Plans to intensify the pursuit of insurgents through targeted raids will increase the demand for timely intelligence about their hiding places, officers said.
"We don't lack for people to go thump in the night," said Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, who commands the task force responsible for the Mosul area in northern Iraq. "The challenge is getting the intel."
But officers noted that linguistic and cultural factors limit the ability of U.S. troops to interact with Iraqis and develop their own actionable intelligence.
"Where we're going to get a lot of this is from the Iraqis," Casey said. "They know themselves, and we have to leverage that."
Other officers, however, described Iraq's reconstituted intelligence service as poorly organized and short of resources. Its capabilities remain immature and will take time to develop, the officers said.
One of the key aspects of the insurgency that U.S. commanders are watching closely is the extent of cooperation between former Baath Party members and radical Islamic fighters. The Baathists remain the dominant opposition group, according to military analysts, but signs of them entering loose tactical alliances with more radical elements have been evident for months.
Such alliances are suspected of underlying at least some of the recent surge of violence in Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, where the police force collapsed under attack last month. Some U.S. officers worry about Mosul, or sections of it, possibly becoming a new insurgent stronghold, although the city's greater size and prosperity make it less susceptible than Fallujah was.
In some other Sunni areas, U.S. intelligence analysts have seen indications lately of Baathists reconsidering partnerships with radical Islamic elements.
"They're assessing their options," DeFreitas said.
The Baathist insurgency is centered on a number of key leaders, U.S. officers say, and still lacks the scope of a popular Sunni resistance. But the officers warned that growing political alienation could lead to a broadening of the insurgency.
U.S. intelligence specialists suspect that the Baathists are pursuing a dual strategy on the elections. If they cannot block the vote through attacks and intimidation, they might try to undermine the outcome by infiltrating political parties with their own candidates, the analysts say.
Appealing to Sunnis
The best prospect for defeating the insurgency, several senior officers said, does not lie in military muscle.
"I think the government, as a result of the Fallujah operation, has bought time to engage," DeFreitas said. "If the government is not successful in bringing more Sunnis to the political process, continued disenfranchisement could increase support for the insurgency."
The Iraqi government's ability to carry its share of the security and reconstruction effort remains questionable. While some effective ministers and staff members have emerged, the officers said, the performance of the ministries has been uneven and power remains centralized in the office of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
