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U.S. Attack in Iraq Is No Surprise to Many Insurgents

Jan- 8-2008 » Filed Under: 4/2 SBCT

Here's more on Operation Phantom Phoenix from the NYT. Elements of the 2nd Stryker CR are also involved.

By STEPHEN FARRELL, The New York Times

ESAIWID, Iraq — With extraordinary secrecy, and even an information blackout aimed at most of their Iraqi Army comrades, American troops launched a major offensive on Tuesday to drive Sunni insurgents from strongholds in Diyala Province. But many insurgents still managed to flee the first villages the Americans went into, showing just how difficult it is to trap the elusive militants.

Because at least half the insurgents escaped before a previous offensive last June, American planners deliberately kept most Iraqi units in the dark before this one was launched, a tactic that suggests they cannot fully trust the allies who are supposed to pick up more of the fighting as American troops scale back their presence later this year.

The militants may have been tipped by leaks or by the visible movements of troops and machinery that precede any operation.

American commanders believe it is essential to hobble the extremists in order to sustain recent security gains and ultimately pacify Iraq.

Tuesday’s offensive, in an area around this village 60 miles northeast of Baghdad, began just before dawn. Seven American battalions, accompanied by Iraqi Army units, pushed into a 110-square-mile area in the fertile northern Diyala River Valley in search of 200 insurgents with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the largely homegrown Sunni insurgent group that American intelligence says is foreign led and now represents the principal threat to stability in Iraq.

The offensive is part of a wider operation across northern Iraq to drive extremists from the region, where many of the fighters and leaders of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia are thought to have fled after military operations around Baghdad and in Anbar Province, as well in Baquba, the Diyala provincial capital 30 miles south of here.

Although the commander of the Iraqi Fifth Army Division in Diyala was aware of the intended target, American units in recent days and weeks carried out smaller decoy operations in other towns farther south, like Baquba and Wajihiya, to mislead extremists about where the actual operation would take place.

“We have taken great strides to convince the enemy that we are not interested in the Breadbasket,” the nickname for this fertile area, said Brig. Gen. James C. Boozer, the deputy commander in the north.

“What has been happening in Baquba and Wajihiya specifically has been somewhat of a deception effort,” said Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, the commander of American forces in northern Iraq. “We have allowed the enemy to believe that Diyala has been wide open while we have been generating forces in here to nail them.”

Outlining details of the feint and other diversionary tactics used by American forces a few days before the attack on Tuesday, he added, “That’s why if you were to go up to an Iraqi soldier on the street today, or even some of their senior leaders and say, ‘So what’s going on in Diyala?’ they might tell you something that doesn’t quite sync with this plan.”

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