IRAQ: Is armed resistance waning?

April 20, 2005
Issue 

Doug Lorimer

US officials have cited a decline in US troop fatalities in Iraq since the January 30 elections as evidence that the anti-occupation resistance is waning. Whereas 107 US troops were killed in January, the death toll fell to 58 in February and 36 in March — the lowest US casualty rate in more than a year.

"I think we're getting some momentum built up against the insurgency", General Richard Myers, head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters on March 17 at the end of a week-long visit to Jordan, where he observed the training being given to Iraqi police cadets. Myers claimed the number of daily attacks on occupation forces had fallen by 22% since the January 30 elections.

However, in testimony given the same day to the US Senate armed services committee, Vice-Admiral Lowell Jacoby, director of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, said that the "insurgency in Iraq has grown in size and complexity over the past year". After noting that attacks on US forces "numbered approximately 25 per day one year ago", he said that "since the January 30 election, attacks have averaged around 60 per day".

Referring to the drop in US casualty figures since the January 30 elections, Jeffrey White, a DIA analyst who is now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argued that "official statements suggesting that current levels of activity represent some sort of 'tipping point' or 'tipping period' should be viewed with caution". In an April 2 Washington Institute policy brief, White noted that insurgent activity dipped last year in February and March as well.

A major factor in the decline in attacks on US forces and therefore in US fatal casualties since the end of January has been a decision by the Pentagon to push the puppet Iraq security forces into playing a more active role. As a result, while the rate of US casualties has fallen back to one or two fatalities and 10-20 wounded per day, an estimated 200 US-recruited Iraqi security personnel were killed in March.

This "Iraqisation" strategy — which includes increasingly using Iraqi army and police forces to carry out patrols and staff checkpoints — is cited by US commanders as evidence of progress in their counterinsurgency war in Iraq. However, the April 8 Washington Post reported that this strategy "is being questioned by some US military advisers who work closely with the Iraqi forces".

"It's all about perception, to convince the American public that everything is going as planned and we're right on schedule to be out of here", one adviser, US Army Staff Sergeant Craig Patrick, told the Post. "They can [mislead] the American people, but they can't [mislead] us."

The April 11 New York Times reported that US commanders are also "concerned that the [resistance's] attacks are being aided by a growing network of informants ... 'They have tentacles that reach all through the new government and the new military', said Lt. Gen. Walter E. Buchanan, the top American air commander in the Persian Gulf region."

On April 12, about 40 resistance fighters attempted to overrun a US Marine Corps base near the Syrian border. The US military said three marines were wounded and at least three "insurgents" were killed during the assault, which was repelled by US attack helicopters.

The April 12 Washington Post reported that "US officials described the assault as the second time in less than two weeks" that anti-occupation fighters "have employed new tactics of massing an organized military-style offensive rather than staging smaller-scale bombings and attacks".

The group calling itself Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for the assault on the marine base, which came nine days after the same group claimed responsibility for a concerted attack on the US-run Abu Ghraib prison involving mortars, rockets, car bombs and ground fighters.

The two large-scale attacks on US targets marked a change in tactics by the al Qaeda-linked group which the US alleges is led by Jordanian Islamist Abu Musab Zarqawi. Previously this group has concentrated on suicide bombings, often against Iraqi civilians.

Following the massed attack on the US marine base, a US official in Baghdad told the Post that "Zarqawi's group appeared to be trying now for a spectacular coup against US forces in Iraq, in a bid to regain flagging popular support".

However, the April 5 Los Angeles Times had reported that Abu Jalal, the nom de guerre used by a former senior Iraqi officer who is now a top commander in the Army of Mohammed resistance group, said that the assault on Abu Ghraib represented a change of tactics by all the resistance groups — a shift away from car bombs and improvised explosive devices toward direct attacks on US bases.

The Post reported that a resistance commander, "who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Jalal, a member of the Sunni Muslim-led insurgent group Mohammed's Army, said in a separate interview that Zarqawi's group intended more assaults on US installations like the one on Abu Ghraib".

From Green Left Weekly, April 20, 2005.
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