Decline in attacks continues in Iraq

Cara Buckley and Michael Gordon:

The American military said Sunday that the weekly number of attacks in Iraq had fallen to the lowest level since just before the February 2006 bombing of the Shiite shrine in Samarra, an event commonly used as a benchmark for the country’s worst spasm of bloodletting after the American invasion nearly five years ago.

Data released at a news conference in Baghdad showed that attacks had declined to the lowest level since January 2006. It is the third week in a row that attacks have been at this reduced level.

The statistics on attack trends have long been a standard measure that the American military has used to assess violence in Iraq. Because the data have been gathered for years and are deemed generally reliable they allow analysts to identify trends.

Military officials said the attacks were directed against American and Iraqi forces, as well as civilians. But since the source for the data is American military reports, and not the Iraqi government, the figures do not provide an exhaustive measure of sectarian violence.

Nonetheless, the figures added to a body of evidence, compiled by American and Iraqi officials, indicating that the violence had diminished significantly since the United States reinforced troop levels in Iraq and adopted a new counterinsurgency strategy.

The data released Sunday cover attacks using car bombs, roadside bombs, mines, mortars, rockets, surface-to-air missiles and small arms. According to the statistics, roughly 575 attacks occurred last week.

That is substantially fewer than the more than 700 attacks that were recorded the week that Sunni militants set off a wave of sectarian violence in Iraq by blowing up a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February 2006. And it represents a huge drop since June when attacks soared to nearly 1,600 one week.

American officials said other measures indicated that civilian deaths had dropped. Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a spokesman for the command, said civilian deaths had dropped by 60 percent since June.

Military analysts said a number of factors explained the drop. They say, for example, that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a predominantly Iraqi insurgent group with foreign leadership, has been greatly weakened by American military attacks.

Thousands of new Sunni volunteers have made common cause with the Americans. About 72,000 such civilians have joined the effort, American officials said, and 45,000 each receive a $300 a month stipend from the Americans to help with the effort.

Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American cleric, has ordered his militiamen to stand down. American military officials also say that Iran appears to be abiding by a commitment to reduce the flow of roadside bombs and other weapons into Iraq. Beyond that, many Iraqis appear to be exhausted by the sectarian violence and eager for a modicum of stability.

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The big difference is not only the success of the surge in destroying the enemy, but the most important difference is that the Iraqis have taken ownership of the war to defeat al Qaeda and the insurgents. Former insurgents are rallying to our side in the fight and Iraqis in general are reporting weapons caches and enemy locations. These tips provide the intelligence needed to destroy the enemy infrastructure of terror. The Iraqis are also engaging in a bottom up reconciliation process. Eventually the central government will have to get on board are it will be replaced at the next election.