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.
| Prob'ly because they've got competing org charts, all of which look like bowls of spaghetti. With meatballs. Just because they're all doing the same thing doesn't mean they're all under the same control. See Ford-Chevy-Toyota competition... |
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.
| Last hint we had was that was a Hezbollah or Iranian operation... |
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.
| "Now we've got to make sense of it, if any..." |
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. 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.
| I don't even recall hearing about that... |
- The Return Party of former Saddam political allies that continues to mount attacks and distribute leaflets warning against cooperating with Americans.
Al-Awda is the Arabic. The Baathists have split in 3 since Saddam’s capture per Amir Taheri, so this is one of the trifecta.
- Muhammad’s Army, an umbrella group of former Iraqi intelligence and security agents.
That’d be Jaish Mohammed. They’re also led by a Saudi al-Qaeda operative and probably under Zarqawi’s aegis.
- And Ansar al-Sunna Army, which claimed responsibility for the Feb. 1 bombings in the northern city of Irbil that killed 109 people.
Ansar al-Islam in drag ...
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.
Skipping past what we already know ...
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.
| I suspect they were intentionally contradictory, though I'm not sure why. Building an OB is not that complicated. |
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.
| Right. The Lebanese and Iranian members of it... |
"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."
What does he think that al-Qaeda does in Chechnya?
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.
| After Sammy's capture we saw a drop in the number of attacks. Then they picked up again and the tactics changed. That was when somebody else took over the reins, presumably Zarqawi and his compañeros. Presumably the new guys also brought their own funding with them, though they still have the weapons and equipment stocks that Sammy's boyz had, along with a proportion of their cannon fodder. Another proportion should also be going sleeper, while the third is actually going out of the bad guy business. I'd guess, also, that a good bit of Sammy's money has now been rolled into the Qaeda coffers. |
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