IRAQ OPERATIONAL UPDATE BRIEFING
Multi-National Force-Iraq
IRAQ OPERATIONAL UPDATE BRIEFING BRIEFER: MAJOR GENERAL RICK LYNCH, SPOKESMAN, MULTINATIONAL FORCE IRAQ LOCATION: COMBINED PRESS INFORMATION CENTER, BAGHDAD, IRAQ DATE: THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 2006
GEN. LYNCH: Good afternoon. Thanks for spending time with me today. A lot of things I want to talk about, and we'll work into that in just a minute.
But the first thing I'd like to do is express our condolences to Major General Mubdar al-Duleimi's family, his tribe, and the Iraqi army. General Mubdar was the commander of the 6th Iraqi Army Division. The leaders of the coalition who had the privilege of working with General Mubdar sing his praises, his ability to lead, his ability to plan, his ability to execute complex operations. His loss is indeed a tragedy for the people of Iraq. And we send out our heart-felt condolences.
First graphic please.
As always, allow me to talk about operations across Iraq first, and then zoom in on specific areas. Our operations continue to the end state that we've articulated in our campaign plan and I talk about every chance I get to talk to you; it's an Iraq that's at peace with its neighbors, that is an ally in the war on terror, that has a representative government that can respect the human rights of all Iraqis, that has a security force that can maintain domestic order and deny Iraq as a safe haven for terrorists. And we see progress on all those fronts. And I'll talk you through that progress.
Operations continue across Iraq. Let me walk around the region.
Last week there were 555 attacks in Iraq against coalition forces, Iraqi security forces, Iraqi civilians. Yesterday, specifically, there were 80 attacks. And this is on average with what we've seen over the last several months.
We conducted 461 operations across Iraq -- company level and above -- of which 34 percent of those operations were Iraqi security force independent operations. Think about that. More than one-third of the operations were planned, resourced and executed by the Iraqi security forces. And then if you add the combined operations -- the coalition force and Iraqi security force combined operations -- that's 77 percent of all the operations across Iraq. So you can see the level of capability that the Iraqi security force has moved to. Today, 240,000 members of the Iraqi security force trained and equipped; two divisions, 13 brigades, 49 battalions control battlespace here in Iraq. So great progress in training and equipping the Iraqi security force.
In the north we're seeing reduced attacks against the civilian population, but a marked increase in attacks against the Iraqi security force. Just yesterday in Mosul we had 14 attacks, either IEDs or direct-fire attacks, aimed at Iraqi security force members.
In Al Anbar last week, attacks were up 21 percent, but the attacks are isolated around Ramadi and Fallujah. And we're seeing an increase in direct-fire attacks in Ramadi.
In the south, attacks have decreased by 35 percent. And in Baghdad, the number of attacks are down, but the casualties are up. And I'll talk to you specifically as to why that is.
Next graphic, please.
You got an enemy out there who wants to derail the democratic process and discredit the Iraqi government, and he sees right now a window of vulnerability for the Iraq people and he's attacking that window of vulnerability. And he's specifically targeting civilians. He is trying to tear Iraq apart at the seams to keep it from unifying as a nation. And what we've seen him use over the last 11 days are VBIEDs. We've seen 40 VBIEDs since the 25th of February that have resulted in 290 casualties, of which 239 of those were innocent Iraqi civilians, civilians who were getting gas for their car, going to a market, going to school, and attacked by the insurgency trying to drive this wedge between the Iraqi people. He's trying to stop the democratic process, but he can't. This Sunday will be the seating of the Council of Representatives. And remember, democracy equals failure for the insurgency, so there's going to be more attacks to discredit the Iraqi government and derail the democratic process. But just like we saw in the Samarra mosque bombing, we believe that a capable Iraqi government directing a capable Iraqi security force can keep the enemy from doing his stated objectives. Two hundred and ninety casualties, the VBIEDs in 11 days; 239 of which were innocent civilians.
Next graphic, please.
I promised you I would continue to give you updates on where we see sectarian violence since the mosque attack on the 22nd of February. So allow me to provide you some specifics as to what we know now, we as the coalition force can indeed confirm.
Of the almost 2,200 mosques across Iraq, we can confirm that there was significant damage to 23 of those. There were reported mosque attacks, both the coalition force members and Iraqi security force members through our command and control network and the Iraqi command and control network, there were 81 reported mosque attacks, but of those, only 23 can we confirm have significant damage, and eight of those were destroyed. There were indeed 17 mosques that upon investigation proved to have light damage -- bullet holes, broken glass -- probably directly attributable to drive-by attacks, insurgents in cars shooting their weapons at the windows at these mosques. And of the 81 reported mosque attacks, we can confirm that there was no damage on 41 of them.
