Posted on 12/02/2004 7:03:36 PM PST by neverdem
THE INSURGENCY
WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 - The expulsion of Iraqi guerrillas and foreign fighters from Falluja has provided the American military with a treasure-trove of intelligence that is giving commanders insights into the next phase of the insurgency, and helping them reshape the American counterinsurgency campaign, senior Pentagon and military officials say.
Documents and computers found in Falluja are providing clues to the identity of home-grown opponents of the new Iraqi government, mostly former Baathists. The intelligence is being used to hunt those leaders and their channels of financing, as well as to detect cracks, even feuds, within the insurgency that can be exploited to weaken its base.
Even so, senior Pentagon officials and military officers said Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist leader who fled Falluja before the offensive, is setting up new cells in Mosul, in the north, and in the desert of Al Anbar Province west of Falluja. At the same time, his network can no longer communicate effectively by use of messengers and cellphones, officials said.
The American military is trying to press insurgents hard as they try to regroup across Iraq, requiring the additional forces announced Wednesday that will push the American military presence in Iraq to 150,000 troops by next month, its highest level since the invasion last year.
"The Falluja operation was very successful, and we want to capitalize on that success," Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday. "We need additional troops to do that."
The insurgents are expected to rely less on attacks by home-made bombs and ambushes, and instead focus on a campaign of coercion by violence directed at Iraqis who cooperate with the Americans in building security forces or a new national government and their families.
Senior Pentagon and military officials predict no easy success in their effort, acknowledging that the insurgency is resilient, well-armed, lavishly financed and organized in cells without the typical hierarchy of leaders and subordinates.
Guerrillas have mounted spectacular attacks on government buildings and Iraqi security forces, but for an insurgency that now has lost Falluja as a safe haven to build explosives and plot attacks on police stations and Iraqi National Guard headquarters, assassination is expected to become the primary weapon.
"We're seeing a shift toward more intimidation," General Myers said, adding that assassinations in Iraq were up significantly in the past month. "The security situation will get worse as we get close to these January elections."
That is pushing the American military to a new strategy. "We are chasing them," said one senior commander in Iraq. "We don't want them to rest. We want to chase them every hour of every day."
American and Iraqi forces have found cellphone numbers in Falluja that they are using to track insurgents, military officials said. They also have recovered lists of family members of foreign fighters in Iraq who should receive payments if their relatives are killed and lists of Iraqis working with the Americans who were being singled out by insurgents, military officers said.
In addition, military intelligence and operations officers have compiled combat reports and analysis into a lengthy document, called "Operation Al Fajr Roll-up," which draws a stark portrait of insurgent activities in Falluja and lists discoveries by American forces since the offensive began on Nov. 8.
The half-inch-thick document, completed on Nov. 27, describes how at least 20 of the city's 133 mosques were used as fighting positions or weapons caches, actions the military says are clear violations of the laws of armed conflict.
Other sections of the report, which was provided by a senior Pentagon official, describe how insurgents in Falluja operated counterfeiting centers that were stamping out forged identification papers, travel documents, vehicle registration cards and banking transfer forms.
Valuable intelligence also is being drawn from men captured during the battle for Falluja, although senior officers said that not all of the 1,200 taken into custody have turned out to be insurgents or terrorists and a significant number have been released.
One senior official said that initial predictions of about 4,000 insurgents in Falluja at the time the offensive began appear to have been accurate. Of those now in detention, the most are Iraqi, although there are 28 foreigners held by the military, among them 6 each from Egypt and Syria, 3 from Saudi Arabia and 3 from Sudan, 2 from Jordan and 1 each from Libya, Turkmenistan, Yugoslavia, Britain and Tunisia. One captured fighter was identified as a Palestinian and 1 as a Kurd.
The Iraqi insurgency is a complex association of former Baathists, radical Sunnis and Shiites, foreign fighters and criminals that is laid out like a flat web, which makes it difficult to attack strictly by military force.
