US denies using Israeli tactics in Iraq

11.45am - By CHARLES ALDINGER


WASHINGTON - The US military has adopted tough new tactics against guerrillas in Iraq, arresting relatives of insurgents and destroying houses used to plan attacks against American troops, defence officials said on Monday.

However, the officials denied the move was modelled on hard-nosed tactics used by Israeli forces in Gaza and the West Bank, despite visits by US military officers to Israel this year to discuss urban combat with Israel Defence Forces (IDF).

"In recent weeks, we have begun using a much-increased tempo of taking the fight to remnants of the former regime to prevent them from planning and carrying out attacks on our people," one of the US defence officials, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.

"This is new in that we are engaging (attacking) buildings for two reasons -- if we find they were used to plan or launch strikes against our forces, or if we have information that arms were being made or kept there for attacks," the official added.

Another confirmed a New York Times report that some family members of guerrillas wanted by the military were being arrested. But he said it was not a pressure tactic to coerce insurgents to surrender.

"We don't do kidnapping. We are arresting relatives if it becomes known that they are co-ordinating with those high-value targets that we are seeking, or if they have information where fugitives are holding out," the official said.

The Times reported from Iraq that at least one whole Iraqi village had been surrounded by razor wire as part of the crackdown, forcing residents to enter and leave through an American military checkpoint. That is similar to isolation tactics used by Israel in its war with insurgents.

Brig Gen Michael Vane, a senior officer in the US Army's Doctrine and Training Command, said in a letter to Army magazine in July that American officers had gone to Israel to discuss urban combat and intelligence with the IDF.

"Although there is much work to be done, it is inaccurate to characterize our thinking and doctrine on urban warfare as anachronistic. Experience continues to teach us many lessons, and we continue to evaluate and incorporate them appropriately into our concepts, doctrine and training," wrote Vane.

"For example, we recently traveled to Israel to glean lessons learned from their counterterrorist operations in urban areas," added the general, deputy chief of staff for doctrine concepts and strategy.

"There is a fair amount of military intellectual discussion that goes on between the US Army and the IDF," Harvey Perritt, a spokesman for the training command, told Reuters on Monday. He said Vane was apparently referring to a visit to Israel in January, months before the Iraq War began.

Pentagon officials cautioned against drawing any direct parallel between Israeli tactics against guerrillas on the West Bank and the new US moves in Iraq.

"We made this decision to adopt a much more aggressive stance based on the conditions at hand, not on what is going on elsewhere," said one official.

In one recent incident, the US military used a bulldozer last week to knock down the front wall of a small compound owned by an elderly couple in the Iraqi village of Hawija west of Kirkuk after troops found a large cache of explosives in the house.

An order was at first given to completely destroy the house, but an American officer later relented.

One soldier told reporters the threat to destroy the house had been a ruse to make the elderly woman provide information.

- REUTERS


Herald Feature: Iraq