AGHDAD, Iraq, Sunday, April 13 — American marines said Saturday that they were shifting their focus from fighting to trying to put this shattered capital back in running order.Posted on 04/13/2003 12:16:34 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
AGHDAD, Iraq, Sunday, April 13 — American marines said Saturday that they were shifting their focus from fighting to trying to put this shattered capital back in running order.
The aim of the marines has been to restore city services and, above all, to stop looting and restore a sense of security.
"Civil affairs is our first priority now," Capt. Joseph Plenzler of the Marines said Saturday, describing an unfamiliar role for the marines.
His declaration came on a day when a marine guarding a Baghdad hospital was shot dead. Meanwhile, looting continued in many areas of the city and American troops discovered evidence of plans for widespread suicide attacks against them.
At the same time, a force of several thousand marines prepared for further military action. Commanders said they were set to move north toward the city of Tikrit, the tribal home of Saddam Hussein and a suspected last-ditch holdout of several senior members of his government. The city is about 100 miles north of Baghdad.
In the capital, scores of black leather vests stuffed with explosives and ball bearings were found by marines at a school and shown to reporters. And American forces in western Iraq stopped a busload of men who had $650,000 in cash and a letter offering rewards for killing American soldiers.
On Saturday evening in central Baghdad, a fierce firefight broke out in an area that had been considered secure for several days. Outside the Palestine Hotel, where hundreds of foreign reporters are based, American marines traded fire with Iraqis in a palace across the Tigris River.
In a potentially important breakthrough, the top Iraqi scientific adviser, one of 55 people on America's most-wanted list of Iraqi leaders, surrendered to American forces. The adviser, Gen. Amir al-Saadi, who was the chief Iraqi liaison with United Nations weapons inspectors, turned himself in in Baghdad.
American forces have not yet found the chemical, biological and nuclear weapons that the Bush administration accused Mr. Hussein of having in the months before the war. General Saadi could provide important information on that subject.
The marine who was killed on Saturday, from the First Marine Expeditionary Force, was approached by two men posing as landscape workers, according to a statement issued today by the United States Central Command in Qatar. One of the men who fired at the marine and was then shot dead by other marines carried Syrian identity papers. The second man fled.
The killing of the marine, whose identity was not disclosed, as well as other armed confrontations and the preparations to take Tikrit, illustrated the persistent problems confronting American forces as pressure grows on them to turn their attention to bringing a measure of order to occupied areas of Iraq. The twin problems — military and civilian — appear to be placing severe strains on the limited American force in Baghdad.
In Baghdad, by Saturday afternoon, there were already signs of the marines' changed mission. A 24-year-old second lieutenant, Ron Winchester, was playing his role in the new orders, leading his platoon from Company C on a patrol through the streets and stopping to recruit supporters along the way.
"We want to help you," he earnestly told a knot of men on the sidewalk, arranging a community meeting for later in the evening in a parking garage. "We want to help you stop the looting."
Each platoon leader, he explained later, is to become a "mayor" of a sector, whose role will include the recruitment of at least four local helpers at about $10 a day.
How much of a briefing had he been given for this task?
"About a two-minute one," he said with a shrug.
The marines face a daunting task. Largely as a result of the American onslaught, this city has stopped dead. Electric power is out. Telephones do not work. Much of the city is without running water. Hospitals have been looted of the few medical supplies they had on hand.
On Saturday morning, a radio broadcast urged all municipal workers to go back to work. It was unclear how many did, but one result was a crowd of hundreds of men outside the Palestine Hotel, where the marines have set up a civil affairs office, clamoring for jobs in any future city administration.
Inside the hotel, a long line of men — including some who described themselves as police officers and at least one as a former general —gathered to be interviewed for possible jobs.
"A combat force does not know how to run a city, but a city knows how to run itself," Maj. Andrew Petrucci said.
The main difficulty, however, is that this is a city of 4.5 million people. The marines here number only about 20,000, and combat operations continue.
A visit to the electric power plant in the southern section of Doura suggested the extent of the difficulties. Dr. Karim Hassan, a director general of the Commission of Electricity, said the plant once supplied 25 percent of the city's electricity.
A unit of the Army's 101st Airborne Division had just arrived at the site on Saturday morning to provide security.
Dr. Hassan, who was one of a number of Iraqi officials and workers who showed up on their own to guard the plant, gloomily reeled off a series of obstacles to getting it up and running, including bomb damage and a lack of both telephones to summon workers and a government to pay them. Moreover, oil to power the plant would have to be issued from the Ministry of Petroleum, which no longer exists.
Lieutenant Winchester and his platoon of young marines, meanwhile, were dealing with a grittier problem. In a long line of traffic, they had spotted two trucks, apparently traveling in tandem, piled high with goods. The lieutenant ordered the two trucks pulled over.
The first held only a family and its belongings. But the second, which was being driven without benefit of ignition keys, was piled high with a variety of chairs, a suspicious haul. A rifle discovered tucked in the back clinched it for the marines.
The four men on the truck were hauled off and questioned sharply, although they were finally let go for lack of formal charges. The truck was confiscated.
"They should have done this a long time ago," said an onlooker, Haidac Hussein, 32, a civil servant.
As such problems are confronted, important military targets remain. Marine commanders said Saturday that they intended to begin a rapid encirclement of Tikrit and give the holdouts a chance to surrender. If they resist, the commanders said, they will be destroyed. The bulk of the attacking force is some 300 armored vehicles, which the commanders here hope will move swiftly across the plains separating Baghdad and Tikrit.
The operation appears to be shaping up as the last major engagement of the war. American commanders in Baghdad said they expected serious resistance from the holdouts, who are thought to include several senior members of the Republican Guard and possibly senior members of Mr. Hussein's government.
"We are moving northward out of Baghdad," Brig. Gen. John Kelly, the leader of a task force named Tripoli, said on Saturday..
American forces were hoping to approach Tikrit by this morning. To do that, they would need to cross the Tigris, which, they said, was still being defended by Iraqi forces.
General Kelly did not say precisely who he believed was inside the city, but he indicated that it was mostly military rather than political leaders.
"Right now all the big guys have left the country," he said. "I don't know what `big guy' means anymore. Some of the Republic Guard have fallen back to Tikrit."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.