NY Times Sunday: Surge A Failure

[ruggerson]

Troop Buildup, Yielding Slight Gains, Fails to Meet U.S. Goals

By DAMIEN CAVE and STEPHEN FARRELL
Published: September 9, 2007

Seven months after the American-led troop “surge” began, Baghdad has experienced modest security gains that have neither reversed the city’s underlying sectarian dynamic nor created a unified and trusted national government.

Improvements have been made. American military figures show that sectarian killings in Baghdad have decreased substantially. In many of Baghdad’s most battle-scarred areas, including Mansour in the west and Ur in the east, markets and parks that were practically abandoned last year have begun to revive.

The surge has also coincided with and benefited from a dramatic turnaround in many Sunni areas where former insurgents and tribes have defected from supporting violent extremism, delivering reliable tips and helping the Americans find and eliminate car bomb factories. An average of 23 car bombs a month struck Baghdad in June, July and August, down from an average of 42 over the same period a year earlier.

But the overall impact of these developments, so far, has been limited. And in some cases the good news is a consequence of bad news: people in neighborhoods have been “takhalasu” — an Iraqi word for purged, meaning killed or driven away. More than 35,000 Iraqis have left their homes in Baghdad since the American troop buildup began, humanitarian groups reporte

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/world/middleeast/09surge.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&hp&oref=slogin">more

[applegrove]

1. Thanks for the post.