BAGHDAD - A growing number of senior American military officers in Iraq have concluded there is no long-term military solution to an insurgency that has killed thousands of Iraqis and more than 1,300 U.S. troops in the last two years.
Instead, officers say, the only way to end the guerrilla war is through Iraqi politics - an arena that has been crippled by divisions between Shiite Muslims, whose coalition dominated January elections, and Sunni Muslims, who are a minority in Iraq and form the base of support for the insurgency.
"I think the more accurate way to approach this right now is to concede that... this insurgency is not going to be settled, the terrorists and the terrorism in Iraq is not going to be settled, through military options or military operations," Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said last week, echoing other senior officers. "It's going to be settled in the political process."
Gen. George W. Casey, the U.S. commander in Iraq, called the military's efforts "the Pillsbury Doughboy idea" - pressing the insurgency in one area only causes it to rise elsewhere.
"Like in Baghdad," Casey said last week. "We push in Baghdad - they're down to about less than a car bomb a day in Baghdad over the last week - but in north-center [Iraq]... they've gone up. The political process will be the decisive element."
The recognition that a military solution is not in the offing has led U.S. and Iraqi officials to signal they are willing to negotiate with insurgent groups or their intermediaries.
"It has evolved in the course of normal business," said a senior U.S. diplomatic official in Baghdad, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of U.S. policy to defer to the Iraqi government on political matters. "We have now encountered people who at least claim to have some form of a relationship with the insurgency."
The message is markedly different from statements by U.S. officials who spoke of quashing the insurgency by rounding up or killing "dead-enders" loyal to former dictator Saddam Hussein. As recently as two weeks ago, in a Memorial Day interview on CNN's Larry King Live, Vice President Cheney said he believed the insurgency was in its "last throes."
But the violence has continued unabated, even though 44 of the 55 leaders of the Hussein regime portrayed in the U.S. military's famous "deck of cards" have been killed or captured, including Hussein.
Lt. Col. Frederick P. Wellman, who works with the task force overseeing training of Iraqi security troops, said the insurgency did not seem to be running out of recruits, a dynamic fueled by tribal members seeking revenge for relatives killed in fighting.
"We can't kill them all," Wellman said. "When I kill one, I create three."
Last month was one of the deadliest since President Bush declared the end of major combat operations in May 2003, a month that saw six U.S. troops killed by hostile fire. In May 2005, 67 U.S. troops were killed by hostile fire, the fourth-highest tally since the war began, according to Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an Internet site that uses official casualty reports to organize deaths by a variety of criteria.
At least 26 troops have been killed by insurgents this month, bringing to 1,311 the number of U.S. soldiers killed by hostile action. Accidents or illness claimed 391 more service members' lives.
Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said last week that the insurgency had killed 12,000 Iraqis during the last two years. He did not say how he arrived at the figure.
U.S. officials had hoped January's national elections would blunt the insurgency by giving all Iraqis hope for their political future. But the political process has not in any meaningful way included Iraq's Sunni Muslim population.
Most of Iraq's Sunnis, motivated either by fear or boycott, did not vote, and they hold a scant 17 seats in the 275-member National Assembly, which is charged with writing a constitution.
With Shiites and Kurds stocking the nation's security forces with members of their militias, Sunnis have been marginalized and, according to some analysts in Iraq, have become more willing to join armed groups.
Since September, about 85 percent of the violence in Iraq has occurred in just four of Iraq's 18 provinces: the Sunni heartland of Baghdad, Anbar, Nineveh and Salah ad-Din.
Sunnis near downtown Baghdad have only to drive down the street to see how precarious their position in Iraqi politics and society is these days. Near the party headquarters for the Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is in large part shaping the policy of the nation, Kurdish militia members patrol the streets.
The troops are ostensibly part of the nation's army, but they still wear militia uniforms and, as is the case with some in Kurdistan, many either can't or won't speak Arabic. One of the roads they patrol has been named Badr Street, for the armed wing of the Supreme Council. There is a large billboard with the looming face of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the Supreme Council's leader.
Unless Sunnis develop confidence that the government will represent them, few here see the insurgency fading.
In speaking of success in suppressing the insurgency in Baghdad - the result of large-scale raids that targeted primarily Sunni neighborhoods - Brig. Gen. Alston said he expected the violence to return.
"We have made good progress" in stopping the production of car bombs in Baghdad, Alston said. "Now, do I think that there will be more [bombs] in Baghdad? Yes, I do."
Contact reporter Tom Lasseter at tlasseter@krwashington.com.