Irak, Medio Oriente y Asia

Irak: Examinando el Objetivo de la Guerrilla

Fecha: 12/11/2003

Traductor: Analí T.B., especial para P.I.

Fuente: Stratfor

Iraq: Examining the Guerrilla Objective

Summary

Suicide bombers struck an Italian Carabinieri headquarters in the southern Shiite city of An Nasiriyah on Nov. 12, killing more than 20 people. Lately, guerrillas have demonstrated their desire to expand the insurgency beyond the Sunni Triangle -- likely in hopes of straining delicate U.S.-Shia relations -- and might begin to target other politically and economically significant assets in the south, including oil fields, British military installations and the port at Umm Qasr.

Analysis

Twenty-three people were killed Nov. 12 when suicide bombers crashed two vehicles into the three-story building housing the Italian Carabinieri in the southern Iraqi Shiite city of An Nasiriyah. There have been almost no assaults on U.S. or other allied forces in the southern part of Iraq since the start of the guerrilla war.

The attack in An Nasiriyah hints at an uptick in activity outside the Sunni Triangle and raises a critical question for the U.S. military: Can the guerrillas extend their campaign to encompass the entire country, stretching coalition forces thin and dispersing their counterguerrilla operations? The truck bombings in An Nasiriyah do not provide an answer to this question, but they do suggest that the guerrillas want to spread the conflict across the California-sized country. With this objective in mind, guerrillas and their allies likely will try to launch further attacks to the south, north and west -- and perhaps strike previously untargeted infrastructure, such as southern oil fields and pipelines.

Expanding the conflict to include the entire country -- especially the predominately Shiite regions in the south -- could give the guerrillas an incredible operational advantage. Such an expansion would require U.S. forces to increase their counterinsurgency efforts, including raiding villages and growing the troop presence in hot zones. This potentially could strain delicate relations between the Coalition Provisional Authority and southern Shia.

Preventing or destroying any potential U.S.-Shia alliance is a key goal of the guerrillas, because the Shia comprise the country's majority and are the foundation upon which Washington will try to build a post-Saddam Hussein government.

The strike in An Nasiriyah is part of this larger strategy. The guerrillas -- in concert with a plethora of foreign fighters, jihadists and local tribes opposed to the U.S. occupation -- have launched a near-constant barrage of attacks against U.S. and allied forces. For the most part, these attacks have been concentrated in Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle, with lower levels of intensity in Mosul and Kirkuk in the north.


The attacks also are intended to erode international support for the U.S. occupation. Militants have struck at the United Nations and the International Committee for the Red Cross in Baghdad as well as Iraqi police stations, Polish troop patrols and individual contractors working to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure.

The guerrillas have stepped up the insurgency since the first salvo was lobbed in the Ramadan offensive on Oct. 27. A key question remains whether the guerrillas and their allies can maintain this level of intensity.

Who actually carried out the most recent assault is an interesting but not critical question. The Italian government blames the bombings on supporters of the ousted Hussein regime. This would mean Sunnis loyal to the Baath Party are either located in the An Nasiriyah region or are capable of operating in the region -- including transporting supplies, explosives and suicide bombers and gathering intelligence about potential targets and propitious times for striking.

There is a small Sunni population in and around An Nasiriyah, but it is in the minority and would risk a violent backlash from the majority Shia if it facilitated the insurgency. One of the factors that has limited guerrilla operations in the south is that the guerrillas and their allies are Sunni, without broad support or entrenched networks that allow for operations there.

Al Qaeda might be the more likely culprit. On Oct. 18, an audiotaped message purportedly from Osama bin Laden aired on Arab television, saying, "We reserve the right of reprisal, at the right moment and in the right place, against all the countries that are taking part in this iniquitous war, which means the U.K., Spain, Australia, Poland, Japan and Italy." A bin Laden supporter in Europe, Sheikh Omar Bakri -- founder of the Al Muhajiroun group -- said in an interview with the Italian newspaper Republica, "If I were the Italian government, I would immediately recall my citizens from the whole of the Gulf. They are in danger of death."

The global militant network has warned repeatedly that it would support guerrilla operations in Iraq, and one of the organization's modus operandi is suicide car bombings.

Whether guerrillas, al Qaeda members or foreign fighters working independently, attackers fuel the guerrilla campaign. The question now is: Will they be able to continue it on a nationwide scale?

A likely tactic southern operatives will consider in the coming weeks will be to target the southern energy and economic infrastructure. Blowing up power stations, oil pipelines or power grids at the port of Umm Qasr would trigger a tremendous response from the coalition, which is eager to keep the south calm and quickly get as much oil production online and exported as possible.

The militants want to rattle the local population, perhaps interrupt their daily lives by cutting off power and food or water supplies, endanger Iraq's oil exports and force the U.S. military to expand its presence in the region -- a sure means of raising tensions with the locals. Whether they can remains to be seen, but as An Nasiriyah illustrates, it is certain they are considering the potential results.