Iraq Attacks Fall 60 Percent, Petraeus Says.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/world/middleeast/30iraq.html?_r=2&ref=worldspecial&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
By STEPHEN FARRELL and SOLOMON MOORE
Published: December 30, 2007
BAGHDAD — The top American military commander in Iraq said Saturday that violent attacks in the country had fallen by 60 percent since June, but cautioned that security gains were “tenuous” and “fragile,” requiring political and economic progress to cement them.
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Speaking to reporters in an end-of-year briefing at the American Embassy in Baghdad, General Petraeus said that coalition-force casualties were down “substantially,” and that civilian casualties had fallen “dramatically.”
“The level of attacks for about the last 11 weeks or so has been one not seen consistently since the late spring and summer of 2005,” he said. “The number of high-profile attacks, that is car bombs, suicide car bombs and suicide vest attacks, is also down, also roughly 60 percent” since their height in March.
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Although the data showed a sharp fall in civilian deaths from their peak between mid-2006 and mid-2007, the rate of decline appeared to level off in the past two months.
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However, he conceded that while attacks were down in the rest of the country, they had not fallen in the northern province of Nineveh, which includes Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, with a population of 1.7 million.
He said that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia remained active in northern Iraq, where it was pushed after offensive operations in Baghdad and Anbar Province, and that the rate of attacks in Nineveh “has just been variable and probably slightly up.”
One reason for the continuing violence, he said, was that the area remained “very important” to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia because it is crossed by the routes into Iraq from Syria and Turkey.
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Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, told reporters in a separate briefing that 75 percent of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s networks and safe havens had been destroyed. He said that 18,000 people had been killed by violence so far in 2007, and that insurgent attacks had declined from 25 a day in February in Baghdad to as few as one during some days in December.
General Khalaf said the turning point was the rise of the so-called Sunni Awakening Councils in Anbar Province, the insurgents’ former stronghold. He said that once the tribal groups turned against the militants there, the Interior Ministry was able to focus on Baghdad. The general acknowledged, however, that Diyala Province had remained difficult to control because of continuing insurgent attacks.
“That’s the coming fight,” he said of Diyala and other troublesome areas north of Baghdad.
General Petraeus acknowledged that while Iraq had been brought back from “the brink of a civil war” in 2007, Iraqi and American commanders “clearly have more work to do in certain areas in the weeks and months ahead.”
General Petraeus identified numerous reasons for the fall in violence, namely the increase in American troops and the decision to move them to smaller bases where they are “living among those we are trying to protect.” He cited aggressive offensive operations, using a mixture of conventional and special forces, to focus on the insurgents’ strongholds and networks.
He also credited the Iraqis’ own “surge” of more than 100,000 soldiers and police officers, the rejection of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia by the Sunni awakening movement in former insurgent strongholds, and the cease-fire by the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia loyal to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr, although he said some “splinter elements” continued to operate.
The general said outside factors included the decisions by some countries to curb the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq, singling out Syria.
Regarding Iran, he noted a fall in attacks using what he described as Iranian-provided “signature weapons”: RPG 29 rocket-propelled grenades, the sophisticated roadside bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, large-caliber rockets and portable air-defense systems.
He said he hoped Iran “will live up to the promises its senior leaders made to Iraq’s senior leaders” to stop what the Americans claim are the training, financing, arming and directing of “special groups” within Shiite militias that have attacked coalition forces.
Iran has consistently denied helping militias attack coalition forces in Iraq.
For his part, General Khalaf said that Iraq’s Interior Ministry, which he conceded had been infiltrated by Shiite militias in the past, was gradually integrating more Sunni Arabs into its ranks and weeding out officers believed to have dubious allegiances.
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It seems the American forces are making progress in Iraq .... and nobody is discussing these positive developments. Why not, do you think ?
It is amazing that the Surrender wing of the Democratic party (consisting of all friggin democrats in the world) have miraculously disappeared off of tv ten times a day demanding that we surrender.
I don't think this will last. They are too heavily invested in our defeat to abandon their efforts to assist the terrorists. Not to mention that they and the terrorists have the same opinion of the USA.
I expect the drum beat to surrender to resume as soon as Harry gets back from gathering his cut of the Mafia money in Vegas and Nancy gets paid off from "sadists for anal sex" lobbies in her home district. They both have been "home on vacation" doing whatever off-duty surrenderists do on vacation you see.
Dems bring a whole new meaning to "Support The Troops"... just by their addition of " Send Habib and Mo an IED Today!"