Politics > Politics-USA > hey Insane McCain and Hillary the Hawk -- Iraqi troops not showing up to fight in Ramadi
| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"can_o_worms" |
| Date: |
28 Jun 2006 11:39:03 PM |
| Object: |
hey Insane McCain and Hillary the Hawk -- Iraqi troops not showing up to fight in Ramadi |
U.S. and Iraqi troops push into Ramadi
This article linked from Juan Cole's excellent
website : Informed Comment at www.juancole.com
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/27/africa/web.0627ramadi.php
By Dexter Filkins The New York Times June 26, 2006
RAMADI, Iraq The 120-millimeter mortar shell landed
with a crash in the middle of the new American-Iraqi
outpost on Monday, hurling foot-long shards of metal
and puncturing the chest of a young American soldier.
"What's the condition of the casualty?" Col. Sean
MacFarland asked, as a team of medics put the wounded
soldier into a Humvee and raced to a field hospital.
"He stopped breathing, sir," Capt. Michael Bajema
replied.
A couple of minutes passed.
"What's his condition?" Colonel MacFarland asked.
"Still no breathing, sir" said another officer who was
manning a radio.
The soldier died. He was young, popular among his
comrades, and the sixth American from the First Armored
Division's First Brigade to be killed in Ramadi since
the unit arrived three weeks ago.
In the street, in the place where the soldier fell, lay
a knife, a sock and a bloodstained American boot.
American and Iraqi soldiers pushed deep into the heart
of this contested city on Monday, the latest step in
their plan to regain control of Ramadi from guerrillas
and to hold onto it. The operation began late Sunday
night, when about 400 American and Iraqi soldiers
advanced into the west side of downtown, quickly taking
over a number of houses and converting them into a small
military base.
Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, has bedeviled
American forces for months, making itself the toughest
city in the most violent of Iraqi regions. Whole city
blocks here look like a scene from some post-apocalyptic
world: row after row of buildings shot up, boarded up,
caved in, tumbled down.
Many neighborhoods are out of the control of either the
American or Iraqi government forces; insurgents hold
sway. In some areas, it is hard to spot any Iraqi police
officers - or any civilians or cars. Amid talk of
timetables for reducing the number of American troops
in Iraq, military commanders are not contemplating
reducing the number in this part of the country.
But rather than assaulting the city frontally, as the
Americans did in Falluja in November 2004 - destroying
it in the process - American commanders have decided on
a softer and more deliberate approach. This time, they
have ringed Ramadi with thousands of American and Iraqi
troops, and have begun to reclaim the city, not in one
sudden attack, but neighborhood by neighborhood.
Instead of leaving after the shooting stops - as the
Americans have been forced to do in other Iraqi
cities - the Americans plan to leave behind garrisons
of American and Iraqi troops at various points
throughout the city. For the first time, they say, they
believe they have the manpower to make the strategy work.
The combat outpost the Americans and Iraqis started
building on Monday morning was the fifth one to go up
this month on the southern edge of the city.
Central to the strategy, American commanders say, is
the decision to commit significant numbers of Iraqi
troops who can hold the neighborhoods after the
Americans do most of the work of pacification. That,
the American commanders hope, will make the city safe
enough for its shattered economy to renew itself and
for Iraqi police officers to feel secure enough to
start showing up for work.
"I'm a realist," Colonel MacFarland said. "I know we
are not going to be here long enough to realize that
vision. The Iraqis will have to do that. What we can do
is try to impart an irreversible momentum."
The challenges of doing even that became evident as the
operation unfolded Monday. American soldiers - trained,
disciplined, with overwhelming firepower - outnumbered
their Iraqi counterparts. Officers here said there were
about 250 American soldiers involved in the operation,
and about 145
Lt. Col. Raad Niaf Haroosh, the Iraqi battalion
commander, said the 145 soldiers represented a fraction
of the battalion's usual numbers. He said as many as
500 of his fellow soldiers - most of them Sunni Muslims
from Al Jabouri tribe - stayed behind in Mosul rather
than fight in Ramadi.
Colonel Raad is a Sunni, as are most of the Iraqi
soldiers who made the trip with him. They seemed alert
and disciplined as they moved about the area, in
contrast to some Iraqi units that have accompanied
American soldiers in the past.
He said that many of the Iraqi soldiers who stayed
behind feared they would create tribal vendettas if
they came to Ramadi and killed other Iraqis.
"They said, 'We don't want fight our own people,' " he
said.
As it was, Colonel Raad, who is a tribal sheik when out
of uniform, said he got a warm reception from the Iraqis
as he moved through the streets. He said he hoped the
operation started on Sunday would begin to loosen the
hold of insurgents on Ramadi.
"Insurgents have the bigger grip here," he said.
The problem he mentioned has been a recurring theme in
the effort by the American military to hand off
responsibility to Iraqi soldiers. The most difficult
task has been to ask Iraqis to fight other
Iraqis - particularly if they are from the same ethnic
or sectarian group.
