BAGHDAD, 1 September 2006 — Iraq’s prime minister said his forces should control most of Iraq by the end of the year, as President George W. Bush launched a round of pre-election speeches yesterday urging Americans to back US engagement.
Confirming occupying troops would hand over a second Iraqi province to local security forces next month, Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki also renewed a forecast that his army and police would be in charge across much of Iraq soon: “By the end of the year we hope that security in most of the provinces will be handed over,” Maliki told reporters, saying British troops would transfer control of southern Dhi Qar province in September. He has said before Iraqis may be running all but Baghdad and the violent Sunni region of Anbar this year.
With congressional elections two months away, Bush is facing demands from opposition Democrats for a timeline for withdrawal from an increasingly unpopular engagement in Iraq and makes the first of a series of speeches to put his case later yesterday.
Key to his withdrawal plan is the build-up of Iraqi forces and ensuring their cohesion in the face of pressures pushing Iraq’s Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds and others toward civil war.
“If we leave Iraq before the job is done, it will create a terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East,” Bush said on Wednesday. “A terrorist state with the capacity to fund its activities because of the oil reserves.” Yesterday’s speech is the first of several around the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 Islamist attacks on New York and Washington and opens the third such tour by Bush in a year. It will explain the “roots of the ideological struggle in the lack of freedom in the Middle East,” a White House spokeswoman said.
The US commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, said on Wednesday he expected Iraq forces to be ready within 12 to 18 months to operate with little US assistance and praised their progress in recent weeks, despite a range of violent threats to Maliki’s three-month-old, Shiite-led national unity government.
Insurgents killed at least 32 people yesterday, including 14 in a car bomb attack on a popular Baghdad market.
A car bomb went off shortly before curfew in the mainly Shiite southern neighborhood of Al-Amin leaving, killing 14 people and wounding 38, including six women, a medic from the capital’s Al-Kindi hospital said.
Insurgents, mainly Sunni extremists, often target markets to kill civilians who venture out to buy household goods before the dusk-to-dawn curfew begins.
Earlier in the day, another 18 people were killed in a series of attacks, as the war-torn country’s latest round of bloodletting claimed more than 250 lives in five chaotic days.
Iraq’s ongoing bloodletting has also hit the US military, with 15 servicemen killed since Sunday, mainly in roadside bomb attacks.
Limited Cabinet Reshuffle
Faction-fighting among the Shiite majority, dominant in the oil-rich south, poses a problem for government cohesion and, after just three months in office, Maliki confirmed his plan for a “limited Cabinet reshuffle” once Parliament resumes next week.
Officials expect changes mainly among supporters of radical young Shiite leader Moqtada Al-Sadr, whose presence in the coalition has been controversial given the accusations — routinely denied — that his Mehdi Army militia is behind some of the violence.
