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Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro
de la Prensa-Basm Özeti
..
Inflation
hits Iraqi
•Insurgency
Guns-for-hire charge
up to $200 per attack
By Richard A. Oppel Jr.
MOSUL, Iraq: After a three-hour firefight
here in northern Iraq this month,
American commanders were surprised
to learn that one of the 22 insurgents
they had killed was a Saudi. Even more
intriguing, one of the principal leaders
of the insurgency attended the funeral,
the commanders said.
This was Muhammad Sharkawa, who'
is described as a former member of the
Ansar al-Sunna organization who now
directs several hundred insurgents here
in Mosul. As one commander who said
Sharkawa had killed several of his own
cousins put it, he is "a brutally ruthless
criminal, almost like a mob wise guy
who started whacking dudes."
Yet Sharkawa represents only one
face of the insurgency. He works for jihadist
goals, but another movement is
secular, the Americans say, though both
have a common goal: disrupting the Jan.
30 national parliamentary elections
and intimidating prospective voters.
As they do so, each group operates
with sophisticated leaders careful to
stay in the background while relying on
part-timers to carry out attacks and
killings on a pay-by-assault basis, according
to American officials. .
Meanwhile, the insurgents benefit
from a stream: of money trucked in from.
Syria for the cause, the Americans say.
Sharkawa, the commanders say, is a
leader of the Salafists, or extremist Islamists
who want a government so
weak that the vacuum allows a Talibanstyle
theocracy to develop locally.
"Right now, if we could get one guy
off the street in northern Iraq, he would
be the guy," said Brigadier General
Carter Ham, the top American commander
in Mosul. "He is the organizer
for a number of operations up here."
The Salafists are working with a
quite different group, commanders say,
made up of Saddam Hussein loyalists
and others from his Baath Party who
want to regain power by promising a return
to the "stability" of Baathist rule.
It is no surprise that they would gather
in Mosul, a city of two million with'
. an enduring base of Baathists that has
long been favored by military officers. .
Saddam loyalists "differ significantly
from the religious extremists, who don't
want any strong government," Ham
said. "What they both want now is instability
and insecurity." ,
Other insurgents in Mosul identify
Iraqi women passing a building damaged when a car bomb blew up in
Najaf on Monday. Two bombings killed 66 people Monday.
with the Jordanian militant Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi and Al Qaeda.
According to American military statistics
compiled after the invasion of
Falluja in November, nearly 500 of approximately
700 terrorists in Iraq
aligned with or sympathetic to Zarqawi
and Al Qaeda live in or around Mosul.
In the compilation, the most detailed
picture of the Iraqi insurgency to be
made public, military officials estimate
that about 11,000 to 20,000 insurgents
are spread throughout Iraq.
Of that number, 700 to 1,200 fled Falluja
in November just before the U.S.
Marine invasion of the city.
The largest group remains loyal to
Saddam: About 2,200 to 3,300 or more
insurgents are classified as "hard-core"
Saddam supporters. Another 6,100 to
10,200 are "part-time" supporters, a
designation that includes those paid to
carry out attacks on American troops.
. In addition, as many as 2,900 "Shia
extremists" - including the Mahdi militia
of the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr
- operate mostly in Baghdad and
southern Iraq, while 1,200 to 2,400 "extremists"
who do not identify themselves
with Zarqawi or Al Qaeda are
also part of the estimates.
The figures were compiled from data
from each of the seven military commands
in Iraq using observations by
troops, interrogations and other intelligence,
said a military official, who emphasized
the data were rough calculations
and that the estimates were
constantly changing.
In Mosul, the insurgents' main focus
has been terrorizing Iraqi residents and
killing those believed to work with
'The hard-core group is
quite smart; they get
others to do their work.'
Americans. More than 100 people -
many in the Iraqi National Guard or
Iraqi Army - have been shot in the
head or decapitated, burned, dismembered
or otherwise killed in the
last month.
The killers order that the bodies not
be moved, to spread word of the deaths
- and the people obey, until American
troops arrive with body bags.
Insurgents also burned three-quarters
of the city's election registration
materials, sending officials scrambling
to sign people up. "Their common aims
are to disrupt the elections process and
delegitimize the existing government,"
said Colonel Tom Knight, the deputy
commander of American troops in
northern Iraq. "There's no denying it
has been a successful tactic and that it
has discouraged local support."
Yet commanders also say there are
more hopeful signs: Commerce is returning,
and American and Iraqi forces
are getting better tips about insurgent
activities.
Equally significant is that fewer anti-
American Iraqis exist or appear willing
. to do battle. It used to cost $50 to hire an
. Iraqi youth to fire a rocket-propelled
.grenade at American troops; it now
costs $100 to $200, Ham said.
Important captures have been made
recently, including a top Zarqawi lieutenant,
Abu Saeed. More than 200 insurgents
have been killed in Mosul in
the last month.
But the secular and jihadi wings each
have a, few hundred core operators in
Mosul, and "the fighters who can be
rented out probably number in the
thousands," the general said.
"The hard-~ore group is quite smart;
they get others to do their work for
them," he said. '~l the dumb guys are
dead or in jail. The surviving leaders
are very competent."
The New York TImes
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