Looking Toward a Stronger Iraq

ByABC News
August 30, 2004, 2:46 PM

T A M P A, Fla., Nov. 19 -- In an interview with ABCNEWS' Peter Jennings Wednesday, Gen. John Abizaid, the head of U.S. Central Command, said the recent spike in violence in Iraq has been caused by a more organized enemy that is changing its tactics.

Abizaid also explained why he is moving a significant component of CENTCOM back to Qatar.

The following is an excerpt of his interview:

Jennings: What is your best judgment for what is going really well in Iraq?

Abizaid: Clearly I think a lot reconstruction efforts are going very well. If you look down in the south in particular economic conditions a lot of the rebuilding that's going on down there is certainly moving along, at a pace that I think people in the south appreciate very much. In the north, there's a lot of good governance projects going on, a lot of good things in particular in the Mosul area. And even in the center of the country, where we've got some difficult security conditions, there's still economic activity.

I was up on the Syrian border the other day [where there are] a lot of trucks, a lot of activity, lot of commerce going back and forth. And when you go in downtown Baghdad schools are open, people are moving about, markets are open.

I am much surprised every time I go there, after being away for even a week, at how much progress I find that there is. It doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of challenges.

Jennings: What is not going as well as you like?

Abizaid: I think clearly we have really got to work hard at the ability to understand the cellular structure of the enemy. And we've got to go in and take these cellular structures down and defeat them. We have had good effect in previous endeavors here in the June-July time period. They adjusted to us, obviously. They changed some of their tactics. They've done some things differently. They've probably managed to work with other organizations that are anti-coalition.