Iraqi General Enters Fallouja as Security Transition Advances

Iraqi troops led by one of Saddam Hussein’s former generals began replacing Marines here Friday as a plan to end a near-monthlong siege of this battle-torn city gained momentum.

Former Iraqi Maj. Gen. Jassim Mohammed Saleh, dressed in the uniform of Hussein’s Republican Guard, entered Fallouja to cheering crowds, triggering a debate on whether securing the defiant city with an Iraqi force was a masterstroke or a concession that could undermine U.S. control of the country.

“I am very happy to be here. You are truly a friend,” Saleh, handpicked to head the new force, told Marine Col. John Toolan. “I look forward to cooperating with the Marines.”

The decision to have an Iraqi force patrol Fallouja appeared to be part of an evolving U.S. strategy to end two volatile standoffs -- with Sunni Muslim insurgents here and with Shiite Muslim militants in the holy city of Najaf in southern Iraq.

U.S. occupation authorities have recently made efforts to reach out to the nation’s Sunni minority and former members of Hussein’s Baath Party -- two marginalized groups in post-Hussein Iraq.

As the deadline nears for transferring sovereignty to Iraqis, U.S. officials appear to be adopting a more flexible strategy, one that attempts to co-opt enemies of the U.S.-led occupation. The hard-line strategy of civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer III, who abolished the Iraqi army and sidelined even nominal Baath Party members, has been tempered as a relentless insurgency, feeding on dissatisfaction with the U.S., threatens efforts to rebuild Iraq.

The Bush administration’s decision to ask the United Nations for help in crafting a plan for a new Iraqi government underscores how U.S. policy in Iraq has drastically changed course. But clerics and others representing the nation’s Shiite majority -- long repressed by Hussein -- are expressing alarm about what some view as Washington’s newfound desire to appease the former dictator’s loyalists.

With only 60 days before sovereignty is scheduled to be returned to Iraqi officials, U.S. authorities have apparently concluded that it is time for reconciliation and that negotiated settlements to the confrontations in Fallouja and Najaf are a better option than force. There was widespread concern that military action in Fallouja might further alienate an Iraqi population resentful of the occupation.

“As long as we continue to see progress -- albeit some days slower than other days -- we will continue to pursue the peaceful track,” Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, chief military spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, told reporters Friday.

Iraqi officers met Marine commanders Friday for a “confirmation” briefing on the plan to have Marines withdraw from the city and be replaced by troops of a new unit dubbed the 1st Battalion of the Fallouja Brigade, under Saleh’s command.

U.S. forces will equip and arm the battalion, and the Iraqi general will be designated a subordinate commander under Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, commanding general of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.

The battalion is expected to number between 600 and 1,000 soldiers, largely consisting of troops from the former Iraqi army. Four former Iraqi generals have agreed to help the unit pacify Fallouja.

Hundreds of Iraqi troops are set to report for duty today and Sunday. They will begin their service by manning checkpoints, a military spokesman said.

The turnover appeared to be proceeding at a brisk pace despite U.S. military officials in Baghdad and Washington saying that the deal was tentative and limited in scope -- even as military bulldozers were dismantling barricades and Marines were preparing to leave Fallouja.

“This is not a withdrawal,” Kimmitt said. “It’s not a retreat.”

Still, the new plan -- agreed to Thursday by Marine and Iraqi negotiators -- represents a reversal from the tough military tactics U.S. officials adopted last month when the Marine encirclement of Fallouja began. Three weeks of fighting and broken cease-fires inflicted heavy casualties on Marines, insurgents and civilians.

Many feared a bloodbath in Fallouja if Marines engaged in house-to-house fighting to root out as many as 2,000 insurgents.

Negotiations among the Marines, Fallouja residents, Sunni clerics, U.S. representatives and others resulted in Thursday’s deal turning security over to the Iraqi force. Other details of the agreement remained sketchy, but Fallouja participants said U.S. officials have released a prominent imam and a tribal leader whose arrests last year for anti-coalition activities led to protests in Fallouja.

