(Source : http://www.20minutes.fr/journal/impr_article.php?ida=27887)(20 Minutes a écrit :Les Américains pessimistes quant à la poursuite des combats en Irak
Mardi 24 août 2004
Vaincre l’insurrection irakienne pourrait prendre « dix ans ». C’est ce qu’a estimé hier Randolph Gangle, chef du Centre sur les menaces et les opportunités dépendant du corps des marines, dans le quotidien USA Today. La situation sur le terrain n’incline pas à l’optimisme. Hier, de violents affrontements opposaient toujours l’armée américaine aux miliciens du jeune chiite radical, Moqtada Sadr, pour la maîtrise du mausolée de l’imam Ali, à Nadjaf.
L'article de USA Today du 22 août et publié hier :
(Source :a écrit :Insurgents showing no sign of letting up
By Jim Michaels and Charles Crain, USA TODAY
BAGHDAD — Nearly two months after the establishment of a sovereign Iraqi government, the violent attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces show no sign of flagging.
A USA TODAY database, which analyzed unclassified U.S. government security reports, shows attacks against U.S. and allied forces have averaged 49 a day since the hand-over of sovereignty June 28, compared with 52 a day in the four weeks leading up to the transfer.
Iraqi guerrillas are relying heavily on weapons that allow them to attack and then slip away, such as roadside bombs and mortars. In June and July, U.S. and Iraq forces were attacked with 759 roadside bombs and uncovered at least 400 others before they exploded.
U.S. officials had said they expected the attacks to drop as Iraqis re-established control over their country. Their thinking: Iraqi security forces would be better at gathering intelligence, and support for militants would erode because insurgents would be attacking Iraqis rather than U.S. occupation forces.
The officials still hold that view. But U.S. officers say the continuing attacks suggest that it will take time, possibly years, to crush the insurgency. President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have said U.S. forces will stay in Iraq as long as they are needed to assist Iraqi security forces. Iraqi forces are not yet trained and equipped to the point where they can assume responsibility for the country's security.
And insurgents — be they former members of Saddam Hussein's regime, criminals or Islamic fundamentalists — remain entrenched. While most attention has been focused on the showdown in Najaf between Shiites and the new Iraqi government, data show the insurgency is a stubborn and continuing phenomenon throughout the country.
"If we have the political will and stamina to stay, I could see this going on for 10 years," says Randolph Gangle, a retired officer who heads the Marine Corps' Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities in Quantico, Va.
Guerrilla war
The USA TODAY database shows a guerrilla war in which insurgents have kept up relentless hit-and-run attacks on U.S. forces:
•Roadside bombs, which the military calls "improvised explosive devices," remain the insurgents' weapon of choice. Mostly rigged from artillery shells, these bombs can be triggered from a distance by militants who can then quickly escape. The bombs are deadly. Half of the Army's 24 deaths from hostile action in July were attributed to roadside bombs. The Marines generally do not describe the specific cause of hostile-fire deaths.
Militants have become more innovative in devising the bombs. They are using cell phones and wireless garage-door openers to detonate the explosives. A military task force is investigating technology, training and tactics to counter the increasingly ubiquitous roadside bombs.
•Though generally not very accurate, mortars and rocket attacks are common. Mortars, some of them homemade, can be carried in the trunk of a car, set up quickly and aimed at U.S. positions. Militants often can drive off before their positions can be pinpointed. In July, there were 468 mortar and rocket attacks. Of the Army's 24 combat deaths in July, seven were from rocket or mortar fire.
•Attacks are concentrated in the "Sunni Triangle" area north and west of Baghdad and in Shiite Muslim strongholds in Najaf and other southern cities. But violence is common in almost every part of the country, with the exception of Kurdish-controlled areas in the north. There were 880 attacks reported in Baghdad, a city of about 5 million, in June and July. They represented about 30% of the total attacks. In Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, 244 attacks were reported during the same period.
•Militants regularly fire on U.S. airplanes and helicopters. In July, there were 15 such attacks, mostly with rifle fire and rocket-propelled grenades. But militants also have access to more dangerous surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns.
"No one is underestimating our opponents," says Marine Brig. Gen. Robert Neller, director of the operations division at Marine Corps headquarters. "These guys are adaptive. They learn. They are creative."
Hit-and-run tactics
Insurgent violence peaked in April, when 126 American troops were killed in action in Iraq. The month was chaotic: Marines launched an offensive in the Sunni Muslim stronghold of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, and the Army battled followers of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in the southern city of Najaf and other predominantly Shiite areas.
The pace of attacks since April is lower but has remained mostly steady.
U.S. officers say the insurgents generally use classic guerrilla hit-and-run tactics and avoid direct confrontation with American troops and firepower.
When insurgents have taken on U.S. forces directly, such as the al-Sadr rebellion in Najaf this month and earlier insurgent attacks in Fallujah and Ramadi, the battles have been costly to the guerrillas.
"Every time they stand and fight, they die," says Marine Col. Larry Brown, who recently returned from Iraq, where he served as operations officer for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, based outside Fallujah. "Their survival tactic is sniping around the edges."
Insurgents have settled on roadside bombs, mortars and rockets because they can attack and run.
The nearly limitless availability of weapons in Iraq has made these tactics deadlier than in previous guerrilla wars. Militants raid military ammunition dumps or use weapons looted from bases abandoned by Iraqi forces after the collapse of the regime in April 2003.
The forces fighting the insurgents find these pinprick attacks frustrating. "We can't see the enemy," Iraqi National Guard Brig. Gen. Mudhir Mawla Abbood says. "They see us, but we can't see them."
