Sunni terrorist are the main threat in Baghdad

NY Times:

In January, when President Bush announced his plans to reinforce American troops in Baghdad, Shiite militias were seen as the main worry. Some analysts predicted that bloody clashes with Shiite militants in the Sadr City district in northeastern Baghdad were all but inevitable.

Instead, during the early weeks of the operation, deadly bombings by Sunni Arab militants have emerged as a greater danger. In particular, the threat posed by the Sunni group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia was underscored when American troops seized a laptop computer from a senior operative in the group who was killed in late December.

Information from captured materials indicates that the group’s leadership sees “the sectarian war for Baghdad as the necessary main focus of its operations,” according to an intelligence report that was described by American officials.

Reflecting concern over the bomb attacks, especially car bombings, American military officials have begun to emphasize that bringing security to the Iraqi capital will involve not only the protection of Baghdad neighborhoods, but also raids to shut down bomb factories and uncover arms caches in the largely Sunni areas on the outskirts of the city.

“The Baghdad belts are increasingly seen as the key to security in Baghdad,” Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the American officer in charge of day-to-day operations in Iraq, said in an e-mail message. “I believe this is where you can stop the accelerants to Baghdad violence. We have already found a large number of significant caches in these areas related to car bombs and I.E.D.’s,” or improvised explosive devices, commonly known as roadside bombs.

“The Shia have gone to ground for the most part, but there are still rogue elements of Shia extremists that are still a threat and conducting operations against the coalition, but more importantly against the government of Iraq,” he added.

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According to American intelligence analysts, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s Baghdad strategy has gone through several changes. The overwhelming majority of the group’s members are believed to be Iraqi. But some senior commanders are foreigners, including Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian who became the leader of the organization last year after the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist who founded the organization.

The group has been active in the Sunni-dominated Anbar Province in western Iraq. But it has also long operated in the Sunni areas on the outskirts of the capital. Mr. Hussein encouraged the settlement of Sunnis in these areas in the hope that it would protect his government, and some towns and rural communities there have emerged as havens for Sunni militants.

In the summer and fall of 2006, the group’s leaders saw an opportunity to step up the fight in Baghdad against Shiite militias, American troops and the nascent Iraqi security forces, according to captured documents. Some of the insight into the group’s strategy was obtained from the laptop computer seized when a senior Iraqi adviser to Mr. Masri was killed by troops of the American-led forces in late December at a traffic checkpoint.

The adviser, who among other aliases used the name Abu Hasan, was detained by the multinational troops in January 2005 but inadvertently released because his role in Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia was not well understood at the time.

As outlined in the captured documents and other material that was seized, the group’s initial strategy was to push Shiites out of western Baghdad. As part of the sectarian battle for the capital, the strategy also called for attacking Shiites in parts of nearby provinces, specifically southern Salahuddin, western Diyala and eastern Anbar, attacks that the group’s leaders also calculated would put American and Iraqi troops on the defensive. (The documents, American officials say, also reflected a continued interest in obtaining chemical weapons.)

But Shiite militias, particularly Mahdi Army operatives, responded with their own offensive, forcing the Sunni militants to retreat. A Pentagon report to Congress noted in November that the main Shiite militia group, the Mahdi Army, had replaced Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia “as the most dangerous accelerant of potentially self-sustaining sectarian violence in Iraq.” American forces, instead of withdrawing from the capital as the Sunni insurgents had hoped, prepared plans to reinforce their troops there.

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According to captured memos portrayed in American intelligence reports, the group was frustrated with the Shiite militias’ success, was unhappy with weapons shortages and was somewhat disorganized, according to an account by an American official who asked not to be identified because he was discussing intelligence matters.

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In addition to car bomb attacks, the group’s basic tactics are to attack American and Shiite militia supply lines. When faced with American combat power, the Sunni militants tend to disperse, hoping to fight another day, American commanders say.

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The Shia militia were never a threat to the government. They were focused on retaliating against the Sunni terrorist. One of the reason they have gone to ground is that the US and Iraqi forces are doing their job of protecting the neighborhoods and seeking out the Sunni terrorist. That is one reason the threat of a sectarian civil war was always overblown. The Shia militia was filling the void left when US forces backed away from security operations and the Iraqi forces failed to step up. Now they are stepping up with US forces working with them.

This story suggest that the operations are having success in the surge operation.