Report: Attacks In Iraq At 2-Year High
Attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops and Iraqi civilians jumped sharply in recent months to the highest level since Iraq regained its sovereignty in June 2004, the Pentagon told Congress on Monday in the latest indication of that country's spiraling violence.
In a report issued the same day Robert Gates took over as defense secretary, the Pentagon said that from mid-August to mid-November, the weekly average number of attacks increased 22 percent from the previous three months. The worst violence was in Baghdad and in the western province of Anbar, long the focus of activity by Sunni insurgents.
Meanwhile Monday, the U.S. military announced the deaths of three U.S. military personnel, raising to 60 the number of Americans killed in December. One soldier died when a Bradley fighting vehicle rolled over north of Baghdad on Monday, and a Marine and a soldier died of combat wounds in separate incidents Friday and Saturday, it said.
At least 2,948 members of the U.S. military have died since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
At a ceremonial swearing-in attended by President Bush, Gates warned that failure in Iraq would be a "calamity that would haunt our nation, impair our credibility and endanger Americans for decades to come." He said he intended to go to Iraq soon to get the "unvarnished" advice of U.S. commanders on how to stabilize the country.
A bar chart in the Pentagon's report to Congress gave no exact numbers but indicated the weekly average had approached 1,000 in the latest period, up from about 800 per week from the May-to-August period. Statistics provided separately by the Pentagon said weekly attacks had averaged 959 in the latest period.
The report also said the Iraqi government's failure to end sectarian violence has eroded ordinary Iraqis' confidence in their future. That conclusion reflects some of the Bush administration's doubt about the ability of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to make the hard decisions U.S. officials insist are needed to quell the violence.
"The failure of the government to implement concrete actions in these areas has contributed to a situation in which, as of October 2006, there were more Iraqis who expressed a lack of confidence in their government's ability to improve the situation than there were in July 2006," it said, calling for urgent action in Baghdad.
In other developments:
Issued just hours after Gates took the oath of office to replace Donald H. Rumsfeld, and amid an effort by the Bush administration to find a new war strategy, the report made no mention of a timetable for ending U.S. military involvement.
It said that as security conditions permit and the Iraqi army and police become more capable, U.S. forces will move out of the cities, reduce the number of bases from which they operate and conduct fewer visible patrols.
Overall, the 49-page report, the latest in a series of quarterly updates, is titled "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq." It used somewhat less stark language to describe the security and political problems in Iraq than the previous version sent to Congress on Sept. 1. Still, the outlook presented in the report was far from rosy.
"The national perception of worsening conditions for peace and stability within Iraq has been accompanied by erosion of confidence in the ability of the government of Iraq to protect its citizens," the report said. One-quarter of the population believes the army and police are corrupt and driven by sectarian interests, it added.
The development of an Iraqi army and police is making progress, the report said, but much remains to be done.
It said, for example, that the goal of training and equipping an Iraqi army of about 137,000 soldiers is 98 percent completed, although it also noted that the actual number of troops available for duty on any given day is far fewer, due to absenteeism, casualties, desertions and leaves of absence.
The report indicated that the number of Iraqi army battalions in combat — generally numbering a few hundred soldiers each — has declined from 114 battalions in August to 113 in October and 112 last month. The decline was not explained.
In Iraq, officials said Monday that private guards in SUVs helped Iraq's former electricity minister escape from a police station just outside the heavily fortified Green Zone where the dual U.S.-Iraqi citizen was being held on corruption charges.
Ayham al-Samaraie, who had escaped once before after being convicted in October, walked out of the detention facility Sunday with private security experts who once protected him, said Faris Kareem, deputy head of Iraq's Public Integrity Commission.
Kareem said the security agents were "foreign," but provided no further details.
It was the second high-profile escape in chaotic Iraq this month. On Dec. 9, Ayman Sabawi, a nephew of Saddam Hussein serving a life sentence for bomb-making, escaped from a prison in northern Iraq aided by a police officer, authorities said.
Discussing the latest incident, Ali al-Shabout, a spokesman for the anti-corruption commission, said officers at the Karadat Mariam police station allowed uniformed men who appeared to be security guards into the building. The officers realized later that al-Samaraie had left with the agents, he said.
"They didn't discover that until they went into his room later and found he was missing," al-Shabout said.
Lou Fintor, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy, which is in the Green Zone, said American officials had been in touch with al-Samaraie in prison to provide basic consular services for the U.S. citizen and were aware of the report that he was missing.
"There are conflicting reports surrounding his disappearance," Fintor said. "We cannot comment further until the facts are determined. We are coordinating with the Iraqi government, which is currently conducting an investigation into this matter."
Kareem said al-Samaraie had been convicted of corruption and sentenced to two years in prison for ordering the purchase of a $750,000 generator for the town of Kut, southeast of Baghdad, even though he had received a report that the equipment was broken.
A judge threw out the conviction on appeal several days ago, but al-Samaraie had been scheduled to appear in court Monday, Kareem said.
He still faces trial on 12 other counts of corruption. The charges concern an estimated $2 billion in missing funds for contracts on rebuilding Iraq's electrical infrastructure.
Al-Samaraie is the only Iraqi official to have been convicted and jailed on corruption charges, although arrest warrants have been issued for about 90 former officials, including 15 ex-Cabinet ministers, according to the anti-corruption commission.