Reuters October 28, 2003
ANALYSIS-Hidden foes confuse, torment U.S. in Iraq
By Alistair Lyon and Mark Trevelyan
BAGHDAD/BERLIN, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Guerrillas in Iraq seem to have a deadly answer to every claim by U.S. military officials that they are in despair and on the run.
Sunday's bold rocketing of a Baghdad hotel that just missed the U.S. deputy defence secretary and a string of suicide bombings the next day were only the latest in what the generals dismiss as the violent acts of doomed men.
But their varying assessments of their enemy suggest an occupying army reeling from the scale of attacks in Iraq and struggling to narrow a bewildering range of suspects.
Saddam Hussein loyalists, Syria, Iran, al Qaeda and its associate Ansar al-Islam -- all, in recent weeks, have been implicated by U.S. officials in the relentless violence.
Confusingly, U.S. comments have alternately highlighted and minimised the role of foreign fighters in attacks on U.S. forces, the United Nations, the Red Cross, foreign missions, Iraqi police and others close to the occupation.
In the latest example, U.S. Brigadier General Mark Hertling said coordinated suicide bombings that killed 35 people and wounded 230 on Monday "certainly...have a mode of operation of foreign fighters". He pointed to the capture of an assailant said to hold a Syrian passport.
The same day, Major General Raymond Odierno, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, took a seemingly different tack, saying the Iraqi resistance contained only a "very, very small percentage of foreign fighters".
Sebestyen Gorka, fellow of the Terrorism Research Center in Virginia, said the mixed messages partly reflected crossed wires between the State Department, Pentagon, military commanders, special forces and newly created regional authorities in Iraq.
"There are far too many chiefs, basically. The lines of communication and command are confused and overlapping...It's a mess," he said.
But the 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq may also act as a magnet to factions across the Middle East who hate America for its support of Israel and invasion of Iraq and who now have the opportunity to wage a jihad, or holy struggle, against it.
BEDROCK OF HOSTILITY
As if to underline the general hatred of U.S. policy in the region, Lebanon's Druze leader Walid Jumblatt voiced regret that the Baghdad hotel attack had failed to kill Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
"There is a super-abundance of external actors, including Syria, including Iran, including al Qaeda, who have both the means and the motive to use proxies in Iraq to bedevil America," said John Pike, head of think-tank GlobalSecurity.org.
But the Iraq invasion also gives Iran and Syria a strong interest in avoiding U.S. wrath, which might temper any temptation to stir trouble for the occupiers next door.
Asked about U.S. charges of cross-border subversion, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's special envoy to Iraq, said Syria and Iran had been "quite cooperative", while urging them to support U.S.-led efforts more openly.
Gorka said virtually any group had the means to carry out low-level attacks on U.S. or foreign targets in a region where Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled grenades and explosives are widely and cheaply available.
But suicide bombings are more typical of al Qaeda, or like-minded "fellow travellers", than of the hard men who once propped up Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime.
Toby Dodge, author of a new book called Inventing Iraq, said foreign militants could well pose a future threat, but derided the idea that they already had organised networks in place capable of orchestrating bombing campaigns.
"Without a shadow of a doubt, the resistance and the bombings are all homegrown," he said.
Whatever their identity, the attackers have shown themselves able to strike effectively at short notice.
An October 14 suicide bombing outside the Turkish embassy in Baghdad came a week after parliament in Ankara had approved sending peacekeepers to Iraq.
Sunday's attack on the Rashid Hotel, where Wolfowitz was staying, proved the guerrillas can mount opportunist strikes on even the most heavily protected targets.
"It's quite an impressive display of operational capability, but it's not as if they had to do everything from zero. They have in place individuals, weapons and the motivation to execute things when they do get that target of opportunity," Gorka said.
© Copyright 2003, Reuters
