Agence France Presse April 22, 2004
Iraqi insurgents an evolving force: officials, analysts
By Peter Mackler
Facing stubborn resistance on two fronts, US commanders in Iraq are showing signs of grudging appreciation for the combat capacity and organization of insurgents still officially written off as isolated thugs and terrorists.
After more than two weeks of fierce fighting, particularly in the city of Fallujah, US officers speak about well-coordinated "enemy forces," many with clear military training and some operating in platoon-like units.
Battling Sunni Muslim militants in Fallujah or facing down Shiite radicals in central and southern Iraq, the US-led coalition has a growing sense of what it is up against a year after toppling Saddam Hussein.
"This is probably the most significant uprising we've had since the end of the war," Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the coalition's deputy director of operations, told reporters in Baghdad this week.
With more than 100 Americans killed so far this month, General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pulled no punches testifying before the US Congress on Wednesday.
"This is a serious situation. We're at war," Myers told the House Armed Services Committee. "We have a lot at stake against these extremists in Iraq."
US officials say the resistance in Fallujah is being waged by hundreds of fighters from the former Special Republican Guard, elite Fedayeen Saddam militia, Mukhabarat intelligence services, special services, diehard residents and some foreigners.
Witnesses in the city west of Baghdad say the insurgents carry a range of weapons, from Kalashnikov assault rifles to mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank rockets and even Russian-made Strela ground-to-air missiles.
No-one is sure where the weapons are coming from: some officials and experts say they may be smuggled in from Syria or stolen from poorly guarded weapons dumps. Others suggest they were stockpiled by Saddam's defeated army.
The Iraqis have been using classic urban guerrilla tactics against the Marines, including sniper fire and hit-and-run strikes, trying to catch the Americans in narrow streets with little maneuvering room, officers said.
The Americans accuse the Iraqis of using ambulances for transporting weapons, mosques for fire bases and women and children as human shields against the Marines, basically daring them to attack and pile up civilian casualties.
Insurgents have also been stepping up their attacks on vital supply routes, obliging the US military to divert troops to protect convoys, and last week shot down one American helicopter in the Fallujah area and forced down another.
Myers acknowleged in a television interview this week that the insurgents in Fallujah were displaying "pretty good coordination," but most officials and military experts believe their organization is loose at best.
A militant in Fallujah said the insurgency there was led by three major groups. "Each has its leaders, its intelligence arm and its hierarchy," the rebel told Ahmad Faddam, an AFP correspondent who entered the city last week.
If the Marines have been so far stymied in their drive on Fallujah, with officials seeking a negotiated settlement, coalition forces have had little more luck with militiamen loyal to firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.
Officials play down the threat from Sadr's Mehdi army, comprised of an estimated 3,000-6,000 poorly armed and trained fighters who have squared off against coalition troops in cities across central and southern Iraq since April 4.
But coalition forces have not been able to impose their will fully on any of the cities, including Kut, southeast of Baghdad, where they sent in a battalion-sized US force with armored personnel carriers and other mechanized vehicles.
Sadr himself is holed up in the holy Shiite city of Najaf south of Baghdad, with thousands of American troops massed outside as mediation efforts continue.
Officials doubt there is any degree of real coordination between the Sunnis and the Shiites although Kimmitt said "what you're starting to see are some marriages of convenience between some of these extremist groups."
Military analysts have seen the Iraqi insurgency develop in the last year from random attacks on coalition forces to the more sophisticated use of roadside explosives, coordinated ambushes and now sustained combat mixed with bombings and kidnappings.
US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Wednesday a branch of the old Iraqi intelligence service, dubbed M-14, has helped plan and carry out anti-coalition attacks throughout Iraq with car bombs and remote-controlled explosives.
Kimmitt said the insurgents, unable to tackle the coalition head-on, were resorting to "asymmetric" tactics such as abductions and bombs "to try to break the will of the coalition ... by creating fear."
For John Pike, director of the GlobalSecurity.org think tank, such operations represent a new dimension in the insurgency, moving from tactics to strategic thinking aimed at undermining support for the occupation in the United States and elsewhere.
"What we are seeing in the last three weeks is a strategy to strike at the points of political vulnerability," Pike said.
© Copyright 2004, Agence France Presse
