<< General Abizaid said there was increasing evidence that the Baathists were coordinating on a regional level with small numbers of foreign fighters and terrorists, and that the militants might even be close to forming a national leadership to direct the attacks. >>
New York Times Guerrillas Posing More Danger, Says U.S. By ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID E. SANGER November 14, 2003 WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 - The senior American commander in the Middle East said Thursday that the American-led occupation in Iraq faces no more than 5,000 guerrilla fighters, but that they are increasingly well organized and well financed, and are gradually expanding their attacks to the previously calm north and south. His estimate of the scale of the shadowy armed opposition, the most precise from a top commander, came in a broad outline of the military obstacles his forces face. The officer, Gen. John P. Abizaid of the Army, said loyalists to Saddam Hussein - not foreign terrorists, as some Bush administration officials have said - pose the greatest danger to American troops and to stability in Iraq. He said these militants were capitalizing on the political and economic turmoil to hire unemployed "angry young men" to do much of their "dirty work." As the general described the challenges, President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, made her own outline of the political steps to be taken in Iraq, acknowledging that the United States was changing course on forming an Iraqi government. Speaking to reporters at the White House, she said it was important to "find ways to accelerate the transfer of power to the Iraqis." "They are clamoring for it, they are, we believe, ready for it," she added. Ms. Rice said the administration had been persuaded by the Iraqi Governing Council that writing a constitution would take so long that Iraq and its American occupiers could not wait until it was complete to transfer more civilian authority. In brief remarks to reporters, President Bush said the United States was developing a plan to "encourage more Iraqis to assume more responsibility" quickly. Administration officials said Mr. Bush had approved in broad strokes the formation of a temporary government by the middle of next year. The urgency has raised new concerns about the administration's policy in Iraq. After a long period of criticism, both here and abroad, that the United States was not moving rapidly enough to hand over power, there is now a growing anxiety that, for domestic political reasons, it may move too rapidly. General Abizaid, who leads the United States Central Command, offered a sobering assessment of a guerrilla force that is dwarfed by the 155,000 American and allied troops and more than 100,000 Iraqi security forces, but is fighting an increasingly bloody low-intensity war that will claim more American lives. "The force of people actively armed and operating against us does not exceed 5,000," he said at a news conference at his headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., which was transmitted to the Pentagon. "People will say, well, that's a very small number. But when you understand that they're organized in cellular structure, that they have a brutal and determined cadre, that they know how to operate covertly, they have access to a lot of money and a lot of ammunition, you'll understand how dangerous they are." Military officials said the general's estimate was based on interrogations of captured fighters and other intelligence. With the deaths of some 40 Americans in the past two weeks clearly weighing on him - and in the shadow of Wednesday's deadly attack on an Italian military compound in Nasiriya - General Abizaid said United States forces needed better and more timely intelligence to crush those responsible for the roadside bombings, ambushes and mortar attacks. "Clearly I feel a sense of urgency," he said. "They're a despicable bunch of thugs that will be defeated." In Nasiriya, the Italian defense minister, Antonio Martino, toured the bombed compound on Thursday. He told Italian state television outside the headquarters that Italy had "some fairly reliable intelligence information" that the bombing was mounted by a combination of "re-grouped Al Qaeda terrorists" and former members of the Fedayeen Saddam, the most brutal of the paramilitary groups that constituted a private army for Mr. Hussein's family. But he offered no evidence. Investigators said they believed that only one vehicle, a Russian-made tanker truck, was used in the bombing, and that it carried two men. The death toll in the attack rose to 31, including 18 Italians and 13 Iraqis, and seemed likely to move higher. One of the 22 Italians injured, a 22-year-old soldier, was declared brain dead by doctors at a military hospital in Kuwait. State funerals are planned next week for the Italians, 16 soldiers and military policemen and 2 civilians working with them. While Italy has insisted that it will keep its troops in Iraq, the Japanese government, a similarly staunch ally of the Bush administration in its campaign in Iraq, suggested that it would delay sending ground troops. The government had expressed its intention to dispatch a small contingent of noncombat troops from its Self-Defense Forces before the end of the year, followed by a larger force next year, in what would amount to the first deployment of Japanese troops to a country at war since the end of World War II. But the attack on the Italians, in a zone that had been considered relatively safe and that the Japanese had regarded as a possible destination, caused them to backpedal. "We have consistently felt that we would like to participate in the reconstruction of Iraq as soon as possible," Yasuo Fukuda, the chief cabinet secretary and the government's chief spokesman, said at a news conference. "But we have to consider the changing situation and respond accordingly." In one measure of how serious the situation remains in Iraq, six and a half months after Mr. Bush declared major combat operations over, a senior military official confirmed that General Abizaid would soon transfer his Central Command base from Tampa to Qatar, because the general had been spending so much time in the region. The transfer was first reported on ABC and NBC news programs. General Abizaid said there was increasing evidence that the Baathists were coordinating on a regional level with small numbers of foreign fighters and terrorists, and that the militants might even be close to forming a national leadership to direct the attacks. He did not address the issue of whether Saddam Hussein was directing the attacks. "There is some level of coordination that's taken place at very high levels, although I'm not so sure I'd say that there's a national-level resistance leadership," he said. elaborating. "Not yet. It could develop." The general said he believed Mr. Hussein was still alive and in Iraq, but dismissed the notion that he planted the seeds for the current insurgency even before the war began last March. General Abizaid said the military's strategy for defeating the militants relied on stepping up the pressure on the fighters and turning over more security responsibilities to Iraqis. But he was surprisingly blunt in describing the challenges to achieve those goals. The 100,000 Iraqi security forces "are not as well trained as American and coalition forces yet," he said. "The police, in particular, need an awful lot of work." In contrast, Ms. Rice painted a more optimistic picture of how the transfer was going, and said there was a compelling reason to put Iraqi forces on the street. "I was asked the other day, `What makes you think the Iraqis will be more competent in dealing with foreign terrorists and with Baathists?' " she said. "And one answer is, `They will know that they're Baathists and they will know that they're foreign, which is already a very big step ahead.' " Ms. Rice described the change in the political landscape in Iraq as chiefly one of timing. "It's the time line on the permanent constitution that's really extended," she said. But other senior officials said that was a coded way of referring to looming arguments over the constitution, which they said were likely to focus on how much autonomy to allow provices, particularly the Kurds in the North, and the sensitive issue of whether Iraq will be a secular state, an Islamic one or something in between.
