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U.S. and Iraqis Are Wrangling Over War Plans
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: January 15, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/world/middleeast/15baghdad.html?_r=2&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
This article was reported by John F. Burns, Sabrina Tavernise and Marc
Santora, and written by Mr. Burns.
BAGHDAD, Jan. 14 — Just days after President Bush unveiled a new war plan
calling for more than 20,000 additional American troops in Iraq, the heart
of the effort — a major push to secure the capital — faces some of its
fiercest resistance from the very people it depends on for success: Iraqi
government officials.
American military officials have spent days huddled in meetings with Iraqi
officers in a race to turn blueprints drawn up in Washington into a plan
that will work on the ground in Baghdad. With the first American and Iraqi
units dedicated to the plan due to be in place within weeks, time is short
for setting details of what American officers view as the decisive battle of
the war.
But the signs so far have unnerved some Americans working on the plan, who
have described a web of problems — ranging from a contested chain of command
to how to protect American troops deployed in some of Baghdad’s most
dangerous districts — that some fear could hobble the effort before it
begins.
First among the American concerns is a Shiite-led government that has been
so dogmatic in its attitude that the Americans worry that they will be
frustrated in their aim of cracking down equally on Shiite and Sunni
extremists, a strategy President Bush has declared central to the plan.
“We are implementing a strategy to embolden a government that is actually
part of the problem,” said an American military official in Baghdad involved
in talks over the plan. “We are being played like a pawn.”
The American military’s misgivings came as new details emerged of the
reconstruction portion of Mr. Bush’s plan, which calls for more than
doubling the number of American-led reconstruction teams in Iraq to 22 and
quintupling the number of American civilian reconstruction specialists to
500. [Page A7.]
Compounding American doubts about the government’s willingness to go after
Shiite extremists has been a behind-the-scenes struggle over the appointment
of the Iraqi officer to fill the key post of operational commander for the
Baghdad operation. In face of strong American skepticism, the Iraqi prime
minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, has selected an officer from the Shiite
heartland of southern Iraq who was virtually unknown to the Americans, and
whose hard-edged demands for Iraqi primacy in the effort has deepened
American anxieties.
The Iraqi commander, Lt. Gen. Aboud Qanbar, will be part of what the
Americans have described as a partnership between the two armies, with an
American general, Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr., commander of the First
Cavalry Division, working with General Aboud, and American and Iraqi
officers twinned down the operational chain.
For the Americans, accustomed to clear operational control, the partnership
concept is troublesome — full of potential, some officers fear, for dispute
with the Iraqis over tough issues like applying an equal hand against Shiite
and Sunni gunmen.
It remains unclear whether the prime minister will be in overall charge of
the new crackdown, a demand the Iraqis have pressed since the plan was first
discussed last month, American officials said. They said days of argument
had led to a compromise under which General Qanbar would answer to a
so-called crisis counsel, made up of Mr. Maliki, the ministers of defense
and interior, Iraqi national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, and the
top American military commander in Iraq.
The Americans said that while they had reluctantly accepted General Qanbar,
they had won concessions from the Iraqis in the appointment of two officers
favored by the American command for the two deputy Iraqi commanders, one for
the areas of Baghdad west of the Tigris River, the other for districts to
the east.
Still, the new command structure seemed rife with potential for conflict. An
American military official said that the arrangements appeared unwieldy, and
at odds with military doctrine calling for a clear chain of command.
“There’s no military definition for ‘partnered,’ ” he said.
Along with those problems, the Americans cite logistical issues that must be
solved before the new plan can begin to work. Intent on using the large
numbers of additional American and Iraqi troops that have been pledged to
the plan to get “boots on the ground” across Baghdad, they are planning to
establish perhaps 30 or 40 “joint security sites” spread across nine new
military districts in the capital, many in police stations that have been
among the most frequent targets in the war.
But in many areas, there are no police stations, at least none suitable as
operational centers, so the planners are seeking alternate locations,
including large houses, that will have to be fortified with 15-foot-high
concrete blast walls, rolls of barbed wire and machine-gun towers.
There are no solutions yet to longstanding problems like who — the American
forces, or the Iraqis’ own anemic logistics system — will supply the fuel
required to keep Iraqi Humvees and troop-carrying trucks running, at a time
when the American supply chain will face new strains in supporting thousands
of additional American troops.
The plan gives a central role to the National Police, viewed as widely
infiltrated by Shiite militias and, despite an intensive American retraining
program, still suspected of a strongly Shiite sectarian bias. One American
officer said that the National Police commanders have been “dragging their
feet” over their role in the new plan and that they could seriously
compromise the operation.
Against those concerns, American officers cite several factors they believe
will lend impetus to the new offensive. The five additional brigades of
American troops committed by President Bush — approximately 21,500 American
soldiers, about 80 percent of them to be deployed in Baghdad — will roughly
triple the numbers of American soldiers available for ground operations, as
a relatively small proportion of the new troop strength will be needed for
“force protection,” the military term for troops who safeguard bases and
ensure the safety of other soldiers.
Since the resignation of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld after
the November elections, American commanders here have been more candid in
acknowledging something Mr. Rumsfeld often disputed: that the commanders
have had to play shell games with thinly stretched troops, and that many
crucial operations, including previous attempts to secure Baghdad, have
failed because troops have often been moved on to other operations, allowing
insurgents and militia groups to retake areas vacated by the Americans. The
new plan, the Americans say, will go a long way toward redressing that
problem, at least in Baghdad.
