BAGHDAD, Iraq – The Iraq war could be heading to its decisive moment: a battle for the capital that already has turned dramatically bloodier for American soldiers and carries enormous stakes for the country’s future.
At least 13 American soldiers have been killed around Baghdad since Monday – the highest four-day U.S. toll in the capital since the 2003 invasion.
That count is likely to rise as the U.S.-led forces step up their campaign to root out the extremist militias, death squads and terrorist cells that have turned the city into a collection of armed, ethnically divided camps.
No longer a limited security problem while the main war is being fought out west in Anbar province, the battle of Baghdad is turning out to be “a critical point in the Iraq war,” former Pentagon analyst Anthony Cordesman said.
“Securing Baghdad … won’t win. But losing Baghdad will lose,” Cordesman says. “If they lose, Iraq is likely to slip into a major civil war.”
Much of Baghdad has yet to be targeted in the joint U.S.-Iraqi pacification operation. Top commanders – signaling the toughest fight is yet to come – say they need six more Iraqi battalions, or 3,000 soldiers, to join the 30,000 Iraqi security forces and 15,000 Americans already in the city.
U.S. commanders have defined victory as reducing violence in the capital to the point where Iraqi civilian police can handle security. With order restored in the capital, the Iraqi government then could focus on providing security and basic services to the rest of the country, creating the conditions for U.S. troops to leave.
Baghdad is “the center of gravity for the country. Everybody knows that,” said Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. general in Iraq. “The bad guys know it, we know it, the Iraqis know it. So we have to help the Iraqis secure their capital if they’re going to go forward.”
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Iraqi leaders on Thursday that they have limited time to settle their differences and that the escalating waves of violence are intolerable.
After meetings in the Middle East with Arab and Israeli leaders, the top U.S. diplomat came to Iraq to tell sometimes-squabbling leaders they have a short window to resolve disputes that she said are spurring sectarian and insurgent violence.
Rice said the U.S. role is “to support all the parties and, indeed, to press all the parties to work toward that resolution quickly, because obviously the security situation is not one that can be tolerated and it is not one that is being helped by political inaction.”
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