Colonel MacFarland, commander of the brigade, and others
say the Iraqi forces in Anbar are sufficient in number,
and committed enough, to get the project under way. Two
Iraqi divisions are now in Anbar - with many of their
units operating at about 60 percent of their planned
strength - putting their numbers somewhere near 12,000.
Many of those Iraqi soldiers are also being assigned to
other cities along the Euphrates River corridor, in
cities like Hit and Qaim and Haditha that have also
been heavily infiltrated by insurgents.
In a series of military operations last year, American
marines rolled into a number of those cities in search
of insurgents, only to find that the guerrillas had
often melted away. When the marines moved on, the
insurgents often returned.
One thing that seemed clear on Monday was that however
small the numbers of Iraqi soldiers were, their presence
was far more palatable to the locals than that of the
Americans. Iraqi soldiers passed out a letter, written
in unvarnished Arabic prose by Colonel Raad, to the
"noble people" of the neighborhood, apologizing up
front for the distress he and his men would cause.
"Military necessity will force us to do things we don't
want to do," he wrote, "but what we have to do for the
sake of your freedom, so you won't live in fear for the
rest of your life."
"It is my foremost intention to bring peace to you," he
continued. "We will stay until the job is complete,
until your children can play without fear and your
families can walk through the streets with honor."
One of the actions undertaken by the Americans and
Iraqis was the expulsion of about 50 Iraqis from a
three-block area where the new outpost was being set up.
The Iraqi civilians were told to gather their things and
go - where to was not clear. The troops assumed that the
local Iraqis, in this land linked by bloodlines, would
be able to flee to their relatives. They promised
compensation. The Iraqis wandered off into the streets,
some of them carrying food and clothing.
Saif al-Dulaimi, one of the expelled Iraqi men,
expressed anger and suspicion toward the American
soldiers, asserting, for instance, that they intended
to stay in Iraq forever. Yet for the Iraqi soldiers
walking alongside the Americans, Mr. Dulaimi offered a
different opinion.
"They are O.K.," he said, pausing in his journey. "They
are respectable."
Asked where he would go, he said: "I don't know. I don't
want money. I want my home."
As far as military operations go, the one that unfolded
Monday was relatively bloodless. There was at least one
Iraqi casualty, a suspected insurgent, killed by Navy
SEALS in the early hours of the operation. His body lay
at the edge of a street, inside a black body bag.
Then there was the American soldier who died on the way
to the hospital. He was not easily forgotten by his
comrades.
"We paid a price today," Colonel MacFarland said.
RAMADI, Iraq The 120-millimeter mortar shell landed
with a crash in the middle of the new American-Iraqi
outpost on Monday, hurling foot-long shards of metal
and puncturing the chest of a young American soldier.
"What's the condition of the casualty?" Col. Sean
MacFarland asked, as a team of medics put the wounded
soldier into a Humvee and raced to a field hospital.
"He stopped breathing, sir," Capt. Michael Bajema
replied.
A couple of minutes passed.
"What's his condition?" Colonel MacFarland asked.
"Still no breathing, sir" said another officer who was
manning a radio.
The soldier died. He was young, popular among his
comrades, and the sixth American from the First Armored
Division's First Brigade to be killed in Ramadi since
the unit arrived three weeks ago.
In the street, in the place where the soldier fell, lay
a knife, a sock and a bloodstained American boot.
American and Iraqi soldiers pushed deep into the heart
of this contested city on Monday, the latest step in
their plan to regain control of Ramadi from guerrillas
and to hold onto it. The operation began late Sunday
night, when about 400 American and Iraqi soldiers
advanced into the west side of downtown, quickly taking
over a number of houses and converting them into a small
military base.
Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, has bedeviled
American forces for months, making itself the toughest
city in the most violent of Iraqi regions. Whole city
blocks here look like a scene from some post-apocalyptic
world: row after row of buildings shot up, boarded up,
caved in, tumbled down.
Many neighborhoods are out of the control of either the
American or Iraqi government forces; insurgents hold
sway. In some areas, it is hard to spot any Iraqi police
officers - or any civilians or cars. Amid talk of
timetables for reducing the number of American troops
in Iraq, military commanders are not contemplating
reducing the number in this part of the country.
But rather than assaulting the city frontally, as the
Americans did in Falluja in November 2004 - destroying
it in the process - American commanders have decided on
a softer and more deliberate approach. This time, they
have ringed Ramadi with thousands of American and Iraqi
troops, and have begun to reclaim the city, not in one
sudden attack, but neighborhood by neighborhood.
Instead of leaving after the shooting stops - as the
Americans have been forced to do in other Iraqi
cities - the Americans plan to leave behind garrisons
of American and Iraqi troops at various points
throughout the city. For the first time, they say, they
believe they have the manpower to make the strategy work.
The combat outpost the Americans and Iraqis started
building on Monday morning was the fifth one to go up
this month on the southern edge of the city.
