USA TODAY August 20, 2003
Bombing in Iraq 'not an amateur job'
By Jack Kelley
Tuesday's suicide bombing at the United Nations' headquarters in Baghdad looks more like the work of a sophisticated terror group - possibly from outside Iraq - than of just disgruntled Baath Party officials or Saddam Hussein loyalists angry at the dictator's overthrow, terror experts say.
The explosion, which killed at least 20 people and injured more than 100, comes after the Aug. 7 bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad, which killed 19 people. Together, those attacks and other efforts to sabotage oil pipelines and critical infrastructure signal that efforts to undermine the work of coalition forces - whether by Iraqis or foreign terrorists - are growing more lethal daily and could further delay Iraq's recovery. (Related story: U.N.'s top envoy to Iraq was no stranger to global hot spots)
"This was not an amateur job," terror analyst Mustafa Alani of London's Royal United Service Institute says of Tuesday's bombing. "We are now entering a new stage of the Iraqi resistance movement: from random to well-planned attacks."
Both the U.N. and embassy bombings bear the hallmarks of a large, sophisticated organization: The targets were soft, or not heavily guarded sites, and the attackers used large, relatively difficult-to-build bombs. Tuesday's bombing, most witnesses said, appeared to be a suicide attack, which also makes it look more like the work of an international group with zealous followers than of locals, experts say. They do not rule out the possibility, however, that the attacks were done by Iraqis associated with, or inspired by, international terrorists such as Osama bin Laden, head of al-Qaeda.
U.S. intelligence reports have indicated that militant Saudis, Jordanians, Egyptians, Syrians, Algerians and Tunisians have been moving into Iraq to fight a jihad against the U.S.-led coalition, says terror analyst Ken Katzman of the Congressional Research Service.
Soon after the attack, L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator for Iraq, accused Syria of allowing foreign terrorists to sneak across its border into Iraq.
"Al-Qaeda-like figures have gotten into the country, married up with the indigenous resistance in the country and begun operations," Katzman says. "If this was carried out by non-Iraqis, their first major operation was the embassy bombing and now this one."
Officials in Iraq, however, cautioned against drawing that conclusion. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who is advising Iraq's law enforcement agencies, says the embassy bombing probably was not the work of foreign terrorists.
He said Tuesday that it's too soon to know whether international terrorists, including another militant group called Ansar al-Islam, were involved in the U.N. bombing.
Coalition forces destroyed an Ansar camp in northern Iraq in the early stages of the U.S.-led war, but Pentagon officials say there is evidence that the group has been regrouping inside Iraq. Ansar is also suspected in the embassy blast.
Attacks are more sophisticated
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1, terror attacks aimed at U.S. forces or organizations and countries seen as supporting U.S. efforts in Iraq have progressed from rocket-propelled grenades to remotely detonated explosions and now, apparently, to suicide truck bombs.
"We have an increasingly complex resistance," Katzman says. "It is no longer one-dimensional. It is nationwide and more complex."
The number and sophistication of those attacks have surprised some experts and U.S. officials.
"What's apparent is that the level of anti-American activity is greater than anyone anticipated in the resources (the terrorists) have available and the number of people involved," says terror analyst Neil Livingstone, chairman of GlobalOptions, a crisis management firm based in Washington.
He says that though the motivation for the early terror attacks may have been to restore former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to power, it now appears to be a battle against foreign occupation in Iraq or a jihad aimed at driving foreigners from this Muslim country.
Andrew Krepinevich, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, says Iraq has become "a magnet for Jihadists." Their major objective, he says, is to give "the impression that America is losing control and (that) resistance is intensifying."
The other motives behind the attacks are uncertain. Jordan angered some Iraqis by supporting the U.S. effort to overthrow Saddam and alienated al-Qaeda sympathizers by assisting the U.S.-led global war on terrorism.
Targeting the U.N. surprised some analysts. Through all the years of sanctions and oil-for-food programs, the U.N. may not have been popular in Iraq. But it did bring much-needed food, medical and educational programs.
The fact that Tuesday's bomb apparently exploded right outside the window of the U.N.'s top official in Iraq, experts say, could be a blunt and deadly signal from those responsible that they want to drive the U.N. out of Iraq, too. Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N. Special Representative to Iraq and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, was among those killed.
Another possibility, however, is that the bombing was designed to upset and scare Iraqis who are working with the U.N. and intimidate anyone who wants to work with the coalition.
Since June, U.S. military officials in Iraq had warned repeatedly that car bombings were possible. "The next step, in my mind, would be something like car bombs and suicide bombers," Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno of the Army's 4th Infantry Division said on July 25.
Matches Al-Qaeda profile
Regardless of their specific intent and purpose, however, the ultimate objective is clear, experts say: to drive the United States out of Iraq. By attacking embassies, organizations and ordinary Iraqis who work with the United States, the terrorists also are warning that Iraqi lives are in danger.
"They want to make Iraq so difficult for the United States that it withdraws with its tail between its legs," says British Ambassador Harold Walker, who was stationed in Iraq from 1990-91.
Those responsible seem to know what they're doing in assembling Tuesday's bomb. Pentagon officials said it was loaded with 500 pounds of C4 explosives - twice the amount used in the Jordanian Embassy bombing.
"Building bombs requires expertise and experience and, yes, there are former members of the former Iraqi intelligence who can do this, but these have the hallmarks of bomb builders elsewhere, the kind we've seen in Lebanon, Israel, and elsewhere," Livingstone says.
A suicide bomb attack, Livingstone says, is "more consistent with the al-Qaeda profile than a former Baathist opposing American occupation."
He says al-Qaeda is eager to demonstrate that, despite a U.S.-led assault on the terror group, it is "still viable and ready to champion the Arab cause against foreign occupiers. They have a goal of getting into Iraq and demonstrating solidarity and leadership against foreign occupation."
An audiotape released on the eve of the U.N. attack, purportedly from an al-Qaeda spokesman, urged Muslims around the world to travel to Iraq and fight the U.S.-led occupation. The tape was thought to be the first public call by bin Laden's network for Muslims to join the fight in Iraq.
Soon after the tape, Bremer warned that al-Qaeda terrorists were already in the country.
The three-story U.N. building in northeast Baghdad, known as the Canal Hotel, was considered a "soft target." But U.N. officials in New York said Tuesday that a U.S. offer of additional security had been rejected. The U.N. feared the greater American presence would damage its image of neutrality.
"We don't want a lot of security, because we're here to help the people of Iraq," Salim Lone, the U.N. spokesman in Baghdad, told CNN after the blast.
It's unclear how the bomber approached the compound, but security analysts say the attacker may have planted the bomb in the truck earlier and then parked it near the building.
The bomb may have been carried in a cement or garbage truck, a tactic that Iraqi intelligence officials sometimes used in the past when they wanted to move things, such as components for weapons, that they wanted to conceal from the world's eyes.
"Most of the violence directed against the coalition had been the sort of thing that a single individual could do or someone trained in infantry could do," says terror analyst John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, a think tank based in Alexandria, Va.
"But building and detonating a truck bomb is not infantry - it's terrorism, and that takes a different type of training. There's a difference between an assassin who hopes to live and a suicide bomber who knows he will die."
The increasing number of attacks, Pike says. "is beginning to fulfill some of the "worst case" scenarios that planners must have drawn up before the war.
But "if you think this is bad, wait. It could get a lot worse," Pike says.
Contributing: Dave Moniz and John Diamond in Washington; Jim Michaels in Baghdad; wire reports
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