Attacks Complicate U.S. Moves in Iraq
The American military provided little detail about the attacks, saying only that one soldier was killed in a roadside bombing in southern Baghdad and that three more were killed in another roadside bombing in northern Iraq.
While the American presence here has been greatly diminished, with Iraqis and Americans rarely conducting joint patrols and Iraqis eager to appear in control of their own security, there are still thousands of American soldiers working as advisers inside cities and towns across Iraq. Tens of thousands more are also on the road every night as Americans move equipment and resources in preparation for the large-scale reduction of forces scheduled to begin after January elections here.
One critical calculation is how the Americans can both provide the protection needed to move the vast accumulation of equipment from six years of war and maintain the capacity to support Iraqi forces if violence spins out of control.
Iraq’s security forces also continued to come under attack on Tuesday, with at least 10 police officers, including a police commander, killed and 6 more wounded in Kirkuk Province.
While Iraq’s police and army have long been targets of insurgents, August was the deadliest month for them since the Americans withdrew combat troops from the cities in late June, with 32 members killed. Since January, 164 Iraqi police officers and army soldiers have been killed.
The strategy of those committing violence in Iraq, never easy to divine, is particularly difficult to gauge when dealing with attacks on police officers in local areas.
Insurgents, of course, seek to destabilize the government. But there are also networks and overlays of crime, corruption, political power plays, ethnic rivalries and local factions in competition for control over vital areas.
In few places do those tensions form as combustible a mix as they do in Kirkuk Province, known as the country’s fault line because of the simmering tensions between the central government in Baghdad and the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan to the north. The deadliest attacks against Iraqi police officers on Tuesday took place around the city of Kirkuk. In one bombing in the town of Armeli, populated with Shiites from Iraq’s Turkmen ethnic minority, the local police commander was killed along with three other officers when his convoy struck a roadside bomb. In a separate attack in the same area, four other police officers were killed.
The continuing tensions in Kirkuk Province are an increasing focus for American commanders here, who have announced a new initiative to try and bring stability to the factions competing for power in the area. The details of the campaign, and how American troops will be involved, remain unclear.
There were also attacks against the Iraqi police in Baghdad on Tuesday, with at least six officers wounded in two bombings.
Another bombing in Baghdad took aim at an official in the Health Ministry, killing one of his employees and wounding 12 more people. But the official emerged unharmed.
Even as security forces are singled out, civilians here often bear the brunt of the violence, with 4,111 people killed around the country so far this year.
The continuing violence has raised questions about the ability of Iraqi forces to maintain security as the American role shrinks, especially after deadly attacks in the heart of the capital last month left roughly 100 people dead.
Seeking to address those doubts, the Iraqi government on Tuesday announced that 29 police and army officers arrested after that bombing were being charged with negligence in the performance their duties.
“There was clear negligence from the security forces,” said Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta, the spokesman for the Baghdad’s security command center. “Absolutely, what has been achieved so far in the intelligence and security efforts is below expectations.”
