Analysis: Iraq Insurgency Fights On

A funeral procession is held in the Shiite slum of Sadr City for two men, Ahmed Abdullah and Jassim Mohammed, who were killed Friday while marching to the Buratha mosque on the other side of the city to protest a suicide attack a week ago on the revered Shiite shrine there, in Baghdad, Iraq Saturday, June 24, 2006. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim) (Karim Kadim - AP)

Criminal gangs and sectarian militias are rapidly filling a security vacuum created by the lack of a trustworthy police force. The Interior Ministry, a Shiite-run agency that controls police forces, is rife with militiamen bent on revenge killings, shakedowns and kidnapping for ransom.

"Sectarian and ethnic violence has come to rival the insurgency in terms of casualties and the threat it poses to political, social and economic progress in Iraq," security analyst Anthony H. Cordesman writes in an advance copy of a book he is writing at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"There is less and less difference between insurgency and civil war, and all sides are to some extent guilty of terrorism," he says.

The breakdown of civil conventions and trust impose a fundamental and nearly unbearable strain on the Iraqi people. Their misery was detailed in a recent confidential memo from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to the State Department.

The collection of anecdotes from Iraqi workers in an undisclosed office in the embassy painted an extraordinarily bleak picture of life in the capital, where local employees do not dare reveal where they work, even to family members, for fear of retribution.

"Employees all share a common tale: of nine employees in March, only four had family members who knew they worked at the embassy. Iraqi colleagues who are called after hours often speak in Arabic as an indication they cannot speak openly in English," the memo said.

Given the increasing difficulties, the writer of the cable concluded:

"Although our staff retain a professional demeanor, strains are apparent. We see their personal fears are reinforcing divisive sectarian or ethnic channels. Employees are apprehensive enough that we fear they may exaggerate developments or steer us toward news that comports with their own world view. Objectivity, civility, and logic that make for a functional workplace may falter if social pressures outside the Green Zone don't abate."

Neighborhoods in Baghdad and throughout the country are increasingly under the control of Shiite or Sunni militias, imposing their will on residents and forcing out those who are in the minority or don't toe an often fundamentalist Islamic line.

Still, there has been progress in pacifying Iraq and establishing a modicum of democracy, leaving some experts to say U.S. success is a 50-50 proposition right now.

"In short," Cordesman writes, "the odds of insurgent success are at best even."

To better its odds, he says, Washington "will have to slow its plans to reduce its military presence, adjust to new threats and intensify its efforts to reshape effective security and police forces."

That will test the mettle of the Bush administration with its Republican allies facing a midterm congressional election in four months and voters increasingly uneasy about the war.

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Associated Press correspondent Steven R. Hurst has covered Iraq since 2003.