Another positive cited by American officers is the appointment by President
Bush of Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus as the new overall American commander in
Iraq, succeeding Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who will leave next month after
more 30 months in command of the war. General Petraeus, who has already
completed two 12-month tours in Iraq, has a reputation among officers who
have served under him as an imaginative commander who enlists strong
loyalties among his troops.
Many officers interviewed for this article said they still believed the tide
of the war here can be reversed, with the additional troops, the focus on
regaining control of Baghdad and the more consistent military strategy they
said they expected from General Petraeus. The 54-year-old native of upstate
New York, a marathon runner, will come to Baghdad after overseeing the
Army’s reworking of its counterinsurgency manual, parts of which he
redrafted himself.
American officials in Baghdad and Washington have said that they have
limited time — perhaps no more than six to nine months — to show gains from
the new American push before popular support erodes still further and the
onset of the 2008 presidential campaign leads American politicians to push
harder for a troop withdrawal. There are also questions of how long the
overstretched American military can sustain the stepped-up presence here.
Together, those factors have thrust American military planners into the
equivalent of a two-minute drill, trying to develop a plan that will yield
rapid gains in regaining control of Baghdad neighborhoods that have slipped
into near-anarchy as Sunni insurgents and Shiite death squads have run
rampant. While American officers are confident the additional troops will
make a major impact, they worry about what will happen when the American
troop commitment is scaled down again, and Iraqi troops are left facing the
main burden of patrolling the city.
That prospect raises the specter of repeating what has happened on several
other occasions in Baghdad: Americans clearing neighborhoods house-by-house,
only for insurgents and militiamen to reappear when Iraqi security forces
take over from the Americans and prove incapable of holding the ground, or
compliant with the marauding gunmen. That was the pattern with Operation
Together Forward, the last effort to secure Baghdad, which began with an
additional 7,000 American troops over the summer, and effectively abandoned
within two months when Iraqi troops failed to hold areas the Americans
handed over to them.
Another concern is that the target of the new Baghdad plan — Sunni and
Shiite extremists — may replicate the pattern American troops have seen
before when they have embarked on major offensives — of “melting away” only
to return later. Some officers report scattered indications that some Shiite
militiamen may already be heading for safer havens in southern Iraq,
calculating that they can wait the new offensive out before returning to the
capital.
“This is an enemy that will trade space for time,” one officer said.
Shiite neighborhoods present special challenges. Tightly woven networks of
militias backed by the government, the areas have been largely off-limits to
American forces. An early test will be Sadr City, the largest Shiite enclave
in the capital, and the main stronghold for the Mahdi Army militia, led by
the renegade cleric, Moktada al-Sadr. American officers say it is far from
clear that the Maliki government will permit American troops to operate
freely in the enclave.
The number of Americans to be based at the new joint security centers is
another matter under debate. At a minimum, according to officers involved in
the planning, there will be an American platoon, about 30 to 40 troops,
working from each new center, with another platoon patrolling nearby,
serving as both a quick reaction force to quell any surge of violence in the
area and also to protect the Americans stationed with the Iraqis.
That places American soldiers directly in neighborhoods where, until now,
they have appeared only transiently on patrols and raids. Under the new
plan, they will work closely with the Iraqi Army and police in an attempt to
establish a trust that has been elusive. The approach has been modeled on a
successful American campaign effort 18 months ago in Tal Afar, a northern
city that saw dramatic drops in violence and is now regarded as one of the
few success stories of the American campaign.
The Tal Afar strategy was developed by Col. H. R. McMaster, commander of the
Third Armored Cavalry Regiment at the time. Colonel McMaster, who is widely
regarded within the Army as one of its most creative counterinsurgency
thinker, as well as something of a maverick, has been involved in Pentagon
planning for the new Baghdad operation. But unlike Tal Afar, Baghdad is at
the heart of the country, with nearly a quarter of Iraq’s population, and
American officers say that success here will be far more complex than in the
operation masterminded by Colonel McMaster.
Another senior officer involved in developing the new plan said that the new
crackdown would have been much easier to implement if it had been adopted
earlier. He said that when he returned to Iraq for a second tour in the
fall, he was shocked to see how far the American war effort had regressed,
something he attributed to muddled strategy. “When I got back three months
ago, the hodge-podge called Baghdad was like a Rubik’s cube gone awry,” he
said.
In embattled West Baghdad, the plan is to place the new security centers
squarely where the sectarian fighting has been fiercest. One of the first
centers expected to begin operating is in Ghazaliya, a Sunni enclave that
has repeatedly come under assault from Shiite militias.
That seems certain to pose early on the central question that confronts
American commanders as they start the plan: will the Maliki government agree
to operations aimed at Shiite extremists, or resist them and push for the
focus to be laid on Sunni extremists attacking Shiite areas?
American officers say that only time will tell, but that they will be
surprised if Mr. Maliki and his top aides change colors, despite the
assurances the Iraqi leader is said to have offered President Bush. As
described by American commanders, the pattern in the eight months since Mr.
Maliki took office has been for the Shiite leaders who dominate the new
government to press the Americans to concentrate on Sunni extremists.
The argument is that Shiite death squads, which have accounted for an almost
equal number of deaths, are engaged in retaliatory attacks, and that those
will cease when the Sunni groups are rooted out.
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