Focus On Neo-Salafis.

Every night in Iraq, US Special Operations forces carry out as many as a dozen raids aimed at Neo-Salafi leaders allied with al-Qaeda, other insurgent fighters and militia targets. Their after-action reports are the first thing Lt Gen. David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, reads the next day. The missions also are closely watched by senior policy makers in Washington, who differ on whether the small number of elite units should focus on capturing and killing leaders of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia and foreign fighters in Iraq, or whether the greater threat comes from the Sunni-based Iraqi insurgency or Shi'ite militias.

The Neo-Salafis are the most violent and most fanatic strain of Sunni Islam. They have already established in Iraq a mini-state which they regard as a nucleus for a universal caliphate to rule the world (see sbme5-IraqUS-IranRegionalMay7-07).

A coalition of Neo-Salafi groups controls a part of Iraq's Sunni Arab Triangle, where it has established the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). The aim is to turn the ISI into an empire to stretch as far west as Spain and China to the east. The official head of the ISI is Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, whose title is "caliph" and whose real name is Hajji Sa'doun Abdul-Razzaq al-Ubaidi. In this small Neo-Salafi world, every city is ruled by a "Wali"; every town or village under its control is ruled by an "Emir".

The strongman of the ISI is Abu Ayub al-Masri, an Egyptian successor of Jordanian terrorist Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi who was killed in a US air strike near Ba'quba (north of Baghdad) in June 2006. Masri is a nephew of Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy at the head of al-Qaeda based in the Waziristan tribal areas on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Zawahiri is an Egyptian physician and al-Qaeda's ideologue.

Baghdadi - i.e., Ubaidi - is an Iraqi engaged in a bloody power struggle with Masri and other non-Iraqis in the network of Neo-Salafi groups in this country. The US hopes this could escalate into a full war among the Neo-Salafi groups (see gmt21IraqWhoMay21-07).

In the shadows of the troop increase ordered by President Bush, Special Operations forces conduct 6 to 12 missions every night across Iraq. A vast majority - 80-90% - are aimed at Qaeda-allied targets, while the rest attack other extremist elements. The New York Times on May 29 quoted one of the "senior military officers in Baghdad and Pentagon officials" it interviewed as saying: "We are focused on those elements that are causing the most problems and going after a very specific target set. We are working very hard to go after the rogue elements or extremists of any flavor".

The mix of targets on any night depends on the intelligence gathered and on an assessment of "can we go after the specific threat or target with the precision required to have a high probability of capture?".

Troops assigned to these special-mission units pulled Saddam Hussein out of his hiding place on Dec. 13, 2003, and led a month-long pursuit of Zarqawi, the former leader of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia who was killed in 2006 after intelligence officers assigned to the teams pinpointed his location near Ba'quba.

In recent weeks, as the final elements of the US troop surge began arriving in Iraq, Special Operations units have captured or killed senior officers of Sadr's JaM. Senior officers said one mission in May killed a militant Shi'ite commander, Azhar al-Duleimi, believed to have organised a deadly attack on a government compound in south-central Iraq in January.

"The first thing I want to know is how did we do last night", Gen. Petraeus said in a recent interview on National Public Radio in the US, explaining how closely he followed the operations of the secret special-mission units.

The Special Operations teams are deployed throughout the country so they can respond faster to emerging intelligence on potential targets. Other foreign militaries contribute forces to the missions, and new Iraqi special operations units and counter-terrorism teams join the effort. Some of the missions are so touchy that they require the approval of PM Maliki.

Officials in Washington and Iraq are briefed in advance on missions which carry a high risk of civilian casualties or of provoking reprisals. The raids can provoke political tensions. The Special Operations teams enter Sadr City, the Shi'ite slum in Baghdad, almost on a nightly basis. Maliki is a Shi'ite, and his coalition depends on the support of Shi'ite political blocs.

The NYT quoted a US officer as saying: "Suffice it to say that what would be considered sensitive or important individuals or locations, we consult with the prime minister whenever possible. Depending on who, it may fall into a category that we take that information to the prime minister before so that he can weigh in on the decision process. This is also an issue of sovereignty".

US military planners say it is difficult to define the impact of the Special Operations missions separately from that of the overall military mission in Iraq, where on average there are also about 10 conventional, battalion-level operations taking place on any given day which involve hundreds of troops.

Those larger-unit missions primarily engage in what are called clearing operations and aim to uncover arms caches, go after bomb-making cells, rescue civilian hostages held by al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia or other insurgents and capture or kill insurgent and militia leaders. The NYT quoted an officer at the US military's corps HQ in Baghdad as saying: "Compared to the surgical-strike" Special Operations missions, "these battalion-level clearing operations are large in scope.

Bush says al-Qaeda remains "public enemy No. 1". But academic experts who analyse the Special Operations missions in Iraq say the battle against any of the varied threats requires far better intelligence on the inner workings of those adversaries than the US military is able to gather today.

Sunni-Kurdish Conflict In Mosul: Sunni Arab militants, reinforced by insurgents fleeing the new security plan in Baghdad, are trying to rid Mosul of its Kurdish population through violence and intimidation. Mosul, with a population of 1.8m, straddles the Tigris River on a grassy, windswept plain in the country's north. It was recently estimated to be about a quarter Kurdish, but Sunni Arabs have driven out at least 70,000 Kurds and virtually erased the Kurdish presence from the city's western half. This is according to Khasro Goran, a Kurd who is the deputy governor of Nineveh, the surrounding province.

The militants "view this as a Sunni-dominated city, and they view the Kurds as encroaching on Mosul", says Col. Stephen Twitty, commander of the 4th Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, a US Army force deployed in Nineveh. Some Kurdish and Christian enclaves remain on the east side, though their numbers are dwindling. Kurdish officials say the flight has accelerated in recent months, contributing to the wider ethnic and religious partitioning taking place all over Iraq.

Nineveh is Iraq's most diverse province, where Arabs, Kurds, Christians, Turkomans, Yazidis and Shabaks lived side by side for centuries, going to the same schools, bartering in the same markets, even inter-marrying on occasion. But what took generations to build is starting to unravel in the shadow of the Sunni Arab insurgency, which is tapping into several wells of ethnic resentment. Already embittered at the toppling of Saddam's Sunni/Ba'thist dictatorship, insurgents in Mosul have been further enraged by their current political disenfranchisement, a result of their boycotting the Dec. 15, 2005 elections.

The main Kurdish coalition now holds 31 of 41 seats on the provincial council and all the top executive positions, even though Kurds make up only 35% of the province. Most Kurds are of the Sunni sect, but they have little in common with the Arabs. Sunni Arabs have asked for new provincial elections and are growing frustrated that the Shi'ite- and Kurdish-dominated national government seems to be ignoring their requests.