A next major battlefield for combating al Qaeda in Iraq is a valley of villages and palm groves north of Baghdad. Scores of terrorists fled to the Diyala River Valley after U.S. troops flushed them out during a counteroffensive in the city of Baquba last month.
The retreat continued the enemy’s pattern of fleeing from one location to another in Iraq to escape various U.S. counterinsurgency operations dating back to 2004.
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“We’re going to have to very deliberately target each one of those villages and target the enemy,” Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, the top commander in northern Iraq, told reporters at the Pentagon in a teleconference from Iraq on Friday. “For sure, they do not want to give up Diyala.”
Weighing in on the troop debate dominating Washington, Mixon said it would be a mistake to start drawing down soldiers before his sector is cleared of the enemy and the Iraqi security forces can take on more duties. Democrats, backed by some Republicans, are on a totally different track. They back legislation to end U.S. combat missions by April.
Mixon said if trends continue, the Pentagon could begin withdrawing forces in his region next January, with three of six brigades removed over 18 months.
“It needs to be well thought out and it cannot be a strategy that is based on, ‘well, we need to leave,’ ” the two-star general said. “That’s not a strategy. That’s a withdrawal.”
At a subsequent news conference Friday, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, Joint Chiefs chairman, acknowledged a setback. The number of Iraqi army battalions able to operate independently, without U.S. control, has decreased from 10 to six. Pace said the units suffered so many casualties and destroyed equipment that they had to be taken out of operation.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates revealed he is thinking about how he might have to pull troops out of Iraq if Democrats get their way and cut off war funds.
“This is a massive logistical undertaking whenever it takes place,” he said. He said it took one year to pull forces out of Kuwait after 1991 Desert Storm “in a completely permissive environment.”
Gates was guarded when discussing progress in the five-month-old counteroffensive designed to secure greater Baghdad. He did cite “political progress” of Sunni leaders in Anbar and Diyala provinces breaking ties with al Qaeda.
