An Iraqi organization tasked with consolidating and coordinating that country’s counterterrorism effort is now capable of conducting unilateral missions, a U.S. military official said yesterday.
“[The Iraqi National Counterterrorism Force’s] primary mission is to synchronize and focus all elements of Iraqi national power to defeat terrorism here in Iraq,” U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Simeon Trombitas, director of the Iraqi National Counterterrorism Force Transition Team, told online journalist and bloggers.
The Iraqi unit was formed in 2003 and has since been trained by U.S. Special Forces soldiers, Trombitas said.
While U.S. forces still train with the specialized Iraqi force and conduct missions with the Iraqis, they’re now capable of running their own missions with limited U.S. help, he said.
“They’re comfortable, at this point in time, doing unilateral operations, even without some of our enablers,” Trombitas explained. “I think that they’re well on the road to conducting the majority of their operations.”
From the New York Times:
An American agency monitoring reconstruction in Iraq said Friday that oil exports through Iraq’s northern pipeline rose more than tenfold over the past year, citing a sharp drop in attacks on the pipeline and new infrastructure built to protect it.
The agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, said in a report for release on Saturday that there had been no insurgent attacks on the pipeline, which exports crude oil from northern Iraq to Turkey, since the American infrastructure project began last July.
As a result, crude oil exports from Iraq’s north rose from an average of 1 million barrels a month to more than 13 million, the report said. Nearly all of the Iraqi government’s revenue comes from oil exports, so the increased flow has direct implications for people here. The increased exports were worth $8 billion, the report said.
To protect the pipeline, berms, fences and guardhouses were built, and American soldiers patrol its 60-mile length. Iraqi guards monitor its perimeter; Iraq’s government has promised to commit almost 800 Iraqi soldiers to take over for the American patrols.
Ginger M. Cruz, the deputy inspector general, said the overall decline in violence in Iraq had helped account for the $34 million project’s success. The rise in oil exports marked a sharp turnaround from earlier years, when Sunni Arab insurgents staged relentless attacks on the pipeline, often stopping the flow of oil.
The supply of crude oil has been flowing to the key northern Baiji refinery, which has helped increase the production of electricity, the report said.
One final positive piece of news from AP:
The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost. Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace — a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.
Despite the occasional bursts of violence, Iraq has reached the point where the insurgents, who once controlled whole cities, no longer have the clout to threaten the viability of the central government.
That does not mean the war has ended or that U.S. troops have no role in Iraq. It means the combat phase finally is ending, years past the time when President Bush optimistically declared it had. The new phase focuses on training the Iraqi army and police, restraining the flow of illicit weaponry from Iran, supporting closer links between Baghdad and local governments, pushing the integration of former insurgents into legitimate government jobs and assisting in rebuilding the economy.
Scattered battles go on, especially against al-Qaida holdouts north of Baghdad. But organized resistance, with the steady drumbeat of bombings, kidnappings, assassinations and ambushes that once rocked the capital daily, has all but ceased.
This amounts to more than a lull in the violence. It reflects a fundamental shift in the outlook for the Sunni minority, which held power under Saddam Hussein. They launched the insurgency five years ago. They now are either sidelined or have switched sides to cooperate with the Americans in return for money and political support.
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