New preoccupations
Insurgency in Iraq is shifting into a deadly campaign of bombings and the occupiers are being forced to reconsider strategies, writes Salah Hemeid
At a time when the United States army says it wants to ease its "iron-fist" policy on Iraqis, the anti- American insurgency has turned to car bombing and guerrilla warfare. On Thursday, a bomb attached to a minibus went off near the Jordanian Embassy, killing 17 people and wounding scores more. The perpetrators of the attack are still unknown and investigators from the FBI have been sent to investigate the blast. It was the deadliest attack against civilians since the American military took control of Baghdad on 9 April. The onset of major bombings of this type would present a new danger to Coalition forces, who so far have been ambushed primarily by insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades, explosive devices and small arms.
The bus bomb brought the war to the heart of the administrative centre of Iraq and presented the occupation forces with a new and unpredictable menace. The central question for the American-led Coalition administration is now whether the car bombing is an isolated act or the beginning of a new series of bombings. US officials are worried that they may be facing a new wave of attacks by more skilled fighters and possibly foreign Islamic militants linked to Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qa'eda network. The prospect that such attacks can now be organised by Islamic militant groups is a worry for the Bush administration. The American government has calculated that attacks on Coalition forces by Ba'thist operatives will substantially decrease if deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is captured or killed, thus depriving former officials of his regime of a rallying tactic. So far, American authorities have said, they do not believe terrorist groups like Ansar Al-Islam or any foreign fighters have played a major role in guerrilla assaults on US forces. Instead, they believe the attacks are the work of remnants of Hussein's regime -- his Republican Guard, Feda'yeen militia and intelligence services.
If Islamic militants are indeed behind the recent escalation, then there is no reason to think that attacks will necessarily cease because they seem to be motivated by a desire to lash out at the Americans over their support for Israel and their presence in the Gulf. Paul Bremer, the chief US administrator in Iraq, blamed the bombing on Ansar Al-Islam, a militant organisation that escaped to Iran when the United States tried to destroy it during the war and then slipped back across the border into Iraq. Bremer, who served as the chief counterterrorism official at the State Department during the Reagan administration, said hundreds of the militants were now in Iraq, where they were preparing to attack the occupation forces or administration. He said the motivations of the attackers were unclear. The Jordanian Embassy, he said, might have been attacked because of Jordan's cooperation with the United States during and after the war to topple the Iraqi regime. However, he said it was unlikely that Jordanian opponents of the government carried out the attack to punish Amman for having granted asylum to Hussein's daughters.
The bombing came as American military commanders said they were revising their strategy in Iraq by limiting the scope of the US army's raids after receiving warnings from Iraqi leaders that the raids were alienating the public. Lieutenant General Ricardo S Sanchez, the chief commander of allied forces in Iraq, said in an interview with The New York Times published Friday 8 August that the military had virtually exhausted the gains from this approach and that continuing it could be counterproductive. "It was a fact that I started to get multiple indicators that maybe our iron-fisted approach to the conduct of ops was beginning to alienate Iraqis," General Sanchez said, referring to military operations. "I started to get those sensings from multiple sources, all the way from the Governing Council down to average people."
The change in approach comes at an important juncture for the Coalition, which is striving to maintain the support of an Iraqi public that has had to struggle with erratic power supplies, high unemployment and rampant crime and which has not always been reassured by the presence of American troops. In its search for Ba'th Party operatives and other friends of the former government, the American military has carried out broad sweeps, some of which have rounded up hundreds of Iraqis.
Among these major operations were the one in mid-July that sought to break up a possible insurgent offensive. That operation involved 143 raids across Iraq. Sanchez said last month that almost 700 loyalists of the old government and criminals were detained and that 64 of these proved to be "high-value targets". But Iraqis have complained that during these raids too many of those rounded up by American troops were not Ba'th Party operatives but ordinary citizens. They say the American tactics have been too aggressive and not sensitive enough to Iraqi culture and traditions. Thus, the new American approach reflects a recognition that widespread raids could unintentionally be creating a reservoir of support for the insurgents or even creating the conditions for revenge attacks by ordinary citizens.
The embassy bombing also occurred during a period in which the American authorities are hoping that the Iraqis' newly established police force and embryonic security forces can take on greater responsibility for maintaining domestic order, including the protection of infrastructure and important sites. Under the new approach, American forces might withdraw from towns that are quiet and leave the policing to Iraqis. Since 1 May, when President George W Bush declared the end of major combat, 56 soldiers have died from hostile action. The hope is that by shifting more of the security burden to the Iraqis, American forces can focus more on capturing and killing Ba'th Party operatives and others opposed to the American presence and, ultimately, reduce the number of American forces kept in Iraq.
There are now about 5,500 Iraqi police officers in Baghdad, about a third of the force's planned strength, and 33,000 nationwide, about half the planned strength. In addition, thousands of Iraqi army and internal security forces are being trained. American and allied troops in Iraq number about 160,000.
Yet securing and pacifying Iraq after the war that ousted Saddam's regime has turned out to be much more difficult than Pentagon strategists had expected. What began as an easy and swift military victory over Saddam's demoralised and fatigued army is now a drama testing the United States' credibility as never before.
