IRAQ - The Challenges Of Terrorism - Part 19 - Iraq & The Neo-Salafi/Sunni Threats.

In January, when President George W. Bush announced his plans to reinforce US troops in Baghdad, Shi'ite militias were seen as the main worry. Analysts predicted that bloody clashes with Shi'ite militants in the Sadr City in north-eastern Baghdad were inevitable. Instead, during the early weeks of the operation, deadly bombings by Sunni militants have emerged as a greater danger. In particular, the threat posed by the Neo-Salafi al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia was underscored when US troops seized a laptop computer from a senior operative killed in late 2006.

US officials describing an intelligence report on March 18 were quoted as saying the information from captured materials indicated that al-Qaeda's leadership saw "the sectarian war for Baghdad as the necessary main focus of its operations". At the same time, al-Qaeda has continued waging attacks in Anbar Province on US troops and on Sunni tribal leaders who have defied it and joined the Baghdad government's campaign against the Neo-Salafis.

On March 17, a triple truck bombing in Anbar involving toxic chlorine gas made 356 people ill near Falluja - another solid sign of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia resorting to chemical weapons. It was the seventh hit with chlorine since Jan. 28, causing the US military to warn that Neo-Salafis were adopting new tactics in a campaign to spread panic.

Reflecting concern over the Neo-Salafi group's attacks, especially car bombings, US military officials have begun to emphasise that bringing security to the Iraqi capital will involve not only the protection of Baghdad neighbourhoods 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 New York Times on March 18 quoted Lt Gen Raymond Odierno, the US officer in charge of day-to-day operations in Iraq, as saying: "The Baghdad belts are increasingly seen as the key to security in Baghdad. 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, commonly known as roadside bombs)". He said Shi'ites had "gone to ground for the most part, but there are still rogue elements of Shia extremists that are still a threat and conducting operations against the coalition, but more importantly against the government of Iraq".

The threat shifted on the eve of the March 19 (or March 20 local time) fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq, in which US forces toppled Saddam's Sunni/Ba'thist dictatorship only to face a growing Sunni insurgency and find themselves involved in an arduous effort to head off growing sectarian strife. In its efforts to stabilise Iraq, US commanders have had to contend with al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, other Sunni Arab insurgent groups, a variety of Shi'ite militias, criminals, and "Iranian operatives". The greater Baghdad area seems to include all of them, making the mission there one of constant adjustment to adversaries who are themselves revising their tactics.

According to US intelligence analysts, as reported by The New York Times, al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia's Baghdad strategy has gone through several changes. The overwhelming majority of the group's members are believed to be Iraqi. But some of its senior commanders are foreigners, including Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian who became the leader of the organisation in 2006 after the death of Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist who founded the organisation and was killed in June in a US air strike near Ba'quba, in the Sunni-Shi'ite province of Diyala, north-east of Baghdad.

Al-Qaeda has been active in the Sunni-dominated Anbar Province in western Iraq. But it has also long operated in the Sunni areas on the outskirts of Baghdad. Saddam's dictatorship encouraged the settlement of Sunnis in these areas in the hope that it would protect his government, and some towns and rural communities there have emerged as havens for Neo-Salafi terrorists and other Sunni militants.

The Neo-Salafi 'Caliphate' On The Defensive: The Financial Times on March 21 quoted Britain's top general in Iraq and deputy commander of the multinational forces (MNF) in the country, Lt Gen Graeme Lamb, as saying the US-Iraqi offensive had put Sunni anti-government forces on the defensive in Anbar. He said: "We're getting momentum... We're seeing a number of points...which would imply that [anti-government militants] are being challenged". He said US and Iraqi forces were recruiting hundreds of police for the first time in Anbar towns that the forces were working together in shared combat outposts, adding: The insurgency "didn't do too well in Anbar... Their claims have failed to come to fruition".

Gen Lamb was referring to the declaration by Neo-Salafi radicals that they had set up a "caliphate" encompassing much of western Iraq. But he did concede that car bomb attacks in Baghdad and a surge of violence in neighbouring Diyala had to be addressed.

Gen Lamb said US and Iraqi planners were learning to reduce the threat, establishing an outer cordon around Baghdad as well as barriers, or "point defence" protection around key targets inside. The US military has reported cases in which car bombs have been stopped at checkpoints. In some cases the bombs detonated killing Iraqi security forces, but the casualties would arguably have been much greater had the blasts hit crowded commercial districts.

Gen Lamb, who commanded British ground forces in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, said the MNF now had the benefit of four years of experience in fighting the insurgents.