IRAQ - Resurgence In The Shiite World - Part 8 - Syria & Baathist Factors.

Most of the anti-US Sunni Arab insurgents in Iraq are Baath Party members loyal to the former Saddam Husssein regime and now believed to be backed by Syria in one way or another. Most of their leaders are said to be based in Syria, where they are said to be meeting frequently since the US-led assault on the Sunni city of Falluja began on Nov. 8.

There are three main Syrian-influenced Sunni Arab groups in Iraq's anti-US insurgency in the Sunni Triangle which includes Baghdad and areas west and north of the capital, and the now famous Triangle of Death just south of Baghdad:

1. The diehard Baathists, former members of Saddam's armed forces and intelligence networks. Their main base until the first week of November was Falluja. It seems their leaders fled Falluja just before the US-led assault began on Nov. 8, and have since spread to other parts of the Sunni triangle including Mosul - Iraq's third largest city of almost 2 million people - with their top leaders having since established at least one secret base in Syria, accord-ing to Western press reports sourced mainly by Kurds in the Mosul region. The objective of this group is to regain power in Iraq. This group includes former soldiers and officers of the Special Republican Guard and Republican Guard divisions, as well as members of local Sunni tribes.

2. Iraqi Salafis, including members of Iraq's Wahhabi movement, who are guided by radical Iraqi Sunni religious figures and allied to other Sunni groups in Iraq. They have a close relationship with the Association of Islamic Scholars (AIS), a coalition Sunni religious men (including Salafis) who claim to control 3,000 Sunni mosques in Iraq. Although AIS members insist their association is not involved in the insurgency, Western press reports point to evidence that many of their mosques in Falluja were used for the storage of weapons and/or as staging points for attacks against US troops and interim Iraqi government forces. The New York Times on Nov. 24 reported that a huge store of weapons was found at the mosque of Abdullah Al-Janabi, a Sunni religious leader and one of the heads of this group, in Falluja. Janabi is thought to have fled Falluja. The NYT said the mosque compound in a residential area had sheds stacked with TNT, mortar shells, bombs, guns, rocket-propelled grenades and ammunition. US officers told The NYT there were no arms in Janabi's nearby house, but they found files on people who had been tortured and executed for co-operating with US authorities and their allies. The Salafis include members of local Sunni tribes.

3. Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) members and other Syrian volunteers, who are part of Syria's mainstream Sunni sect. This is the smallest of the three groups. The group is clandestine. An uprising by the MB against the Baathist regime of Hafez Al-Assad  was crushed in February 1982, with battles in Hama having resulted in the death of up to 25,000 people. On one Friday, as rebels were getting out of mosques, Assad's forces bombarded whole MB neighbourhoods. Once the guns fell silent, he plowed up the rubble and bulldozed it flat into vast parking lots. A main financier of the MB uprising was Osama Bin Laden, whose mother is of Syrian Alawite origin converted into Wahhabism. Since then, the MB has operated secretly in Syria. It is not clear to what extent the Baathist intelligence networks in Syria now is monitoring this group's activities and its movements between Syria and Iraq's Sunni Triangle.

These groups often co-ordinate operations. But the third group is more independent of the first two. Syria's Baathist regime, under Bashar Al-Assad , who took over after his father died in June 2000, on Dec. 7 freed 112 political prisoners - the largest amnesty for three years - all members of the MB jailed since 1982. The head of Syria's Human Rights Association, Haitham Al-Maleh, said Assad should have freed all political detainees - with more than 500 still in jail, and added: "It is not acceptable that a person should be detained for his opinions", noting that many had been held for more than 10 years.

Muwaffaq Al-Rubai'e, a Shiite doctor acting as a national security adviser to the interim government, said on Dec. 9 evidence was found in Falluja of Syrian involvement in the Iraqi Baathist insurgency. He said records were also found of the Syrian government having facilitated the movement of Syrian volunteers to Iraq to join the Sunni insurgency.

Janabi Vows To Oust The US: Salafi Shaikh Abdullah Al-Janabi, wanted by the US for his role in the Falluja resistance, has vowed to continue his fight until Americans leave Iraq. Janabi stated this in a two-page document addressed to Muslims across the world, dated Dec. 5: "Your brothers on the Falluja Council of the Mujahidin and those from other factions stand committed before God and before you to continue the Jihad (holy war) against the occupiers and their agents until they leave Iraq".

They "would continue whatever the sacrifices", Janabi said, adding: "We defy [US President George W.] Bush, to reveal to his people, his failures in Falluja, which has become the symbol and the voice of all oppression in the world and a solid platform of the resistance in Iraq". He said the Falluja campaign was the start of a "Zionist crusade spearheaded by the crusader, the cursed Bush, and [Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad] Allawi to wound our civilisation, doctor our religion and falsify our Qur'an".

