Al Qaeda still dangerous foe, says US General
Middle East Desk Report

BAGHDAD—Sunni Islamist al Qaeda militants remain a dangerous foe in Iraq despite a decline in violence, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq said on Thursday, a day after the deadliest bombing in Baghdad since September.
“We have to be careful not to get feeling too successful,” General David Petraeus told reporters before meeting Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who was visiting Iraq. “We see this as requiring a continued amount of very tough work. We see al Qaeda as a very, very dangerous adversary still able to carry out attacks and an adversary that we must continue to pursue,” Petraeus said.
In central Baghdad’s prosperous Karrada neighborhood, shopkeepers swept up broken glass where a car bomb killed 15 people and wounded 35 on Wednesday across the Tigris River from the “Green Zone” compound where Gates met Iraqi officials. Shredded store mannequins and clothes littered the streets, but defiant Baghdadis ignored the destruction and went shopping in a part of the capital where boutiques selling perfume and imported clothing have come to symbolize the city’s rebirth.
“That? That was just one explosion,” said Um Fadhil, a middle-aged woman trying on boots with her two teenaged daughters at a shop just 100 meters from the blast site. “No, I am not afraid. Things have gotten better.” Perfume shop owner Abu Hiba, 51, said business would go on. “Karrada has always been targeted because it symbolizes stability in Baghdad. Attacks like these are the final throes of a dying bull,” he said.
An al Qaeda-linked militant group issued a threat on the Internet earlier this week vowing to launch a wave of car bomb attacks and strikes on Iraqi security forces. On Wednesday car bombs struck four cities, killing at least 23 people. Petraeus said al Qaeda was likely to attempt spectacular attacks in a last-ditch push against U.S. and Iraqi forces.
“They have certainly demonstrated the continued ability to carry out car bomb attacks, suicide-vest attacks, suicide car bomb attacks and so forth,” he said. Despite Wednesday’s bloodshed, violence in Iraq has fallen dramatically over the past few months. Gates sounded an optimistic note after his meetings with Iraqi officials.
“More than ever, I believe that the goal of a secure, stable and democratic Iraq is within reach,” he told a news conference less than an hour after the Baghdad blast. But Washington has also expressed frustration with what it regards as the slow pace of political progress by Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government towards enacting a series of measures aimed at reconciling majority Shi’ites and minority Sunni Arabs. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, who visited Iraq last week, said he thought Iraqis were seizing the opportunity to make political gains. “They’re just doing it I think sometimes a little more slowly than we would wish. And we are impatient and it’s hard,” he told the Public Broadcasting Service’s NewsHour program.
One of the most important of those measures is an oil law, which Washington hopes will both spur investment and persuade Sunni Arabs that their provinces will share in Iraq’s oil wealth, most of which comes from Shi’ite and Kurdish areas. Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani told Reuters at an OPEC summit in Abu Dhabi that a breakthrough was unlikely soon.
“So far, these positions seem to be irreconcilable for the time being,” he said. “Until there is a breakthrough, I don’t envisage that the law will be passed in the very near future.” The countrywide decline in violence has been attributed to a “surge” of 30,000 additional U.S. troops fully deployed since June, as well as agreements between U.S. forces and Sunni Arab tribal leaders who turned against al Qaeda.
Washington is now paying some 50,000 mainly Sunni Arab men to conduct neighborhood patrols. The Shi’ite-led government said on Wednesday it plans to put 45,000 of them on its payroll by mid-2008, raising the prospect of many former foes going to work for the authorities in Baghdad.