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Who are the Insurgents?
EFLAmerican officials acknowledge that the insurgents are a potent and increasingly structured force. A former Saddam aide who is close to insurgents in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, agrees. What were once dispersed cells are now meeting weekly in the area, he tells TIME. At the first confab four weeks ago, he says, fighters traded intelligence about the location of U.S. bases, discussed future tactics and planned a series of attacks. U.S. officials originally posited that many of the attackers were criminals Saddam had released from jail on the eve of the U.S. invasion as well as foreign terrorists allied with al-Qaeda. Now the Pentagon believes that the overwhelming majority are former Baath Party officials and other Saddam loyalists. Abizaid said last week coalition forces are facing fewer than 5,000 insurgents in all. That figure, while based on interrogations of Iraqi fighters, is "little more than a smart guess," says a senior Pentagon official. Among the estimated 5,000, military officials say, are perhaps a couple of hundred foreigners who have infiltrated Iraq to confront the Americans. The former Saddam aide said he had met two Libyans who came to Iraq to join the battle, both of them veterans of the civil war in Sudan. CIA briefers told a group of Senators in Washington last week that fighters who have arrived recently from Syria and Iran are more skilled than those who came earlier in the year. The briefers said Ansar al-Islam, a terrorist group linked to al-Qaeda that the U.S. targeted during the fighting last spring, is "reconstituting" in northern Iraq. The former Saddam aide cites other improvements in tactics. He claims the material for the bomb used last week in Nasiriyahâwhich was aimed at Italian forces and killed 31 peopleâcame from the warhead of a surface-to-air missile looted from an ammunition dump. U.S. forces had disabled the missile by taking out the booster that launches it but left the 2,200-lb. warhead behind, he says. The resistance, he adds, is learning how to modify other types of looted weapons, converting air-to-air missiles into surface-to-air missiles for targeting low-flying helicopters. The aide says the resistance cells in his province have agreed that they will no longer conduct attacks in their hometowns. A cell from Fallujah, say, will travel to Baghdad to launch an assault and vice versa. The idea is to make it harder for U.S. Army intelligence units to detect and bust cells. The Saddam aide says the attack in Nasiriyah was planned and executed by a cell from a town between Fallujah and Ramadi. To further increase their chances of eluding capture and to protect their families, the members of a cell based west of Fallujah, says the aide, never sleep at home. Instead they stay with relatives who live in other towns in the area. And they never keep their weapons in these or their own houses, but hide them in farmersâ fields and orchards. Posted by: Paul Moloney 2003-11-18 |
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