The imam, Sheik Jamal Shaker Nazzal, was said to have returned to his mosque in Fallouja for Friday prayers. Army troops had arrested him on charges of inciting violence against the coalition and sheltering a Yemeni citizen described by the Army as a suspected Al Qaeda operative.

U.S. officials are still seeking to bring Fallouja’s insurgents into custody and confiscate their heavy weapons. U.S. officials are also demanding the arrest of those responsible for the March 31 killings of four U.S. contractors, whose bodies were mutilated. The men who attacked the Fallouja police station in February and left at least 17 dead are also on the U.S. wanted list.

Marines heaped praise on the Iraqi officers who came forward and helped broker the Fallouja deal.

“This has always been a matter of leadership,” said Toolan, commander of the 1st Marine Regiment. “Finally we’ve got somebody standing up.”

There were no major firefights reported Friday in Fallouja, but a suicide car bomber attacked a U.S. patrol outside the city, killing two Marines and injuring six.

It was the second straight day that such an attack claimed troops’ lives. On Thursday, a suicide bomber killed eight Army soldiers and wounded several others along a country road south of Baghdad.

In Najaf, there were also signs that U.S. officials were attempting to negotiate an end to the standoff with Muqtada Sadr, the militant Shiite cleric whom U.S. forces have vowed to capture dead or alive. Sadr is wanted in connection with the slaying of a rival cleric last year.

A force of more than 2,000 U.S. troops has set up camp outside Najaf and has had several confrontations with Sadr’s Al Mahdi militia.

In recent days, U.S. commanders have refrained from repeating their “kill or capture” goal when referring to Sadr. Rather, officials have urged the firebrand cleric to give himself up and voluntarily disband his militia, which roams the streets of Najaf and other southern towns, as well as Sadr City, a poor Shiite neighborhood in east Baghdad.

Associated Press reported that American troops and Sadr’s representatives agreed to a three-day truce Friday to end the standoff in Najaf, where Sadr is holed up among some of Shiite Islam’s most sacred shrines.

“There have been some Iraqis who have approached us with their views about how this might be resolved,” Gareth Bayley, a spokesman for the coalition, said Friday, referring to the Najaf crisis. “Basically, there should be a return of the rule of law over all the cities of Iraq, including Najaf.”

In Washington, analysts predicted that the Iraqi force would be unable or unwilling to disarm the insurgents in Fallouja and feared that the move would create a pocket of territory beyond the occupation’s control.

Daniel Goure, a former U.S. defense official now at the Lexington Institute consultancy in Virginia, said the move implied that “if things get bad in Ramadi, you negotiate to create a Ramadi security force, then a Tikrit security force. And then gradually [U.S. forces] are out of the country.” He said Iraqis would see the security transition as a defeat of U.S. forces and it would encourage more attacks.

“If the administration thinks that the Iraqis are going to let us have peace over the next six months, when the elections come, they’ve made a bad mistake,” Goure said. “They’re smelling blood: ours.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that although he had been an advocate of training Iraqi forces, he thought it might be a good idea for U.S. forces to waste no time attacking the insurgents.

“With Fallouja, more than any other area, it seemed to me we had a significant but very limited number of bad guys all together and this may have been an appropriate time to have a Battle of Fallouja, and, once and for all, break their backs militarily.”

But he now has mixed feelings. “At some point, we decided to give this approach a chance,” he said, adding he could not second-guess the field commander’s decision.

One Senate aide said, however, that U.S. forces still had the opportunity to change course if the Iraqi security force failed to bring order to the city. “They’re taking a chance here, but there’s still nothing they can’t undo,” the aide said.

Defense officials Friday defended the decision to return former Iraqi military officials to duty.

“The opportunity is to build an Iraqi security force from former elements of the army that will work under the command of coalition forces, that will be mentored and worked next to by coalition forces,” said Gen. John Abizaid, the commander of U.S. forces in the Mideast.

“And I think that we should be very careful in thinking that this effort to build this Iraqi capacity will necessarily calm down the situation in Fallouja tonight or over the next several days.”

Perry reported from Fallouja and McDonnell from Baghdad. Times staff writers Paul Richter and John Hendren in Washington contributed to this report.