This is physical confirmation. We sent troops to the mosque to confirm or deny there was any damage. So as of today, we looked at 81; 23 had significant damage; 17 had light damage; and 41 had no damage.
As of today, we can confirm 452 civilian deaths since the 22nd of February. How many of those are directly contributible to sectarian violence? We're not sure, but we can confirm 452 civilian deaths. Now, could the number be larger than that? Sure it could. You know in the process of working through all the issues, in terms of numbers of attacks since the mosque, we're given the best fidelity that we can, and 452 is the number that we can indeed confirm.
We do believe that there is an insurgency out there who's trying to inflame the numbers. It's about perceptions of security. If the people of Iraq are convinced that they're indeed in an unsecure environment, then the insurgent has been successful, and he's driven a wedge between the Shi'a population and the Sunni population and their government. But we can confirm 452, and we can confirm 83 demonstrations of which only five had any acts of violence in them all together.
So you got the 26 million people of Iraq who expressed their concerns about the attack on the Golden Mosque, one of their revered shrines, by peaceful demonstrations.
Next graphic, please.
The insurgency's still out there. We still believe that it's broken into three parts, terrorists and foreign fighters, Iraqi rejectionists, both Sunni and Shi'a, and Saddamists. And we continue to target our operations to defeat al Qaeda in Iraq, because he's the one that has the most to gain from keeping this national unity government from forming. He's the one where democracy equals failure. He's the one that was instructed by his leadership, both Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri, to deny Iraq a democracy, allow it to become a caliphate for extremism.
Since January of `05, we have killed or captured 122 of Zarqawi's leaders, and as I've told you before, we break them into tiers. Tier one are those who have direct access to Zarqawi. Tier two are those individuals that are leaders, both in local and regional areas, and Tier three are the terrorists and foreign fighters, the work -- the insurgents on the ground, if you will, and their cell leaders -- a hundred and twenty-two since January of `05. We continue to target Zarqawi and his network. Allow me to zoom in on one individual that was a recent capture, Abu Qatada (sp). On the 27th of December, we with the Iraqi security forces planned and then conducted an operation to detain Abu Qatada (sp), a successful operation. He was here in south Baghdad, and when we found him, he was hiding in a canal. He was the known leader of the one of the terrorist and foreign fighter cells, specifically the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Iraq.
He was responsible with that cell for the assassination of two government leaders, for many planned activities against coalition forces and Iraqi security forces, and for the murder of numerous truck drivers. He used those trucks to become VBIEDs. We planned and conducted an operation two months ago and have had him in detention ever since. In the last two months, he's provided critical information against his terrorist associates, actual intelligence that lead us to additional terrorists, locations of munitions, locations of supplies.
What's important about Abu Qatada is not so much who he is, but who he was the lieutenant for. He was the lieutenant for Tier-one terrorist named Abu Ayman -- Abu Ayman. Abu Ayman was the chief of staff for the chief of intelligence for Saddam, and we know he's been personally responsible for planning and conducting many of these horrific attacks here in Iraq. Abu Ayman two months ago lost his right-hand man, the man Abu Qatada, and we continue our operations based on the information that Qatada has provided.
Next graphic, please.
I gave you two weeks ago letters that we came across in one of our operations. The operation was named San Rafael (sp). We were conducting operations against known Zarqawi leaders. We found this individual. He was in the process of burying something. We detained him. We uncovered letters and a thumb drive, and I provided to you last -- two weeks ago three of those letters, and I'm giving another one to you today -- a repeat of one that I gave you. But I want to talk about the significance of that.
See, out in Al Anbar, the terrorists and foreign fighters have become the enemy to the people of Al Anbar, and they are collectively turning against Zarqawi and his network. As I've told you, since September, they have killed seven of Zarqawi's leaders. In Ramadi, they have physically blocked access to their city from terrorists and foreign fighters, and these individuals are all led by political and tribal leadership.
In the letters that were found in San Rafael (sp), the Iraqi -- the insurgents on the ground, terrorists and foreign fighters, were describing to their leadership the environment in which they worked in Al Anbar: Hey, the leadership and the people of Al Anbar have turned against us, and these are our recommendations on what to do. They said, first off, they claimed credit for the assassination of Sheikh Nasr al-Fahdawi (sp). And Sheikh Fahdawi (sp) was indeed an individual who both politically and locally was directing activities against the insurgents for the people of Al Anbar.
