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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Shi'ite leaders want insurgency crackdown |
| 2005-05-01 |
| Iraq's Shiite Muslim leadership, alarmed by a surge in attacks as the new government prepares to take office, plans to crack down on Sunni-led insurgents and purge suspected infiltrators and corrupt officers from the nation's security forces, officials and lawmakers say. A likely tactic, authorities say, is unleashing well-trained Iraqi commandos in Baghdad and other trouble spots. The special forces units have a reputation for effectiveness and brutality. Whether additional Iraqi troops can tame an insurgency that has not withered in the face of massive U.S. military might remains to be seen. But Shiite leaders express confidence that determined Iraqi forces, with U.S. backup, can use their superior knowledge of the culture, language and terrain to gather intelligence, infiltrate cells and defeat the guerrillas. The Iraqi commandos' wider deployment is indicative of how the raging guerrilla conflict here is increasingly a war pitching Iraqis against Iraqis, leading to a decline in U.S. casualty rates even as the number of Iraqi dead soars. The prospect of stepped-up counterinsurgency efforts is greatly unsettling to a Sunni Arab minority that already considers itself besieged and disenfranchised in the new Iraq. Most Sunnis boycotted the Jan. 30 elections, and their political representation is scant. Shiite leaders insisted on controlling the Interior Ministry during marathon talks to form the new government. Their plan is to oust guerrilla informants and sympathizers of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and go after insurgents in a more concerted fashion than the regime of outgoing Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, whose political slate was shut out of the new Cabinet. Allawi, a secular Shiite who was himself a Baathist turned foe of Saddam, tried with little success to coax insurgents into the government through talks with Sunni tribal leaders and other intermediaries. Although Allawi did sign off on the U.S.-led attack on the former Sunni rebel bastion of Fallujah last November, the Shiite Islamists about to assume power here are clearly signaling a much harder line. "Our policy will be to develop the security forces and uproot the terrorist cells," Jawad Maliki, a prominent member of the dominant Shiite coalition in the new National Assembly, said in an interview here. "They (Allawi's appointees) should have dealt with this situation from the beginning," added Maliki, a member of the political bureau of Dawa, the Islamist party of incoming Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. "We will not let this grow." The incoming interior minister also took a tough stance. "The recent acceleration in terrorist attacks is posing a serious challenge on the ground," Bayan Jabour told the Al Hayat newspaper a day after the new government was approved. "We must take immediate action." Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials have warned that a large-scale purge can sweep out capable officers as well as compromised ones. U.S. authorities also fear a backlash among Sunni Arabs who might otherwise join the evolving political process and renounce armed struggle. "If they (Iraqi authorities) want to reduce the level of the insurgency, having competent people and avoiding unnecessary turbulence is a high priority," Rumsfeld said in Washington last week. But representatives of the new Shiite administration have harshly assailed the outgoing Interior Ministry, which is in charge of internal security, as riddled with insurgent informants and Saddam sympathizers. The names of new policemen are being sold to "terrorists" bent on assassination, the new interior minister said, while suspects pay bribes to be sprung from custody. "I could not sleep when I heard about this," Jabour said in an interview with a television station run by his Shiite political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. "We know many of these violators and we plan to discover the rest. We will take measures and people will see the changes in two months." Shiites have agreed to allow a Sunni Arab to run the Defense Ministry but have already vetoed at least one candidate because of past Baathist ties. In the absence of a Sunni candidate acceptable to the Shiite majority in Parliament, Prime Minister al-Jaafari assumed the top defense post on a temporary basis. At any rate, the new Shiite leadership appears determined to use its control of the Interior Ministry as a spear point in coming offensives. Tens of thousands of police officers and other troops are under its command. Authorities plan increased deployment of the Interior Ministry's special commandos, known here as Maghawir (Fearless Warrior) brigades. The units are largely composed of well-trained veterans of Saddam's military who worked closely with U.S. forces during pitched battles last year in Najaf, Fallujah and the northern city of Mosul. Their loyalty to the new Iraq has been tested, officials say, despite their previous service as commandos in Saddam's regime. "We get involved once the police are helpless (against insurgents) and unable to do their job," Maj. Gen. Rasheed Flayih Muhammad, commander of the 12,000-strong Maghawir, said in an interview here. While acknowledging U.S. logistical and technical support, Muhammad insisted that his forces are all-Iraqi and largely free of the U.S. taint that has marred many Iraqi units. "The Iraqi people treat us with respect," Muhammad said. "They love us because we are wearing our own Iraqi uniforms, and because we are doing our work by ourselves." Many Sunnis view the squads suspiciously as largely composed of Shiite and Kurdish rivals eager to exact revenge for decades of suppression under Saddam, a Sunni Arab. The planned anti-insurgency campaign comes as U.S. forces are increasingly turning over security to Iraqi forces and attacks with sectarian overtones continue on almost a daily basis. On Saturday, a car bomb went off outside a recently formed Sunni political organization that favored participation in the new government, killing at least one bystander and injuring 17. The night before, officials said, someone had sprayed automatic-weapons fire at the office. "Whoever did this means to cripple the political process," said Salih al Mutlig of the Iraqi National Dialogue Council, the group that was targeted in Saturday's bombing. "Without dialogue, the country will be headed to greater tragedies." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |