghdad

By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington and Steve Negus, Iraq Correspondent

10/19/06 "FT" -- -- American and Iraqi efforts to improve security in Baghdad have failed to reduce bloodshed in the increasingly violent Iraqi capital, the senior US military spokesman in Iraq acknowledged on Thursday.

In an uncharacteristically gloomy admission, Major General William Caldwell said the recent surge in violence was “disheartening”. He said US and Iraqi forces would have to “refocus” security measures. The review was demanded by General George Casey, who commands the 140,000 US troops in Iraq.

Gen Caldwell did not specify how security methods might be refocused, but the unusually grim assessment seems in part intended to put pressure on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to take political steps that US officers have long said need to accompany military operations.

“In Baghdad, Operation Together Forward [launched in August to curb violence in the capital] has made a difference in the focus areas but has not met our overall expectations in sustaining a reduction in the level of violence,” Gen Caldwell told reporters.

At its launch, Operation Together Forward was to deploy more than 20,000 Iraqi security forces – including army and police – plus more than 7,000 coalition forces to tighten security in the capital. In July, General John Abizaid, the top US commander in the Middle East, told US senators that reducing violence in Baghdad was the key to avoiding a full-scale civil war. Since those comments, the level of violence in Iraq, and Baghdad in particular, has continued to rise.

So far in October, 72 US troops – including a soldier killed in fighting near Balad on Thursday – and hundreds of Iraqis have been killed. Gen Caldwell said attacks on US and Iraqi forces in Baghdad shot up 22 per cent in the first three weeks of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month.

The increasingly pessimistic assessments from Iraq come as Republicans in Congress grow anxious that the Iraq war is going to cost them control of one, or both, houses of Congress in next month’s elections.

While the Bush administration insists that progress is being made in Iraq, privately they are frustrated with the apparent inability of the government of Mr Maliki to help clamp down on some of the sectarian killing perpetrated by death squads and Shia militias associated with members of the governing coalition.

Mr Bush on Wednesday made a comparison between Iraq and the Vietnam War when he said Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist, “could be right” in writing that the violent situation in Iraq was the “jihadist equivalent” of the Tet offensive, which helped increase public opposition to that war. But a White House spokeswoman said Mr Bush was only trying to make the point that “the enemy is trying to affect the psyche of Americans”.

The US military wants Mr Maliki to stop protecting radical Shia groups such as the Mahdi Army militia loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. In a virtually unprecedented criticism of the Iraqi leadership, Gen Caldwell said US forces had been forced to release Sadrist organiser Mazin al-Sa’edi on Wednesday, one day after his arrest on suspicion of involvement in violence, at the prime minister’s request.

Mr Maliki told USA Today that he had blocked a US proposal to conduct a large-scale operation against the Mahdi Army, saying the government did not intend to disarm militias until the end of this year.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006