Dec 23, 2004
Mosul attack shows Iraqi insurgents getting more sophisticated
Experts say the deadly raid appears to be based on precise intelligence
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WASHINGTON - IN APRIL last year, as the United States-led invasion of Iraq was ending, the Pentagon projection was that the US military occupation of the country would end this month.
Mosul attack shows Iraqi insurgents getting more sophisticated
Instead, the current month brought the deadliest single incident of the war for US forces, when a US base near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul was hit by mortars at lunchtime on Tuesday.
Fourteen of the 22 killed in the attack on a mess tent at the city's airport were American soldiers - more US troops than have been lost in nearly any other major incident in the fighting, even during last year's spring invasion.
Before this, the worst incidents were the deaths of 17 soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division in the collision of two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, also in Mosul, in November last year and, two weeks before that, the loss of 15 soldiers when a CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter crashed west of Baghdad.
All three occurred after President George W. Bush's declaration in May last year that major combat operations in Iraq had ended.
The major difference between the latest attack and the earlier incidents is that it was an attack on a US base, rather than on troops in transit in vulnerable aircraft.
That difference appears to reflect both the persistence of the insurgency and its growing sophistication, as experts noted that it seemed to be based on precise intelligence.
Most disturbingly, some officers who have served in Iraq worried that the Mosul attack could mark the beginning of a period of even more intense violence preceding the Iraqi elections scheduled for Jan 30.
'On the strategic level, we were expecting a horrendous month leading up to the Iraqi elections, and that has begun,' retired Army Colonel Michael Hess said.
Mr Jeffrey White, a former Defence Intelligence Agency analyst of Middle Eastern military affairs, said he was especially worried that the insurgents' next move would be an actual penetration by fighters into a base.
'The real danger here is that they will mount a sophisticated effort to penetrate or assault one of our camps or bases with a ground element,' he said.
If anti-American violence does hit a new level, pressure is likely to increase on the Bush administration to either boost the US military presence in Iraq or find a fast way to get out.
The adequacy of current troop numbers is one of the questions raised, said Mr Charles McComas, a veteran Special Forces soldier who served in Afghanistan before retiring.
'Do we have the right forces and enough of them to do the offensive patrolling to reduce the chances of this happening again?' he asked.
A private-sector security expert who recently left Baghdad after more than a year there agreed, noting that the US originally put an entire division in the Mosul area, the 101st Airborne, but replaced it earlier this year with a force about half that size, only to see insurgent attacks increase.
The attack also indicates that the insurgency is growing more sophisticated with the passage of time. One of the basic principles of waging a counter-insurgency is that it requires patience.
'Twenty-one months' - the length of the occupation so far - 'is not a long time to tame the tribal warfare expected there,' said retired Marine Lieutenant-Colonel Rick Raftery, an intelligence specialist who operated in northern Iraq in 1991.
'My guess is that this will take 10 years.'
Another principle, less noted but painfully clear, is that insurgents also tend to sharpen their tactics as time goes by. Over the past 20 months, enemy fighters have learnt a lot about how the US military operates and where its vulnerabilities lie.
'The longer you are anywhere, the more difficult it becomes,' said Col Hess, who served in northern Iraq in 1991 and in Bosnia in 1996. 'They have changed their tactics a lot in the year-plus.'
Several experts noted that insurgents appear to have acted on accurate intelligence. -- WASHINGTON POST |
