The insurgency in Iraq appears to be more widespread and deadly than Iraqi leaders are prepared to admit, according to military figures and a report by a private security firm.
There have been 2 300 attacks in the past month, according to a firm called Special Operations Consulting Security Management Group. It said the attacks were being carried out from Mosul in the north through the Sunni heartland west of Baghdad and central Shia towns around Babylon down to Basra, near the border with Kuwait. The attacks ranged from car bombs and time bombs to rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades, gunfire, mortars and landmines. It said there was an average of 80 attacks a day.
With the pressure on to rein in the insurgency before January’s election, the Defence Minister, Hazim al-Shalaan, said all rebel cities would be subjugated this month, presaging some form of offensive.
For now, it is the interim government and the occupying powers that are under attack. In Baghdad alone there were 1 000 attacks last month.
One United States officer said earlier this week that 3 000 mortars had been fired into the capital since the uprisings in April. Most are aimed at the Green Zone, the heavily fortified compound housing the Iraqi government and the United States and British embassies.
Although Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi painted an optimistic picture to the US Congress last week, saying his government was on top of the insurgency and preparing for January’s elections, others painted a darker picture of the security situation.
Allawi said 15 of Iraq’s 18 provinces were safe enough to hold elections and spoke only of ”pockets of terrorists”.
The number of daily attacks has risen and fallen over the past year. It peaked in April at about 120 a day when Sunni and Shia gunmen led uprisings across the country. Earlier this month there were about 90 attacks a day but last week that had dropped to 50, a senior US military official said.
Insurgents have refined their attacks, focusing on suicide car bombs. September was a record month with about 35 bombs in 30 days. For the first time, several of those car bombs have attacked moving targets, often US military or Iraqi police convoys, rather than the usual fixed targets.
In the latest attacks, on Thursday, at least 40 people were killed and 180 injured in a series of car bombs targeting US and Iraqi forces in and around Baghdad.
The violence began with a suicide car bomb near a US checkpoint in Abu Ghraib. Two Iraqi police officers and a US soldier were killed, and as many as 60 people were wounded. A few hours later, at least 37 people were killed and about 120 injured in three near-simultaneous explosions that appeared to be aimed at a US convoy in Baghdad’s al-Amel neighbourhood. Shortly after, four people were killed and 16 wounded in a bombing in the northern city of Talafar.
But the picture is mixed. A British army major, Charlie Mayo, said there had been a fall in violence in the south-eastern provinces around Basra since August. Although two British soldiers were killed in an ambush on Tuesday, there had been some days with no incidents at all.
US military officials are struggling to put a number on the force of insurgents they are fighting. Some have suggested up to 20 000, others more.
”In terms of a core there are a few hundred,” said a senior American military official, who declined to be named. But, he said, there could be many more involved who are loosely affiliated to insurgent groups.
The US military believes Falluja, 52km west of Baghdad, is the stronghold for fighters like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant. Yet his fighters have emerged in other cities, including an area of Baghdad known as Haifa Street, which is just a few minutes from the Green Zone.
Last week Allawi boasted of a new peace in Samarra, another town in the troubled Sunni heartland. Yet on Tuesday dozens of gunmen from Zarqawi’s group were seen parading through the street, forcing motorists to exchange music tapes for cassettes of Quranic readings. Some reports have suggested his militant group has grown to number at least 1 500. — Â