Driving a stake into al Qaeda operations in Diyala

LA Times:

Under cover of darkness early today, U.S. soldiers crept across a bridge where just days before insurgents had left a chilling warning: a severed human head with a message identifying the victim as a U.S. collaborator scrawled across the forehead with a black marker.

About 4,000 U.S. and Iraqi forces, backed by war planes and attack helicopters, swept into the northern Diyala River Valley overnight Monday in pursuit of insurgents who have made the region one of the most violent in Iraq.

It was the latest in a series of operations in the last year to flush the Sunni militant network Al Qaeda in Iraq and its affiliates out of their havens in Diyala, a province the size of Maryland with more than 1.6 million people.

"What we want to do … is put a stake in it and be done," said Brig. Gen. James Boozer, the deputy commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq.

But before the offensive began late Monday, there were reports that the 50 to 60 senior insurgent leaders holed up northwest of Muqdadiya had fled, confirming a longstanding pattern: Each time U.S. and Iraqi forces reclaim a sanctuary, the insurgents drop their weapons and blend into the civilian population to fight elsewhere.

Boozer said the military had positioned forces to observe where the insurgents went and would pursue them. He estimated about 200 mid- to low-level militants remained in the encircled area, known as the bread basket of Iraq, a place of isolated hamlets, citrus orchards and date palm groves that has rarely been penetrated by U.S. and Iraqi forces. Most of the insurgents are Iraqis, but U.S. intelligence indicates that some foreign fighters may be among them, said Lt. Col. Mark Landes, who commands the U.S. Army's 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment.

The insurgents had prepared their defenses in advance of the raid. Bombs ripped through at least two U.S. vehicles, injuring three soldiers in one of them. U.S. soldiers had to bring in a bridge to get their vehicles across a large cut in the road. And there were brief exchanges of gunfire.

Four men believed to have triggered one of the bombs were killed when U.S. forces unleashed thundering Hellfire missiles, collapsing the building in which they sought cover. Iraqi commandos detained three other suspects.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have claimed major successes against Al Qaeda in Iraq since June, when U.S. forces completed a buildup of 28,500 additional troops focused on Baghdad and neighboring Anbar province. Maj. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry, said as much as 75% of the network was wiped out in 2006, aided by tens of thousands of Sunni tribesmen who turned against the insurgents they once backed.

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It will take persistence to wipe out the infestation of enemy forces trying to survive Iraq by hanging out in their last remaining area of influence. It is also clear that the people want to be rid of them too. Al Qaeda's attempts to intimidate by mutilating those who don't want them there will only drive more people into our side of the struggle.