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| Captured: US Army troops escorted suspected Al Qaeda militants on Sunday, after some 33 suspects were arrested in a joint US-Iraqi overnight
raid in the restive city of Baquba. AP |
Too few men hunting Al Qaeda
US-Iraqi forces struggle to clear and hold Iraq's Diyala province.
from the July 9, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
'An endless cycle'
But for many Iraqi and American soldiers there is a sense of déjà vu in this operation since many parts of Diyala, such as Sufayet, had been cleared of insurgents before only to fall back in their sway.
"It's an endless cycle, we keep searching. There aren't enough soldiers to cover the areas," says Sgt. Stephen Hayes from Greenville, Ohio, who is part of one of the surge brigades sent to Diyala.
Sheikh Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi of the pro-insurgency Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars sums it up this way: "The resistance will not settle down and defend a piece of land. It's all hit and run."
Although small elements of the homegrown nationalist insurgency are present in Diyala, the Al Qaeda-linked fighters are the dominant force, say US and Iraqi officials. This has meant that opportunities for the US Army to exploit the rifts that have emerged between Al Qaeda and other insurgency groups, most notably in the western Anbar Province, are limited here.
The US military says some Sunni militias joined it in the fight against Al Qaeda in Baquba's Tahrir sector and nearby Buhriz. This was swiftly denied in a purported Internet posting from the group last month.
"Al Qaeda is the strongest in Diyala," says Nibras Kazimi, a visiting scholar at the Hudson Institute in Washington. "Its biggest strength is that it's well financed with grass-roots money from the Gulf, Syria, and even Europe."
The US Army's Bednarek talks about an "endless pit of dollars" at the disposal of Al Qaeda in the province.
Iraqi soldiers' missing equipment
On Thursday, two of Colonel Mahmoud's men were killed by a roadside bomb north of the base. Eight of the battalion's 12 Humvees have been destroyed in such attacks over the past year and they have yet to be repaired or replaced.
The base is getting mortared all the time now since the start of operations in Baquba, but they have no way to respond since they have no mortars or artillery fire of their own.
"It's incredibly frustrating," says the US Army's Major Hoch.
Some US officers blame the poor equipment conditions on weak organizational and logistical skills by the Ministry of Defense. Others say it's downright mismanagement of funds and corruption.
"How can you expect us to fight Al Qaeda terrorists under these conditions," says one Iraqi soldier from the Udhaim battalion adding that things have gotten so bad that soldiers sometimes have to share body armor and helmets.
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