Iraq occupation to last longer
AFP, Washington
The prospect of a long and difficult occupation of Iraq was brought home to Americans this week as US forces moved sharply to crush an armed resistance that has left a trail of US dead. Over the past 10 days, US forces have surged into the Baathist stronghold of Fallujah, raided suspected terrorist camps in northern and western Iraq, and battled armed irregulars in the Balad area northeast of Baghdad. The full scope of the operations are still secret, but they were clearly the biggest since President George W. Bush declared on May 1 the end of major combat operations in Iraq, and suggested that the war is far from over. US commanders said the 147,000 US troTops now in the country are sufficient to stabilize Iraq but they did not know when conditions will allow soldiers to begin going home. "We do have plans, but they're all conditions-based. It depends on what the enemy does," Lieutenant General David McKiernan, the commander of coalition ground forces in Iraq, told reporters Friday. As US troops have increased their presence throughout the country in order to restore order and security, they have been targeted by hit-and-run attacks, mainly in the predominantly Sunni areas north of Baghdad. By the Pentagon's count, 40 US military personnel have been killed since May 1 -- a dozen of them by hostile fire, and most of those in the past three weeks. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged this week that it may take months to root out resistance, and the failure to capture or otherwise account for deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was making the task of pacifying the country more difficult. "If anybody else inside Iraq, particularly, the former Baathists think he is alive then that can be a problem," Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Richard Myers told Fox News Channel. But McKiernan and other US commanders believe that the resistance is locally organized by remnants of the former regime -- and not a nationally orchestrated campaign of resistance. The core of the resistance is believed to be from Fedayeen Saddam, Baathist militants, Iraqi Intelligence Service and Special Republican Guards who survived the war intact in an "iron triangle" running from Baghdad north to Fallujah and Tikrit.
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