EAST OF BAQUBA, Iraq, 8 October 2007 — US and Iraqi security forces have made “substantial gains” against Al-Qaeda in Iraq but must keep up the pressure, especially in drying up the network’s sources of cash, the US commander in Iraq said.
Gen. David Petraeus also defended an expanding policy that has seen tribes and neighborhood groups help secure their communities, insisting the US military was not trying to create more militias in Iraq.
In parts of Iraq, most notably western Anbar province, local Sunni Arab tribesmen have joined with Iraqi and US security forces to fight Al-Qaeda militants. “The actions against Al-Qaeda are encouraging. There have been substantial gains against Al-Qaeda,” Petraeus told a small group of reporters on Saturday at a US military base in Diyala province, where Al-Qaeda has been blamed for many attacks.
“Al Qaeda remains the wolf closest to the sled, the enemy that is always bent on re-igniting sectarian violence, causing the most horrific casualties. ... If you think we have our teeth into them, then we’ve got to keep them into them,” he said.
The US military blames Al-Qaeda in Iraq for most mass-casualty attacks. The group also often claims responsibility for killing Iraqi government officials and tribal leaders.
Petraeus said that besides combat against Al-Qaeda, an important element was to stifle the group’s financial resources. He pointed to the northern city of Mosul, where he said Al-Qaeda had been getting cash from businesses in cement, banking and real estate until security forces broke up the network.
“They were into everything and so what that enables them to do is to hire unemployed people. ... That’s what so pernicious about them,” Petraeus said.
Majority Shiites in Iraq have criticized the policy of involving tribes and local groups of men in providing security, saying US forces were creating more militias. Petraeus said the military was not creating more militias nor arming tribes. “What we are trying to do is take advantage of situations in which locals in some cases for the first time and perhaps ever since liberation ... are volunteering to serve in the Iraqi police,” Petraeus said.
“They are seen as a force that can become part of legitimate Iraqi security forces. ... The idea is not for them to remain on our payroll indefinitely.”
One of the architects in getting Sunni Arab men in Anbar to join up was tribal leader Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, who headed the Anbar Salvation Council until he was killed last month in a bombing claimed by Al-Qaeda.
Abu Risha was replaced as head of the council by his older brother, Ahmed, who Petraeus described as “brilliant.” “He is a very, very impressive individual,” Petraeus said of Ahmed Abu Risha, 42.
Meanwhile, Maliki welcomed yesterday a pact to end violence between the country’s two most powerful Shiite leaders Moqtada Sadr and Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim.
Sadr, the leader of Iraq’s most popular Shiite movement, and Hakim, the head of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC), a pillar of Maliki’s ruling coalition, announced their deal on Saturday.
“We received news of the signing of an agreement between the leaders of SIIC and the Sadr Movement with deep comfort,” Maliki said in a statement.
“This agreement came at the right time and expressed a high sense of religious and national responsibility,” added the statement from Maliki, himself a Shiite who leads the Dawa party at the head of the ruling coalition.
Also there were a spate of bomb attacks yesterday targeting police and military patrols and a government building in Baghdad killed at least nine Iraqis and wounded 12, security officials said.
“A roadside bomb went off yesterday morning when a US military patrol was passing though a main street in Al-Dora (in southwestern Baghdad) which killed three bystanders and wounded three others,” a security official said.
Another three civilians were killed and four injured when a roadside bomb exploded near an Iraqi police patrol in Baghdad’s eastern Al-Baladiyat neighborhood, another security official said. A car bomb also exploded outside the Baghdad provincial council building in the center of the Iraqi capital, killing three people and wounding five, the official said.
Iraqi and US military commanders say violence levels in the Iraqi capital are at their lowest levels this year, which they attribute to a “surge” of US troops since February. However, they say they are unable to completely halt bombings despite knocking out a string of car bomb factories in the rural belts surrounding Baghdad where most of the deadly devices are constructed.
