U.S. Goals for Iraqi Forces Meet Success and Challenges in Najaf

U.S. Goals for Iraqi Forces Meet Success and Challenges in Najaf
By EDWARD WONG
Published: December 3, 2005

NAJAF, Iraq, Dec. 1 - On the palm-lined avenues leading into this Shiite holy city and among the twisting alleyways at its center, next to the golden-domed Shrine of Ali, police officers with Kalashnikovs patrol where American troops once fought two fierce rebellions led by Moktada al-Sadr, the militant cleric.

Najaf and the surrounding region lie at the forefront of the Bush administration's plans to turn over security operations to Iraqi forces, earning a mention in the president's speech at the United States Naval Academy on Wednesday. By many measures, the thousands of Iraqi police officers and soldiers here have done well. They have prevented the devastating suicide bombings that have plagued Baghdad and other areas of Iraq. Attacks against Americans are rare, and American troops are steadily lowering their profile.

But even here, in the southern Shiite heartland that is largely free of sectarian tensions, the American enterprise still faces steep hurdles, ones that are more subtle but no less subversive than the Sunni-led insurgency.

Many of those blue-uniformed police officers are members of Shiite militias, including Mr. Sadr's Mahdi Army, which battled American troops here last year. Political rivalries occasionally erupt into violence, as when the Mahdi Army clashed with another militia in August. Corruption and kidnappings remain a problem, officials say, as does politically motivated crime.

On Thursday evening, Hussein al-Zurfi, whose brother, Adnan al-Zurfi, a former Detroit businessman and ex-governor of Najaf who is running in the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections, was kidnapped in the neighboring town of Kufa.

Hours before President Bush gave his Wednesday speech, the Najaf provincial council threatened to break off all ties with the Americans over accusations that soldiers had stabbed a young man to death during a house raid last Sunday. The Americans say the Iraqi Army was responsible for the killing, and that the man was reportedly armed.

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