[Mb-civic] Signs Point to Imminent Showdown in Iraq

[Armageddon A. Cummin]

Signs Point to Imminent Showdown in Iraq

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-iraq-showdown-ahead,0,6818579.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines

By ROBERT H. REID
Associated Press Writer

October 27, 2004, 10:26 PM EDT

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- An uptick in airstrikes and other military moves point to 
an imminent showdown between U.S. forces and Sunni Muslim insurgents west 
of Baghdad -- a decisive battle that could determine whether the campaign 
to bring democracy and stability to Iraq can succeed.

American officials have not confirmed a major assault is near against the 
insurgent bastions of Fallujah and neighboring Ramadi. But Iraqi Prime 
Minister Ayad Allawi has warned Fallujah leaders that force will be used if 
they do not hand over extremists, including terror mastermind Abu Musab 
al-Zarqawi.

A similar escalation in U.S. military actions and Iraqi government warnings 
occurred before a major offensive in Najaf forced militiamen loyal to 
radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to give up that holy city in late 
August. And U.S. and Iraqi troops retook Samarra from insurgents early this 
month.

Now U.S. airstrikes on purported al-Zarqawi positions in three 
neighborhoods of eastern and northern Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, 
have increased. And residents reported this week that Marines appeared to 
be reinforcing forward positions near key areas of the city. Other military 
units are on the move, including 800 British soldiers headed north to the 
U.S.-controlled zone.

The goal of an attack would be to restore government control in time for 
national elections by the end of January. However, an all-out assault on 
the scale of April's siege of Fallujah would carry enormous risk -- both 
political and military -- for the Americans and their Iraqi allies.

A series of policy mistakes by the U.S. military and the Bush 
administration have transformed Fallujah from a shabby, dusty backwater 
known regionally for mosques and tasty kebabs into a symbol of Arab pride 
and defiance of the United States throughout the Islamic world.

A videotape obtained Tuesday by Associated Press Television News featured a 
warning by masked gunmen that if Fallujah is subjected to an all-out 
assault, they will strike "with weapons and military tactics" that the 
Americans and their allies "have not experienced before."

Regardless of whether the threat was an empty boast, insurgents elsewhere 
in Iraq could be expected to step up attacks to try to relieve pressure on 
fighters in the Fallujah and Ramadi areas.

But the main problem an assault would pose for both the U.S. military and 
Allawi's government is political, such as a widespread public backlash. A 
nationwide association of Sunni clerics also has threatened to urge a 
boycott of the January elections if U.S. forces storm Fallujah.

So Iraqi officials appear anxious to convince the public that they have 
made every effort to solve the Fallujah crisis peacefully. The government 
spin is that the people of Fallujah are held as virtual hostages of armed 
foreign terrorists. Although Fallujah leaders insist there are no more than 
a few foreign fighters in the city, Arab journalists who have visited say 
they heard non-Iraqi accents at some checkpoints.

U.S. and Iraqi officials hope the Iraqi people are so fed up with suicide 
attacks, assassinations and kidnappings -- many of them believed 
orchestrated from Fallujah and Ramadi -- that they will acquiesce to the 
use of force.

"There are terror groups in this city who are taking human shields," Iraq's 
deputy prime minister for national security, Barham Saleh, said Wednesday, 
referring to Fallujah. "We are working hard to rid the people of Fallujah 
of them and to let security and stability prevail across Iraq."

In the event of an attack, Iraqi insurgents, who have skillfully used the 
Internet as a propaganda tool, would likely attempt to muster opposition in 
the Arab world with graphic accounts of the suffering and death of innocent 
women and children caught up in the fighting.

It's a tactic that worked when Marines attacked in Fallujah last April 
seeking to root out foreign fighters and capture the killers of four 
American security contractors whose mutilated bodies were hung from a 
bridge over the Euphrates River.

The attack was called off within weeks -- reportedly on orders from the 
White House -- after a wave of outrage among Sunni Muslims in Iraq and 
elsewhere over reports that hundreds of civilians had been killed. Ghazi 
al-Yawer, now the interim president, and other leading Sunni politicians 
threatened to resign from the then-Iraqi Governing Council if the assault 
did not stop.

After the Marines pulled back, the city fell under the control of extremist 
clerics and their mujahedeen allies, who had defended Fallujah against the 
Americans. The Fallujah Brigade, organized from residents to assume 
security duties, melted away within a few months.

Weeks after the siege ended, Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi and others 
complained that the April agreement enabled insurgents to transform 
Fallujah into a sanctuary. The wave of car bombings and the beheading of 
foreign hostages that accelerated after the end of the Fallujah fighting 
seemed to validate those criticisms.

To avoid a repeat of the April political disaster, the Iraqi government has 
been preparing the public for a showdown. On Wednesday, Allawi said more 
extremists were flooding into Fallujah.

Although negotiations with Fallujah clerics broke down this month, 
government ministers maintain they are still in contact with community 
leaders in hopes they will hand over al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian whom the 
clerics insist is not in the city.