The number of US soldiers killed in combat in postwar Iraq rose yesterday above the number killed before May 1, the day President George Bush declared victory.
Two soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb about 120 kilometres north of Baghdad, bringing US combat fatalities to 116 since May 1. Between March 20, when coalition forces invaded Iraq, and May 1, 115 US troops were killed in combat.
The almost daily casualties, many of them aged 21 or younger, are beginning to impact on the US domestic agenda and, with the presidential election looming next year, could put pressure on Bush to get out of Iraq as quickly as possible.
Ivo Daalder, an analyst at one of the leading Washington thinktanks, the Brookings Institute, and a member of the national security council staff in the Clinton administration, predicted during a visit to London yesterday that US engagement in Iraq would be reduced in the next three to six months.
His prediction came as an official in Washington revealed that US intelligence staff working on the hunt for weapons of mass destruction may switch to counter-insurgency in Iraq.
In a further sign that Iraq is beginning to impinge more on US domestic politics, Bush this week denied he had been premature in declaring the war over when he addressed sailors on the USS Lincoln in May.
Repercussions of the bombing on Monday outside the International Committee of the Red Cross offices continued to be felt yesterday. Baghdad’s police commander, Major-General Hassan al-Obeid, announced tighter security in the capital, including 24-hour checkpoints and special patrols.
Pierre Kraehenbuehl, the ICRC director of operations, said it had yet to decide how many of its foreign staff would leave. The agency’s 600 Iraqi employees will remain.
The British government is backing those in Washington pushing for as speedy an exit from Iraq as possible. It wants a quick handover of power to Iraqis. An official from the US-UK coalition headquarters in Baghdad confirmed yesterday the coalition was urgently looking at ways to transfer some security responsibilities.
The source admitted that the pattern of attacks on Iraqis working for, or allied with, the US-led authorities, such as police officers, was a blow to efforts to persuade more Iraqis to join in administering the country and playing a greater role in providing security.
Any new arrangement with Iraq’s militia, its tribes, or the Kurds, had to come under a unified command: ”Otherwise you could have a security civil war.”
The source said the presence of foreign suicide bombers ”had been expected”, and that it was a consequence of failing to shut the country’s borders after the war ended.
The source said a man held after allegedly trying to blow up a police station on Monday who was initially thought to be a Syrian — he allegedly had a Syrian passport — is now believed to be a Yemeni.
Meanwhile, western governments owed billions of dollars by Iraq have agreed a radical shakeup of debt relief rules so the oil-rich state can qualify for generous loan forgiveness previously reserved for the world’s poorest countries.
The secretive Paris Club of creditors announced yesterday that future debt relief deals would be ”more tailored” to individual country circumstances, without specifically naming Iraq.
Yesterday’s announcement comes after months of lobbying from the US to ease pressure on the war-ravaged country’s economy, against opposition from France, Germany and Russia, significant creditors but opponents of the US-led war. – Guardian Unlimited Â