A Summer Of Tears
A seemingly endless wave of car bombings Leaves Many Iraqis--and Americans--in Despair
BAGHDAD--From dusk till dawn, chaos reigned. As darkness fell last Wednesday, three apparently synchronized bombs exploded in a Shiite neighborhood, killing 23 people. With the rising sun came four more blasts in another Shiite part of Baghdad that killed at least 17 Iraqis. The dead were found in two mosques, a shopping area, and a bathhouse. Even in a city becoming inured to such horrors, this seemed staggering in its intensity--and its audacity.
A surge of suicide attacks--largely against civilian targets--has had almost no military effect on American forces nor any significant impact on the development of the Iraqi Army. But the bombs nonetheless have proved quite effective--on both sides of the globe. In Iraq, the bloodshed adds to the fear and uncertainty and undermines the standing of the fragile democratic government; in the United States, the daily accounts of suicide attacks undercut assertions by President Bush and his top generals that meaningful progress is being made in Iraq. While the generals downplay the bombings' military impact, they are beginning to worry about signs of declining public support at home--a concern also articulated by some in Congress who have backed the war. "I'm here to tell you, sir, in the most patriotic state that I can imagine, people are beginning to question," Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last week. "And I don't think it's a blip on the radar screen. I think we have a chronic problem on our hands."
Tuesday marks the first anniversary of the United States' handing sovereignty to a transitional government in Iraq. And the Bush administration is using the anniversary to highlight the progress made since then and to try to rebuild confidence in the face of declining poll numbers. "Any who say we have lost or are losing are flat wrong," Rumsfeld testified last week. "We are not." President Bush will send a similar stay-the-course message in a prime-time speech Tuesday to troops at Fort Bragg, N.C. But the administration needs to take care. Vice President Dick Cheney said the insurgency was in its "last throes" --only to be contradicted by his generals in Iraq and Washington. "I believe there are more foreign fighters coming into Iraq than there were six months ago," Gen. John Abizaid, who heads the U.S. Central Command, told Congress. The strength of the insurgency, he added, is "about the same" as it was six months ago.
Tricky business. The generals in Baghdad believe the U.S. forces are fighting, in essence, two wars in Iraq. One is against former members of Saddam Hussein's regime, Sunni Baathists who see no future in an Iraq dominated by the American-backed Shiite majority. The other is against hard-line Islamic extremists, some, like Abu Musab Zarqawi, loosely aligned with al Qaeda. It is this group that uses suicide bombers, most often against Iraqis. The targets of the suicide bombers are increasingly Shiite and Kurdish civilians, suggesting to U.S. military officers that the extremists' goal is to foment civil war and derail accord on a new constitution later this year.
American officials do not believe that Sunni Baathists necessarily want civil war. Instead, says Lt. Gen. John Vines, who oversees day-to-day operations of all coalition forces in Iraq, their strategy is to pursue what amounts to a coup. Sunni insurgent leaders are trying to infiltrate the army while at the same time destabilizing the government through intimidation, assassinations, and roadside bomb attacks. Eventually, Vines argues, Baathists hope to use the military to return a Sunni strongman to power. "It's a classic Baathist strategy," Vines says.
While suicide bombers dominate the news, the numbers of foreign militants are small compared with ranks of Iraqi Sunni insurgents, estimated at perhaps 20,000. American military leaders say Sunni insurgents are a more potent force, but they also recognize the impact of the jihadists. "The suicide bombers are less dangerous militarily," says Col. Ben Hodges, the chief of operations for the Multinational Corps Iraq. "But their tactics are so spectacular they generate an effect out of proportion to what they do. If you do not stop the suicide bombing, the optimism of people in coalition countries starts to wane."
Despite the varying agenda and disparate tactics, most American grunts and even their commanders tend to call every fighter, foreign or domestic, a "terrorist" or a "muj" --short for mujahideen. Hodges says it is useful to keep the two groups of insurgents linked in the minds of Iraqis, as well. "The former regime wants to regain power," he says. "That insurgency requires popular support. But it makes it difficult for them to gain that support if they are seen as connected to the Islamic extremists who are slaughtering Iraqis."
