Friday, August 24, 2007

US intelligence is gloomy over Iraq

US intelligence is gloomy over Iraq
By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: August 24 2007 03:00 | Last updated: August 24 2007 03:00


The Iraqi government will continue to ‘struggle’ to achieve political reconciliation over the next year despite prospects for a moderately better security environment, according to a new US intelligence report.

The director of national intelligence yesterday re-leased the latest national intelligence estimate on Iraq, which said the US surge had helped ‘check for now’ the steep escalation in violence that gripped Iraq last year.

But the NIE concluded the Iraqi government would have difficulty implementing the political reconciliation that is considered key to bringing long-term stability to Iraq.

‘We assess, to the extent that coalition forces continue to conduct robust counter-insurgency operations and mentor and support the Iraqi security forces, that Iraq's security will continue to improve modestly during the next six to 12 months,’ said the report.

‘But . . . levels of insurgency and sectarian violence will remain high and the Iraqi government will -continue to struggle to achieve national-level political reconciliation and improved governance.’

The report comes as US politicians grow increasingly impatient with the government of Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister.

Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who heads the Senate armed services committee, this week called for the ousting of Mr Maliki.

‘Political and security trajectories in Iraq continue to be driven primarily by Shia insecurity about retaining political dominance, widespread Sunni unwillingness to accept a diminished political status, factional rivalries with the sectarian communities resulting in armed conflict, and the actions of extremists such as AQI (al-Qaeda in Iraq) and elements of the Sadrist Jaish al-Madhi militia that try to fuel sectarian violence,’ the NIE concluded.

The intelligence assessment found that while tribal Sunni sheiks working with US forces had reduced the capabilities of AQI, that co-operation had not translated into wider support for the Shia-dominated Iraq government.

The last NIE on Iraq, released in February,concluded that the term ‘civil war’ applied to parts of the conflict, and warned that the Iraqi government would be hard-pressed to achieve reconciliation given the country's sectarian divides.

The report released yesterday said that ‘developments in Iraq are unfolding more rapidly and with greater complexity’ than wasenvisioned in the February NIE.

The NIE also assessed that ‘the Iraqi government will become more precarious over the next six to 12 months because of criticism by other members of the major Shia coalition . . Grand Ayatollah Sistani, and other Sunni and Kurdish parties’.

Sunni 'killed'

By Steve Negus, Iraq correspondent

Al-Qaeda-linked fighters attacked a Sunni village in Diyala on Thursday, killing 15 people, police and witnesses quoted by agencies said. The reports said that 10 attackers were killed in the fighting in the village of Ibrahim al-Yahya, which began when militants detonated a bomb at the house of a local anti-al-Qaeda tribal sheikh, killing him and a member of his family.

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