Assault on Sunni insurgents likely after president's win

Knight Ridder Newspapers and Gannett News Service

Ayad Allawi's demands of Fallujah go unanswered.

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The new approach is fraught with risks, and it could take Bush a large part — perhaps all — of his second term, billions more taxpayers' dollars and more American lives to put Iraq on a path toward peace and begin a U.S. troop withdrawal.

"This is only the first stage of a very long process that will likely take years," said Michael Eisenstadt, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "We should lower our expectations for any rapid successes."

More than 1,100 Americans and thousands of Iraqis have been killed in the war. But Bush no longer has to weigh the political risks of the Iraq war.

"We had to stop some operations until the [U.S.] elections were over," said a senior Iraqi Defense Ministry official who requested anonymity. "The Iraqi government requested support from the American side in the past, but the Americans were reluctant to launch military operations because they were worried about American public opinion. Now, their hands are free."

In his victory speech yesterday, Bush was optimistic.

"We'll help the emerging democracies of Iraq and Afghanistan so they can grow in strength and defend their freedom, and then our servicemen and women will come home with the honor they have earned," he said.

"The president is in a stronger position," Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister of the U.S.-backed interim Iraqi government, said in Baghdad. "What he's doing here is right and just. We just need to complete the mission."

The resistance is believed to involve up to 20,000 fighters and 100,000 supporters led by former Saddam Hussein regime officials, Islamic fundamentalists and Iraqi nationalists.

U.S. and Iraqi government forces have been building up for a drive to seize Fallujah, Ramadi and other insurgent-held towns and cities in the region northwest of Baghdad. The area is dominated by minority Sunni Muslims, who formed the bedrock of Saddam's regime.

	Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has evaded capture.

Fallujah, a bombed-out city of 300,000 that many have fled fearing a punishing battle, is believed to be home to Iraq's most notorious terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The Jordanian, who claims to be allied with Osama bin Laden, has taken responsibility for multiple beheadings and large-scale bombings in Iraq.

Military intelligence officials think the insurgents of Fallujah are making many of the car and roadside bombs being used against U.S. troops across Iraq.

Fallujah, where Sunni Arab fighters held off Marines for weeks last spring, has also become a national symbol of the growing will to repel the 138,000 U.S. troops still in Iraq.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has ordered Fallujans to turn over Zarqawi and provide intelligence on the insurgents there or face a "military solution."

So far, the demands have gone unanswered, prompting U.S. and Iraqi forces to begin logistical preparations for a large attack.

U.S. warplanes have been bombing Fallujah almost daily while British troops have moved north from Basra to Baghdad to free up U.S. forces there.

Victory in Fallujah — the city where U.S. contract workers were killed and burned last spring and where Marines died in subsequent retaliation attacks — will require taking urban terrain and holding it against insurgents who are often indistinguishable from innocent civilians.

The administration's hope is that Iraqi forces can do much of the hard work, both to prove they are capable and to keep American troops from being seen killing large numbers of Iraqis.

"The 25 million people liberated in that country are going to have to be the ones to make that country work," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently told reporters while characterizing the counterinsurgency in Iraq. "... They [Iraqis] have a good crack at making it."

There are doubts.

Some of the most respected experts analyzing the war fear the Iraqi forces need more time before carrying out the kind of large and extremely violent strike anticipated in Fallujah. In previous attempts to take the city, some Iraqi troops fled their posts or joined the insurgents.

"I'm inclined to think you're better off waiting until well into 2005 before you do this kind of a big raid," said Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution. "But that's just a gut instinct." After the military secures Fallujah and the other towns, the strategy calls for holding elections for a national assembly by Jan. 31. The assembly would choose a transitional government and draft a new constitution.

The military operation needs to happen quickly to allow time for Sunni emotions to cool. Civilian casualties could be high, making it difficult for Iraqi leaders to persuade the Sunnis to participate in elections.

Sunnis make up about 20 percent of Iraq's population of 26 million. Their participation in the election is essential to crippling the insurgency. If they don't participate, they would view the transitional government — controlled by majority Shiite Muslims and minority Kurds — as illegitimate.

"It will be considered an illegitimate government, which would be worse than not having elections at all," warned Peter Khalil, a Brookings Institution expert who was a senior security adviser to L. Paul Bremer, the former U.S. administrator of Iraq.

U.S. and Iraqi officials and independent experts cautioned that the United States and Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi face considerable risks in pursuing the new strategy, especially the current plan to have U.S. troops turn over reclaimed cities and towns to Iraqi security forces.

Sunnis will not abide the presence of U.S. troops, experts said. And the Pentagon is eager to limit the exposure of U.S. soldiers to attacks. But experts questioned whether inexperienced Iraqi security forces, which are believed to be penetrated by the resistance, can prevent insurgents from reasserting control of Sunni population centers.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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