Central to the strategy, American commanders say, is
the decision to commit significant numbers of Iraqi
troops who can hold the neighborhoods after the
Americans do most of the work of pacification. That,
the American commanders hope, will make the city safe
enough for its shattered economy to renew itself and
for Iraqi police officers to feel secure enough to
start showing up for work.
"I'm a realist," Colonel MacFarland said. "I know we are
not going to be here long enough to realize that vision.
The Iraqis will have to do that. What we can do is try
to impart an irreversible momentum."
The challenges of doing even that became evident as the
operation unfolded Monday. American soldiers - trained,
disciplined, with overwhelming firepower - outnumbered
their Iraqi counterparts. Officers here said there were
about 250 American soldiers involved in the operation,
and about 145 Iraqis.
Lt. Col. Raad Niaf Haroosh, the Iraqi battalion
commander, said the 145 soldiers represented a fraction
of the battalion's usual numbers. He said as many as 500
of his fellow soldiers - most of them Sunni Muslims from
Al Jabouri tribe - stayed behind in Mosul rather than
fight in Ramadi.
Colonel Raad is a Sunni, as are most of the Iraqi
soldiers who made the trip with him. They seemed alert
and disciplined as they moved about the area, in
contrast to some Iraqi units that have accompanied
American soldiers in the past.
He said that many of the Iraqi soldiers who stayed
behind feared they would create tribal vendettas if they
came to Ramadi and killed other Iraqis.
"They said, 'We don't want fight our own people,' " he
said.
As it was, Colonel Raad, who is a tribal sheik when out
of uniform, said he got a warm reception from the Iraqis
as he moved through the streets. He said he hoped the
operation started on Sunday would begin to loosen the
hold of insurgents on Ramadi.
"Insurgents have the bigger grip here," he said.
The problem he mentioned has been a recurring theme in
the effort by the American military to hand off
responsibility to Iraqi soldiers. The most difficult
task has been to ask Iraqis to fight other
Iraqis - particularly if they are from the same ethnic
or sectarian group.
Colonel MacFarland, commander of the brigade, and others
say the Iraqi forces in Anbar are sufficient in number,
and committed enough, to get the project under way. Two
Iraqi divisions are now in Anbar - with many of their
units operating at about 60 percent of their planned
strength - putting their numbers somewhere near 12,000.
Many of those Iraqi soldiers are also being assigned to
other cities along the Euphrates River corridor, in
cities like Hit and Qaim and Haditha that have also
been heavily infiltrated by insurgents.
In a series of military operations last year, American
marines rolled into a number of those cities in search
of insurgents, only to find that the guerrillas had
often melted away. When the marines moved on, the
insurgents often returned.
One thing that seemed clear on Monday was that however
small the numbers of Iraqi soldiers were, their presence
was far more palatable to the locals than that of the
Americans. Iraqi soldiers passed out a letter, written
in unvarnished Arabic prose by Colonel Raad, to the
"noble people" of the neighborhood, apologizing up
front for the distress he and his men would cause.
"Military necessity will force us to do things we don't
want to do," he wrote, "but what we have to do for the
sake of your freedom, so you won't live in fear for the
rest of your life."
"It is my foremost intention to bring peace to you," he
continued. "We will stay until the job is complete,
until your children can play without fear and your
families can walk through the streets with honor."
One of the actions undertaken by the Americans and
Iraqis was the expulsion of about 50 Iraqis from a
three-block area where the new outpost was being set up.
The Iraqi civilians were told to gather their things and
go - where to was not clear. The troops assumed that the
local Iraqis, in this land linked by bloodlines, would
be able to flee to their relatives. They promised
compensation. The Iraqis wandered off into the streets,
some of them carrying food and clothing.
Saif al-Dulaimi, one of the expelled Iraqi men,
expressed anger and suspicion toward the American
soldiers, asserting, for instance, that they intended
to stay in Iraq forever. Yet for the Iraqi soldiers
walking alongside the Americans, Mr. Dulaimi offered a
different opinion.
"They are O.K.," he said, pausing in his journey. "They
are respectable."
Asked where he would go, he said: "I don't know. I don't
want money. I want my home."
As far as military operations go, the one that unfolded
Monday was relatively bloodless. There was at least one
Iraqi casualty, a suspected insurgent, killed by Navy
SEALS in the early hours of the operation. His body lay
at the edge of a street, inside a black body bag.
Then there was the American soldier who died on the way
to the hospital. He was not easily forgotten by his
comrades.
"We paid a price today," Colonel MacFarland said.
This article linked from Juan Cole's excellent
website : Informed Comment at www.juancole.com
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/27/africa/web.0627ramadi.php
--
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
John J. Mearsheimer
University of Chicago - Department of Political Science
Stephen M. Walt
Harvard University - John F. Kennedy School of Government
http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011
( has polemical response from Alan Dershowitz at site )
Edited non-PDF HTML version :
http://www.lrb.co.uk./v28/n06/mear01_.html
.
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