Hussein Arrest Yields Details on Resistance
Detention of Insurgents Rise, U.S. Commander Says
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 18, 2003; Page A37
KIRKUK, Iraq, Dec. 17 -- The top commander of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region said Wednesday that the capture of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had given U.S. authorities valuable insight into the structure and operations of the resistance.
"I don't want to characterize it as a great intelligence windfall," said Army Gen. John Abizaid, the head of U.S. Central Command. "But it's clear that we have gained a greater understanding of how things work as a result of capturing him and looking over his environment and understanding the whole picture."
Information gained from the capture, coupled with intelligence gathered during an intensified effort over the past two months, has contributed to "a good haul" of more suspected insurgents, Abizaid said. He described those detained as "several mid-level Baathist leaders of cells in areas that we haven't had the opportunity to really get a good grip on previously."
As a sign of stepped-up military activity resulting from the new intelligence, troops from the 4th Infantry Division conducted a second day of raids in the town of Samarra, 70 miles north of Baghdad, which has been an area of fierce resistance. Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno identified nine Iraqis taken into custody Wednesday as "mid-level" operatives -- "financiers, organizers, arms suppliers."
In the northern city of Mosul, Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, reported Wednesday that documents found with Hussein confirmed that the former president had had contact with several suspected Iraqi insurgents long sought by U.S. forces in northwestern Iraq.
Abizaid, Odierno and Petraeus spoke to reporters traveling with Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is touring the region. The generals emphasized that much work still needs to be done to defeat the Iraqi resistance but also gave the strong impression that they believed a corner had been turned after months of trying to penetrate the networks of insurgents.
For much of the summer and early fall, as guerrilla attacks mounted, U.S. commanders frequently acknowledged a lack of understanding about the enemy they faced. They complained about a shortage of intelligence analysts and linguists to sort through the information they said had begun to pour in from informants.
Things began to change about two months ago. That's when, according to Abizaid, the "intelligence system" launched "a full-court press" focused on tying together leads and forming a sharper picture of the resistance structure.
More analysts and linguists were provided, some of them diverted from the hunt for Hussein's suspected stocks of unconventional weapons. More emphasis was placed on finding Hussein's family and tribal members and on identifying mid-level operatives in the resistance.
"The capture of Saddam is indicative of knowing more about the enemy," Abizaid said.
Abizaid likened the piecing together of information about the resistance to a war against organized crime, in which the key is developing the big picture.
"You have to look at the entire network, you have to understand the complete organization, and how it works, how it mutates, and over time you begin to get at it," Abizaid said. "That's exactly what you're starting to see now."
Although U.S. authorities have attributed some of the violence in Iraq to non-Iraqi Islamic militants, Abizaid said most of the resistance is homegrown. It consists, he said, of elements from Hussein's former government who use "the covert structure that existed within the Baath Party, within the Iraqi intelligence service, within the Special Security Organization."
Defeating them, the general said, requires the same basic strategy used to counter any insurgency -- isolating them from money, ammunition, leadership and public support. Abizaid said a recent series of attempted bank robberies in Iraq may indicate that the insurgents are running low on cash.
"I don't want to jump to conclusions, but I believe that money is starting to dry up in the resistance because we are starting to understand not only where money is coming from internally but externally," Abizaid said.
Asked about the size of the insurgency, Abizaid stuck by the estimate he gave last month of about 5,000 resistance fighters. He said the capture of Hussein had dealt the insurgency "a huge psychological blow" that would "pay great benefits over time." But he predicted "still a lot of violence ahead in Iraq."
Abizaid noted that the level of violence has tended to ebb and flow. "There's a notion, I think, that a lot of people have that this is linear," he said. "But it's really not linear. It's more like a sine wave."
Odierno predicted that attacks would become "more horrific," involving more suicide bombers and vehicles laden with explosives, "because everything else hasn't worked" and the insurgents "don't have much else left."
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