Plan Puts Only Sunni Terrorists in Crosshairs of the Iraqi Army

By ELI LAKE, Staff Reporter of the Sun
May 3, 2007

BAGHDAD — With the new Baghdad security plan just getting started, American military advisers here say the list of targets issued to local commanders comprises almost exclusively Sunni terrorists, not Shiite militias.

As a result, almost all action against Moqtada al-Sadr's militia, known as the Mahdi Army, is taken by the American and coalition forces.
The prospect of an Iraqi army that only attacks Sunnis could destroy the one institution the White House believes has the best chance of forging a new unified state. Under Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, most Shiite areas were denied clean drinking water and healthy food as a result of the dictator's manipulation of the U.N. oil-for-food program. Since the 2005 elections, Iraqi governments have been dominated by parties representing the majority Shiite population and have pursued policies that, Sunnis say, persecute Sunnis.

"There is great concern among the advisers about the balance of targets," an adviser to the Baghdad Operations Command, Major Michael Philipak, said. "That is the sectarian issue. Don't get me wrong, a bad guy is a bad guy. But the difficulty is the intelligence collected on Jaish al-Mahdi."

The targets for military action are drawn up every Sunday by the Iraqi military's chief of staff, Lieutenant General Aboud Qanbar, a close ally of Prime Minister al-Maliki, in conjunction with the American adviser, Brigadier General John Campbell. While lawyers oversee the process, the choice of targets is affected by intelligence reports, which depend largely on Shiite sources, according to Major Philipak.

"The intelligence agencies who are developing the targets … are Shia," the major said. "We have not detected they are sectarian or have an ulterior motive. Their sources generating the intelligence tend to be Shia, and they have a great deal of fear that targeting Shia militias will get them killed."

Iraq currently has two intelligence agencies. One was created and is still funded by the CIA and has a budget that is kept secret even from Iraq's parliament; the second was created by Mr. Maliki and reports to him. Some American officials have said they are concerned that Iranians have infiltrated the Maliki intelligence agency.

Major Philipak said he was concerned but optimistic that the target lists generated in the Baghdad Operations Command would become more balanced as intelligence gathering diversified. But he also said he was worried about other targets General Aboud generates through his confidential sources.

"The second targeting process is what we are trying to wean them off of. General Aboud, like every Iraqi officer, has his own sources. Sometimes he will get an order from the prime minister's office or Ministry of Defense. Sometimes he will get a call from a source. That will then translate into a verbal order down to the commanders, shot straight down via phone through command channels," Major Philipak said.

The military transition team operating in southeast Mansour, where this reporter is embedded, became concerned about the partiality of the target lists last month. "We first suspected in the middle of April, when we received a target list from Baghdad Operations Command that had 42 targets and all were Sunni, even though we operate in a battle space where 40% of our population is Shia," the commander of the military transition team, Major Chris Norrie, said.

He added: "That is certainly a reason to be concerned and check into how we receive information, process information, and act on that information. The overriding concern is doing anything that might be perceived by the populace as being biased."

The lieutenant colonel with whom Major Norrie works, Rahim al Bakri, a Shiite, would not comment on the unbalanced target lists for his area. His commanding officer, Colonel Ghassan Khaled Kathem, a Sunni, was also tight-lipped, and said the Mahdi Army did not operate in his battle space, a claim that was denied by American soldiers there.

Colonel Ghassan did say he was not worried about the target lists coming from Baghdad. "The targets that we receive, most of them are Sunni, because our sector mainly is Sunni. There is a maximum 30% Shia in the area," he said.

That area of operations included Haifa Street, which was one of the most violent places in Iraq until recently and was advertised by Al Qaeda in Iraq in an Internet video in 2006 as the center of its new caliphate.

Major Norrie's intelligence officer, Lieutenant Martin Ellison, said he was still trying to gauge the quality of the intelligence from the Baghdad Operations Command.

"We've pulled in guys that there has been very little evidence on, and we've pulled in guys that have confessed to attacking coalition and Iraqi forces," he said. "The issue is, when we get those lists, there is a name and vague description of what they have done wrong, like ‘member of Al Qaeda' or "displaced Shia families.' There is very little evidence to detain them, but these are orders. Because they are orders, the Iraqi officers have to follow them."

The issue of political and sectarian influence at the top of the Iraqi army was raised this week in a Washington Post story about an office controlled by aides to Mr. Maliki aimed at purging Iraqi officers who were targeting the Mahdi Army. In an interview, Brigadier General Dana Pittard, who commands the Iraq Assistance Group, which trains Iraqi security forces, said he was unaware of the office cited in the Post story.

When asked about the target lists, he said he was unfamiliar with the practice. "There is a concern for the need for balance. But we have to remember that 75% of attacks on American forces are from the Sunnis," he said.

Plan Puts Only Sunni Terrorists in Crosshairs of the Iraqi Army

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