By John F. Burns
The New York Times, 23 November 2005
TIKRIT, Iraq, Nov. 22 - For the two most powerful Americans in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr. and Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, as for the Iraqi dignitaries who had gathered here, it was a symbolic moment: a ceremony on a bluff high above the Tigris River at which the Americans formally returned the largest of Saddam Hussein's palace complexes to Iraqi sovereign control, 31 months after invading troops had seized it for use as an American base.
There was an Iraqi military brass band, red piping on the members' blue dress uniforms, whose rendering of the national anthem rang with a quirky dissonance, but with an engaging air of bravery, too. American Apache helicopters circled off in the distance, vigilant for any sign of insurgent attack. Iraqi dignitaries lined up with the Americans on white plastic chairs in the weak winter sunshine, some resplendent in gold-trimmed Bedouin robes and headdresses.
The American officer chosen to eulogize the occasion, Col. Mark McKnight of the First Brigade Combat Team of the Third Infantry Division, in combat fatigues and a camouflage helmet with raised goggles, had reached the point at the lectern when he was vaunting "the many victories this country has achieved" during the period of American tutelage. "The Iraqi people will continue to move forward toward a sovereign Iraq, an Iraq where an elite few can no longer erect expensive and ornate palaces like these while the majority of the people suffer in fear and poverty," he said.
And then came the terrifying whistling in the air overhead, the morbid sound of an incoming rocket or mortar shell that is dreaded by all who have lived through the war. In an instant, American bodyguards protecting General Casey and Mr. Khalilzad dived on them, and they were lost from view in the melee of Americans and Iraqis ducking, pushing and diving, upending chairs and tables, as they fled for cover in a palace behind. The shot that was surely intended to kill them appeared to strike about 500 yards beyond the gathering, General Casey said afterward, and as with much of the old Hussein-era ordnance used by the insurgents, it failed to explode.
After about 15 minutes, the ceremony reassembled, the Iraqi governor of Salahuddin Province, which includes Tikrit, accepted a symbolic brass key to the palace complex, and all concerned affected to be untroubled. Partly, this seemed like a matter of dignity, a determination that the insurgents not be allowed to make a shambles of the occasion. But partly, too, it seemed like a recognition that the insurgent attack was part of Iraqi normality, and that it made the event still better allegory for a country and a time when nothing seems certain, everything is still in play.
General Casey, a 57-year-old four-star general who has the disarming manner of a genial college professor coupled with a steeliness in running the war that has made him popular with his troops, seemed unshaken. He stood where the bodyguards had flattened him, telling reporters that he thought the projectile was a rocket, and that the probable firing point lay miles away to the northeast, across the river, where a cluster of Sunni Arab villages is an established insurgent stronghold. He said he had seen the Apache helicopters flying surveillance for the ceremony wheeling east, as if in pursuit of the attackers.
Mr. Khalilzad, a 54-year-old former scholar who came to Baghdad last summer after two years as ambassador to Afghanistan, where he was born, made light of the affair and used it to underscore the close relationship that he and the general say is central to calibrating America's policies here. "I ended up with General Casey on top of me," he said, laughing, "so I guess that's a pretty good sign for civil-military relations." He stuck to his schedule after the ceremony, meeting with local leaders in the palace to accept petitions on everything from property disputes to a reopening of the Tikrit airport.
"This is a phenomenon existing in this country," he said of the attack. "We are used to it."
The ceremony at the palace complex appeared to have been staged partly to bolster the Bush administration's war policy here in the face of the rising urgency among Congressional leaders for a timetable to bring American troops home. As commanders here have explained the policy to newly arrived American units in the past week, the aim is to push forward as fast as the Iraqi military's abilities can bear toward the goal, by the end of 2006, of putting Iraq's new American-trained, 270,000-soldier army in the lead in the war. If the plan succeeds, these commanders have said, they could have American troop levels down to 100,000, from the current 153,000, within 12 months.
Part of the plan is to pull American troops back from the cities to more remote bases where they will be less visible to Iraqis but poised to assist when needed. The plan, the commanders say, matches Congressional demands for a drawdown with the need for Iraqi Army units to gain strength; and, they say, it is in accord with Iraqi public opinion, as measured in recent surveys taken for the American command. The commanders, at briefings in the past week that were held on the condition that they not be identified, said the surveys showed 90 percent of Iraqis want American troops to leave, but nearly 70 percent say they oppose withdrawal now, before Iraqi forces can stand on their own.
By staging a public ceremony to dramatize the pullout from the palace complex in Tikrit, and by flying Iraqi and American reporters from Baghdad for the occasion on a fleet of Black Hawk helicopters, the Americans appeared intent on showing that the pullback from the cities is more than a paper plan. Since April 2003, the 1,000-acre palace complex here, with 136 buildings and a dozen huge sandstone palaces, has served as the American military and civil headquarters for a wide swath of the Sunni Arab heartland that is the main battlefield in Iraq.
In October, the 42nd Infantry Division, a New York National Guard unit, began pulling up stakes for its return home after nine months with its headquarters at the complex. The 101st Airborne Division took over, and now has transferred its headquarters about 12 miles north of Tikrit, to a former Iraqi air base that housed Mr. Hussein's air force college. From there, the American division will team up with the Iraqi Army's new Fourth Division to create a combined force of more than 30,000 soldiers to fight the insurgents.
The United States command has similar plans to pull American troops back from all major cities, including Baghdad, and it has already handed over 27 other military bases. For its part, the Iraqi Army appears intent on not replicating what many Iraqis have said was an American mistake - moving into palaces that were symbols of Mr. Hussein's repression and making themselves, at least symbolically, the former dictator's heirs. For now, at least, according to Iraqi officials at the Tuesday ceremony, the Tikrit complex will be used for some of Saladin Province's government offices, but mainly as a tourist center - a museum, the officials said, of Mr. Hussein's contempt for the people.
Lt. Gen. Abdul Abdul Aziz al-Mufti, the commander of the Fourth Division, told reporters that even as a general in Mr. Hussein's army he had never dared look at the palaces as he drove through Tikrit, for fear of arrest. "Thanks be to God," he said, "the ordinary people can now come and see the palaces for themselves."
As for himself, he said, he will be too busy to tour the palaces as he works to bring his troops to the point where they can supplant the 101st Airborne Division as the main force in the war. "We're not at 100 percent right now, more like 70 percent," he said. "But if we are given the equipment we need, and the logistical support, we can get there in four to six months."
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Citation: John F. Burns. "Return of Former Palace to Sovereignty of Iraqis Offers Glimmer of Hope," The New York Times, 23 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/23/international/middleeast/23tikrit.html
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