Senior US General : Al-Qaida will retreat to Africa !
Aug 25, 2005 (London) — A senior US military officer yesterday predicted that al-Qaida fighters in Iraq will move to the “vast ungoverned spaces” of the Horn of Africa once conditions in the country get too tough for them.
The warning came from Major General Douglas Lute, director of operations at America’s Central Command. “There will come a time when Zarqawi will face too much resistance in Iraq and will move on,” he predicted, referring to the head of “al-Qaida in Iraq”, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born Islamist who has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks, kidnappings and beheadings.
Looking ahead to a time when he said Iraq would be “stabilised”, Gen Lute predicted that Zarqawi would take the “path of least resistance” and leave the country for the Horn of Africa, including parts of Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia.
However, before that, Gen Lute suggested, Zarqawi would make a show of force in the run-up to the Iraqi consti tutional referendum and subsequent elections. “He has to go down fighting,” he said.
Gen Lute said 90% of what he called the “enemy” in Iraq was domestic. There was only a “slither” of foreign fighters “sponsored from outside”.
He declined to put a figure on his estimate. Earlier this year, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said there were between 12,000 and 20,000 hardcore insurgents in Iraq.
In Iraq yesterday, dozens of insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles attacked police checkpoints in western Baghdad in some of the heaviest street fighting in the capital for months.
Explosions shook the Hay al-Jamia district and at least six police vehicles were set ablaze as a group of around 40 insurgents, some with their faces masked, launched a daylight assault, police and witnesses told Reuters. A police source said three police officers and three civilians were killed and 31 people were wounded, most of them civilians.
Gen Lute said in London yesterday that the dependency of Iraqi security forces on foreign, notably American, troops had to be broken. “Ultimately, the solution has got to be a local solution, not one imposed from outside.”
However, he refused to be drawn on a timetable for a reduction in the number of US troops – currently about 138,000 – in Iraq. Gen Lute said only that if the training of Iraqi forces continued at its present rate, by this time next year the US would be “in a position to make adjustments in our force structure”.
But he said the US would not “leave a vacuum” in Iraq and would continue to deploy 10-man “coalition assistant teams” to provide air support, artillery and medical evacuation for Iraqi forces.
But he admitted the US suffered from an intelligence gap and had to rely on Iraqis to tell the difference, for example, between people from different Arab countries, and between Iraqi Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds.
Britain will be under heavy pressure to make deep cuts in the number of its troops – currently some 9,000 – in southern Iraq before it takes over control of Nato forces in Afghanistan in April next year.
Britain will command Nato’s allied rapid reaction force, which is due to be based in southern Afghanistan. Nato will later set up another headquarters to the east of the country. “Then all of Afghanistan will be under the Nato flag,” Gen Lute remarked yesterday.
Britain has also taken on the responsibility for eradicating the country’s opium poppy crop. Gen Lute said yesterday that US forces would work alongside the British only when they were available. There were historic restrictions on the role of the US in law enforcement activities, the general added.
Gen Lute said there was no hard intelligence linking the narcotics trade with “extremists”. However, he added: “We didn’t eliminate the Taliban to introduce a narco-state.”
He also said there was evidence that the Taliban was still recruiting supporters.
The Guardian.