Iraq: Signs of a lull

Arab media:

“More than ever, I believe the goal of a secure, stable and democratic Iraq is within reach”, Gates told a news conference after holding a flurry of meetings with Iraqi leaders in the embattled capital. Just ahead of the conference in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, a powerful car bomb exploded in a busy street in a nearby suburb, killing 14 people and wounding 32, Iraqi security officials said.

The blast occurred near a Shiite mosque in the Karrada neighborhood when the streets were crowded with people, they said.
A car bomb exploded earlier at Mosul killing a civilian soon after Gates had jetted into the northern city from Kabul, where a suicide attacker on Wednesday slammed a bomb-filled car into an Afghan army bus killing at least 16 people.
Car bombs also exploded in the center of the restive city of Bakouba, north of Baghdad, killing five people while a fourth attack targeted the oil hub of Kirkuk, where a car bomb killed two people.
Gates told reporters in Baghdad that he and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had discussed “a range of issues affecting the future of Iraq”.

“There has been a dramatic change in the security situation across the nation”, the secretary averred, pointing to the fact that violence levels were the lowest in two years, “a substantial number” of refugees had returned and some 70,000 Iraqis had joined US forces in fighting against Al-Qaeda.

“One of the main reasons of my visit is to see how we can best work together not only to sustain the momentum of recent months but to build upon it”, Gates said.
Iraqis who have chosen to fight against Al-Qaeda needed to be integrated into the security forces or provided with job opportunities, he noted.

“We need to be patient and also need to be absolutely resolved in our desire to see the nascent signs of hope across Iraq expand and flourish so that all Iraqis can enjoy peace and prosperity”. Gates’ visit came 10 days after US President George W. Bush and Maliki agreed on a long-term American military presence in Iraq that would go beyond 2008.
“The Maliki government took a critical step by signing with us a declaration of principles that sets a stage for future US-Iraqi cooperation”, Gates said, welcoming the accord.

In a separate statement Maliki said he told Gates that Iraq’s security forces were now at an “advanced stage” of development.
“I assured that our armed forces had reached an advanced stage and have proved their high ability in facing terrorists and outlaws”, Maliki said.

The prime minister also indicated that the accord with Washington to keep American forces in Iraq beyond 2008 would go a long way in training Iraqi forces further and give them “a bigger chance of taking the matter in their hands”.
Iraqi Defense Minister Abdelkader Jassem Mohammad, who also addressed the news conference with Gates, said during the talks with his counterpart he stressed the need to develop a sophisticated Iraqi army.

“We need more helicopters who can give air support to our troops during missions”, he said.
In Mosul where he landed, Gates met senior American military commanders who briefed him about the situation along the Iraq-Turkey border, where the Turkish army was pursuing Kurdish rebels, and also in Mosul and the restive province of Diyala.

Gates said he was told the situation in Mosul remained “challenging” and the commanders needed more combat power. “What I heard them [the commanders] say was... they did need some additional force”, he said, adding the commanders however requested Iraqi troops, not American soldiers.

Gates’ visit came at a time when US and Iraqi officials were hailing a major reduction in violence on the back of a “surge” in US troop numbers launched in February.

As well as the extra US troops, the fall in violence has also been attributed to a rising number of Sunnite Arabs aligning with US forces to fight Al-Qaeda, and a freeze in the activities of the militia arm of the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr.
For his part, General David Petraeus, the senior American commander in Iraq, expressed satisfaction at the progress made in Iraq but said the military was still far from any victory dance.

“Nobody in uniform is doing victory dances in the end zone”, Petraeus told reporters travelling with Gates.
Gates said that the violence in Iraq had dropped to levels not seen since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in the town of Samarra that unleashed brutal Shiite and Sunnite conflict nearly two years ago.
Petraeus, who in September announced to Congress the first possible elements of an American troop reduction in Iraq, was cautious.

“We work hard to build up on the progress made” but “we have to be careful not to feel too successful”.
Petraeus attributed the drop in violence to series of factors, including a rise in the number of Iraqi security personnel, rejection of Al-Qaeda by the Sunnite Arabs, rising support from neighboring countries like Syria and a six-month cease-fire by Moktada al-Sadr.

He said the US military was keenly watching Iran and its promise to help in curbing bloodshed in Iraq.
“We have seen reduction of signature attacks [explosively formed penetrators]” but “we are all in a wait and see mode”.
The US military has regularly charged that Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite extremists smuggle EFPs, fist-sized bombs that cut through a heavily armored military vehicle, and use them against the coalition forces.
But last month Gates told reporters in Washington that he believed Teheran had assured Baghdad it was helping in controlling the bloodshed.

Al-Qaeda retreating northward
The surge in American troop numbers and the recent alignment of some Sunnite Arabs with the Americans against Al-Qaeda have pushed fighters of the extremist organization to migrate to northern areas of Iraq like the provinces of Nineveh, Kirkuk and Salaheddin, after being chased out of safe havens in Baghdad and other volatile regions like the western province of Anbar, according to US military officials.

In the first years after the fall of the former regime, Anbar was the main stronghold of Al-Qaeda-led Sunnite insurgents fighting the occupation. But since September 2006, Sunnite tribes there have aligned with US forces and turned against the group following its excessive brutality in which many Sunnites were also slaughtered.

The alliance of these Sunnites and US soldiers has dramatically changed the situation in Anbar, while in Baghdad and the southern belts outside it a series of military crackdowns have massively dented the group’s networks.
Major-General Rick Lynch, who heads the US forces in Central Iraq, last month told reporters that Al-Qaeda in Iraq was “losing support from local people” as more and more Sunnites turned against it.

