Moreover, the security reports indicate that a majority of the hostile acts committed against U.S. and Iraqi security forces over the past two weeks have occurred outside those three provinces. For example, the cities of Amarah in the southern province of Maysan and Samawah in Muthanna province, also in the south, had long been relatively free of violence but are now experiencing frequent attacks, the reports indicate.
There also has been an unusual spike in the number of attacks to the north of the capital. More attacks have been reported in the northern cities of Mosul, Samarra and Tikrit over the past two weeks than in Fallujah and Ramadi, two areas of frequent fighting in Anbar.
A U.S. Army soldier takes aim from a rooftop in Baghdad's Sadr City, where violence has become commonplace.
(Jim Macmillan -- AP)
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Military officials contend, however, that does not mean the restive areas west of Baghdad -- the area known as the Sunni Triangle -- are no longer insurgent strongholds. The likely explanation, the officials said, is that U.S. Marines stationed in Anbar have sharply reduced their patrolling, making them less vulnerable to roadside attacks. But that strategy, officials say, has allowed insurgent cells to expand in the province.
"There are fewer attacks here because we're out on the road less," an officer at the Marine headquarters near Fallujah said on condition of anonymity. "But you shouldn't conclude from that that things are any safer."
As news reports have detailed over the past several months, the insurgents' campaign of violence is not limited to U.S. and Iraqi security forces. Iraqi civilians working for the interim government have been killed and kidnapped. So, too, have Iraqis who work as interpreters and truck drivers for the U.S. military. Foreign civilians, even aid workers and fellow Arabs, are regarded as fair game by the insurgents.
The security situation has grown so dire that many of the few remaining nongovernmental aid organizations left in Iraq are making plans to withdraw. The United Nations, which was supposed to help organize the national elections, has just 30 employees in the country, all of whom are quartered in the U.S.-controlled, fortified Green Zone. Foreign journalists, who used to roam the country, are now largely restricted by safety concerns to Baghdad hotels surrounded with concrete walls and barbed wire.
With insurgents targeting not just U.S. troops but seemingly everyone in the country -- Iraqi security forces, Iraqis working for the interim government, foreign contractors, journalists, aid workers and others -- it is difficult for even ordinary Iraqis to ignore the threat.
"When we leave home, we never know if we're going to return home alive or not," said Mohammed Kadhim, a taxi driver.
