For success in Fallujah, Iraq Army key

As US forces gear up for a showdown in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, the weekend arrest of a suspected lieutenant of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi points to improving US intelligence in Iraq.

The outcome in Fallujah will be critical to attempts by the US and Iraq's interim government to shape Iraq's future, before and after January elections, analysts say.

Recent efforts to pacify the city of Samarra suggest that Iraqi military participation is crucial to legitimize any offensive and maintain stability afterward. Aware of this key role, insurgents took bloody aim at Iraq's fledgling armed forces this weekend.

Sunday, about 50 newly trained Iraqi Army recruits were shot to death at close range, after three minibuses were ambushed northeast of Baghdad by attackers with apparent insider knowledge. Two suicide car bombings killed another 20 members of the Iraqi National Guard on Saturday. In addition, a US diplomat died in a mortar strike on Camp Victory, near Baghdad airport.

Fallujah has become the potent symbol of resistance in Iraq, where the mix of Mr. Zarqawi's Al Qaeda-affiliated foreign fighters and nationalist Iraqis have been targeted during two months of nightly US air strikes.

US forces said the arrested Zarqawi aide was a "relatively minor member" of the network who "had moved up to take a critical position as a Zarqawi senior leader" because of the attrition of other militants in the airstrikes.

"This is the first time there is evidence that intelligence gathering [in Fallujah] is really improving," says Mustafa Alani, a security and terrorism expert at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai. "The reason is that human intelligence is much improved. There is some cooperation, so Iraqis are now part of the process."

Taking on Fallujah, where negotiations are stalled over Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's demands that city leaders hand over Zarqawi or risk an American invasion, may help curb the violence. Attacks have increased by up to 30 percent nationwide since the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan last week.

Some argue that a positive momentum has been created by a recent peace deal with Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr - whose fighters withdrew from Najaf after bloody battles with US troops in August, and have just been paid $5 million in an 11-day weapons buy-back scheme in Baghdad's Sadr City slum.

Reestablishing US and Iraqi control of Samarra following a three-day battle earlier this month has added to that momentum, and may be a template to build upon, experts say.

"The interim government has had a pretty good couple of months," says Gary Samore, an Iraq specialist at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. "The battle of Fallujah will be absolutely critical, because if they are able to restore control, that may very well send a strong message to other renegade towns, which would then be more likely to participate in January elections."

Sunni Muslim clerics vowed over the weekend to boycott the poll if Fallujah is invaded. But while the majority of Fallujah's 300,000 residents have fled the city, it may be increasingly inhospitable for militants.

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