While commanders estimate that hundreds of militants were killed in the Falluja offensive, the number of hard-core insurgents across the country before the battle was estimated at 8,000 to 12,000. When active sympathizers or covert accomplices were included, the total number was estimated at more than 20,000, American officials said.
The insurgency consists of as many as 50 militant cells that draw significant money from an underground financial network run by former Baath Party leaders and Saddam Hussein's relatives, the officials say. The financing for their operations is supplemented in large part by wealthy Saudi donors and Islamic charities that funnel large sums of cash through Syria, according to the officials, who have access to detailed intelligence reports.
The insurgency also has had no trouble recruiting new foot soldiers.
General Myers declined Thursday to estimate how large the insurgency is, saying it was too hard to tell. While he described foreign fighters as "a very serious threat" in Iraq, the main risk to long-term stability in the country comes from former members of Saddam Hussein's security services, including former Republican Guard officers. His comments reflect a shift in thinking from earlier this year when foreign terrorist were blamed as the most significan cuase of instability in Iraq.
Robert F. Worth contributed reporting for this article from Baghdad.
Nuke Falluja!
don't know why the NYT goes out of its way to tell the bad guys what we have and don't have...
It's not an insurgency, it's a (not too) civil war.
Don't exclude a sophisticated disinformation campaign on our part.
I just talked with someone who used to be in the Marines, has friends who are in Fallujah. He said that his buddies tell him, that virtually all the bad guys in Fallujah are foreign fighters, not Iraqis.
It's time to get tough with Syria and Iran.
before the last push on Fallujah, I had heard that 10,000 were already killed...
Not even close.
20,000 (the high figure) in a country of 25,000,000 represents 0.1% of the population. That's about the same number of functional morons and nut jobs as in the U.S.
The only difference is that in the US the public are not illiterate, easily led or sheep, hence not too inclined to be victims and not fight back.
Is it our Saudi "friends", our European "friends", our "most-favored-nation-trade-status" Asian "friends", our Russian hegemonistic "friends", or all of the above?
I've read that many high ranking Baathists boogied with the bucks to Syria. Maybe they just hinted at that in this story. I've read a lot of decent stories in the Times, but I don't post them all because I don't want the hassle in the comments just because it's from the Times.
nope
fallugjah ti's WAY over
time to DO mosul.
this time starting from 40 thousand feet.
we know what to target...
the ammo storage areas... aka... mosques and school buildings.
do it after dark so that the slammies can't say we tried to kill little terrorists, I mean kids.
something like 65 percent of all mosques in flatujah were used for storage. we need to show the slammies that ole allah ain't a god.
insurgent armories are not protected under the rules of war.
flatten mosul, starting with the mosques we reasonably suspect of having arms inside. get rid of the sniper towers, called minarets... and any buildings over two stories tall with windows. Work the way up the target list until all the innocent refugees have left the area... and then AFTER we eliminate all the ambush potential.. then mop up.
people with firearms or weapons? Shoot on sight.
people out and about after 7 pm? shoot on sight.
give them the bling bling.
but no marines to shoot at.
i got no use for mosul, same as fallujah.
but i believe it is time for the supposedly well organized and armed kurds up in the north to pay us back for covering thier arab as*es with the no fly zone for 12 years.
we are fighting thier civil war for them as george will wrote last week. kurds, you at least need to step up to the plate.
Kurds don't have Arab asses. Kurds have Kurdish asses.
I think over half of this entire article was disinformation. If you had phone numbers of the dudes...you wouldn't admit that. But if you wanted them to think that and for them to rush out and buy new phones immedately...this would force them to that step.
What is so clever about disinformation is you can include some things that you know they know, some things that they think you know, some things that you think they will believe and some things they think they know that they really don't. It is really one of the most interesting forms of warfare. Sun Tzu developed much of the underlying principles in about 500BC.
Normally, you release information like this to get a reaction, as you were saying. But sometimes you might be monitoring certain things and need to get them to try to communicate or leave a certain place etc.
The terrorists are pretty good at this game too. Much of the various tapes are disinformation, IMHO.
Yup.
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