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| Iraq |
| Iraqi insurgent tactics learned from al-Qaeda, Chechens, and the Taliban |
| 2004-01-06 |
| IRAQI guerillas blasting US military convoys with improvised bombs hidden at roadsides might have learned tactics by talking to Chechen rebels and Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, a US Army intelligence officer told The Associated Press. Iraqi rebels have been communicating with such outsiders through e-mail, telephone and personal visits, said Major Thomas Sirois, chief intelligence officer of the US Army’s 3rd Corps Support Command, north of Baghdad. He would not identify the types of communication US intelligence officers had intercepted. "I think they share information," Sirois said. "Individuals here who are fighting against us I’m sure are reaching out to see what has been successful in other locations, and probably trying to adapt those procedures here." Some ambush techniques observed in Chechnya against the Russians and in Afghanistan against US forces by al-Qaeda and former Taliban militants "we’ve seen employed here" in Iraq, Sirois said. As in Iraq, recent conflicts in Chechnya and Afghanistan have involved Islamic guerillas hiding at roadsides to ambush military convoys with booby-trapped bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. One Middle East military analyst said information being shared from Afghan and Chechen sources was probably technical assistance with fuses, remote-control detonators – such as cell phones – and assembling the complex daisy-chained bombs that began appearing in Iraq in the late northern summer. Since the beginning of military operations in Iraq, with the March invasion, 483 US troops have died, according to the Defence Department. Of those, 330 died as a result of hostile action. The British military has reported 52 deaths; Italy, 17; Spain, eight; Bulgaria, five; Thailand, two; Denmark, Ukraine and Poland have reported one each. Suicide bombings blamed on Chechen separatists have killed more than 275 people in and around Chechnya and in Moscow in the past year. Russian troops in Chechnya suffer daily losses in rebel attacks and land-mine explosions. "There will be people out there with the expertise who will be very happy to share it, because they want to see the US project in Iraq fail," Jeremy Binnie, with Jane’s Sentinel Security Assessments in London, said. "With the technical things, there is some level of co-operation because they can get quite sophisticated." Sirois monitors intelligence on Iraq’s roads for the Army’s 16,000-member 3rd Coscom, which operates the thousands of truck convoys travelling across Iraq each day, supplying US military with fuel, food, water and other supplies. Attacks on the convoys grew more complex in the late summer and autumn, with the number of attacks rising each month from May to November. The number of highway ambushes – usually involving roadside bombs – began dropping in late November and through December, Sirois said. Still, yesterday, three US soldiers were wounded when a bomb exploded as their convoy passed near a town north of Baghdad. US military and intelligence officials have long said they believe members of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terror network have migrated to Iraq, but little evidence has been released to support their assertions. Sirois said he and other intelligence officers believe al-Qaeda members were in Iraq but had seen no signs of Chechens or Afghans launching attacks alongside Iraqi guerillas. Some tactics used to attack US convoys were home grown as well, Sirois said, noting there was plenty of expertise among disaffected members of the disbanded Iraqi army. The effectiveness of the roadside bombs, which the US military calls IEDs or "improvised explosive devices", depends on them being carefully hidden on the edges of the convoy routes and detonated when an unsuspecting convoy passes. The US Army has found bombs disguised as curbs. Others have been hidden in lampposts, animal carcasses and the US Army’s ubiquitous brown plastic ration bags. "We’ve seen some pretty ingenious disguises," Sirois told AP last week. "You name it, they hide IEDs in just about anything – tyres at the sides of roads, trash piles." At the same time, Sirois said the ambushers’ influence on US convoys was slipping, with 250 attacks in November and 200 in December. Perhaps more significantly, the rebels’ bombs had grown smaller, less complex and less deadly, he said. At the height of their attacks – from late August to early November – rebels were able to interconnect 15 or more large artillery shells into a single bomb that might have been assembled and buried at the side of a highway over a period of several nights or a week, he said. Some bombs used plastic explosives as well as artillery or mortar shells. But for the past six weeks, most bombs had been smaller, sometimes a single, converted artillery or mortar round. "Where in the past we’ve seen casualties and significant damage to our vehicles, lately the IEDs have been single rounds and they’ve done minimal damage to our vehicles," he said. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #2 These tactics might have been effective against sheeple, but those Iraqi terrorists don't seem to understand that the people being targeted are members of the U.S. Armed Forces who will fight back, with deadly efficiency. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2004-1-6 5:10:21 PM |
| #1 Nice summary. I don't know about anybody else, but I have found myself unexpectedly fascinated by the countermeasures/countertactics employed against these bombs and the people placing them. One of my favorites is the story LtCol Steve Russell told about his guys, who got a stash of some doorbell buzzers used in remotely detonating bombs and taped some of them to their vehicles. Smart, simple, and effective, what's not to like ? |
| Posted by: Carl in NH 2004-1-6 6:02:55 AM |