Sunni, not Shiite, militants emerge as biggest threat
U.S. military now sees need to raid bomb factories in Baghdad
Michael R. Gordon, New York Times
Sunday, March 18, 2007
(03-18) 04:00 PDT Washington -- In January, when President Bush announced his plans to reinforce U.S. troops in Baghdad, Shiite militias were seen as the main worry. 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 Iraq was underscored when U.S. troops seized a laptop computer from a senior operative in the group who was reported killed in late December. Information from captured materials suggests 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. At the same time, the group has continued attacks in Anbar province on U.S. troops and on Sunni Arab tribal leaders who have defied it.
Reflecting concern over al Qaeda in Iraq's bomb attacks, especially car bombings, U.S. military officials have begun to emphasize that bringing security to the Iraqi capital will involve not only the protection of neighborhoods within the city, but also the use of 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 Odierno, the U.S. 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 IEDs" -- improvised explosive devices, known as roadside bombs.
more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/18/MNG71OND2D1.DTL&feed=rss.newsIntelligence Experts Say Group Is Busy On Its Home FrontBy Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, March 18, 2007; Page A20
Al-Qaeda in Iraq is the United States' most formidable enemy in that country. But unlike Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization in Pakistan, U.S. intelligence officials and outside experts believe, the Iraqi branch poses little danger to the security of the U.S. homeland.
As the Democratic Congress continues to push for a military withdrawal, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have repeatedly warned that bin Laden plans to turn Iraq into the capital of an Islamic caliphate and a staging ground for attacks on the United States. "If we fail there," Bush said in a February news conference, "the enemy will follow us here."
Attacking the United States clearly remains on bin Laden's agenda. But the likelihood that such an attack would be launched from Iraq, many experts contend, has sharply diminished over the past year as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) has undergone dramatic changes. Once believed to include thousands of "foreign fighters," it is now an overwhelmingly Iraqi organization whose aims are likely to remain focused on the struggle against the Shiite majority in Iraq, U.S. intelligence officials said.
Although AQI's top leader, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, is thought to be Egyptian, most members "are Iraqis, both in terms of leaders and foot soldiers," said one counterterrorism official. He and other officials estimated that Iraqis make up 90 percent of AQI's several thousand fighters.
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