Iraqi Insurgents’ New Tactic: Disperse and Attack

While US troops were largely in control of Fallujah yesterday, they were still meeting sporadic pockets of fierce resistance.

Iraq’s Interior Minister Faleh Hassan Al-Naqib admitted for the first time at a press conference in Baghdad that the interim government and the US led coalition faced a broad insurgency covering the Sunni heartland of the country.

Naqib made a number of other major revelations:

• Contrary to previous assumptions that the insurgency consisted of dozens of disparate groups, it is a unified movement with a large measure of central command and control.

• The overwhelming majority of the insurgents are Iraqis, not foreign fighters. In fact, non-Iraqi Arab fighters represent between four and six percent of the combatants. In Fallujah of the1 , 200insurgents killed, only 24 were non-Iraqis.

• The remnants of Saddam Hussein’s regime play a much bigger role in the insurgency than previously assumed.

• The insurgency has developed some form of political leadership, operating from Syria. Naqib named the principal coordinator as Muhammad Yunus Ahmad, a former Baath party security official.

• Saddam’s regime had prepared special units for waging urban guerrilla warfare long before the US-led invasion in2003 . Those units have now been activated throughout the Sunni Triangle.

• The insurgents aim at dispersing American firepower in what looks like a dress rehearsal for fomenting enough chaos to disrupt the elections scheduled for January 2005.

A series of apparently well-orchestrated and simultaneous attacks in Baiji, Baqubah, Ramadi, Haditha, Tikrit, and other localities showed that the insurgents have switched to hit-and-run tactics, abandoning their previous strategy of seizing and holding terrain that could be turned into safe havens.

The most dramatic illustration of this new tactic came in Mosul where insurgents attacked and temporarily seized control of nine police stations, looting arms and materiel stores.

Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city, was never in danger of falling into insurgent hands. But the daring raids achieved their two key objectives: Easing US military pressure on other localities in the Sunni Triangle, and rattling the nerves of the still fragile Iraqi police and army. The three-day raid on Mosul drew some 1, 200American troops away from Fallujah and Ramadi.

It also provoked the desertion of at least 300 newly recruited Iraqi policemen and troops. Mosul is ethnically very mixed with large communities of Kurds, Turkomans, Christians and Yazidis. Thus it is not a place where Sunni Arab insurgents could strike root. Saddam Hussein’s efforts to Arabize the city by moving in his Sunni supporters inevitably created tensions.

Lightly armed insurgent forces are like grains of sand. As combat power is deployed against them they tend to drift away, either going to ground or seeking another battlefield on which to fight. They could also hide their arms and melt into the local population to reappear when and where an opportunity arises. This is exactly what has happened in Fallujah. The insurgents appear to have suffered serious losses in Fallujah, but not necessarily a knockout blow.

It is clear that some insurgents left Fallujah before the US-led assault and have embarked upon a coordinated series of attacks in Baqubah, Samarra and Mosul.

This implies a reasonably sophisticated level of centralized command. But in military terms it is far from clear what these various attacks amount to. It is also clear that the US simply does not have sufficient troops on the ground to maintain order in several key cities at once while launching a major offensive against another.

Once Fallujah is secure the US may have more troops available to put down the sporadic violence elsewhere. But it is still far from clear what message Sunni leaders have taken from the Fallujah operation.

Despite expectations that the fall of Fallujah would break the back of the insurgency it seems to have produced unintended consequences. The insurgents were using an estimated3 , 000to4 , 000men to hold Fallujah. It seems that at least half of them got away and were almost immediately deployed for attacks in other localities. This means that the insurgents, abandoning their tactic of holding to territory, can wreak havoc in many more places with fewer fighters. In Fallujah they were fixed targets while the US-led force was moving. Now they become mobile while the US-led forces, especially Iraqi police and army units, become fixed targets.

Analysts say the fighting the past few days has shown that the insurgents have little chance of winning a war over territory. But they can achieve tactical political objectives that could prevent Iraq’s stabilization anytime soon.

The big prize is the January 2005 elections. If the insurgents manage to have it postponed or canceled they would emerge as winners, at least of this round. If, on the other hand, the elections are held on time, the insurgency might find it hard to sustain itself even within the Sunni Triangle.

The first signs that the interim government, headed by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi may have been rattled came yesterday when Naqib hinted that the elections might be postponed. Hours later, however, Deputy Premier Barham Salih rejected any suggestion that the exercise could be postponed.

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