In the letter they identified 14 protocols, and I ask that you study those letters when you get the chance. But these are the kind of protocols. As they try to describe to their leadership in the Zarqawi network what they should use for killing the leaders of the Islamic (party ?), the tribes and the apostates. They say you got look closely at the leader that you're fixing to assassinate, and if he's a leader in a town where the connections are strong, then there's a significant problem with the assassination. But if he's a leader in a city where there's a greater diversity, you could kill that leader without significant effect.
They say specifically that you look closely at regions where the insurgents have brothers and financial/religious interests, but they're marginalized as far as security goes.
They talk specifically about whether or not the leader should be assassinated and when. If he's peaceful and has a good reputation, we should focus first on killing him, his prominent supporters, and then expose him in the media.
So I'd ask that you look closely at those letters. And what we see them to be is the impact of our operations and the operation on the Iraqi force against Zarqawi and his network, and the people of Al Anbar specifically rising against the terrorist and foreign fighters and taking actions in their own hands.
And the last graphic, please. (Pause.)
The people of Iraq are fed up with the insurgency. Zarqawi and his band of terrorists and foreign fighters are trying to discredit the Iraqi government and disrupt the Iraqi political process at the expense of the Iraq civilians. And the Iraqi civilians have had enough. There was a 67 percent increase in the number of attacks against civilians last week, resulting in a 15 percent increase in the number of civilian casualties and, as I showed you, in an 11-day period of time, 40 VBIED attacks that resulted in 239 civilian casualties.
So the people of Iraq are uniting against the insurgency. One way they're doing that is providing actionable intelligence. And I've talked to you routinely about the activity on the national tips line. And you can see in yellow the number of calls that come in on that tip line. And as I told you, we find 98 percent of those provide actionable intelligence, information that we and the Iraqi security force can do something with.
In addition to that, I wanted to show you today the number of tips that we receive by walk-ins or people walking up to the members of the coalition force or the Iraqi security force. The fact that we now have 240,000 trained and equipped members of the Iraqi security force -- two divisions, 13 brigades, 49 battalions that had the lead in counterinsurgency operations -- provide the opportunity for the people of Iraq to walk up and provide actionable intelligence. And they do that on a day-to-day basis.
Based on these kinds of tips, since November, we have been able to kill or capture 41 bomb-makers. Based on those kinds of tips, since November we've uncovered over 1,500 weapons caches -- so a perfect indication of the people of Iraq uniting against the insurgency
Can you take that graphic down, please?
And with that, I'll take your questions. Sir?
Q Good afternoon. Francis (Goode ?) from AFP. What have the Iraqi authorities told you about a couple of recent incidents yesterday and the day before, specifically some 30 security guards being abducted or going missing yesterday, and the day before, 18 bodies being found in a minibus? What have the Iraqi authorities told you about these two incidents?
GEN. LYNCH: Let me talk about the first one and tell you what we know. And we can confirm there was indeed 50 local nationals kidnapped from a security forum in western Baghdad. We can confirm, based on our investigation, that individuals dressed like this, in chocolate chip desert combat uniforms, riding in eight civilian vehicles, drove up, kidnapped 50 local nationals, and left four of the security guards behind, handcuffed.
We don't know who did that. In our conversation with the Iraqi authorities, they don't know either. We have no indications from the Iraqi authorities that they know who conducted that kidnapping.
And as with the bodies, as with all bodies, you know, investigations are continuing. It's a true tragedy that we find that, but we have found that. But we're not sure how that happened or who did that.
Q Do you believe those are sectarian, the 18 -- (off mike)?
GEN. LYNCH: It's hard to say. I mean, there was a baseline level of violence before the sectarian violence exploded, if you will. And we had that rash of civilian murders, the 492 that we can confirm. So I can't say for sure whether or not those 18 were part of that.
Q Do we know that they were all Sunnis?
GEN. LYNCH: I don't know.
Sir?
Q General -- (name off mike) -- from Newsweek. Could you give us more detail on Iranian infiltration and what you know about it, how concerned you are about it, and particularly what your assessment is of what kind of difficulties they could cause -- the Iranians could cause for us in Iraq in the wake of statements from their leadership that they would make life difficult for the Americans in response to the -- referring them to the Security Council?
