U.S. Unsure Who's Behind Iraq Attacks

BAGHDAD—U.S. commanders say they are unsure about who is responsible for the persistent violence in Iraq, underscoring the challenge they face trying to keep a lid on it amid parliamentary elections this weekend.

While security has improved significantly across Iraq in recent years, in the weeks leading up to the March 7 vote, U.S. commanders have reported an increase in low-level violence: kidnappings, assassinations, and mortar attacks against Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, the seat of government power.

And since August, a series of large-scale bombings aimed at government buildings have ripped through Baghdad, killing several hundred people and shaking confidence in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's security services, following the withdrawal of most U.S. combat forces from major Iraqi cities last summer.

Commanders worry the violence could spike further after the election if parties feel there was fraud or if negotiations to form a government after the vote break down.

U.S. and Iraqi successes cracking down on organized insurgent groups have caused the groups to splinter into an ill-defined web of smaller, often independent, groups with widely divergent motives, ranging from the ideological to the purely material, according to American military officials.

"There is definitely less clarity as to who the enemy is," says a U.S. Special Forces officer in Baghdad. "The big-time players aren't there anymore. The organized terrorists aren't there anymore."

Iraqi officials are blaming al Qaeda-linked terrorists and loyalists to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party for the attacks. Iraq officials said Tuesday the number of Iraqis killed in February was twice as high as in January and 40% higher than a year earlier.

But U.S. military officers, working in Baghdad and Anbar provinces, say the real picture is less clear, making effective countermeasures more difficult.

"Whether or not the violence is extremist, political or tribal is not clear at this point," says U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Kevin Mangum, the deputy commanding general of U.S. forces in Baghdad and Anbar. "We're not being evasive; it's just really hard to figure out."

Attacks have largely held at or near record post-war lows for the past year and a half in Iraq. But the violence persists at levels that would be considered unacceptably high in many other countries.

"If we don't understand why it's happening, in addition to what's happening, then it's destined to happen again," says Army Capt. Evan Davies, commander of the only U.S. combat company still based inside Baghdad city limits. "And right now, we don't know why a lot of this is happening."

Muddying the waters, U.S. commanders say in recent months they have witnessed a new phenomenon: Sunni al Qaeda-linked insurgents are cooperating with Shiite militias to coordinate more-effective attacks against Iraqi and U.S. forces. In the past, those two groups have typically been bitter enemies.

"Right now AQI and Shiite special groups are uniting together against a common enemy, the Iraqi Security Forces," says Capt. Davies, using the acronym for al Qaeda in Iraq. "That's something we've never encountered before."

The U.S. Special Forces officer says his forces have picked up similar intelligence.

U.S. commanders are hopeful it could signal an act of desperation by insurgent groups in their death throes. But if Sunni and Shiite insurgents begin cooperating on a wider scale, it could give what remains of the Iraqi insurgency a new bite.

The task is expected to get more complicated as the U.S. troop withdrawal accelerates after the election. In Baghdad and Anbar provinces, the U.S. presence already is down to 20,000 troops, from 51,000 troops in January 2009, according to Gen. Mangum.

Without boots on the ground, U.S. commanders are increasingly reliant on Iraqi intelligence gathering. On a recent day in southwest Baghdad, an Iraqi interrogation of a group of men who allegedly confessed to an attempted murder underscored the challenge.

The group, detained in the previous few hours, said they had tried to kill a Sunni sheikh, and were led into a room bound and blindfolded, as U.S. and Iraqi officers looked on. Iraqi National Police Maj. Gen. Shaker al-Assadi grilled the detainees about which insurgent group they belonged to, and why they had tried to kill the sheikh.

"Are you with al Qaeda?" Gen. Assadi asked over and over. Finally, one of them meekly said, "Yes."

U.S. commanders watching the incident seemed unconvinced. The Iraqi interrogators "have no idea why they tried to kill the sheikh," Gen. Mangum said.
WSJ