Home > Georgians@War > Archives > 2007 > April > 01 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USGeneral soothes stricken Iraq city
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
 |
| Louie Favorite / AJC |
| Community leaders listen to the governor of Ninevah province, Duraid Kashmula (center), with Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno (seated) at a meeting in Tal Afar on Sunday. |
Tal Afar, Iraq — Army Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno knows well the suffering in Iraq. His own son, Capt. Anthony Odierno, lost an arm when a rocket-propelled grenade ripped through his Humvee in 2004.
The elder Odierno, who assumed the role of American operational commander in December, flew Sunday from Baghdad to Tal Afar, where anguish reached heinous dimensions last week.
Local authorities say about 85 people died in last Tuesday’s truck bombing here. But the Iraqi Interior Ministry upped the death toll in the Shiite neighborhood of al-Wahada to 152, making it the deadliest single attack in Iraq since the war began four years ago.
The number of dead rose as more bodies were pulled from the rubble, the government said. Another 47 people — all Sunni men — died in a night of brutal vengeance killings after the bombing. Some of those implicated were Shiite policemen.
With Tal Afar’s peaceful image tarnished, local authorities and U.S. troops in the region have clamped down on security. Shops remain closed. The streets are lifeless. Tal Afar looked like a ghost town Sunday as Odierno’s entourage made its way to an Ottoman Turk castle that now houses city council offices.
After a particularly bloody week that renewed concerns that Iraq is teetering on outright civil war, Odierno stepped into a conference room to meet Tal Afar’s mayor, the governor of Ninevah province to which the city belongs, Iraqi police and army commanders and a host of community leaders.
 |
| Louie Favorite / AJC |
| Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, indicating respect and friendship, greets community leaders at the mayor’s office in Tal Afar. Odierno is the operational commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. |
Just blocks from the where the carnage occurred, Sunnis and Shiites sat with one another to talk.
Odierno assured them that U.S. forces were here to help them “move forward from this tragedy caused by a handful of people who do not care about the greater good of Iraq.”
A towering man, Odierno dwarfed his Iraqi counterparts as he shared a meal of lamb and rice and exchanged conversation well into the afternoon.
The prime minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, was supposed to have been at Odierno’s side. But bad weather kept the Iraqi leader from flying, according to military officials at Forward Operating Base Sykes, just outside of Tal Afar in northern Iraq.
Privately, the Americans who accompanied Odierno — including other high-ranking Army officers and State Department employees of the area reconstruction team — lamented al-Maliki’s absence. It was important, they felt, to put a united face forward at this critical juncture in Tal Afar, the city that President Bush held up a year ago as Iraq’s beacon of hope and one that is viewed as a litmus test for this troubled nation.
Violence once reigned in Tal Afar, a predominately Turkoman town that is about 60 percent Shiite and 40 percent Sunni. An American offensive in the fall of 2005 chased the insurgency away and residents here experienced calm compared to other parts of Iraq.
That peace shattered last Tuesday when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a flour truck carrying 10,000 pounds of explosives. Entire blocks of houses collapsed; the local hospital brimmed with the dead.
Odierno said, however, he was impressed that local authorities were able to put a quick lid on a volatile situation.
“Tal Afar had one incident which was a very bad incident,” Odierno said in a brief interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution after the meeting.
“What’s been heartening to me is how the city has responded,” he said. “The first 24 hours were tenuous. There were very clearly ethnic tensions, sectarian tensions. But the leadership was able to bring the town back together and stop the sectarian tension. That in my mind is very important.”
Odierno is no stranger to this region; he spent a year in northern Iraq as commander of the 4th Infantry Division, which got credit for the capture of Saddam Hussein.
Since his return to Iraq, the No. 2 military man behind Army Gen. David Petraeus has breathed caution into his Iraqi forecast, saying that improvement will take time.
The two generals have implemented a new U.S. strategy here with increased American troop presence in restive Baghdad neighborhoods and revamped counterinsurgency operations.
Odierno, however, is keenly aware that his biggest battle might be time. He said patience is wearing thin in the United States. Sunday, he reiterated the importance of that patience.
“I think we’re on the right track but I don’t know how long it will take,” he said, adding that the United States will take a measurement of progress this summer.
“By July or August, we’re going to have to conduct an assessment of how far we’ve come, how successful we’ve been and we’re going to have to make a decision on where to go from there,” he said. “We’re seeing some positive steps but there’s still a long way to go.”
Tal Afar’s tragedy was just one example that Iraq is far shy of the democracy and stability Odierno said he is here to create.
But, he said, there is always a heavy price for attempting ambitious change. His family paid it.
“This is not about individuals,” Odierno said about his son, who was 26 when he was wounded — and perhaps also alluding to those whose lives ended in Tal Afar last week.
“It’s about a country trying to move forward.”
Comments
Commenting is now closed for this entry.
By bill
April 1, 2007 11:59 PM | Link to this
congrats to Mr. Odierno (spelling and title); thx for ur tremendous commitment!! Wish we could give the foks of Iraq a continuos message of hope. Ur work is extremely important!! !@!!!!!
I pray for ur well being, but I think your debt has been well paid to society and to our founder. thx. bill, ga
By Bobby
April 2, 2007 9:38 AM | Link to this
Thank you General Odierno. We appreciate the job you and the other soldiers are doing in Iraq. Keep up the great work and be safe.