American and Iraqi officials will meet to discuss a ban announced by the Iraqi defense minister earlier this week that would prevent the raiding of mosques or arresting of clerics.
According to the New York Times, a high-ranking American officer in Iraq said he expects a “more moderate” policy than that announced Monday, apparently without other parts of the Iraqi government knowing.
Earlier this week, Sadoun al-Dulaimi issued the order in what Iraqi officials called an effort to lower tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.
“The holy places must not be violated by the security forces, nor religious leaders arrested, and that will not happen anymore,” Dulaimi said at news conference in the Defense Ministry, according to several published reports.
Previous raids, largely carried out by U.S.-supported Iraqi troops, have “terrified worshipers,” Dulaimi said, according to The New York Times. “A sense of public security cannot be achieved by spreading fear.” The new order could hamper efforts by U.S. forces to battle the months-long insurgency, which has centered in largely Sunni areas west of Baghdad. On countless occasions, troops have been fired at from mosques or found huge weapons caches inside.
At a Tuesday news briefing, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said the order would be “factored” in to U.S. military operations. “I truly am not trying to parse what the minister of defense said, but they know that the insurgents have in the past used mosques as staging areas; the Iraqi leadership knows that,” Di Rita said, according to a transcript of the briefing.
“They know that the insurgent threat is a serious one, and I’m confident that they’ll take the steps they need to go after insurgents where they are. Now the minister has made his comments. There are other types of security forces. There are other ways to get at insurgents who might be using mosques as cover,” he said, without detailing those other methods.
“The [U.S.]commanders over there will work closely with the Iraqi commanders and do what needs to be done to defeat this insurgency.”
U.S. military policy has been to attack mosques only if they are being used as fighting positions by insurgents. In recent months, as U.S.-trained Iraqi forces have tried to assume some of the burden of U.S. patrols and raids, the Iraqis have largely been the ones to search or fight in mosques or religious schools. Insurgents have fired from mosques or used them as caches in Fallujah, Mosul and several other places.
In towns such as Ramadi, a center of the insurgency west of Baghdad, Iraqi troops have sometimes been welcomed when they search mosques because residents presume they are more sensitive to Islamic tradition than American soldiers. But at other times, even the Iraqi troops have faced angry receptions.
At his news conference announcing the ban, Dulaimi said U.S. and Iraqi forces would deal with insurgents in mosques through “other ways.”
“I’m confident that the [U.S.] commanders will develop a method of operating that will allow them to go after insurgents where they are,” Di Rita said. “And if insurgents are threatening Iraqis from mosques, they’ll have to work out some kind of an arrangement to take care of that.”
