More progress reported in Baghdad

NY Times:

American forces have routed Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia, the Iraqi militant network, from every neighborhood of Baghdad, a top American general said today, allowing American troops involved in the so-called surge to depart as planned.

Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil, commander of United States forces in Baghdad, said that American troops have yet to clear some 13 percent of the city, including Sadr City and several other areas controlled by Shiite militias. But, he said, “there’s just no question” that violence has been reduced since a spike in June.

“Murder victims are down 80 percent from where they were at the peak,” he said. Attacks involving the improvised bombs known as I.E.D.s are down 70 percent, he said.

General Fil attributed the decline to improvements in the Iraqi security forces, a cease-fire ordered by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, the disruption of funding for insurgents, and most significant, Iraqis’ rejection of “the rule of the gun.” His comments, in a wide-ranging interview over egg rolls and lo mein in a Green Zone conference room, were the latest in a series of upbeat assessment that he and other commanders have offered in recent months. But his descriptions revealed a city still in transition: tormented by its past, struggling to find a better future.

“The Iraqi people have just decided that they’ve had it up to here with violence,” he said, while noting that their demands for electricity, water and jobs have intensified.

Hundreds if not thousands of displaced families are returning to their homes, but a majority are still afraid to go back to neighborhoods now segregated by sect. “Clearly,” General Fil said, “it will take some time for Baghdad to restore itself to what it was.”

General Fil and other military commanders have maintained for months that the conditions for national reconciliation have been met. They argue that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is foreign-led, has been weakened. They cite in particular the rise of the American-supported citizen volunteers — 67,000 nationwide, according to military figures.

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With less than two months to go before his division heads home, General Fil offered a mixed vision of the military’s role for the coming year. He said if 2007 was the year of security, 2008 would probably be “a year of reconstruction, a year of infrastructure repair, and a year of, if there’s going to be a surge, a year of the surge of the economy.”

General Fil acknowledged that dislodging Shiite militias from control of gasoline, government ministries and other sources of power would be difficult. . He said the biggest threat to Baghdad’s security is now Shiite militias. Infrastructure weaknesses and unemployment are also serious obstacles, he said, which American efforts at the local level cannot fully address because “these become national level problems.” Violence, meanwhile, despite recent declines in some areas, has moved to some degree from major cities to rural villages and town, according to American and Iraqi commanders.

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US forces are now concentrating on getting the enemy out of the outlying areas and the citizen watch groups have been helping. In Anbar the bad guys have pretty much disappeared. The sudden victory of US and Iraqi forces has overwhelmed the enemy and had a cascading effect which led to the al Qaeda rout. It was also greatly helped by intelligence from local Iraqis. What is missing from this story is the fact that those who were arguing that Iraq was in the middle of an intractable sectarian civil war were dead wrong. A sectarian civil war was al Qaeda's strategy for getting us to leave, but without al Qaeda the civil war fizzled. The Fact is the Democrats fell hard for the al Qaeda ruse and if they had been able to implement their policy we and the Iraqis would be in the middle of a huge defeat instead of a victory right now.