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2007 becomes deadliest year in Iraq

BAGHDAD — Casualties from two roadside bombs Monday made 2007 the deadliest year since the Iraq invasion. With nearly two months left in the year, 852 American military personnel have died in Iraq. This is despite October having the lowest monthly death toll of the year — 36.

Some 850 troops died in 2004, mostly in larger, more conventional battles like the campaign to cleanse Fallujah of Sunni militants in November, and U.S. clashes with Shiite militiamen in the sect’s holy city of Najaf in August.

The American military in Iraq also reached its highest troop levels in Iraq this year — 165,000. Moreover, the military’s decision to send soldiers out of large bases and into Iraqi communities means more troops have seen more “contact with enemy forces” than ever before, said Maj. Winfield Danielson, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.

“It’s due to the troop surge, which allowed us to go into areas that were previously safe havens for insurgents,” Danielson said. “Having more soldiers, and having them out in the communities, certainly contributes to our casualties.”

Last spring, U.S. platoons took up positions — often in abandoned houses or in muddy, half-collapsed police stations — at the heart of neighborhoods across Baghdad and nearby communities. The move was part of President. Bush’s new strategy to drive al-Qaida from the capital.

The idea was to fight the “three-block war” — in the words of the Pentagon counterinsurgency manual written in part by America’s Iraq commander, Gen. David Petraeus — by embedding U.S. forces inside Iraqi communities in order to win the trust and, crucially, the aid of residents.

It was the first time many residents had seen U.S. troops up close, rather than whizzing by in armored convoys en route to huge bases that house thousands of troops. And it was the first time many U.S. troops went to bed each night outside those fortresses, to the sounds of Iraqi life: gunfire, the roar of helicopters overhead and an occasional explosion.

The move has worked, U.S. officials say. Increasingly, the sounds of Baghdad include children playing on the streets.

“It’s allowed Iraqi civilians to get more comfortable with U.S. forces — increasing the number of tips we get from Iraqi citizens,” Danielson said. “That leads us to insurgent leaders and cells, and cleaning those up has led to a decline in violence over the past couple months.”

Stationing U.S. troops in communities, where they have reduced the level of Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence, appears to have helped win the trust of the leaders of Shiite and Sunni communities. And that has helped the U.S. persuade those leaders to join the fight against radical groups, especially al-Qaida in Iraq.

The U.S. troop increase also put pressure on anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who called a formal cease fire in August. That, it appears, has slashed the number of mutilated bodies discovered on the banks of the Tigris River and other dump sites each day, the apparent victims of sectarian murders.

Ironically, though, the same strategy that U.S. military officials says has reduced violence so sharply in recent months is what made 2007 so deadly for American forces.

Small patrol bases make attractive targets for insurgents. In April, nine U.S. soldiers were killed and 20 wounded when two suicide truck bombers rammed into their building in the heart of volatile Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad.

It was the deadliest attack on U.S. troops in Iraq in a year and a half.

U.S. troops ventured out on Iraq’s roads more frequently in 2007, and insurgents responded by building larger, more powerful and more difficult to detect bombs. On a single day in June, the military announced the deaths of 14 troops, most killed by such roadside explosions.

Diyala’s provincial capital, Baqubah, was planted with so many hidden explosive devices that some streets were declared off-limits to U.S. military vehicles.

Today, many places where U.S. troops did not dare venture last year are relatively quiet. Anbar province, once the heart of the Iraqi insurgency, is now one of the country’s most peaceful areas.