IRAQ: In July 2003, when President Bush was asked about the growing number of attacks by insurgents in Iraq, he said: "Bring them on. We have the force necessary to deal with the situation." That assertion was being questioned again yesterday after a fresh wave of suicide bombings that has killed nearly 400 people in the past fortnight.
According to a western diplomatic source in Baghdad, 135 car bombs exploded in Iraq in April, up from 69 in March. And if May continues as it has started, it could be the worst month yet.
The situation is causing consternation and frustration among some in the new Iraqi government. One government official said yesterday the US had "failed to stem the strategic insurgency".
"Millions of dollars have gone on military and intelligence actions, and training up the Iraqi forces, but innocent people are still killed and terrorised every day," said the official, who requested anonymity. "[ Iraqis] are very angry and disillusioned."
Of the suicide bombers, the diplomat said: "Is there a never-ending supply of these men? Can it really still be the case that they all come in from outside Iraq?"
Most Iraqi analysts agree the young men who carry out most of the suicide bombings are foreign jihadis. Hiwa Osman of the Institute of War and Peace Reporting in Iraq said: "Suicide bombing is not a natural Iraqi response. Saddam killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, but there was not a single suicide bomb during his regime. Iraqis fought back with other means. It is realistic to say the people blowing themselves up and causing the carnage now are foreigners."
But analysts also conclude that the foreign jihadis would not be able to strike so successfully in Iraq without substantial help in planning and assistance from homegrown insurgents such as diehard Baathists, ex-regime military and security service officers, and radical Sunni Islamists.
Mr Osman said: "The foreign Islamists and the ex-Baathists and regime people have nothing in common ideologically, but tactically they both want to disrupt and destroy the new situation in Iraq, and they are prepared to ally to that end."
One Iraqi intelligence officer said the failure to secure Iraq's borders had allowed many young men from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Tunisia, Iran and Egypt, to come to Iraq to "achieve martyrdom".
"Co-operation between these foreign militants and the domestic insurgency, however, is also in danger of turning the homegrown resistance into a breeding ground for a major jihadi movement."
He said the testimony of scores of non-Iraqi Arabs who had been arrested in Iraq pointed to the network of suicide bombers coming mostly from Syria, and he claimed that the Syrian secret service was involved in their training. Syria has come under repeated pressure from the US to shore up the gaping holes along its porous border with Iraq, but vehemently denies any involvement in the preparation of suicide bombers. A recent US offensive near the Iraqi-Syrian border was designed to disrupt the flow of fighters into the country.
Another Iraqi intelligence official explained how the bomb squads worked, saying they generally worked in pairs.
A western diplomat said the key to taming the insurgency was including the Sunni Arabs in the political process.
"With the removal of the Baathist regime, the Sunnis' political leadership vanished overnight, and the community is struggling to come to terms with the shift in the balance of power in Iraq to the Shia and Kurds." - (Guardian service)