GEN. LYNCH: We are concerned about two specific neighbors that seem to be particularly unhelpful, Syria and Iran. And clearly, I can't go into intelligence or sources or levels of detail that I know you'd like me to, but there are clear indications that Iran is supporting the insurgency in Iraq, either by munitions and technology or by individuals coming in to support the insurgency. And that's as far as I can go.
Q Could I just follow up?
GEN. LYNCH: Sure.
Q It's a little hard to understand how they would be supporting an insurgency that's largely Sunni based. I mean, are you sure about that? And what kind of indications have you had about it? Have you captured any Iranians, or is this just kind of vague intelligence at this point?
GEN. LYNCH: It's not vague intelligence, it's intelligence that we can indeed confirm. Remember, as we study the insurgency, the insurgency has many groups. I talk about the three major groups, the terrorists and foreign fighters, the Iraqi rejectionists and the Saddamists. Inside the Iraqi rejectionists there are both Sunni rejectionists and Shi'a rejectionists. And the Iranian influence seems to vector towards the Shi'a rejectionists.
Okay.
Q Do you know any instances of Shi'a rejectionist collaboration with the Sunni rejectionists?
GEN. LYNCH: Not that I'm aware of. But remember, the insurgency has combined objectives -- derail the democratic process, discredit the Iraqi government. So there could be indeed collusion taking place between rejectionists of all sorts to accomplish those objectives.
Other questions? John.
Q Thank you. John Anderson, Washington Post. The deaths that you've confirmed since the mosque attack on February 22nd at 452, you say, are those numbers that are supplied to you from Iraqi officials?
GEN. LYNCH: Those numbers come from all sources. And that's why it's important that everybody understands that that's the number we can confirm right now. The actual number could be bigger than that number. But let me give you indications of where those numbers come from.
One indication is from our own soldiers on the ground that are there when attacks take place or move to the site of the attack immediately after, and they give us an estimate, if you will, of the number of civilian casualties, both KIA and WIA. So that's part of the population of numbers.
We reached out to the Ministry of Health and the Iraqi morgue officials to get a sense from them as to the number of bodies they've seen since the attack on the golden mosque. And the number that we were given from both the director and the acting director were 240. And we do indeed have consultants that work with the Ministry of Health that continue the conversation about the number of bodies.
So what we can confirm right now, John, is the number that I showed you, 459.
Q And that's a number that has appeared on documents, that's not -- when you say confirm, you haven't actually seen the bodies.
GEN. LYNCH: Oh, of course not. Of course not. What we're trying to give you is based on our professional judgment and our analysis of the situation. General Casey led the coalition leadership through what we call a detailed after-action review -- what happened on the 22nd of February, what do we know, what do we think we know -- to get clarification on what attacks there were and who could have conducted those attacks. And part of that was looking at civilians murdered. We've got a clear spike in the number of civilians murdered. We see on average in Iraq 10 civilians murdered per day, and we spiked an average of 50 per day during that period of time. So clearly that was a result of sectarian violence. But the number that I gave you, 452, is the number that we can currently confirm.
Q Is it deaths until yesterday, or --
GEN. LYNCH: As whatever the date/time group was on your chart. I think it's today.
Q Okay, to March 6. Okay.
GEN. LYNCH: Oh, to March 6th. Okay.
Q And one last thing.
GEN. LYNCH: Sure.
Q On this same sheet here we've got -- you went through the number of mosques attacked, the number of mosques that had significant damage, the one that had little damage. What do those numbers tell you? Is there a message there? I mean, confirmed -- I'm sorry -- confirmed with no damage, 41 out of 81. What's the conclusion that we should draw?
GEN. LYNCH: We believe from the get-go that the attack on the golden mosque was by the terrorists to create sectarian violence. And the insurgent who stands back and says, "I got a problem; they're trying to form this national unity government; what can I do?" -- he stopped and said, "What action can I take that could inflame sectarian violence?" And he decided to blow up the golden mosque.
As a result of that, we saw a cycle of violence commence, and it was retaliation; Shi'a retaliation for the attack on the mosque, Sunni retaliation for the attack on the Sunnis, and on and on and on. So in those mosque attacks, we believe a lot of those were a function of retaliation, both the ones with significant damage and the ones with minor damage.
We do, though, believe that we have now broken that cycle of violence. There was indeed a spike of VBIED attacks. Remember, the insurgents still have the capability to surge, and he opted to surge. And he is most concerned about what's going to take place on Sunday, the seating of the Council of Representatives. And he is most likely going to surge again to try to disrupt the democratic process.
