WP,pg1: In Offensive, Iraqi Forces Show Signs Of Progress

[DeepModem Mom]

In Offensive, Iraqi Forces Show Signs Of Progress
By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 22, 2005; Page A01


....The Tall Afar offensive, which began Sept. 2, is the largest urban military operation in Iraq since November's siege of Fallujah. Unlike many previous joint offensives, however, it is the Iraqi army that has the majority of the soldiers on the ground -- 5,000 of the roughly 8,500 troops involved -- that does the most intense fighting and that pays the heaviest price. At least nine Iraqi soldiers have been killed during the operation, compared with one American.

"We were not afraid. We are here to protect our country," said Pvt. Tarek Hazem, 28, of Baghdad, his hands and uniform still red with the blood of men he helped treat when the building exploded. "All we feel is motivated to kill terrorists."

Tall Afar's Sunni Muslim majority and its strategic location on a main insurgent smuggling route, 40 miles from Iraq's border with Syria, make the operation here an important test case for the transition of security duties to Iraqis, commanders said. "If we can get things under control and begin handing off responsibilities here, we can do it anywhere," McMaster said. "It won't happen overnight, but progress is being made."

But while it has provided evidence that the capabilities of Iraq's security forces are improving, the operation in Tall Afar has also laid bare the challenges they face as their role in fighting the insurgency expands.

Because the ranks of the Iraqi police force and army are filled mostly with Shiite Arabs and ethnic Kurds, they are perceived in many of the country's Sunni sections not as national forces but as factional hit squads bent on persecution. The ethnic tensions were evident in Tall Afar, a city of just over 200,000 predominated by Sunni Turkmen....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/21/AR2005092102175.html

[Erika]

1. Read www.icasualties.org