Ramadi recovery underway

John Burns:

SUNNI merchants watched warily from behind neat stacks of fruit and vegetables as Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno walked with a platoon of bodyguards through the Qatana bazaar here one recent afternoon. At last, one leathery-faced trader glanced furtively up and down the narrow, refuse-strewn street to check who might be listening, then broke the silence.

“America good! Al Qaeda bad!” he said in halting English, flashing a thumb’s-up in the direction of America’s second-ranking commander in Iraq.

Until only a few months ago, the Central Street bazaar was enemy territory, watched over by American machine-gunners in sandbagged bunkers on the roof of the governor’s building across the road. Ramadi was Iraq’s most dangerous city, and the area around the building the most deadly place in Ramadi. Now, a pact between local tribal sheiks and American commanders has sent thousands of young Iraqis from Anbar Province into the fight against extremists linked to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. The deal has all but ended the fighting in Ramadi and recast the city as a symbol of hope that the tide of the war may yet be reversed to favor the Americans and their Iraqi allies.

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Two factors that have led to the astonishing success in Anbar — the Sunnis’ dominance of the province and the nature of their foe here — could have the opposite effect elsewhere, especially in Baghdad. There the population is an explosive mix of sects, rather than largely Sunni. And the Sunnis’ fight — explicitly so, in the case of many of the new volunteers — is not just against Al Qaeda-linked extremists, but ultimately against the American presence here, and beyond the Americans, the new power of the majority Shiites.

The Anbar turnaround developed just as Mr. Bush was committing nearly 30,000 additional American troops to Iraq in a bid to regain control of Baghdad and the “belt” areas that surround it. The so-called troop surge reached full strength in mid-June, and the results so far have been mixed. In any case, the Pentagon has told American commanders it can be maintained only until next March, at the latest.

This has left commanders looking beyond the surge’s end, to a point when the trajectory of the war, increasingly, will be determined by decisions the Iraqis make for themselves. So the question is whether the Anbar experience can be “exported” to other combat zones, as Mr. Bush suggested, by arming tribally based local security forces and recruiting thousands of young Sunnis, including former members of Baathist insurgent groups, into Iraq’s army and police force.

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The key to turning that around was the shift in allegiance by tribal sheiks. But the sheiks turned only after a prolonged offensive by American and Iraqi forces, starting in November, that put Al Qaeda groups on the run, in Ramadi and elsewhere across western Anbar.

Not for the first time, the Americans learned a basic lesson of warfare here: that Iraqis, bludgeoned for 24 years by Saddam Hussein’s terror, are wary of rising against any force, however brutal, until it is in retreat. In Anbar, Sunni extremists were the dominant force, with near-total popular support or acquiescence, until the offensive broke their power.

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Across Anbar, according to figures compiled by the American command, insurgent attacks fell from 1,300 last October to 225 in June. The command says the Ramadi offensive put more than 800 extremists out of action — more than 200 killed or wounded, and nearly 600 captured. American losses in Ramadi in the same period, were 19 soldiers and Marines killed, though Iraqi security force casualties were higher. In the wake of their offensive, American and Iraqi units moved out of large bases on Ramadi’s outskirts to establish more than 100 smaller posts across the city, most of them in previous no-go zones. Now, Colonel Charlton says, “We are living among the people,” building relationships with local leaders.

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There is more.

Burns has been one of the best war correspondents the NY Times has sent to Iraq. His report here confirms much of what this blog has been posting since October last year about the turn around in Anbar. Hopefully this report will penetrate the despair in Congress where too many have been putting on their track shoes for a retreat. To retreat at this point would be unwise in the extreme, but that is what the Democrats want desperately to do before the victory can be secured. A victory at this point would so discredit these guys that it would be a political disaster for democrats. That is the sorry position they have put themselves in.