American military officials have spent days huddled in meetings with Iraqi officers in a race to turn blueprints drawn up in Washington into a plan that will work on the ground in Baghdad, The New York Times on Tuesday said.
With the first American and Iraqi units dedicated to the plan due to be in place within weeks, time is short for setting details of what American officers view as the decisive battle of the war. But the Times says the signs so far have unnerved some Americans working on the plan, who have described a web of problems ranging from a contested chain of command to how to protect American troops deployed in some of Baghdad's most dangerous districts that some fear could hobble the effort before it begins.
First among the American concerns, the paper said, is a Shiite-led government that has been so dogmatic in its attitude that the Americans worry that they will be frustrated in their aim of cracking down equally on Shiite and Sunni extremists, a strategy President Bush has declared central to the plan.
"We are implementing a strategy to embolden a government that is actually part of the problem," an American military official in Baghdad involved in talks over the plan was quoted as saying.
"We are being played like a pawn. The American military's misgivings came as new details emerged of the reconstruction portion of Bush's plan, which calls for more than doubling the number of American-led reconstruction teams in Iraq to 22 and quintupling the number of American civilian reconstruction specialists to 500," the report said.
Compounding American doubts about the government's willingness to go after Shiite extremists has been a behind-the-scenes struggle over the appointment of the Iraqi officer to fill the key post of operational commander for the Baghdad operation, the paper said. In face of strong American skepticism, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, has selected an officer from the Shiite heartland of southern Iraq who was virtually unknown to the Americans, and whose hard-edged demands for Iraqi primacy in the effort has deepened American anxieties.
The Iraqi commander, Lieutenant General Aboud Qanbar, will be part of what the Americans have described as a partnership between the two armies, with an American general, Major General Joseph F Fil Junior, commander of the First Cavalry Division, working with General Aboud, and American and Iraqi officers twinned down the operational chain.
For the Americans, accustomed to clear operational control, the paper says, the partnership concept is troublesome full of potential, some officers fear, for dispute with the Iraqis over tough issues like applying an equal hand against Shiite and Sunni gunmen. It remains unclear whether the prime minister will be in overall charge of the new crackdown, a demand the Iraqis have pressed since the plan was first discussed last month, American officials were quoted as saying.
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