Once Skeptical, Briton Sees Iraqi Success

December 24, 2003
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 23 — When Maj. Gen. Graeme Lamb, a 50-year-old Briton, arrived in June to lead the mainly European force controlling southeastern Iraq, he was skeptical, he said. He felt that "this is going to be a lot more difficult than we realized."

But as General Lamb prepared to hand his command to another British general, he said at a news conference here on Tuesday that Saddam Hussein's capture and other changes, including progress in restoring oil installations, power stations and running water, as well as the Iraqis' fast-rising prosperity, had fostered a new confidence that the American-led occupation force can eventually hand a politically stable Iraq back to its people.

"Is this do-able?" he said. "You'd better believe it."

The British officer described himself as neither optimist nor pessimist but "a hard-boiled realist," then offered an upbeat assessment that matched that of American generals: "I think we're in great shape."

He took a jab at the press. Western reporters, he implied, had come to an early conclusion that the allied undertaking in Iraq would not succeed, and had failed to adjust. He compared this with criticism that greeted allied forces in the first stages of the spring invasion, when resistance stalled the drive to Baghdad.

The plan provided for 125 days to take Baghdad, and it was accomplished in 23 days, he noted. But, he told reporters, "you had us dead and buried in seven days."

The general is finishing his six-month command of an 11-nation contingent of 13,000 troops, based in Basra, that controls an area covering about a quarter of Iraq, home to five million people. He has served in front-line units in Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf war, the Balkans, Northern Ireland and the Falkland Islands, and was with British headquarters staff during the invasion of Iraq in March.

The general said Mr. Hussein's capture on Dec. 13 in an underground bunker near Tikrit had lifted the shadow that his months as a fugitive left on Iraqis.

"We've just buried that nail in the coffin," General Lamb said. "He's not coming back."

For the insurgents, this removed a figurehead, if not a cause; for other Iraqis, particularly Shiites, the country's largest single group, it lifted a widespread fear of Mr. Hussein's restoration that had acted as a drag on the allied forces' prospects. "These are difficult waters that those who are against us swim in," the general said.

At times he tempered his enthusiasm. "I sense that we're well in the corner," he said. "We haven't turned the corner — this is a huge undertaking — but we are moving forward."

The general said he spoke principally from his experience in the south, where the population is 85 percent Shiite. But he based his conclusions, too, he said, on first-hand knowledge of conditions faced by fellow allied commanders: the American generals who command 120,000 American troops in military districts that account for 20 million other Iraqis, including Baghdad and the restive Sunni Muslim regions north and west of the capital.

It is in these regions that more than 90 percent of the attacks on allied forces have occurred. The south has been far quieter, though General Lamb said 20 British troops had died since he took command.

Progress, he said, has been rapid in meeting grievances in the south. He gave a chronicle of more than 1,000 repair and rebuilding projects involving oil installations, water-pumping stations and pipes, power stations and cement plants, as well as schools, hospitals, clinics and cultural institutions. With funds from the United States, Britain and others, he said, spending could soon rise to $250 million on infrastructure that had deteriorated disastrously under Mr. Hussein.

Part of the frustrations expressed by Iraqis over the occupation, he suggested, arose because some had exaggerated expectations.

He said civic leaders had approached him claiming that "before the war, everybody in Basra had running water," and that many had lost it as a result of allied bombing. But he said he had produced Water Department charts showing that a third of the city never had pipes to carry water in the first place, typical in areas not favored by Mr. Hussein. Pipes were being installed, he said.

For the most part, he offered a view similar to that of American commanders, who have repeatedly said allied forces would prevail, laying the grounds for the democracy that President Bush says is his goal in Iraq.

But General Lamb also struck notes of gentle admonishment. At one point he said that drawing from his experience in conflicts elsewhere, it was "slightly simplistic" to use the declining number of daily attacks by insurgents as a measure of progress, because it measured only a part of the challenge facing the occupation forces.

American commanders often use the attacks as a kind of barometer. In November there were an average of 40 a day across Iraq, and as many as 55, with more than 80 American soldiers killed, half of them when their helicopters were downed.

That prompted American forces to shift briefly to an all-out offensive that employed aerial bombing for the first time since the invasion. After the Muslim holy month of Ramadan ended a month ago, the attacks fell to an average that American commanders have put at slightly fewer than 20 a day.

One American officer at General Lamb's news conference said the attacks had declined still further since the arrest of Mr. Hussein, with only six reported on Monday, which the officer described as "the lowest level since May."

On Tuesday night, another shift in American tactics seemed to be taking place with the eruption of what sounded like heavy artillery and cannon fire in a wide area of southern and southwestern Baghdad. The fire continued far into the night, loud enough that it echoed deeply against the walls of the Palestine Hotel in the city center, at least 10 miles away.

The United States command had said earlier that it was cancelling arrangements for reporters to watch an offensive by the First Armored Division using 105-millimeter artillery guns, among the heaviest battlefield weapons in the Army's inventory.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company