Washington – Insurgents in Iraq are drawing on dozens of stockpiled, bomb-rigged cars and groups of foreign fighters smuggled into the country in recent weeks to carry out most of the suicide attacks that have killed about 300 people in the last 12 days, senior U.S. officers and intelligence officials say.
Insurgents exploded 135 car bombs in April, up from 69 in March and more than in any other month in the two-year U.S. occupation.
For the first time last month, more than 50 percent of the car-bombings were suicide attacks, some remotely detonated. The officers and officials have not drawn a single conclusion from this, but one top U.S. general said it suggested that Iraqis were being forced or duped into driving those missions.
Senior U.S. officers predict that the insurgents, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant whose network has claimed responsibility for the deadliest bombings, will not be able to sustain the level of attacks much longer. And the attacks have not dented recruiting for the U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces.
But the officers acknowledged that the increase in suicide bombings over the last two weeks had won the militants important propaganda victories by gaining worldwide media coverage. The benefits, they said, would include boosting insurgent morale that flagged after the Jan. 30 elections, and depicting the Iraqi government as incapable of protecting its citizenry.
“When he cranks up the propaganda campaign, it means we’ve probably hurt him,” Brig. Gen. John DeFreitas III, the senior military intelligence officer in Iraq, said of al-Zarqawi.
In interviews with a dozen senior military officers in Iraq or with experience there, as well as other U.S. officials, varying assessments emerged, underscoring the uncertainty about how the different strands of the insurgency operate and cooperate.
One senior officer said the recent violence was a predictable “attempt by the enemy to show that they are still a factor, still relevant and still capable.”
Another officer, a general with extensive command experience in Iraq, acknowledged he was not sure yet what the rash of suicide car-bombings meant: “More foreign fighters? More religious extremists? An indicator of insurgent desperation? Iraqis as suicide attackers?”
Attacks against allied forces, which had dropped to about 40 a day in March and early April, now stand at 55 a day, well below the 130 a day before the January elections but roughly the same as last fall. Attacks against power stations, pipelines and other infrastructure have declined sharply in the last three weeks, U.S. officers said.
U.S. officials say the insurgency is still a mix of former Baath Party loyalists, Iraqi military and security service officers, Sunni Arab militants and terrorists like al-Zarqawi. They claim progress against the insurgents, killing or capturing at least 20 of al-Zarqawi’s top lieutenants, driving militants into less-patrolled rural areas and getting more tips from Iraqis.
Foreign fighters, only a small part of the insurgency, commit most of the suicide bombings, military officials say. Jihadists from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Iran continue to infiltrate Iraq’s porous borders despite new Iraqi border patrol units assisted by specialists sent from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Military officials said they had been concerned for weeks about reports that insurgents were stockpiling bomb-rigged cars. Iraqi commandos seized about 10 vehicles rigged with explosives in the last 10 days.
Top commanders said they expected spikes and lulls in the violence through at least early next year.
“It takes everything they’ve got to muster attacks,” said Maj. Gen. Stephen T. Johnson, the top Marine commander in Iraq. “Unless the insurgents get involved in the political process, I think we’ll continue to see this.”