Major arrests show a shift in Iraq

The arrest of seven key insurgents in the past two weeks, including Saddam Hussein's half-brother and top aides to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, are giving a much-needed morale boost to Iraq's counterinsurgency efforts.

Indeed, some Iraqi officials see the momentum beginning to shift since the Jan. 30 elections. They say Iraqi citizens are providing more tips, and that a series of videotaped confessions by captured insurgents shown on Iraqi TV are helping discredit the rebels. "We are very close to al-Zarqawi, and I believe that there are a few weeks separating us from him," Iraq's interim national security adviser, Mouwafak al-Rubaie told the Associated Press.

Analysts agree that the string of arrests are likely to hurt the insurgency. But the decentralized nature of the uprising makes it difficult to dismantle. A massive car bombing in Hilla, Iraq, Monday underscored the point. The bomb exploded near a line of recruits for the Iraqi security forces in the southern Iraq town, killing more than 100 people, one of the largest death tolls from a car bomb in Iraq.

US military intelligence experts say the insurgency is made up of several groups with different long-term goals but the common short-term goal of forcing US troops out of Iraq. They include former Baath party members loyal to Saddam Hussein and Sunni extremists, like the Jordanian militant Zarqawi, who see Iraq as part of a larger global war against entities they feel are anti-Islamic.

"We tend to put a hierarchical Western military template [on other conflicts] but it doesn't work that way," says Lord Timothy Garden, a former officer in the British military and senior fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. Lord Garden suggests the latest arrests have to go hand in hand with broader changes in the country to shut down the insurgency.

Al Iraqiya television started airing police interviews of insurgents last week. The interviews, run almost daily, have been the talk of Baghdad. In the videos, a prisoner sits behind a desk while an off-camera policeman asks questions about how many people he has killed and what operations he has carried out.

Judith Yaphe of the National Defense University in Washington says the interviews publicize government successes and "send a signal - 'Come and tell us more. It's safe now to talk' - to encourage people to come forward" with information about the insurgency.

Lord Garden says this is part of what's needed in a counterinsurgency effort. "The most important thing you've got to do is detach the general population from the insurgency. You've got to make the quality of life better all the time," he says. "We've just got to be patient and do the long haul.... The elections are one thing but people want tangible improvements in the quality of life."

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