'Months' before success in Baghdad

Key US and Iraqi officials today issued cautiously optimistic reports one month into the latest drive to curb sectarian bloodshed in Baghdad but warned that months would pass before the operation could be labelled a success.

Key US and Iraqi officials today issued cautiously optimistic reports one month into the latest drive to curb sectarian bloodshed in Baghdad but warned that months would pass before the operation could be labeled a success.

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the US military spokesman, also said the level of sectarian killings had dropped significantly in the month since the operation began.

“By the indicators that the government of Iraq has, it has been extremely positive, but I would caution everybody about patience, about diligence. This is going to take many months, not weeks, but the indicators are all very positive right now,” Caldwell said.

Brig. Gen. Qassim al Moussawi, spokesman of the Baghdad security operation, said the number civilians killed had plunged to 265 since the operation started on February 14 compared with 1,440 during the preceding monthlong period due to a sharp reduction in murders, kidnappings and bombings.

He also said 94 terror suspects have been killed while 713 terrorists and 1,152 other suspects have been arrested since February 14, while 24 kidnap victims have been released and more than 2,000 displaced families returned to their homes.

He summed up the Iraqi security forces losses as 11 police officers and 48 soldiers killed and 24 vehicles damaged.

The assessments – offered in separate news conferences in the heavily guarded Green Zone – were the latest in a series of high-profile efforts by the US and Iraqi governments to shore up public support for the third crackdown on sectarian violence in the capital in less than a year.

The positive report card on operations to pacify Baghdad coincided with the countdown to the fourth anniversary of the March 20 start of the US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. Caldwell said nothing special was planned to mark the day as the military was focused on ending the sectarian war.

One possible reason for the lowered violence in the capital could be the continued absence of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who remained in Iran “as of 24 hours ago,” Caldwell said. The anti-American chief of the Mahdi Army militia was reported to have taken refuge in the neighbouring Shiite theocracy before the security operation.

“He’s a very significant part of this political process. We do continue to track his whereabouts,” Caldwell said at a briefing to mark the end of the first month of the security drive.

Al-Sadr’s militia was seen as responsible for much of the sectarian bloodshed, especially the executions and murders of as many as 50 people a day before the security operation began.

Al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army fighters melted away and have not confronted US forces as American and Iraqi troops launched the third crackdown on sectarian violence in the capital in less than a year.

There was great concern the operation would force an all-out showdown with al-Sadr’s forces in their Sadr City stronghold in eastern Baghdad, but that has not materialised.

While Caldwell’s assessment was largely positive, he expressed concern about a spike last week in the number of what he called “high-profile” car bombings.

“If the high-profile car bombs can be stopped or brought down to a much lower level, we’ll just see an incredible difference in the city overall. Murders and executions have come down by over 50%. ... But the high-profile car bombs is the one we’re really focused on because that’s what will start that whole cycle of violence again,” he said.

His remarks came hours after suicide bombers struck a market in northern Iraq and an Iraqi military checkpoint in Baghdad, killing at least 10 people. Twelve other people were killed in attacks elsewhere, including two Palestinians who died in clashes between gunmen and police under unclear circumstances in Baghdad.

In the worst attack, a man detonated his explosives belt in an outdoor market just before noon in Tuz Khormato, 130 miles north of Baghdad, killing at least eight people and wounding 25.

The blast highlighted concerns that insurgents fled the capital ahead of the crackdown and were causing violence to spike elsewhere.

“What is the guilt of the people who came to sell or buy fruit and vegetables?” said Shawan Saleh, a Kurd who owns a restaurant near the market and rushed to the site. “There were no military or policemen in the market. It was only innocent civilians. The insurgents want to kill as many as they can. They want to ease the pressure on their fellows in Baghdad.”

The commander of the Baghdad security plan, Lt. Gen. Abboud Qanbar, warned that all terrorists and outlaws “will be smashed with the foot of the Iraqi people” unless they reconsider their “position and return to logic before it’s too late.”

Qanbar also sought to reassure the capital’s residents that the military is not discriminating in the crackdown, despite complaints by Sunnis that their neighbourhoods have been unfairly targeted by the Shiite-dominated government.

He said the effort had made headway.

“We’ve overcome the terrorist acts, militant groups, criminal gangs, sectarian killings and displacement,” he said at a press conference in the heavily fortified Green Zone.

The US military also has stepped up its presence and plans to have about 20,000 extra American troops sent to Baghdad and surrounding areas by the end of May.

In a reminder of the persistent Sunni resentment fuelling much of the violence, the bodies of Saddam Hussein’s sons and a grandson were exhumed and reburied near the ousted leader’s grave in Ouja, his hometown north of Baghdad. Saddam was hanged on Dec. 30 and buried the next day in a grave chipped out of an interior floor of a building he had built for religious events.

Tribal officials said they decided to move the remains of Saddam’s sons Odai, 39, and Qusai, 37, and his 14-year-old grandson Mustafa – who died July 22, 2003, in a gunbattle with US troops in the northern city of Mosul – to keep all members of the family in one place.

Tribal chief Ali al-Nida and three other relatives accompanied the bodies as they were transferred Tuesday in three cars from the cemetery about a mile from the building in which Saddam is buried.

The three bodies were buried in the courtyard near the graves of Saddam’s half brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court, who also were sent to the gallows in January for the killings of 148 Shiites in the town of Dujail in 1982.

The five graves were covered with Iraqi flags as people prayed next to them during the service in Ouja, near the scene of Saddam’s capture by US soldiers in December 2003.

A US Marine was killed yesterday during combat operations in the western province of Anbar, the US military said.