28 November 2006
Sectarian Violence Seen as Central to Terrorists' Plan in Iraq
U.S. general says captured terrorists detail plan to derail Iraqi democracy
Washington -- The latest upsurge of civilian attacks in Baghdad illustrates al-Qaida’s agenda of death and division in Iraq, says a top coalition general.
“Al-Qaida, foreign terrorists and extremists do not want to let the Iraqis decide their own future,” U.S. Army Major General William Caldwell told reporters at a November 28 Baghdad press briefing, but “Iraqis are creating a country that will replace the rule of the gun with the rule of the law, and they will put criminals and killers out of business.”
Recently, there has been a dramatic spike in civilian killings in the Iraqi capital, beginning with a series of car bombings, mortar and rocket attacks in Baghdad’s Shiite-majority neighborhood of Sadr City, which killed 180 Iraqi citizens and wounded 245 others, and has led to a series of retaliatory strikes by sectarian militias against Sunni neighborhoods.
“The attacks in Sadr City last week were a vivid reminder of al-Qaida in Iraq's strategy of executing high-visibility, high-casualty-producing attacks against civilian targets in order to sow division among Iraqis along sectarian lines," he said.
Caldwell predicted that elevated levels of sectarian violence likely would continue for the next several weeks.
“Under the best of circumstances, this transformation from dictatorship to democracy is an extremely difficult one,” Caldwell said. “Given the depths of the previous regime's depravity and Saddam Hussein's effort to strengthen his grasp on power by setting Iraqi sects, ethnic groups and tribes against one another, this task is all that much harder.”
Exploiting these divisions within Iraqi society, he said, remains central to the terrorists’ goal of derailing the democracy supported by the Iraqi people in two nationwide elections and a constitutional referendum.
Since October 2004, Caldwell reported, coalition forces have killed or captured more than 7,000 members of al-Qaida in Iraq, including 30 senior leaders since July of this year. Those questioned by Iraqi and coalition forces have outlined a three-point strategy to stop Iraq’s progress.
The terrorists’ first goal, he said, is to control Iraq’s Sunni population by trying to convince them to resist the creation of an Iraqi unity government. Sunni community leaders with the courage and vision to resist al-Qaida in Iraq by working toward national reconciliation have been and will continue to be targeted for murder and intimidation, say jailed militants.
Yet at the same time, Caldwell said that captured terrorists also have admitted that a second strategy is to stage attacks in Sunni neighborhoods to sow fear and diminish faith in elected officials’ ability to keep the peace. (See related article.)
Al-Qaida in Iraq aims to make Sunnis fear cooperating with their own government, Caldwell said. “They want to convince people that hope is misplaced, that the government cannot offer security or stability.”
The third element to al-Qaida in Iraq’s strategy, he said, was to complete the cycle of sectarian violence and retribution by staging additional attacks in Iraq’s Shiite communities, such as the February bombing of the Golden Dome Mosque in Samarra and the recent attacks in Sadr City. (See related article.)
“Al-Qaida in Iraq has attempted to establish their extremist rule in Egypt, the Sudan, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia. In each of these cases, they brought suffering, bloodshed, and death to the people of these countries,” Caldwell said. “But in each case, they failed and were driven out by the people of those countries. This is why they do not want the Iraqis to determine Iraq's future.”
But the Iraqi people, Caldwell said, do not support the terrorists’ vision and continue to work with the coalition to take their country back. In a recent poll, Caldwell said, 89 percent of Iraqis nationwide agreed with the statement that, "My first loyalty is to my country rather than my sect, ethnic group or tribe." In addition, he said, the poll found that 70 percent of Iraqis said they support the government of Iraq, and only 25 percent agreed the Iraqi people would be better off if the country were partitioned along ethno-sectarian lines.
Caldwell also cited the continued progress of the Iraqi security forces, which are supported by 430 teams of embedded coalition advisers. (See related article.)
“Although the terrorists were able to execute latest week's brutal attack, coalition and Iraqi security forces have made significant progress in dismantling the terrorists' network,” he said, noting that in the last two weeks, Iraqi forces captured 11 senior-level terrorists in a series of raids in north central Iraq.
Finding ways to deepen the U.S.-Iraqi security partnership will take center stage on November 29, when President Bush meets with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Amman, Jordan. (See related article.)
A transcript and video link of Caldwell’s briefing are available on the Multinational Force - Iraq Web site.
For more information, see Iraq Update and Response to Terrorism.
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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