Attacks in Baghdad fall 80 percent
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Attacks by insurgents and rivalsectarian militias have fallen up to 80 percent in Baghdad andconcrete blast walls that divide the capital could soon beremoved, a senior Iraqi military official said on Saturday.
Lieutenant-General Abboud Qanbar said the success of ayear-long clampdown named "Operation Imposing Law" had reinedin the savage violence between majority Shi'ites and minoritySunni Arabs dominant under Saddam Hussein.
"In a time when you could hear nothing but explosions,gunfire and the screams of mothers and fathers and sons, andsee bodies that were burned and dismembered, the people ofBaghdad were awaiting Operation Imposing Law," Qanbar toldreporters.
Qanbar pointed to the number of dead bodies turning up onthe capital's streets as an indicator of success.
In the six weeks to the end of 2006, an average of 43bodies were found dumped in the city each day as fiercesectarian fighting threatened to turn into full-scale civilwar.
That figure fell to four a day in 2008, in the period up toFebruary 12, said Qanbar, who heads the Baghdad securityoperation.
"Various enemy activities" had fallen by between 75 and 80percent since the security plan was implemented, he said.
To demonstrate how life had improved, Prime Minister Nurial-Maliki toured parts of the city on Saturday, visiting Iraqiforces and checkpoints.
"He wanted ... to send a message to the terrorists thatsecurity in Baghdad is prevailing now," one official said.
Central to the success has been the erection of 12-foot(3.5-metre) high concrete walls that snake across the city.
The walls were designed to stop car bombings blamed on alQaeda that turned markets and open areas into killing fields.
Qanbar said he hoped the walls could be taken down "in thecoming months" and predicted the improved situation in Baghdadwould translate to greater security elsewhere.
The U.S. military says attacks have fallen across Iraq by60 percent since June on the back of security clampdowns andthe deployment of 30,000 extra American troops.
FRAGILE RELATIONSHIP
Vital to the fall in violence was also a decision by SunniArab tribal leaders to turn against Sunni Islamist al Qaeda inlate 2006 and form neighbourhood security units, which mancheckpoints and provide tips on militant hideouts.
However, their relationship with Iraqi authorities remainstense. The Shi'ite-led government is wary of the units, called"concerned local citizens" (CLCs) by the U.S. military andwhose ranks includes former Sunni Arab insurgents.
"Everyone should know, that the official security forcesrepresent the country. And it is the one side that has theright to bear arms and impose security," Qanbar said.
In a sign of the tensions, one CLC group said it wassuspending its activities after three members were killed in anincident near the town of Jurf al-Sukr, south of Baghdad.
The unit blamed American soldiers for Friday's deaths. TheU.S. military said attack helicopters had responded withrockets after security forces came under small-arms fire. Itsaid the incident was under investigation but gave no furtherdetails.
The CLCs number some 80,000 mainly Sunni Arabs. Qanbar saidBaghdad was working on compensating victims of mistakes by theIraqi army and multi-national forces in Iraq.
While Iraqi and U.S. officials laud the security gains,humanitarian groups say it is still too early to encouragearound 2 million refugees who fled Iraq to return home.
"The plight of Iraqi refugees will end with nationalreconciliation," the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees,Antonio Guterres, told reporters during a visit to Baghdad.
(Additional reporting by Michael Holden, Mohammed Abbas andAhmed Rasheed, Writing by Mohammed Abbas: Editing by RobertWoodward)