In Baghdad itself they have lost ground in their former strongholds such as Adhamiya, Ghazaliya, Ameriya and Jihad.
The group’s increased movements in the North is confirmed by the fact that as violence in Baghad and Anbar fell, there has been a steady rise in bloodshed in the North.

On December 5, The New York Times reported that the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Egyptian-born Abu Ayyoub al-Masri, himself visited Nineveh Province twice recently.

During his visit last week, Gates specifically mentioned that Mosul was witnessing increased militant activities.
In fact, he jetted into Mosul from Kabul to get a first hand briefing from the ground commanders in and around Nineveh.
The militant group has, however, managed to maintain its threat in Diyala Province, north of Baghdad where, despite military assaults, suicide attacks are still a regular occurrence.
Diyala has been a stronghold of Al-Qaeda for many years. The former head of the group, Abu Musaab al-Zarkawi, was slain in a US air strike in the province last year.

To counter them the US military last month began Operation Iron Hammer, which encompasses not just Diyala, but also Salaheddin, Nineveh and Kirkuk provinces.

Arabs and Kurds reach accord in Kirkuk
Arab and Kurdish parties in Iraq’s northern oil city of Kirkuk last week clinched a deal under which Arabs will end their boycott of the provincial council in return for a more equal sharing of power.

The “in principle” agreement was reached on December 2, according to the chief of the Kirkuk provincial council, Razgar Ali, a leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) headed by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.
Ethnic Turkmen, however, have refused to join the agreement and will continue boycotting the 41-member council.
Kirkuk has been gripped by ethnic tension since the invasion of 2003, with Kurds demanding that the city be incorporated into the autonomous Kurdish region and Arabs and ethnic Turkmen opposing this, saying they fear non-Kurdish communities will be marginalized.

A referendum to determine the future of the city, which sits on the second-largest oil and gas reserves in Iraq, was to have been held before the end of the year but officials acknowledge there is too little time left.
Under the weekend deal the six Arab members of the provincial council will end their boycott, called more than a year ago in protest at what they said was the “domination” of Kurdish parties in the multi-ethnic council.
The two major Kurdish parties, the PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), occupy 26 seats in the council while the Turkmen Front has the remaining nine.

“It is a positive step towards building Kirkuk and bolstering peaceful co-existence in a partnership in which decisions will be made without injustice”, said Ali, calling at the same time on the Turkmen Front to join the agreement.
An Arab member of the council, Rakan Saeed al-Juburi, called for speedy implementation of the agreement.
“We will get, for the first time, the post of Kirkuk’s deputy governor and the deputy head of the judicial council. Posts will be distributed equally -- 32 percent each for Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens and the remaining four percent for the Armenian and Chaldaean-Assyrian communities, and for the Sabaeans”, Juburi said.

A Turkmen official declared that Kirkuk’s problems “cannot be resolved by compensating one side while marginalizing another.

“We have demanded an end to the arrest and marginalization of Turkmens and the need to adopt the Turkmen language officially in Kirkuk, but there has been no response”, said Ali Mahdi, deputy leader of Turkmen Eli Party.
Kirkuk’s population is estimated to be one million, a mixture of Turkmens, Kurds and Sunnite Arabs, with small Christian Chaldaean-Assyrian and Armenian communities and a community of Sabaeans, a group of obscure origin.
US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said at the end of recent a six-day Iraqi visit that there was no time left this year to hold a referendum, which is required under Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution.
“It is my understanding that an effort will be made in the new year to get a process going forward that deals with Article 140 and the issue of Kirkuk”, he told reporters in Baghdad.


Red Crescent: First drop in Iraq’s internally displaced
The number of internally displaced Iraqis fell by 4.8 percent in October, or nearly 110,000 people, marking the first significant drop in two years, the Iraqi Red Crescent has said.
As of October 30, it said in its latest report, there were 2,189,804 Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in Iraq compared to 2,299,425 at the end of September.

They had fled their homes in the wake of the invasion of Iraq and a subsequent explosion of sectarian violence in February last year after the bombing of the Shiite shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad. The figures mark the first time the number of displaced families has dipped month on month after a steady rise that began after the Samarra bombing.
The Red Crescent offered no explanation for the trend, but the Iraqi government has said IDPs and refugees in neighboring countries are beginning to return to their homes in numbers in the wake of a drop in violence across the country.
The Red Crescent said children under the age of 12 accounted for 58.6 percent of the internally displaced population.
“In addition to their plight as being displaced, the majority suffer from disease, poverty and malnutrition”, the agency said.
“Children do not attend schools and are being sheltered in tents, abandoned government buildings with no water or electricity, mosques, churches, or with relatives.”

The independent organization said in a separate report earlier this week that between 25,000 and 28,000 Iraqi refugees had come home from Syria since mid-September.

New rules for private guards in Iraq
Officials in Washington have laid down new rules for private guards protecting diplomats in Iraq, a State Department spokesman said, months after a deadly shooting involving security contractors in Baghdad.

Resulting from the notorious September shooting involving the US security firm Blackwater, in which 17 Iraqis died, an agreement was signed by the deputy secretaries of the Defense and State departments, Gordon England and John Negroponte, respectively.

Approved by US Ambassador in Baghdad Ryan Crocker and General Petraeus, the 12-page document “basically details and memorializes the policies and procedures that we’ve agreed to”, said State Department spokesman Tom Casey. In the September shooting, Blackwater staff opened fire in a crowded Baghdad neighborhood as they protected a State Department convoy. Blackwater said the guards came under attack.

The Iraqi government in October said that an investigation into the incident concluded the US motorcade had not come under any attack and that the Blackwater guards had opened fire without cause.
The US Justice Department is still investigating the incident.
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