Concern mounts over growing unrest in Iraq
salon.com
Katherine Pfleger Shrader
April 8, 2004 | WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. officials and outside experts are increasingly concerned about the deteriorating security situation in Iraq despite Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's assurances that the insurgency is limited to a relatively small number of malcontents.
Current and former U.S. officials are monitoring whether a Shiite militia has gained enough popular support to become a more widespread uprising, and whether Shiites and Sunnis -- normally rival Muslim sects -- are working together in some instances to oppose the U.S.-led coalition.
So far, U.S. officials generally don't see a widespread uprising, nor coordination among Sunnis and Shiites. However, one defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there is some evidence from the field that some Iraqi Shiite demonstrators, disgruntled with a lack of electricity and water, have joined recent episodes of violence after being caught up in a mob mentality.
If there is a unifying goal among Iraq's diverse population, outside experts say, it may be a desire to push the U.S.-led coalition out. Some fear the violence stretching across cities outside Baghdad to well into southern Iraq could complicate months of work to establish a stable government in those parts of Iraq.
Rumsfeld has attributed the insurgency to a few "thugs, gangs and terrorists,'' not a widespread uprising.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who commands coalition ground forces in Iraq, has said he believes linkages between Sunnis and Shiites may be occurring at the lowest levels. There is some evidence from the field that the connections are "a pile on,'' said another defense official, also speaking anonymously, as insurgents watch what others are doing and take advantage of opportunities.
U.S. officials say they do not yet have a clear sense of the Iraqi opposition. But so far they have publicly identifed two broad categories of fighters.
The first -- in Fallujah and Ramadi, west of Baghdad _ consists of Sunnis who have joined a mix of transnational terrorists, foreign fighters and former Saddam Husseim regime loyalists to challenge the U.S.-led coalition, according to U.S. officials including Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
More geographically widespread are the 3,000 or so fighters supporting the young, radical Shiite cleric, Muhab al-Sadr, who have a presence in at least a half-dozen towns in southern Iraq.
U.S. officials indicate that some Shiites have joined with Sadr's fighters, but they say there is little evidence that his message has resonated broadly across the Shiite population. The first defense official, who cited indications that some demonstrators have gotten caught up in violence, said there is little evidence those people are ideological supporters of Sadr.
Sadr's following is believed to be mostly the poor and uneducated, with his strongest support in Sadr City, an impoverished Baghdad district named for his father. But the creation of Sadr's militia last summer is thought to have eroded his support.
It is believed that other Shiite clerics have not thrown their support behind Sadr, concerned that such action could spark violence within the Shiite community. Iraq's top Shiite cleric, the moderate Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, stayed silent on the standoff between Sadr and the Americans until a statement Wednesday condemning both the methods of the U.S. occupation force and the militia's disturbances of order.
Meanwhile, intelligence experts outside government caution that the U.S. has much work to do to regain control of the security situation and prevent a widespread rebellion.
Milt Bearden, who retired after 30 years with the CIA's directorate of operations, notes that in the last 100 years any insurgency that has taken on a nationalist character -- for instance, a shared goal of getting rid of Americans -- has succeeded.
Other former intelligence officials familiar with the region caution that outside Shiite groups, acting more covertly than the Sadr militia, could prove to be formidable problems.
Bob Baer, a former CIA officer who spent 21 years in the Middle East, said he met with Islamic fighters in Lebanon just before the U.S. invasion of Iraq who told him they were preparing to fight a long-term war with the West in Iraq. They included members of Hezbollah and Hamas, he said.
Baer said the resistance groups warned then that a Shiite uprising in Iraq would come in April, and promised kidnappings and bombings in southern Iraq. Then, he dismissed the timing, but "it indeed happened in April.''
"I think we are facing the possibility of a Shiite insurrection,'' said Baer, who has been critical of the U.S. government since he left the agency in 1997. "Muhab al-Sadr is the tip of the iceberg in terms of the Shiite.'' |