Another question?
Q You spoke of the spike in recent VBIED attacks. How does that compare to previous figures over previous months for VBIEDs? And how does that compare also to suicide bombers? There seems to be a marked drop in the number of suicide bombers, say compared to six months ago.
Now it seems that we might have, you know, one or two a month. Why this -- this change from sort of suicide bombing to VBIEDs, and what conclusions do you draw from that? And also, there also seems to be, on the VBIED thing, maybe they're not quite as effective. They seem to be more than -- when you look at the casualty figures, maybe it's sort of the figures aren't always very high per VBIED. How would you sort of explain that?
GEN. LYNCH: Yeah. Thank you for that. There has, indeed, been a marked decrease in the number of suicide attacks. And I don't have those figures with me readily available, but we can get those to you. But as we study the situation on the battlefield, we see a marked decrease in the number of suicide attacks.
We have seen a surge in VBIED attacks. Two days specifically, most concerning 6 and 7 March, and in those day we saw 17 VBIED attacks, which was the highest we'd seen since January. So we're seeing -- we saw over that course of that 10-day period a spike in VBIED attacks.
We attribute those attacks specific to the insurgents, who are trying to continue to inflame sectarian violence. They don't want the Sunnis and the Shi'as and the Kurds of Iraq to unite and form a national unity government. And they are, indeed, trying to tear Iraq apart at the seams by using these VBIEDs. And that is, indeed, the spike that we have recently seen.
If the insurgents can cause the people of Iraq to attack against each other, then they can, indeed, derail the democratic process. And that's why he's trying to do. But what we have not heard people talk about that I'd like to emphasize is from the 22nd of February till now what we have not seen is an Iraqi government that fell apart. What we saw was a capable Iraqi government who made conscious decisions to recall their security forces, deploy forces, impose curfews to calm the violence.
And what we have not seen is an Iraqi security force that fell apart. There were people that were worried about the segments of the Iraqi security force -- the minister of Interior versus the minister of Defense, Shi'as versus Sunnis, internal security forces fighting against each other. And we did not see that. We saw a capable Iraqi government, command and control of a capable Iraqi security force, to stop the violence. Q And on the second part of the question about how lethal these car bombs were, they appeared to be sort of less lethal inasmuch as if you look at the number of casualties --
GEN. LYNCH: Yeah.
Q -- they seem sort of to be decreasing per VBIED. How do you explain that?
GEN. LYNCH: Good point. And I'm going to talk VBIEDs and IEDs, because both of them are now less effective than they could be.
IEDs, for example, we are finding and clearing over 45 percent of the IEDs. As I explained to you, since November we have killed or captured 41 of the bomb makers. These are the guys who have the sophistication, the technical knowledge and capability to build capable IEDs and VBIEDs, but they're having a hard time building those if they're detained or dead. So, taking the bomb makers off the street impacted on the capabilities of the IEDs and VBIEDs.
I talked to you about we found almost 1,500 weapons caches since November. Those are the munitions that he wanted to use to build these bombs. So all he's got left is munitions that may, indeed, be less effective. So we have seen a decrease in effectiveness of both the IEDs and the VBIEDs for those reasons.
Q Thank you. General, there were some indications from the Iraqi security people that they believed that the people, or the person who assassinated General Mubdar may have had some inside information. I'm wondering whether or not that you share that assessment.
GEN. LYNCH: That's a good question, John, and we're working that closely.
We are most concerned about operational security. The leaders of the coalition and the leaders of the Iraqi security force are targets of the insurgency. So, in this particular case, there was, indeed, a sniper who was able to target General Mubdar. Now, whether that was because he just happened to be at the right place at the right time, or whether or not he had intelligence that led him to believe that General Mubdar was going to be there, we're not sure. But you can take it to the bank that that is being investigated, because we know, as we think like the enemy, if he can find effective leaders in the Iraqi security force and take them out, then he's going to have a -- it's going to be capable on his part. And we don't want that to happen.
I have time for one more question. Please.
Q If I could just follow up again on Iran, are you -- are you preparing for or concerned that there could be an upsurge in activity by the Shi'a-connected resistance in response to events with Iran? GEN. LYNCH: Yeah, we -- we continue to work with the Iraqi government and the Iraqi authorities to ensure they are aware of our concerns about Iranian influence, and how influence by Iran, specifically in facilitating the insurgency, is not good for the people of Iraq. So we continue to send that clear message.
Okay, folks. Thanks for your time. Have a good day.
END.
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