Metrics of victory in Iraq
Al Qaeda will not sign a peace treaty when its defeat is complete and if it did, it would not honor it. But there is a significant change in attitude among Iraqis from that even prior to the elections. Before there was a silent rejection of al Qaeda and now there is a belligerent rejection of al Qaeda. There is also a broad rejection of Iran's influence that is peculating through the current war effort. But the biggest change is the bottoms up grass roots reconciliation process. This may eventually make the central government's inaction moot.No one is declaring victory, but cautious optimists on the U.S.-led war in Iraq suddenly find themselves armed with a growing number of indicators that the fighting has taken a new, more hopeful turn.
U.S. military fatalities are down sharply, from 101 in June to 39 in October. Iraqi civilian deaths also were down sharply, from 1,791 in August to 750 in October, according to the Associated Press. Mortar rocket attacks by insurgents in October were the lowest since February 2006, as were the number of "indirect fire" attacks on coalition forces.
Iraqi officials say they plan to reduce checkpoints, ease curfews and reopen some roads in and around Baghdad because of the improving security situation. Sunni Arab tribal leaders in western Anbar province, now allied with the U.S. military, say al Qaeda is "almost defeated" in their once-chaotic region.
Having been burned repeatedly by past expressions of optimism in the 4½-year-old war, senior Bush administration officials and top military leaders are wary of any temptation to celebrate prematurely.
"We're not shouting victory by any stretch," Col. Steven Boylan, spokesman for the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, said in a telephone interview from Baghdad. "We are still focused on extremists and criminal-type elements within the region. The violence is still too high."
The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said this week that sectarian violence between Shi'ite and Sunni fighters in Baghdad had dropped 77 percent from last year's high.
Mr. al-Maliki called it a sign that sectarian fighting in the capital "is closed now." Some skeptics countered that the drop reflects the fact that ethnic cleansing has now been completed in many once-mixed urban neighborhoods.
An alliance of convenience between U.S. forces and once-hostile Sunni tribes against al Qaeda has become so solid that former Sunni insurgents say they warned American troops to stay away as they took on al Qaeda terrorists themselves in a pitched battle late last week in the city of Samarra that produced heavy al Qaeda casualties.
For ordinary Iraqis like Hassan, a doctor raising his small family in Baghdad, things have clearly changed for the better. He said street life and public markets are returning to the city, which was under a virtual state of siege just a year ago.
"Now people are moving; you can hear voices in the neighborhood; and for the first two hours of the evening people can walk, just some short distances," said the doctor, who declined to have his full name published.
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Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a recent analysis that "victory" in Iraq, however defined, will fall well short of the original hopes of many war supporters.
"What is clear is that the military progress of the last 10 months is all too easy to waste at the political level, and that defeating al Qaeda is at best a prelude to dealing with the rest of Iraq's problems. Time is running out and Iraq's leaders need to act," he wrote.
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