Pentagon sees spiraling cycles of Iraq violence

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a new assessment of Iraq they acknowledged as "pretty sober," senior Pentagon officials sketched out a bloody landscape Friday of sectarian violence spreading beyond Baghdad and execution-style assassinations and terrorist bombings by increasingly entrenched private militias and death squads.

"This is probably the most complex combat environment we have seen since the war began," said Rear Adm. William Sullivan, the top strategic planner for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The severity and breadth of the Defense Department report, which is required four times a year by Congress, appeared to undercut recent statements by President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that conditions in Iraq are difficult but that steady progress is being made.

The grim thrust of the report underscores that even with the establishment of an elected Iraqi government under a new constitution, chaos and bloodshed have only increased, driving growing numbers of families from their homes and jobs.

Three-month jump

In the period covered by the assessment, roughly mid-May through mid-August, weekly attacks on civilians rose 15 percent over the previous three-month period, while Iraqi casualties shot up 51 percent.

Sunni and Shiite groups, including al-Qaida in Iraq and Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, "are increasingly locked in retaliatory violence and are contesting control of ethnically mixed areas to expand their existing areas of influence," the report said.

"Death squads and terrorists are locked in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife," it stated, creating "increasing numbers of internally displaced persons," or refugees.

Bush and others argue that the bloody conflict is concentrated in Baghdad, where U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces are making a major push to quell the violence, but the Pentagon assessment says sectarian bloodletting "is gradually spreading north into Diyala Province and Kirkuk as Sunni, [Shiite] and Kurdish groups compete for provincial influence."

Concern about civil war "has increased in recent months" within the civilian community, the report said.

The U.S. strategy for prevailing over the rising violence and worsening conditions in Iraq, as explained this week by Bush and other administration officials, is for the 140,000 American troops in Iraq to train and fight alongside Iraqi security forces while the central government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki gathers control of the fractious nation.

U.S. officials are relying on al-Maliki to get the private militias disarmed and off the streets, a politically tricky business given that government ministries and the legislature are threaded with powerful politicians connected with sectarian organizations, like al-Mahdi, which often have armed militant wings.

But the United States will not undertake the dangerous job of dismantling the militias, Pentagon officials said.

That mission "has to be Iraqi-led," Sullivan said, adding that while some militia members may disarm voluntarily, others will have their weapons taken away by force.

There are "almost daily discussions" on the issue between al-Maliki and senior U.S. military commanders in Iraq, he said.

Peter Rodman, a top Pentagon policymaker, said the fact that there is a national government in place is encouraging.

"You have a functioning national government and that is not a small matter, and a legislature elected in a 77 percent [voter] turnout," he said. Iraqi security forces are operating out on the streets, and Iraq's economy is forecast to grow 4 percent, he added, citing a World Bank estimate.

However the latest Pentagon report, the fifth quarterly report on Iraq, suggests a darker picture.

Corruption in government ministries "has hampered" their performance, but the Iraqi government has difficulty prosecuting cases because of a shortage of about 750 judges and because of intimidation of judges and prosecutors.

Iraqi officials cooperating with or merely visiting American officials have received death threats and one has been kidnapped, hampering further cooperation, the report said.

Readiness declines

Despite claims of U.S. officials that Iraqi security forces are increasingly well-trained and equipped, the report said the number of national police battalions able to lead operations has dropped from six battalions to two since spring. Officials could not immediately explain why.

Officials also acknowledged that Iraqi police ranks have been heavily infiltrated by militia loyalists. Reports of civilians being dragged away and killed by unknown gunmen in police uniforms have become common in Baghdad.

Perhaps most tragic is the steady climb in the number of attacks on civilians.

These attacks rose from an average of more than 400 per week in the spring of 2004, before an interim Iraqi government took over, to almost 800 this summer as the al-Maliki government attempted to extend its reach.