Identifying who exactly is carrying out suicide attacks is a tricky business. There have been some 480 car bombings in Iraq since the handover of sovereignty a year ago, according to the Associated Press; the explosions killed at least 2,174 people and wounded 5,520. The military tries to piece together a picture of who is attacking Iraqis by forensic analysis of the dead bombers, interviews with captured jihadists, and confessions from failed suicide bombers. American officials say the largest share of the suicide bombers are Saudis and the second-biggest group are Syrians. Vines says the primary source of foreign fighters comes from recruiters who work mosques around the Middle East looking for young men eager for jihad against America. A senior intelligence official in Iraq told U.S. News that some of the bombers are recruited through mosques in isolated parts of Sudan or Yemen, where there is little access to satellite television. As a result, those recruits have no knowledge that ordinary Iraqis, not American soldiers, are increasingly the targets. "These individuals are disenchanted when we capture them," said the intelligence official. "They feel they have been lied to."
What's more, American military officials believe that many of the suicide bombers in Iraq did not initially volunteer to die; rather they believe they are signing up to fight a more traditional battle against an occupying power. "We have indicators that many don't come here intent on killing Iraqi civilians or themselves," says Vines. "They come here to participate in a jihad. Only late in the process are they made aware they are expected to kill themselves."
"Suiciding." Military leaders in Baghdad are pushing a new strategy to try to roll back the suicide campaign, according to senior officers. Trying to secure the border militarily, they say, is unlikely to be any more effective at stopping foreign fighters than U.S. border efforts to prevent illegal immigrants from Mexico. But American officials now are mounting diplomatic efforts to prevent bombers from ever getting to Syria. Military officials say many jihadis funnel through the Damascus international airport, since Arab men can enter Syria without a visa. American officials want U.S. allies in the region--Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia--to pressure Syria to impose visa restrictions.
The military has also begun stepping up operations in the border regions. In Operation Spear, near the Syrian border last week, marines discovered three car-bomb factories and said they killed 47 insurgents. A new mission this summer just to the north will aim to cut off the supply of suicide bombers directly. The operation, two military officials told U.S. News , aims to disrupt Zarqawi's operations and try to interfere with the flow of foreign fighters through Syria. "We are going to disrupt their ability to move," said one official, who was authorized to discuss the planning. "They will no longer have a free pass. . . . Hopefully, that will decrease the ability for suicide bombers to get to Baghdad." The idea, according to the officials, is to force a fight with Zarqawi's followers--a fight in the open desert, largely on the U.S. Army's terms. Military officials also hope that, if Iraqi forces begin providing security for residents in the area, they can stamp out popular support for the Baathist rebels. The operation will continue through the scheduled October referendum on a new constitution. "We will have that many fewer people suiciding at polling places," said another official.
The Iraqi government and American forces also need to find a way to encourage Iraqi citizens to report people they suspect of being potential bombers, Vines says. The Iraqi government has begun an information campaign that denounces the insurgency as terrorists who are slaughtering Iraqis. But Vines acknowledges that the average Iraqi remains intimidated, too afraid to risk going to the police or calling a tip line. "It is about intimidation and a lack of confidence the security forces can protect them because the insurgents are so ruthless," Vines says. "There [is a] corollary in the United States, in areas where gangs operate; they can intimidate witnesses, operate in plain view on the street, because they have intimidated residents who fear for their safety. There is an element of that now in Iraq."
Both political and military leaders believe it is essential to let the American public know they have a plan for defeating the insurgencies by bringing Sunnis into the democratic government and destroying the foreign fighters. Military officers say they cannot afford to lose public support for their efforts--or public confidence that they will succeed.
A YEAR OF CAR BOMBINGS
In Iraq, 479 car bombs have killed at least 2,174 people since the handover of sovereignty on June 28, 2004.
[key]
Single car bomb
Monthly total
Killed
Wounded
[labels]
June 28- July 2004
13 148 305
August
12 44 175
September
26 202 667
October
43 149 392
November
48 165 414
December
27 196 424
January 2005
43 237 420
February
30 252 339
March
36 98 281
April
65 173 568
May
77 317 896
June 1-23
60 193 639
The Associated Press count, through June 23, is based on reports gathered in Baghdad from police, military, and hospital officials.
Further reports from Iraq appear at www.usnews.com.
This story appears in the July 4, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.