WP: U.S. Hopes To Divide Insurgency [View All]

[kskiska]

Plan to Cut Extremism Involves Iraq's Sunnis

By Bradley Graham and Walter Pincus
Sunday, October 31, 2004; Page A01

Facing an entrenched insurgency in Iraq whose ranks have grown significantly over the past year, the Pentagon has devised a new military strategy aimed at driving a wedge between various factions, defense officials said.

The strategy stems from what the officials said is a deeper understanding of an insurgency that has gained strength in recent months and proved tougher and more resilient than expected. Once viewed as little more than a few thousand embittered remnants of Saddam Hussein's government, the hard-core militants in Iraq are now estimated by senior U.S. military officers to number as many as 12,000.

The dominant element of the insurgency, the officials said, is a loose group referred to in U.S. military documents as "Sunni Arab rejectionists," consisting largely of former members of Hussein's government. These are onetime military officers and intelligence agents who U.S. officials have come increasingly to believe had some kind of plan to reorganize into cells and wage an insurgency if U.S. forces invaded.

Filling out the resistance, the officials said, are an assortment of Islamic extremists, some homegrown, such as the militia led by radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, and some foreign, such as those associated with Jordanian-born Abu Musab Zarqawi, plus a mix of criminals, financiers and other "facilitators" operating inside and outside Iraq and having access to substantial sums of money.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12434-2004Oct30.html