In Two Weeks, Baghdad Violence Up 22 Percent
    By John Ward Anderson
    The Washington Post

    Thursday 19 October 2006

    Baghdad - A two-month U.S.-Iraqi military operation aimed at stemming sectarian bloodshed and insurgent attacks in Baghdad has failed to reduce the violence, which has surged 22 percent in the capital in the last two weeks, much of it in areas where the military has focused its efforts, a senior U.S. military spokesman said Thursday.

    The assessment by Army Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV comes as attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces in the capital have spiked 43 percent since midsummer and have pushed U.S. military fatalities to their highest rates in more than a year. At least 73 U.S. military personnel have been killed so far this month in Iraq.

    Attacks on police and military units continued in many parts of Iraq Thursday. Coordinated suicide car and truck bombs and mortar attacks on several police facilities and two U.S. patrols in the northern city Mosul killed at least 12 Iraqis and wounded 30, local police and hospital officials said. There were no reports of U.S. casualties.

    Later in Kirkuk, about 140 miles north of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber targeted a group of soldiers and civilians lined up outside a local bank to cash their paychecks before the start of the holiday of Eid al-Fitr later this week. The explosion killed 12 people and injured about 70.

    The new appraisal of the Baghdad campaign, called Operation Together Forward, stands in stark contrast to reviews from the opening weeks. At that time, U.S. military leaders said the addition of 12,000 U.S. troops in Baghdad's most violent neighborhoods was significantly improving security for the city's residents.

    Instead, the operation "has not met our overall expectations of sustaining a reduction in the levels of violence," Caldwell said Thursday at a weekly press briefing. Violence has risen in the areas where the U.S.-Iraqi operation has focused, because of counterattacks, he said. "They're punching back hard."

    "We're finding insurgent elements, the extremists, are pushing back hard; they're trying to get back into those areas" where Iraqi and U.S. forces have targeted them, he said. "We're constantly going back in and doing clearing operations."

    Now, he said, "We are working very closely with the government of Iraq to determine how to best to refocus our efforts."

    There are about 68,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops in Baghdad, and about 15,400 personnel are taking part in Operation Together Forward. The campaign was launched in early August in response to terrorist and sectarian attacks that were claiming as many as 100 lives a day in the capital. In September, 2,667 Iraqis were killed in Baghdad.

    Without giving exact statistics, Caldwell said there has been a surge in violent attacks during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. It ends in a few days with the beginning of Eid al-Fitr, a three-day celebration that marks the end of a month of fasting.

    He said the increased attacks on U.S. forces also reflect the fact that more Americans are patrolling Baghdad as part of Operation Together Forward. In addition, he said, the violence has been timed to affect the upcoming midterm elections in the United States.

    "The enemy knows that killing innocent people and Americans will garner headlines and create a sense of frustration," Caldwell said.

    He said Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has adopted Operation Together Forward as "the model which he is trying to take to clear the city of the violence and extremism." But the campaign is under intense counterattack, he said, because "if you want to in fact discredit the government and show they have an inability to bring security and safety to the city, you would in fact target the focus areas. We think that's exactly why it's occurring."

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    Washington Post correspondents in Mosul and Kirkuk contributed to this report.