Attacks Surged After Insurgents Met in Syria, U.S. Officer Says
By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 19, 2005
BAGHDAD, May 18 -- A senior U.S. military official told reporters Wednesday that the recent surge in violence in Iraq followed a meeting in Syria last month of associates of the Jordanian insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi.
The rash of bombings and assassinations across the country this month has killed more than 450 people and shattered a period of relative calm after Iraq's Jan. 30 parliamentary elections.
Zarqawi "wasn't happy with how the insurgency was going. The government was getting stronger and coalition forces not being defeated," the U.S. official said, according to news service accounts of the briefing, which was given on the condition that he not be named.
The disclosures followed comments made by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who during a visit to Iraq on Sunday expressed concern about the "gathering of terrorist networks" in Syria. Last weekend, U.S. Marines wrapped up an offensive in northwestern Iraq, near the Syrian border, aimed at uprooting sanctuaries for foreign fighters who had crossed into the country.
Zarqawi leads the group al Qaeda in Iraq, which has asserted responsibility for many of the insurgency's deadliest attacks. The U.S. military has put a $25 million bounty on his head. Reports that he had been wounded or killed during the recent Marine offensive have been denied in Internet postings.
The U.S. official who briefed reporters Wednesday said that it was unclear whether Zarqawi attended the meeting in Syria but that his lieutenants were encouraged to step up attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces, particularly with car bombings. Insurgents have carried out 21 car bombings in Baghdad this month, compared with 25 in all of 2004, the official said.
An audio recording posted on the Internet on Wednesday and attributed to Zarqawi justified the deaths of Muslims in attacks against U.S. troops and their Iraqi allies, saying holy war was too important to be hindered, the Associated Press reported. The authenticity of the tape, posted on a forum where al Qaeda in Iraq statements are often found, could not be independently verified, the AP reported.
The man purported to be Zarqawi, who like the bulk of Iraqi insurgents is a Sunni Muslim, denounced Iraq's Shiite Muslims as collaborators with the Americans and said leaders of the country's Shiite-led government were traitors to Islam. The recording accused Shiite militias of assassinating Sunni leaders, kidnapping Sunni women and seizing mosques since the U.S.-led invasion two years ago.
In a further sign of tensions between Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites, religious leaders traded charges Wednesday over who was responsible for a recent wave of execution-style killings. Two Sunni clerics were found dead in Baghdad on Tuesday, and a Shiite cleric was shot to death. The bodies of more than 60 Iraqis who were apparently executed have been discovered across the country in recent days, many with their hands bound and bullets in their skulls.
"We know who is killing the imams and preachers of the mosques. We know who is killing people going to prayers. The ones responsible for these killings are the Badr Brigades," Harith Dhari, the head of the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni religious organization, said in a televised address.
The Badr organization is affiliated with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a major Shiite political party that is part of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari's ruling coalition. While the Badr group has recast itself as a political organization in recent years, it is still widely believed to operate as a militia.
"They've killed Sunnis and Shiites. They've killed anyone who stood in their way. The one responsible for the tension in the country is Badr," Dhari said.
Responding to the accusation, Hadi Amiri, secretary general of the Badr group and a member of Iraq's National Assembly, placed the blame for recent killings on elements of the Iraqi government led by former president Saddam Hussein.
"We condemn all of the criminal operations against the Iraqis," Amiri said. "These are terrorist acts committed by the remnants of the former regime and their allies of extremists. They aim to provoke strife among the Iraqis."
The Jafari government says the executions are meant to foment sectarian violence and are not evidence of existing sectarian tensions. Laith Kubba, a spokesman for Jafari, said the accusation by Dhari could lead to more violence.
"The sheik is a man of influence, and one would have thought he would be far more careful with his words," Kubba said.
In Washington, the head of U.S. Central Command said the insurgency appeared to be focused on intimidating Iraqis -- mainly in areas populated by Sunnis -- to dissuade them from becoming active in the new government.
Army Gen. John P. Abizaid said the insurgents' reliance on Iraqis to kill their countrymen mirrors the "Al Capone-style government" that ruled Iraq for three decades under Hussein.
"It's my impression that the majority of the insurgents that are fighting continue to be Iraqis," he said, adding that foreign extremists are playing a role in the violence but that their role should not be overestimated. "People are killing their own people for no good reason that I can see."
Abizaid said that "the first and most important issue in Iraq is the political process remaining viable. If it doesn't remain viable, it will spark more violence. What will make the biggest difference in Iraq is the political process."
In recent days, some Sunni leaders have accused the Jafari government and particularly the Interior Ministry, which oversees the country's police force, of permitting or even conducting attacks on clerics, charges the government has denied.
Interior Ministry officials have themselves been frequent targets of assassinations. That pattern continued Tuesday morning when Brig. Gen. Ibrahim Khammas, head of criminal intelligence at the ministry, was killed in a drive-by shooting as he left his house for work.
Later in the day, in a town southeast of Baghdad, Iraqi police discovered the bullet-riddled bodies of seven Turkmens who worked as security guards for U.S. and Iraqi convoys, according to police Capt. Nadhum Dulaimi. Al Qaeda in Iraq later issued a statement asserting responsibility for the killings.
Staff writer Josh White in Washington contributed to this report.