Violence spreads south as forces of the rump regime get ever bolder

British targeted after spate of attacks on US troops blamed on Saddam loyalists

The Guardian
June 25, 2003
By Ewen MacAskill and Michael Howard in Baghdad

At first sight, the town of Amara looks like trouble. Since the end of the war, there have been five checkpoints on the way into the town, manned by heavily armed, grizzled guerrillas from a hardline Islamist group, Hizbullah of Iraq. But the appearance of danger turned out to be deceptive - until yesterday.

Those guerrillas have been working hand-in-hand with British forces in a wary but seemingly workable relationship that kept Amara calm and orderly.

Suspicion yesterday fell not on these men - though they are capable of turning against the British - but on remnants of forces loyal to Saddam Hussein.

A British commander, briefing yesterday, noted that Amara, like most of southern Iraq, had seen few incidents since the end of the war. The British-run sector, based in Basra and stretching north to Amara and west almost as far as Nassiriya, had seen few attacks on troops, in contrast with the almost daily ambushes against US forces further north.

This relative calm was attributed to the sector being predominantly Shia Muslim, people who suffered three decades of oppression under Saddam and grudgingly welcomed the arrival of British forces as liberators. It has been so quiet that British soldiers for the last few weeks have been patrolling without body armour.

There was also a sense that the UK forces, with their experience in Northern Ireland, were handling the local population better than American troops: less heavy-handed, less visible as an occupation force, prepared to chat to people.

Immediate blame for the attack fell on Saddam diehards suspected of the increasingly bold ambushes against US forces. Most of these have been in Baghdad or to the areas to the west and north, which are mainly Sunni, the minority religion favoured by Saddam.

Intense

His core support comes from this area, which has been dubbed the Sunni Triangle. Initial attacks on US soldiers were tentative, with soft targets being chosen, such as a stabbing of a lone soldier guarding a bridge crossing, or on the soft-skinned Humvee vehicles.

Over the last few weeks, the attacks have become both more intense and more audacious, including daylight ambushes on heavily armoured US convoys. Eighteen US soldiers have been killed in such incidents since May 1.

Those operating in the Sunni Triangle may have decided to extend their operations southwards, knowing that the British soldiers, having shed their body armour, offered a soft target.

Although British commanders said yesterday it could take some time to establish who had been responsible, the way the assault was conducted suggests military experience. The attacks on the US are assumed to be the work of a mixture of former soldiers and members of Saddam's Ba'ath party. The US force in Baghdad believes at least one or more trained Iraqi sniper is involved.

Some of the ambushes may be a direct result of US behaviour since the war ended. A disproportionate share of the violence has been focused round Falluja, west of Baghdad, almost certainly a response to US tactics that led to American troops shooting dead 14 civilians.

A week ago US forces began a new operation to try to clear the Sunni towns around Baghdad of Saddam remnants.

"The region saw almost no combat during the war and there are still well-armed fighters there," an official with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad told the Guardian yesterday. "There are still many places that are regarded as combat zones."

Though the sweeps were based on intelligence and a strategy of drawing out opponents, the sight of US soldiers entering homes added to resentment among the Sunni population.

Kanan Makiya, a former exile and author of Republic of Fear, said the spate of attacks should not be interpreted as a sign of popular resistance to the US forces.

"They are undoubtedly the work of members of the former regime, the intelligence and the mukhabarat [secret police]. During the collapse of Saddam, they systematically robbed banks and looted arsenals and then slipped back into the population.

Resistance

"They are forming a new, loose but very dangerous elite which mixes politics and criminality. What we need is a proper Iraqi police force controlled by Iraqis to stop them."

A spokesman for a Shia group in Baghdad also said that the resistance was being orchestrated by elements from the former regime. He showed the Guardian a document which he claimed carried instructions to members of Saddam's secret police on how to resist an American occupation once the regime had fallen.

The methods of resistance detailed in the document, which the Guardian could not verify, included armed robbery, hit-and-run tactics against "occupying forces", and suicide bombing.

Amara was the base for one of the most notorious of Saddam's inner circle, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali. He was initially claimed to have been killed in the first days of the war but this US assessment had to be revised after reports by Iraqis claiming to have seen him.

Amara, a poor town, had been the hub of the Marshlands, a lush area until Saddam cut off the water in the mid-1990s to deny cover to Shia guerrillas led by Abu Hattem, leader of Hizbullah of Iraq and known as Lord of the Marshes.

He liberated Amara from the Ba'athists on April 5 before the British arrived. The British forces initially chased the guerrillas away but have since reached an accommodation with them, allowing them to man the checkpoints, watching them from a distance. Abu Hattem has said he wants the US and British to leave eventually but that he will bide his time.

It would be madness for Abu Hattem, who proved an astute strategist in a decade-long campaign against Saddam, to turn on the British, just as it would be madness for Iran to allow Iraqi mojahedin operating from their territory to mount such an attack.

Amara is close to the Iranian border, territory that was popular with the Iranian mojahedin fighting against Saddam.

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