By Jim Krane
The Associated Press, 15 February 2004.
Baghdad, Iraq - The capture of dozens of guerrilla leaders has left the U.S.
military with a murky picture of a shadowy resistance here, with American
and Iraqi officials divided about whether Iraqis or foreign fighters are
responsible for recent attacks.
A spate of arrests - including the capture of Saddam Hussein - have broken
rebel command networks and forced fighters underground, a top U.S. military
official told The Associated Press. Yet attacks persist, crowned by a bold
daylight assault this weekend on security compounds in Fallujah that freed
87 prisoners and killed 25 people, mostly police.
U.S. and Iraqi officials have begun focusing on foreign fighters, especially
al-Qaida-linked operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian blamed for a
series of devastating car bombs that U.S. officials say were aimed at
fomenting civil war.
The emergence of al-Zarqawi has triggered a spate of competing statements by
U.S. and Iraqi officials, with some blaming foreign terrorists for the car
bombs and Saturday's guerrilla raid and others pointing to Saddam loyalists.
“We've really gotten into the guts of the insurgency,” said a U.S. military
official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The Dec. 13 capture of Saddam
helped the Americans identify and capture a slew of operational-level
leaders.
The string of arrests convinced some rebels to give up the fight, while
others may have turned to radical politics or religion to undermine the
occupation, the official said.
At the same time, U.S. officials here and in Washington have acknowledged a
handful of Iraqi rebel groups remain active in Iraq.
They include:
- Muntada al-Wilaya, a Shiite group that has grown less troublesome since
its leader's capture.
- The Return Party of former Saddam political allies that continues to mount
attacks and distribute leaflets warning against cooperating with Americans.
- Muhammad's Army, an umbrella group of former Iraqi intelligence and
security agents.
- And Ansar al-Sunna Army, which claimed responsibility for the Feb. 1
bombings in the northern city of Irbil that killed 109 people.
Despite U.S. gains, rebel attacks against U.S. troops in February have
increased to between 20 and 24 a day, rising from 18 per day in January.
And guerrilla assaults have grown more spectacular - and devastating for the
Iraqi police, whose death toll appears to have surpassed that of the far
more numerous U.S. military forces. At least 538 U.S. troops have died since
the U.S. invasion began nearly 11 months ago. But some 600 Iraqi police have
been killed since May, said Iyad Allawi, a member of Iraq's Governing
Council.
In the Saturday attack in Fallujah, gunmen launched a coordinated,
two-pronged assault, pinning down civil defense forces while another group
stormed the police station and freed the prisoners. Rebels launched the
attack after sealing off the area with checkpoints and warning merchants not
to open their shops.
Two days earlier, insurgents showered rocket-propelled grenades and machine
gun fire on a convoy carrying two U.S. commanders including John Abizaid,
the four-star Army general who runs the war.
That assault came a day after a suicide car bomber killed 47 Iraqis outside
an army recruiting center in Baghdad. On Tuesday, a car blast killed 53
outside a police station in the Shiite-majority town of Iskandariyah, south
of Baghdad.
The authors of those four attacks remain in dispute.
U.S. officials including Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said the “sensational”
characteristics of the two suicide bombings pointed to al-Zarqawi, after a
letter emerged that intelligence officials say was written by the Jordanian.
In the letter, the author takes credit for 25 suicide operations in Iraq and
seeks al-Qaida's help in triggering a civil war by attacking Shiite Muslim
leaders and shrines. The United States quickly released a wanted poster of
al-Zarqawi with a $10 million bounty.
According to the Brookings Institution's count, Iraq has had 39 suicide
bombings since May.
But others say attacks on Iraqi security forces are usually mounted by
homegrown insurgents, not foreign terrorists.
In Tuesday's Iskandariyah bombing, Iraqi police Lt. Gen. Ahmed Kadhum
Ibrahim said evidence pointed toward an Iraqi's involvement, when
investigators traced the engine number of the vehicle used in the blast to
one of Saddam's intelligence officers.
A U.S. official in Washington also blamed Saddam loyalists for Wednesday's
suicide car blast on a Baghdad recruiting station - hours after a U.S. Army
colonel on the scene said the attack was probably carried out by terrorists
intending to show a U.N. mission that Iraq was too unstable for elections.
Saturday's Fallujah attack also inspired contradictory pronouncements.
Administrator L. Paul Bremer told ABC's “This Week” program on Sunday that
he believed foreign fighters took part in the attack on the Fallujah police
station. Iraqi officials echoed this claim.
However, a senior U.S. military officer discounted the role of foreign
fighters saying the “complex, well coordinated attack” appeared to have been
the work of former members of Saddam's army or Republican Guard.
“This was something put together by people with knowledge of small-unit
tactics,” the officer told AP, speaking on condition of anonymity. “This
would not be the same tactics that al-Qaida would employ. These are military
tactics. It points to former military members.”
The competing theories and lack of clear intelligence may stem partially
from the U.S. military's success. With their commanders in prison, the loose
alliance of guerrilla cells has been disrupted and left leaderless and is
fighting “with one arm tied behind their backs,” the U.S. military official
in Baghdad said.
“Most commanders understood the insurgency would not fade after Saddam was
captured, because all knew there were additional elements - religious
extremists, terrorists, criminals, former regimists - who would continue to
fight to gain their own specific form of power within Baghdad,” said Brig.
Gen. Mark Hertling, a deputy commander of the 1st Armored Division.
Citation: Jim Krane. "U.S. Has Murky Picture of Iraq Resistance," The Associated Press, 15 February 2004.
Original URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3751577,00.html