Shift in Tactics Aims to Revive Struggling Insurgency

Ogaidi said the total number of al-Qaeda in Iraq members across the country has plummeted from about 12,000 in June 2007 to about 3,500 today.

By all accounts, the number of foreign fighters entering Iraq has plunged. The U.S. military said the number sneaking in from Syria has dropped from 110 a month in late summer to about 40 to 50 a month now. Ogaidi said the total number of foreign fighters in Iraq is "in the tens -- not more than 200." Al-Qaeda in Iraq is a predominantly Iraqi group, but the U.S. military says it is led by Arabs from outside the country.

Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Baghdad, said Syria has increased border patrols and checkpoints, and Saudi Arabia, where many of the fighters are from, has tightened its exit visa policies. He also said al-Qaeda in Iraq's violence against civilians -- 4,552 attacks last year killed 3,870 people and injured 17,815, he said -- made it much more difficult for foreigners to live safely in the country.

"Al-Qaeda has alienated the very people it needed for support," he said.

The insurgent group is now reaching out to disaffected Sunni tribal leaders in a bid to win back their support, even as it attacks Sunnis working closely with the Americans, according to Abdullah Hussein Lehebi, an emir from the Amiriyah section of Anbar south of Fallujah. "In exchange, we would not target them again and would respect the authority of the tribal leaders," he said in an interview with a Post special correspondent at a date orchard near the Euphrates River in Amiriyah.

Lehebi, 47, whose nom de guerre is Abu Khalid al-Dulaimi, said the group's main focus now was to attack bridges, oil pipelines and telephone towers, as well as U.S. troops and their Sunni allies.

Some members of al-Qaeda in Iraq blame Muhajer, the group's leader, for their current predicament. Ogaidi said Zarqawi traveled constantly around the country to visit senior leaders and ensure that wounded fighters received compensation from the group. But he said Muhajer is rarely seen and doesn't take care of members such as Rafid, whose leg was amputated after an attack in the Garma region. Rafid now sits at home, hungry and unable to work, Ogaidi said.

"Everyone would be scared of Zarqawi as a tough leader," he said. "Whereas Muhajer has now failed in imposing his personality on the organization. He is mild-mannered and weak."

Disheartened Fighters

Al-Qaeda in Iraq's change in tactics comes in response to the turmoil and self-doubt that arose among its members as they lost the support of Sunni tribesmen, a process vividly described in a letter by an unnamed al-Qaeda in Iraq emir that the U.S. military said it seized last November.

"This created weakness and psychological defeat," the emir wrote. "This also created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight. The morale of the fighters went down."

The emir cited Muhammad, a 6-foot-3 computer major born in a Western European country, who crossed the Syrian border about a year ago with dreams of carrying out a suicide bombing in Iraq.

But when he arrived in Anbar, there was no mission for him.