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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, November 24, 2003

US seeks out shadowy enemy: News analysis

Some US generals carry photographs of soldiers killed in Iraq in their breast pockets, next to their hearts. What they lack is a clear picture of the guerrillas responsible for their deaths.


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Some US generals carry photographs of soldiers killed in Iraq in their breast pockets, next to their hearts. What they lack is a clear picture of the guerrillas responsible for their deaths.

No spokesman has emerged and few claims of responsibility or lists of demands have been issued to help put faces to the killers of some 180 US soldiers since Saddam Hussein fell.

US commanders in Iraq say they still do not know enough about their enemies. But they are now offering tentative answers to key questions such as how many they face, how they are organized, where they are from and what motivates them.

Despite much speculation about foreign Islamic militants, the commanders say most attacks are carried out by people linked to the old regime such as former officials, military officers, soldiers and intelligence agents.

"There are indications of foreign fighters in the country, but former regime loyalists are the ones doing the damage," said Lieutenant Colonel Darryl Reyes, senior intelligence officer with the 101st Airborne Division which covers northern Iraq.

Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of US forces in Iraq, said last week: "We've been working very hard to increase our intelligence capacity here. We are not where we want to be yet."

But he added: "I'm getting a lot more comfortable with it."

Sanchez's boss, US Central Command chief General John Abizaid, has said there are no more than 5,000 fighters operating against the 150,000-strong US-led coalition.

Their number may be small but they have shown they can stage spectacular attacks on troops, Iraqis working with them and international groups, shaking US public faith in the Iraq War even if officers say they are "militarily insignificant."

Commanders think the insurgents do not operate as a single force. But some groups are believed to be part of a loose network known as Mohammad's Army which claimed it was behind the shooting down this month of a US helicopter, killing 16 soldiers.

It has also appeared on anti-American leaflets.

"We do believe Mohammad's Army is a group - as much an umbrella organization as anything else, not one that necessarily has a commander and a staff and an army as we think of an army," a senior coalition official said.

In Baghdad, US officers estimate they face about 10 cells of up to 25 insurgents each. But these groups draw on larger numbers of impoverished Iraqis who can be persuaded to carry out attacks, motivated by financial rewards or disillusionment.

"There's an enormous pool of disenfranchised, sometimes unemployed, young men," said a commander in the 1st Armoured Division which patrols the city. "They can tap into them."

In the area around Falluja west of Baghdad, one of the heartlands of the insurgency, officers see the same phenomenon. "Employment is your problem," said Lieutenant Colonel Steve Grove, senior intelligence officer for the 82nd Airborne Division. "You've got a disenfranchised youth out there."

Initially, US commanders said co-ordination between insurgents seemed to be limited to local areas. But now they are seeing signs of links at a higher level.

A few days ago, four attacks took place on the railway network within 10 minutes at points both north and south of Baghdad. Several suspects in the Chinook attack near Falluja were detained in Tikrit, some 150 kilometres away.

Officers have not named a single leader of the guerrillas, but they have said they suspect Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, one of Saddam's deputies, of being behind some attacks.

The United States has shown how seriously it views the threat he poses by putting a US$10 million price on his head.

Most commanders do not believe Saddam, on the run since he was ousted on April 9, is actively directing operations. But some suspect he may be providing encouragement and helping shape the broad lines of the insurgency from wherever he is hiding.

While former regime members may be the masterminds, they could still be recruiting foreign militants, willing to die for what they see as a holy war against the United States.

Commanders acknowledge they are unsure how many foreign fighters are in Iraq. Sanchez has said it was "probably a couple of hundred." Other officers say it could be as high as 2,000 but is hard to pin down as the militants move in and out.

Officials say they have several people in detention they suspect of links to al-Qaida or Ansar al Islam, a group formerly based in northern Iraq with ties to Osama bin Laden's network. But they have yet to conclude whether either group was responsible for any of the major attacks committed in Iraq.


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