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Driving force of Iraq insurgency shifting

BY MOHAMAD BAZZI | MIDDLE EAST CORRESPONDENT

May 13, 2005

BEIRUT, Lebanon - The insurgency will go on.

A recent wave of massive attacks by insurgents in Iraq is likely to continue for several weeks because the guerrillas have not yet exhausted stockpiles of weapons and car bombs that they put in place during the relative lull after the Jan. 30 election, according to two senior Kurdish security officials.

The insurgency is now being driven more by former Baathists and members of Saddam Hussein's security services, and less so by foreign Islamic fighters, said the officials who spoke by phone from Iraq on the condition of anonymity. And while Iraqi and U.S. forces have made important arrests in Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's militant network in recent months, that has done little to dampen the insurgency. The officials say this underscores their past assessment that al-Zarqawi was taking credit for more attacks than his network was actually carrying out.

"It was a mistake to portray al-Zarqawi as the overall leader of the insurgency," said one of the officials, who has overseen the interrogations of dozens of insurgents. "There are many small militant groups that agree with him ideologically, but they don't necessarily take orders from him."

Over the past two weeks, insurgents have carried out about 70 attacks a day - shootings, roadside explosions, ambushes and car bombings - throughout Iraq. In February and March, there were 30 to 40 attacks a day, according to the U.S. military.

The insurgents' most effective weapon is bomb-rigged cars, usually set off by suicide attackers but sometimes also detonated remotely. Last month, insurgents carried out 135 car bombings, more than in any other month since the U.S. invasion of Iraq two years ago. In March, the military recorded 70 car bombings.

The latest wave of attacks began two weeks ago, when a new government was named after nearly three months of political squabbling. The attacks have killed more than 420 Iraqis and injured hundreds, in one of the worst periods of violence since the U.S. invasion.

"In the short term, there is nothing that would enable the government to stop these attacks," Laith Kubba, a spokesman for new Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, told reporters in Baghdad on Wednesday.

To carry out the intensive attacks of the past two weeks, the security officials said, insurgents probably spent more than a month planning, recruiting suicide bombers and stockpiling bomb-laden cars.

"After the election, the terrorists needed to regroup, and there was a drop in large-scale attacks," said one of the officials. "They arranged their logistics and support so they could carry out a new wave of attacks. ... They're not finished yet."

Kurdish leaders are trying to use the surge of attacks to lobby once again for a purge of the Iraqi police and security forces, whose ranks were filled with ex-Baathists under former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. The Shia Arab parties that control a majority in the new parliament also want to flush out the security services to prevent intelligence from being passed to insurgents.

But that strategy is risky because most of those fired are likely to be Sunni Arabs, members of the minority community that forms the backbone of the insurgency. Already, many Sunnis are angry that they do not have adequate representation in the new government. (Most Sunnis boycotted the Jan. 30 parliamentary election.)

"There are a lot of sectarian tensions in Iraqi society right now," said Hazem Shammari, a political science professor at Baghdad University. "This is not a good time to drive Sunnis out of the security forces."

While U.S. officials have long said that foreign Islamic militants have carried out the majority of suicide attacks in Iraq, the Kurdish officials say the recent wave of bombings indicates that more Iraqis - Sunni Arabs and Kurds - are becoming involved.

In some cases, the officials said, explosives-laden cars are being set off remotely while the unwitting drivers are still inside. That means some did not volunteer for suicide missions and were duped into believing they would hand off the cars to others. "Not everyone may have been a willing suicide bomber," said one of the officials. "The Baathists and al-Zarqawi's agents could be tricking people into driving a bomb-rigged car."

The Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi has claimed credit - or has been blamed by U.S. and Iraqi officials - for a majority of the bloodiest suicide bombings, kidnappings and beheadings of foreigners in the past year. U.S. officials say al-Zarqawi is masterminding a terror network in Iraq at the behest of Osama bin Laden.

In July, U.S. officials raised the reward for information leading to al-Zarqawi's arrest or killing to $25 million, equal to the bounty on bin Laden's head. The Bush administration has consistently labeled al-Zarqawi as the main force behind the Iraqi insurgency. To some Iraqis, the U.S. focus on al-Zarqawi is part of a political strategy to portray the insurgency as driven by foreign militants.

"There is too much attention on al-Zarqawi," said Shammari, "and not enough on the grievances of Iraqi Sunnis."