In another statement, Janabi (who had fled the Sunni city) congratulated Falluja residents for their "resistance". Their sufferings were "divine ordeal", he said, calling the offensive "a war between crusaders and Zionists" against a "symbol of Islam and Muslims".

On average in recent months, insurgents stage two suicide attacks a day. A suicide bomber on Dec. 13 steered a car full of explosives into the western gate of the heavily protected Green Zone compound that houses the interim government and embassies in the morning rush hour, killing at least 9 Iraqis and wounding 19. The explosion, taking place on the one-year anniversary of Saddam's capture by American soldiers, tore into a crowd of workers waiting to enter the compound and left a scene of carnage, with two charred bodies visible inside a nearby car and blood spattered about the dusty checkpoint.

US officials had anticipated attacks timed for the anniversary, but there was no evidence that the bombing of Baghdad's Green Zone, where a number of mortar and bomb strikes have been aimed recently, was related. Hours later, an Islamist Website posted a message from the network of the Wahhabi leader Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi claiming the attack. A second car bomb exploded in northern Baghdad on Dec. 13, wounding three US soldiers and an Iraqi civilian and destroying two Humvees. A suicide car bomber on Dec. 14 hit the entrance to the Green Zone, 24 hours after an almost identical attack at the same checkpoint - with two blown to pieces and 12 civilians wounded, five of them seriously. No Americans were hurt. In Falluja, two US Marines were killed, taking the death toll to 10 in three days among the force dealing with an upsurge in fighting there. At least 1,018 US troops have been killed in action since the invasion of Iraq 21 months ago. In all, 1,295 have died.

In Falluja, Marine aircraft dropped precision-guided bombs on enemy positions throughout Dec. 12 and Marines battled insurgents. Nearly a month after the main combat operations in Falluja ended, small groups of insurgents continue to strike at US and Iraqi forces as they clear the city's houses, inflicting a small but steady toll. Recently, US and Iraqi troops discovered tunnel networks, sewer systems and hiding places where the insurgents evaded capture and then launched ambushes. The New York Times on Dec. 14 quoted Lt. Col. Dan Wilson, a Marine spokesman, as saying: "In many instances, they are hiding under beds, or in spider holes, then firing at the last second in very close quarters". Marines found evidence that insurgents in Falluja were getting high on drugs before attacking. Wilson said that, despite the loss of the seven Marines on Dec. 12 and another on Dec. 11, the number of attacks in Falluja and the surrounding area had dropped since the offensive, and local residents had begun helping the US effort in ways they had never done in the past.

On Dec. 14 Allawi announced the capture of Saddam's cousin Izzedine Al-Majid in Falluja, where he was caught recently while fighting with insurgents. Majid has been accused of being behind the Sunni insurgency from his base Syria. He is a cousin of Ali Hassan Al-Majid, a Saddam general formerly responsible for Iraq's south, who became known as "Chemical Ali", and who is among top Saddam associates under US custody. Allawi said trials of top officials of the former regime including "Chemical Ali" was to begin soon.

There is a link between Falluja and Ramadi in western Iraq and the Death Triangle just south of Baghdad. In this small triangle, Wahhabi insurgents often target and kill Shiites travelling between Baghdad and southern Iraq. On Dec. 14, Wahhabi insurgents attacked an Iraqi police convoy travelling from the southern city of Basra to Baghdad, killing six police officers. Most of Iraq's police and National Guardsmen are Shiites or Kurds. The police were ambushed near the town of Salman Pak, part of the Death Triangle about 30 km south-east of Baghdad. The area around Salman Pak, site of a nuclear power plant and ammunition factories during Saddam's regime, has been a focal point of Wahhabi guerrilla activity over the past year. Towns to the west of Salman Pak, including Mahmudiya and Iskandariya, form part of the Death Triangle, where attacks are routine.

Iraqis who lost loved ones during Saddam's brutal rule on Dec. 14 rushed to a site in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq which Allawi said was a mass grave containing some 500 bodies. They went to the site at a village near the city of Sulaimaniyah after building workers noticed human skulls and torn clothes as they were digging.

Iraq on Dec. 14 urged the UN to help discover the fate of more than one million people who disappeared during Saddam's years in power. Officials from donor governments, UN agencies and other groups were then meeting with Iraq's Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin, and Justice Minister Malek Dohan Al-Hassan in Geneva for two days discussing plans to improve the country's human rights situation. Despite a population of about 25m, Iraq has just 20 forensic pathologists, while Jordan, with its five million inhabitants, has 35.