No 'pressure point' to hit
The fight against the Iraqi insurgency differs from other guerrilla wars. There is no single cause driving the fighters, nor is there a unified leadership. Making the situation even more complex, the insurgency includes multiple groups with differing goals and motives. Sometimes they fight together; other times they fight among themselves.
Insurgents include former members of Saddam's Baath Party and ex-military officers who want to return to power, religious extremists who want Islamic rule, foreign fighters who want to hurt the United States and criminals motivated by money.
"Here you have a whole hodgepodge of differing groups," Gangle says. He recently returned from Iraq, where he conducted research to update the Small Wars Manual, the Marine Corps' counterinsurgency bible.
That diversity makes quashing the violence difficult. There is no way to attack the nerve center of Iraq's multifaceted insurgency.
Saddam's capture in December was followed by a temporary drop in attacks. That led U.S. officers to believe that the ousted dictator had been inspiring, if not controlling, the fighters. His capture sparked hopes that the insurgency was in permanent decline.
Now U.S. officials are focusing on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born militant suspected of having ties to al-Qaeda.
Zarqawi is believed to be behind many of the more spectacular attacks, assassinations and kidnappings in Iraq. But even his capture might not have a dramatic effect on the violence because there are so many guerrilla cells with different leaders and different motives.
"It is not classical guerrilla warfare in the sense there is no one in charge of it," Brown says. "There is no pressure point. ... There is no rebel leader that you would find in a Central American guerrilla war."
Building Iraqi capability
One key to U.S. strategy remains rebuilding Iraq's security forces and turning over responsibility for security to the Iraqi army, National Guard, police and other security forces.
But until that happens, American troops remain in the line of fire. U.S. forces in Iraq, which number about 140,000, are conducting 12,000 patrols per week, though many now are joint operations with Iraqi troops.
In July, 43 U.S. troops were killed by hostile fire, up from 37 in June. In the first weeks of August, about 34 U.S. forces were killed in action, bringing the total to at least 599 combat deaths since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared major combat operations over.
Rumsfeld said recently that the number of properly trained and equipped Iraqi troops is about 100,000, not 206,000 as had been widely reported. Rumsfeld said the larger number that had been cited included individuals who are poorly equipped or trained, have left the force or died.
In April, an Iraqi army battalion balked when told it would be sent to quell violence in Fallujah. And civil-defense forces in Fallujah melted away when the fighting started there.
U.S. officers say the problem at the time was that security forces were hastily put together. Quality was sacrificed in the interest of building the size of the forces quickly. Many recruits had no formal military training before donning a uniform.
Soldiers and police are now receiving more training, and many of the poorly disciplined troops who were recruited earlier have left.
"There's been a turnover," says Army Col. Gerald Simmons, an adviser to the Iraqi National Guard's 40th Brigade. "After the March-April incident (in Fallujah), we found out who wanted to be an ING (Iraqi National Guard) soldier and who didn't."
In recent weeks Iraqi police have stood up to militants in fighting in Najaf, Mosul and elsewhere. U.S. officials say there are signs that Iraqi forces have taken on more responsibility since the June 28 hand-over. And increasingly, Iraqi forces are coming under attack. More than 700 Iraqi police have been killed since the fall of Saddam's regime.
Progress evident in Iraqi forces
Before the hand-over, Army 2nd Lt. Fernando Medina, a platoon leader with the 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, patrolled Baghdad streets with four Humvees and 16 U.S. soldiers. On a patrol early this month, half his patrol consisted of newly minted Iraqi National Guardsmen.
Medina, of Austin, says he has seen progress in the Iraqi forces since the hand-over. Before the transition, he says, "sometimes they didn't even show up for work." Now they mostly do.
As they prepare to leave for Baghdad's predominantly Shiite Amin neighborhood, the armed Iraqi soldiers crowd into the open back of a pickup. The Americans leave in armored Humvees. The patrol's mission: to provide a show of force around a date palm grove where insurgents have hidden and fired mortars at U.S. positions.
The strategy behind the patrols is to put an Iraqi face on security. But sometimes the reaction from Baghdad residents is as hostile to the Iraqi troops as it is to the Americans. The Iraqi translator who accompanies the Americans on the patrol wears a red bandanna over his face and mirrored sunglasses to hide his identity. Iraqis working for Americans have been killed by insurgents.
At times, locals will spit at the National Guardsmen, throw things at them and call them spies and traitors, Medina says. The Iraqi soldiers sometimes respond with their fists when the locals swear at them. "Their rules of engagement are a little different from ours," the lieutenant explains.
Patience is the key to winning in a guerrilla war, tacticians say.
"If we can stay the course over here for another year or so, the insurgency will wear itself out," says Col. Dusty Rhoades, a Marine intelligence officer in Iraq. "The U.S. military is currently in a position where it is militarily impossible for us to lose, but only an Iraqi government can totally win."
But how much time will it take? The Army is hiring a research group, The Dupuy Institute, to help answer that question. The group will study guerrilla conflicts in Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Greece, Malaysia and elsewhere to see whether they hold lessons for Iraq.
But even a lengthy war doesn't have to be a quagmire, military experts say.
"We're not doing badly at all," says Ralph Peters, a retired Army officer and strategist. "It's just everyone underestimated the intensity and complexity of this."
Crain reported from Baghdad, Michaels from McLean, Va. Contributing: Paul Overberg, James Cox, William Risser, Tom Squitieri
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/20...raq-cover_x.htm)