Pat Dollard | Young Americans

NY Times:

BAGHDAD, Nov. 7 — American forces have routed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the Iraqi militant network, from every neighborhood of Baghdad, a top American general said today, allowing American troops involved in the “surge” to depart as planned.

Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr., commander of United States forces in Baghdad, also said that American troops had yet to clear some 13 percent of the city, including Sadr City and several other areas controlled by Shiite militias. But, he said, “there’s just no question” that violence had declined since a spike in June.

“Murder victims are down 80 percent from where they were at the peak,” and attacks involving improvised bombs are down 70 percent, he said.

General Fil attributed the decline to improvements in the Iraqi security forces, a cease-fire ordered by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, the disruption of financing for insurgents, and, most significant, Iraqis’ rejection of “the rule of the gun.”

His comments, in a broad interview over egg rolls and lo mein in a Green Zone conference room, were the latest in a series of upbeat assessments he and other commanders have offered in recent months. But his descriptions revealed a city still in transition: tormented by its past, struggling to find a better future.

“The Iraqi people have just decided that they’ve had it up to here with violence,” he said, while noting that their demands for electricity, water and jobs have intensified.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of displaced families are returning to their homes, but a majority of them are still afraid to go back to neighborhoods now segregated by sect. “Clearly,” General Fil said, “it will take some time for Baghdad to restore itself to what it was.”

He and other military commanders have maintained for months that the conditions for national reconciliation have been met. They argue that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is foreign-led, has been weakened. They cite in particular the rise of the American-supported citizen volunteers — 67,000 nationwide, according to military figures.

And though Sunni extremist groups could revive and “reinfest very quickly,” General Fil said, Iraq’s leaders should now have the peace they need to build a trusted, cross-sectarian government. But progress toward that, he said, has been “disappointing.”

Soon, General Fil said, there will be fewer troops for the Iraqis to rely on. “Already we are at a point where we’ll see that as the surge forces depart the city, we’ll see a natural decline in numbers, and I’m very comfortable where that comes to,” he said.

With less than two months to go before his division heads home, General Fil offered a mixed vision of the military’s role for the coming year. He said that if 2007 was the year of security, 2008 would probably be “a year of reconstruction, a year of infrastructure repair, and a year of, if there’s going to be a surge, a year of the surge of the economy.”

He acknowledged that dislodging Shiite militias from control of gasoline, government ministries and other sources of power would be difficult.

The biggest threat to Baghdad’s security is now Shiite militias, he said. Infrastructure weaknesses and unemployment are also serious obstacles, which American efforts at the local level cannot fully address because “these become national-level problems,” he said. Violence, meanwhile, despite recent declines in some areas, has moved to some degree to rural villages and towns from major cities, American and Iraqi commanders said.

On Wednesday, two children were killed when a roadside bomb exploded on a farm road in Wasit Province. South of Baquba, Iraqi army patrols found 17 bodies, blindfolded, handcuffed and decayed. Four were found headless about 200 yards away. It was the second mass grave discovered in a rural area this week.

American troops have recently focused more operations on the farm towns and dusty villages of the country, with the latest coming this week outside Kirkuk in the north.

The operations are aimed at maintaining what General Fil described as vital momentum. The greatest challenge of the coming months, he said, will be satisfying the delicate hopes and expectations of Iraqis, who see security not as an end, but just as a beginning.

Stability, General Fil said, “is within sight but not yet within touch.”

“Close, but not yet within touch.”