Good news from the War on Terror
by Stan Lowe, Chairman (retired), Wyoming Veterans’ Commission
Recently, when I went to the Internet to research for this column’s planned article, I decided to go into the Department of Defense Web site.
I was amazed at all of the “good news” reported in press releases dated Oct. 4 and 5 about the world-wide War on Terror and decided to write this article instead.
There were several stories on a variety of topics, including the growing number of civilian “concerned citizen groups” in former Iraq “hot spots” that are doing basic community police duties at schools, markets, offices, etc.
Another story was about the remarkable successes achieved by U.S.-trained Philippine army anti-terrorist soldiers in neutralizing key Muslim terrorist leaders and making that nation’s troubled islands safer and more secure.
The first Iraqi “concerned citizen groups” were started months ago by Sunni sheiks, fed up with al Qaeda’s violence, in Iraq’s huge western Anbar province.
Originally, those sheiks had allied themselves with al Qaeda to fight Iraq’s newly formed Shiite dominated government, but in recent months they decided to switch sides.
Army Maj. Gen. Richard Sherlock, a Joint Staff spokesman, gave two reasons why these groups are growing.
First, with the surge of additional U.S. troops, American-led coalition forces and Iraqi security units have been able to respond more effectively to al Qaeda’s violence.
Second, al Qaeda and other extremist groups are losing support all over Iraq due to their indiscriminate targeting of civilians.
Sherlock said results in Anbar and trends elsewhere in Iraq are so encouraging that “the number of American service members in Iraq has started to drop, with 2,200 Marines from 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit redeploying from Anbar and not being replaced.
“If the security situation holds and improves, all five surge brigades will be out of Iraq by summer 2008,” he predicted.
In another press release, Col. Michael Kershaw, commander of the 10th Mountain Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, said that concerned citizens groups, motivated by Anbar’s example, began forming four or five months ago elsewhere in Iraq.
“About 16,000 (carefully screened) citizens have enrolled to form armed citizens groups,” Kershaw estimated, “of which about half are now performing security patrols and checkpoint duties.”
Benefits already seen include “a huge decline” in improvised-explosive-device (IED) attacks on U. S. forces. Also, groups’ cooperation has led to the capture of 85 terrorist leaders, and they are finding and turning in huge amounts of explosives and ordinance used to make IEDs, the colonel reported.
As al Qaeda leaves, he added, roads are opening up, which helps spur local commerce and industry.
Kershaw said Euphrates River valley residents living southeast of Baghdad are working with Iraqi army and coalition forces to pacify their area, once known as the “triangle of death.”
Formerly, it was “a bastion for Sunni Baath Party members who’d been displaced from high office after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Al Qaeda moved in afterward, and the terror group struck alliances with the embittered Sunnis.
“But, as in Anbar, Sunnis soon became disillusioned with al Qaeda’s brutal methods and religious philosophy,” Kershaw explained.
In another press release, Kershaw stated that when Iraqi army officers go out to coordinate with concerned citizen units, in many cases they talk to former army members they know personally or by reputation.
“This serves to bridge a huge gap amongst these kinds of sectarian fears that we hear so much about that exist in Iraq,” he said.
Sherlock’s press release also addressed U.S. involvement in the Philippines.
“Iraq is not the only success,” he stated.
American soldiers have worked with the Philippines’ armed forces for five years, training and equipping its first counterterrorism force and helping train three infantry brigades and training senior staffs to conduct combined brigade-level operations.
Also, U.S. Troops supported that country’s army in its campaign against Muslim terrorists.
On the humanitarian side, U.S. forces helped the Filipinos build 16 schools, seven medical facilities, more 80 kilometers of roadways and 25 water improvement projects, Sherlock said.