Iraq bomb targets US allies, patience

Wednesday's suicide attack on an Italian military compound in the southern city of Nasiriyah sends a chilling message to the coalition: The resistance to the occupation will be carried to all corners of the country, and all contributors will be targeted.

The worst attack on non-American coalition troops since the occupation began - it killed at least 16 Italians and eight Iraqis - underscores to Iraqis that security is under siege everywhere.

"The spreading of these attacks around Iraq makes perfect strategic sense for an insurgency that all signs tell me can be traced back to the Sunni Triangle," says Ralph Peters, a retired US Army intelligence officer with longtime experience in the Middle East. "This furthers the battle to defeat the occupation by defeating not the US military, which they know they can't do, but the American will," he adds, "and it addresses a second goal of driving off [the Americans'] allies."

Despite criticism from politicians who oppose Italy's presence in Iraq, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi pledged that the attack would not derail his country's commitment. But while no one expects the gruesome attack to cause an immediate withdrawal of foreign troops, it may have a future impact on foreign troop deployments.

"The pattern is that such attacks have weakened the readiness over time to participate" by sending in troops, says Dan Plesch, a military affairs analyst at the Royal United Services Institute in London. "The impact may be more on the willingness to go through a further rotation than to proceed to an immediate withdrawal."

At the same time, countries that had committed to sending even small forces, such as Japan, may now be even more reluctant. A chilling aspect of the continuing attacks is that, from the insurgency's perspective, they appear to be working. After the United Nations and Red Cross were hit by similarly deadly car bombings in Baghdad, the organizations largely pulled out. "The goal in the case of these foreign countries that haven't felt quite so targeted up to now is surely the same," says Mr. Peters.

The Italian contingent in Iraq numbers 2,300. Italian troops felt so at ease in Nasiriyah, a prosperous town where the fall of Saddam Hussein was met with joy, that they mingled in its neighborhoods and markets without helmets and sometimes without arms. The south of the country is overwhelmingly Shiite and suffered under the Sunni-dominated Baath regime.

The south has been seen as something of a model by the US-led coalition, pointed to as a success story by officials But the insurgency, which to now has focused its attacks around Baghdad, has found it easy to expand its campaign to new areas. With his country's oil wealth, Saddam Hussein built a network of wide and well-paved roads that are open and operating with few checkpoints. While the locals may be friendly, it's easy for others to move in.

"Nasiriyah was especially chosen,'' says M.J. Gohel, president of the Asia Pacific Foundation in London, an independent think-tank. "The aim is to show that coalition troops aren't going to be safe in Kurdish areas, or in Shiite areas or in any part of Iraq."

The suicide bombing marked a week in which attacks on coalition forces surged in the south of the country. In Basra, the principal southern city, there have been 4 bombings since Nov. 4. "The rise in incidents began in just the last week," said Maj. Charles Mayo, spokesman for the British forces in Basra. Attacks have also increased in the largely Kurdish north.

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