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World>Terrorism & Security
posted February 19, 2004, updated 12:00 p.m.

More than enough enemies

Between Iraqi insurgents, foreign jihadists and Ansar al-Islam, US-Iraqi authorites dispute who is reponsible for attacks.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

As suicide attacks and insurgent tactics grow bolder and more frequent in Iraq, The Associated Press reports that US and Iraqi officials remain divided about whether Iraqis or foreign fighters are responsible for recent attacks.

On the one hand, the letter released last week by US military officials that they allege was written by Al Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and the capture Wednesday of seven men who may have links to Al Qaeda, show that the terrorist network has at least a presence in Iraq.

On the other hand, US officials admit that an Iraqi based insurgency is still very much a problem. While the insurgency has been disrupted by the capture of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and other key figures, AP reports rebel attacks against US 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 US military forces. At least 538 US troops have died since the US 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.

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The Australian reports on the most recent example of the insurgency's staying power; the attack Saturday on the police station in Fallujah, deep in the so called "Sunni Triangle," north and west of Baghdad. Some 40 insurgents conducted twin attacks on the police station and an Iraqi Civil Defence Corps building, freeing some 70 prisoners. The attacks left at least 23 policemen dead and 30 others wounded, according to the US military.

Some Iraqi officials blamed foreign militants, and the top US administrator Paul Bremer said foreigners participated. But Agence-France Presse reports that one US military officer in Baghdad said it was more likely that Iraqis – former Saddam Hussein military officers – carried out the raid. Most of the insurgents killed during the attack were later indentified as Iraqis.

The New York Post reports that US military officials will replace the Army unit currently based in Fallujah with a Marine unit better trained to deal with urban guerrilla warfare. The Christian Science Monitor reports that the attack shows that local Iraqi forces may not be able to maintain security after the US transfer of power to Iraqi authorities, currently scheduled for June 30.

The Asia Times reports that local insurgents could have organized the raid, but not without a lot of help.

But could local Saddam loyalists have organized the raid? Yahia Said of the London School of Economics and Political Science says yes - but not without the support of a large part of the local population. "My instinct on these events, on activities like that in Fallujah in particular, is that these are a combination of Saddam Hussein remnants – or, if you like, more precisely, disgruntled local Fallujah citizens, unhappy with the [US-led] occupation, being organized by some remnants of the Saddam Hussein regime."

Perhaps more disturbing, AP reports, is the rumor that swirled around Fallujah about the identity of the attackers; several of those killed were said to have tattoos that praised Shiite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. It's just one more sign, reports AP, that Iraq may be slipping towards a civil war, with or without the efforts of Al Qaeda. A Washington Post report on the long-standing animosities between Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites says they have turned into "intimate enemies."

Meanwhile, the Zarqawi letter mentioned above continues to generate speculation on both its contents, and its; author. Time magazine reports that some experts are still not sure that it was actually written by Mr. Zarqawi. Syndicated columnist Gwynne Dyer asks, even if Zarqawi did write the letter, whether it is reasonable to believe that one man is responsible for all the US troubles in Iraq. But if Zarqawi was the author, argues the Pentagon's DefenseLink newsite, it shows that it's the desperate fear of a free Iraq that is fueling the rise in terror attacks.

The attacks are designed to slow down progress, [Coalition Provisional Authority Dan] Senor said, using Al Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi's words to make the point that a democratic Iraq will not tolerate terrorists in its midst. "If, God forbid, the government is successful and takes control of the country, we'll just have to pack up and go somewhere else again," Senor read from a letter from Zarqawi to Al Qaeda leaders that the coalition intercepted.

But the Zarqawi letter has also served to undermine some of the arguments made by the White House about the reasons for going to war in Iraq, reports The Chicago Tribune. It raises questions again about whether Saddam Hussein, as the Bush administration claimed, once plotted with Al Qaeda.

There is nothing in the memo, however, that confirms or bolsters some key prewar White House claims: that Zarqawi was operating in the north as a leader of an Al Qaeda affiliate known as Ansar al-Islam, that he had set up a camp to produce deadly poisons and that, with Hussein's blessing and cooperation, he had moved people, money and supplies in and out of Iraq for months. If Zarqawi were involved in prewar activities in Iraq, it would be a curious omission in a memo by a terrorist who was trying to foment rage against the country's majority Shiite Muslim population and was calling for kidnappings and killings of Americans in Iraq.

Jim Lobe of the Inter Press News Service says that the letter also throws water on the notion that Islamic extremist groups will cooperate with each other despite their often sharp religious differences. "The Shiites have declared a subtle war against Islam," the letter states. "Even if the Americans are also an arch-enemy, the Shiites are a greater danger and their harm more destructive to the nation than that of the Americans," the author [allegedly Zarqawi] writes of the Shiites, who he describes as a "perverse sect."

"The document undermines all the conspiracy theories about Iranian support for Al Qaeda or an Al Qaeda-Hezbollah link'', says [University of Michigan Iraq expert Juan] Cole. "The Iranians would as soon shoot those people (Zarqawi and al-Qaeda) as look at them."

The International Herald Tribune reports on the resurgence of Ansar al-Islam. The group has been blamed for the recent twin suicide bombings in Erbil that killed many Kurdish leaders.

Finally, Tom Friedman of The New York Times writes that even if going into Iraq did create more enemies for the US in the Arab-Muslim world (which Mr. Freidman does not believe is the case), it has also "has also triggered the first real 'conversation' about political reform in the Arab world in a long, long time." Thus, even if the political outcome in Iraq is not a good one, he writes, a debate has been created that will not be stopped.