BAGHDAD, 25 July 2006 — Fresh American troops are to be brought into Baghdad, US officers said yesterday, even as Iraq’s embattled government insisted it remains on course to gradually take full control of the country’s security.
A six-week-old security clampdown in the capital has failed to quell a surge in sectarian violence, but Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki defended his record and said US soldiers would not stay in Iraq for decades or “even years.”
Nevertheless, while Maliki began a trip to Britain and the United States, the violence raged on at home. One Iraqi soldier was killed and two wounded yesterday in one of three Baghdad bombings in which one civilian was also killed, defense officials said.
The bodyguard of a Sunni politician was shot dead in west Baghdad, and the bodies of at least 27 murder victims were discovered, including eight found shot dead and dumped by the roadside in the southwest of the city.
Outside the capital, suicide bombings against security forces in the northern cities of Mosul and Samarra left five soldiers and one civilian dead and wounded 21 people, including six children. On Sunday, two bomb attacks in the mainly Shiite east of the capital killed at least 42 people, and a car bomb outside a courthouse in the northern oil city of Kirkuk ripped through a crowded street killing 22 people.
Against this background, US troops patrolling the west of Baghdad — where the city’s Sunni minority has recently suffered a series of murderous attacks by Shiite militias — said they were beefing up their presence. The size of the redeployment has not been revealed, but units which were due to be sent elsewhere in the country are being diverted to the capital.
“They’ve been redirected to Baghdad,” US Maj. Scott Coulson said. “Where they were going before, they’re not going now.” On June 14, Maliki unveiled Operation Forward Together, a plan to put 43,000 Iraqi Army and police and 7,200 US troops into Baghdad to halt the bloodletting and bring prestige to a government that has struggled to assert its authority.
Maliki, who arrived in Britain yesterday for talks with Prime Minister Tony Blair, was due in the United States today for talks on security and economic development with his government’s main foreign backer.
Maliki said in a BBC interview that Iraq’s elected political leaders were “working on putting an end to the sectarian issue and there is continuing efforts in that direction. The civil war will not happen to Iraq.”
He said the government was also using security forces to stop violent crime — “another type of conflict” — and said ending violence “will involve working with the surrounding countries and also disarming militias.” Asked how long foreign troops were needed in Iraq, he replied: “Definitely not decades, not even years.”
