http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/01/13/iraq.main.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories Kurdish brigade trains to deploy in Baghdad POSTED: 7:07 p.m. EST, January 13, 2007
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A Kurdish army brigade in northern Iraq is undergoing intensive urban combat training as it readies for deployment in the latest Baghdad security operation and is expected to take on the capital's Mehdi Army Shiite militia, its commander said Saturday. Meanwhile, three Iraqi generals told The Associated Press that the Iraqi commander who will lead the overall Baghdad security mission was the government's second choice and only got the job after the U.S. military objected to the first officer named to the post by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. "We will head to Baghdad soon," said Brig. Gen. Nazir Assem Korran, commander of the 1st Infantry Brigade, 2nd Division of the Iraqi army. "We have 3,000 soldiers who are currently undergoing intensive training especially in urban combat and how the army should act inside a city." Korran, in the Kurdish northern city of Irbil, said he did not know how the operation would unfold, but said the Defense Ministry in Baghdad had asked his brigade to take part in the security operation along with thousands of other Iraqi and U.S. troops. The forces were to conduct neighborhood-to-neighborhood searches to clear the city of Sunni Muslim insurgents and local militias such as the Mehdi Army of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The militia has been blamed for much of the sectarian killing in the past 11 months. "We are going to confront any terrorist elements or militias. We will confront any outlaws," the general said. Later in the day, al-Maliki issued his first comment on the new Bush administration plan outlined on Wednesday, declaring it "identical to our strategy and our intentions." President Bush said he would send an additional 21,500 troops to help pacify the capital and other parts of the country. (Full story) Al-Maliki, however, continued to avoid naming the Mehdi Army as a target of the military operations, disinclined, perhaps, to take on al-Sadr, a key backer of the prime minister. "Our strategy that aims to control security is based on using force against any outlaws, whatever their background or identity," al-Maliki said in a brief appearance aired on state-run Iraqiya television. Al-Maliki has repeatedly used that kind of formulaic language during his eight months in office, but has routinely blocked American forces from taking on his militia allies. On Wednesday, Iraqi military officials said al-Maliki had chosen Lt. Gen. Abboud Gambar as commander of the new security plan in the capital, where sectarian bloodshed built to a crescendo at the end of last year, with more than 100 people killed on many days. The army generals who spoke to AP said al-Maliki appointed Gambar a week ago when he told the nation that a new security plan was to be launched within days. But al-Maliki never revealed that Gambar would command the operation and has refused since then to confirm the appointment. The Iraqi generals, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information had not been officially released, said there had been several candidates from the military to run the new security plan and two names topped the list. First among the candidates was Lt. Gen. Mohan al-Freiji, but he was quickly vetoed by American officials. Gambar was second choice after the Americans blackballed al-Freiji, the generals said. Both al-Freiji and Gambar are Shiite Muslims. The U.S. military did not respond to an AP e-mail asking for verification of the dispute. "Mohan (al-Freiji) is not flexible at all and cannot be subdued. If he finds something unacceptable, he will never tolerate it. Mohan doesn't take direction at all," one of the generals said. "Abboud is more flexible." The generals said Gambar, a veteran of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and the 1991 Gulf War, would have two deputies, a Shiite and a Sunni, one on each side of the Tigris river that curls through the center of Baghdad. Gambar was a brigadier general in the navy during the 1991 Gulf War, one of the generals said. He was captured by U.S. troops on the Kuwaiti island of Fialaka and held prisoner in Saudi Arabia before being freed shortly afterward. Under Saddam Hussein's rule, military men normally were fired if taken prisoner, but the former president made an exception for Gambar and his brigade because of their brave defense of Fialaka. Gambar, in his early 60s, was decorated by Hussein for bravery. Gambar will report directly to al-Maliki, who is commander general of the armed forces. Indicating that the new security plan was near its formal opening, military officials said Saturday that the 4th Brigade of the Iraq army's 1st Infantry Division arrived in Baghdad's southern neighborhood of Rustomiyah. They said the brigade came from Fallujah, west of Baghdad, but refused to give further details. Korran, the general in Irbil, said his troops would face a language barrier and rely on translators because 95 percent of the brigade is Kurdish and unable to speak Arabic. Kurds, a separate ethnic group, are largely Sunnis but not Arabs. His brigade is one of two coming from the Kurdish region. The other will arrive from the northern city of Sulaimaniyah. A third brigade will come from southern Iraq. "We do not represent any sect or ethnic group," Korran said, adding that he expects to be fighting against "militias in residential areas." Other developments a.. U.S. raids that President Bush approved and that led to the detention of five Iranians in Iraq are part of broad efforts to confront Tehran's aggression, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday before meeting with Israel's foreign minister in Jerusalem. (Full story) a.. U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who opposes Bush's plans to send more U.S. soldiers to Iraq, met Saturday with al-Maliki and the two top U.S. commanders during her first visit to Baghdad in nearly a year. The New York Democrat, who is expected to run for her party's presidential nomination, said she doubted the al-Maliki government would live up to promises it had made about cracking down on violence. a.. Underscoring the difficulties in taming the violence, at least 48 people were killed or found dead nationwide on Saturday, including a Sunni cleric who was shot to death near his home in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad.
