Beyond Embattled City, Rebels Operate Freely
By Alissa J. Rubin and Tyler Marshall
Times Staff Writers
November 12, 2004
BAGHDAD — Iraqi insurgents have extended their reach over large swaths
of the country, including sections of the capital, making it unlikely
that the United States can establish the stability needed for credible
elections in January even if its forces succeed in Fallouja, military
and political analysts say.
There is little doubt that American-led forces will recapture Fallouja
within days, the analysts say. But U.S. officials who are planning for
the election face another challenge: a law and order vacuum in many
Sunni Muslim areas where there are no American or Iraqi forces and
insurgents can operate with impunity.
Masked gunmen patrol
these places, particularly at night, assassinating government
officials, carrying out kidnappings and intimidating the people.
"There are large areas of countryside that are controlled 24 hours a
day by the mujahedin, where people do not see U.S. forces," said
Charles Heyman, a senior defense analyst for the London-based Jane's
Defence Weekly.
With voting scheduled to take place in less
than three months, there has been no let-up in insurgent attacks nor
any sign that the government can curb them.
"You need to be
able to replicate the density of troops now in Fallouja right across
the Sunni Triangle, at least, and in Baghdad, and we don't have enough
soldiers to do that. And it's hopeless to pretend Iraqis have the
ability to do that," Heyman said.
Pentagon officials Wednesday
denied that a security vacuum had developed in some areas, stating that
Iraqi security forces were growing in strength and that patrols by
U.S.-led forces were conducted routinely throughout the Sunni Triangle
— the heavily populated Sunni areas of central Iraq north and west of
Baghdad where guerrilla attacks have been most prevalent.
"Every day we're gaining more control over the Sunni Triangle region,
and the Fallouja operation is an example of that," said a senior
defense official who declined to be identified.
President Bush
said this week that he would consider any request for additional
forces, but that U.S. military leaders "have yet to say, 'We need a
substantial number of troops.' "
Nevertheless, insurgents
continue to carry out attacks sowing widespread fear. In recent
violence, insurgents have assassinated police officers and left their
bodies in the road; they have hung the empty uniforms of slain Iraqi
national guardsmen like scarecrows to warn off anyone thinking of
joining the security forces; have set up checkpoints at which they
robbed and threatened people. They have staged mortar and rocket
attacks and vanished down back alleys and country roads. They are
increasingly demonstrating an ability to shut down civic life even in
many urban areas.
The insurgents, believed to be predominantly
Sunnis, oppose the elections because they fear that the power they lost
with the ouster of Saddam Hussein will be cemented by a popular vote.
The battle for Fallouja has already caused leading Sunni clerics to
urge a boycott of the poll and seems likely to further stiffen a
broader Sunni resistance to voting.
With the majority Shiite
Muslims insisting on elections — and likely to stage mass protests if
they are not held — interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is
pressing to bring the insurgency under control.
So far, the insurgents seem to be winning many fights.
Civil authority appears to have all but vanished in some areas. In
Haditha and Haqlaniya, neighboring towns 135 miles west of Baghdad,
people say they are afraid to walk the streets. Insurgents sent a
strong warning months ago after the U.S. military put a local tribal
leader in control. Militants killed him and his sons. A second group of
leaders, including a police chief, was also deposed.
The
current chairman of the city council, Khaled Hussein, who has the
approval of the insurgents, painted a bleak picture of life in the
city. He spoke about a weekend attack on two police stations in the
towns, in which 22 police officers were killed. Some were handcuffed,
then executed.
"Now the Iraqi police refuse to go to work. The
shops are closed, the streets are empty and very few people go out,"
Hussein said.
The picture is reflected in other areas.
In Mahmoudiya, a mixed Sunni and Shiite community south of Baghdad, the
streets were nearly empty Wednesday even though it was a few days
before Eid, one of the biggest holidays in the Muslim calendar, when
people shop for new clothes and gifts.
Small crowds gathered
around Internet printouts, declarations by former Iraqi police officers
and national guardsmen who swore on the Koran that they had quit their
jobs.
Fresh graffiti proclaimed "Oh Muslims, Go to Jihad," "Death to Allawi
and His Puppet Government," and "Long Live Fallouja."
At one of the few shops that had customers, the owner looked
suspiciously at a visitor who asked why so few stores were open.
"The people are staying home because they are afraid of the armed men,"
he said.
In southern Baghdad, the situation is similar. A mortar attack this
week on a half-finished municipal building, which housed a police
outpost, drove away the small force camped there. Residents say there
is not even a checkpoint. At night, the only patrols are by insurgents
with kaffiyehs masking their faces.
Mustafa Alani, chairman
of Defense and Terrorism Studies at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai,
said that Baghdad was likely to be a chief target of the insurgency. It
is the country's nerve center, and with at least 6 million residents
spread over a vast area, difficult for U.S. and Iraqi forces to
stabilize.
"Baghdad is the real battlefield right now," Alani
said. "It's the largest city, it's impossible for the U.S. troops to
control. They cannot really occupy Baghdad; they are spread too thin."
The capital has become a prime site for one of the guerrillas' most
effective tactics: assassination. Often unrecorded in the daily
violence is the frequency of attacks on low- and mid-level government
workers. Allawi's accountant and his son were shot to death two weeks
ago; so was one of his secretaries. A deputy director general of the
Oil Ministry was killed a week ago, along with a defense official.
Government workers are scrambling to apply for housing in the capital's
U.S.-controlled Green Zone to escape gunmen in their neighborhoods.
Experts said they expected the insurgents to melt away when U.S. troops
mass forces — such as the contingent now in Fallouja — and reemerge
when the Americans draw down their numbers.
"The insurgents
have read the manual: You allow the heavily armed, well trained
soldiers in; you let them set up their positions, sort themselves out;
and then you close in around them," said Heyman, of Jane's Defence
Weekly.
In Samarra, which the insurgents abandoned after
intense battles with U.S. troops and Iraqi forces in early October, the
guerrillas have begun to re-assert themselves. Two coordinated car
bombs and several mortar attacks Saturday killed more than 30 people.
This week insurgents killed a shop-owner suspected of spying for the
U.S. His body, was left in the street as a warning to others.
In the north, Mosul, once trumpeted by the U.S. military as a model of
stability, is now mostly controlled by insurgents. Two U.S. soldiers
were killed there in mortar attacks this week. Insurgents killed four
Turkish truckers Wednesday and guerrillas armed with machine guns and
rocket-propelled grenades clashed with American troops for several
hours. They attacked two U.S. convoys, killing four people, a reporter
on the scene said.
A U.S. military spokesman confirmed the
attacks but said only that a foreign contractor was killed. Three Iraqi
police officers also were killed, a hospital spokesman said. On
Thursday, the city crackled with automatic weapons fire as gunfights
ran for hours. There were no police or Iraqi national guardsmen on the
streets, residents said.
In one neighborhood, insurgents
boasted that they had killed an Iraqi national guardsman, and showed
reporters the body of a lieutenant, his identification on his chest and
his head riddled with bullets.
One fighter said: "This is a
traitor who worked with the [Iraqi national guard], and he helped the
Americans in killing his brother Iraqis!"
Another fighter, who
refused to identify himself, said: "What is happening in Mosul is
retaliation for our brothers in Fallouja. There is nothing that can
stop us."
Rubin reported from
Baghdad and Marshall from Washington. Times staff writers Mark Mazzetti
in Washington, Paul Richter in Washington, Maggie Farley at the United
Nations, special correspondents Raheem Salman in Baghdad and Ahmed Izzi
in Samarra contributed to this report.
