WASHINGTON, Aug 23: A senior US military official alleged on Wednesday there is ‘clear evidence’ that Iran is funding, training and arming Shia militants to destabilise Iraq.
“I think it is irrefutable that Iran is responsible for training, funding and equipping some of these Shia extremist groups, and also providing advanced IED technology,” said Brigadier General Michael Barbero, using the acronym for ‘improvised explosive devices’.
“And there is clear evidence of that,” he added at a Pentagon press conference.
His comments came the same day that Iran turned aside demands by the international community that it halt uranium enrichment as required by a UN Security Council resolution, offering “serious negotiations” instead.
Barbero, deputy operations director of the joint staff, said he had seen no reports of “direct contact” involving Iranian paramilitary or intelligence forces.
But he said he had seen “reports of their involvement and presence there as trainers to train these terrorists and Shia extremist groups.”
How to respond to destabilizing Iranian activity was a question for policymakers, Barbero said.
But he said neutralising the radical Shia groups in Iraq ‘will go a long way to removing their direct influence into the affairs of the sovereign country of Iraq’.
In recent weeks, US military forces have stepped up raids against militant groups in Baghdad in an effort to tamp down a wave of violence that has raised fears of civil war.
The violence last month forced the United States to extend the tours of nearly 4,000 troops, preventing a reduction in the size of the 133,000-strong US force.
“Our intent is to draw down the number of troops,” Barbero said. “And, as I said, that will be driven by the conditions on the ground and the requests from the commanders on the ground.”
BATTLE OF BAGHDAD: US and Iraqi authorities have a ‘sound’ strategy of military might and economic incentives to quell sectarian violence in Baghdad, the US ambassador to Iraq said in an article published on Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal.
“The Battle of Baghdad will determine the future of Iraq,” the ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, said in the article.
Since the city is a ‘microcosm’ of the ethnic and sectarian communities in Iraq and the country’s financial and media centre, ‘violence in Baghdad has a disproportionate psychological and strategic effect’, he wrote.
“This trend is especially troubling because we cannot achieve our goal of a secure, stable and democratic Iraq if such devastating violence persists in the capital,” he added.
Iraqi and coalition authorities have a ‘sound strategy to turn the situation around’, Khalilzad said, mentioning the Iraqi government’s Baghdad Security Plan.
On the military side, coalition forces as well as Iraqi military and police have deployed ‘more than 12,000 additional forces on the city’s streets’, and there was also intensive retraining for the national police.
These forces were increasing checkpoints and patrols, targeting extremist leaders and working with local committees with ‘the goal of achieving security neighbourhood by neighbourhood,” Khalilzad said.
The plan also calls for launching ‘targeted raids and other operations on areas outside of Baghdad’s centre, where planning cells, car-bomb factories and terrorist safe houses are located’ to degrade the ability to mount offensive operations.
Finally there was civic action and economic development for which the Iraqi government has pledged 500 million dollars and the United States at least 130 million dollars, the ambassador went on.—AFP
