In Splits, Reorganization and Realignments Within the Insurgency in Iraq, I argued that the internecine warfare within the Sunni insurgency was a good thing for coalition troops in the short term, but that sooner or later, one side will win.  This side — whichever it happens to be — will then turns its sights again on the so-called “occupiers” (i.e., the U.S.).  The insurgency doesn’t end, it merely morphs into something different than it is at the present.

The Middle East Times brings us a fascinating story of U.S. armed forces learning counterinsurgency, adapting and bringing innovation to the battlefield.  Things like this simply cannot be taught.  They have to be learned by troops at the front.  This is a lengthly article, but well worth your time (along with a few comments by me at the end).

Joseph Krauss
AFP
May 9, 2007

SAMARRA, Iraq —  On a dark street in the restive Iraqi town of Samarra a young man masked with a bandana and a baseball cap looks over his shoulder before pulling out an aerosol can and spray-painting across a wall.

A US Army officer standing behind him squints at the flowing Arabic script, then turns to a reporter traveling with his platoon.

“What does that say?” he asks.

The young vandal is an army translator whom the soldiers call Matthew – publishing his real name would put him in danger.

Matthew is charged with sowing seeds of strife between the town’s two main insurgent groups, Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Islamic Army of Iraq.

While Al Qaeda takes its inspiration from Osama Bin Laden’s international Islamist struggle, the Islamic Army is a coalition of Iraqi Islamists and Baathist supporters of the ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.

And while both groups are fighting to oust American forces from Iraq, there are also signs of growing conflict between them – a conflict that the local security forces and their US allies are keen to exploit.

The two groups have clashed on the Internet, with the more nationalist Islamic Army criticizing Al Qaeda for targeting Iraqi civilians and for its attempts to impose a harsh Saudi-inspired version of Islamic law.

Within Samarra, the Islamic Army enjoys wide popularity because of its single-minded focus on attacking US forces, while Al Qaeda intimidates local residents with spectacular bombings and coordinated attacks on police.

“Al Qaeda is based on Islamic extremism, while the others only focus on the occupiers,” said Colonel Jalil Al Dulaimi, who was police chief of the town north of Baghdad until he was killed in a coordinated attack on police headquarters this week. “But from our perspective, anyone who carries weapons is a terrorist. It doesn’t matter what faction they are a part of,” he added.

The commander of the US Army’s 82nd Airborne, 3rd Brigade, Charlie Company, based in Samarra, agrees that both groups pose a threat to security in the town but says that there are important differences.

The Islamic Army “is against coalition forces and ISF [Iraqi Security Forces] that work with the coalition,” says Captain Eugene “Buddy” Ferris. “Al Qaeda will blow up bombs in markets. Al Jaish Al Islami [the Islamic Army] won’t,” Ferris adds. “If reconciliation is ever going to occur then the Islamic Army is a group you could work with.”

Both insurgent groups tag the walls with slogans, threats, and boasts.

Al Qaeda’s street artists write: “The Samarra police are infidels, so we will bring you young men who love martyrdom,” and “We will destroy all those who cooperate with the Americans.”

The Islamic Army scribes write much the same thing, but threaten “the occupiers” instead of the local security forces and collaborators.

Matthew’s job is to redirect the artistic impulses of each group against the other. “It’s a way to destabilize their unification efforts,” says First Lieutenant Charlie Hodges, who leads one of the graffiti patrols.

Abu Tiba, the alleged leader of Al Qaeda in Samarra, is a frequent subject.

Hodges tells Matthew to write something really terrible about Abu Tiba, something that the Islamic Army of Iraq might say about him, something that will start a fight.

Matthew nods. Then in bright red paint he writes “Abu Tiba is a terrorist and those who work with him are terrorists.”

It seems somehow less menacing than the crossed out “USA” daubed next to it on the dusty brown wall.

Hodges does not read Arabic, so he asks a reporter traveling with the platoon to translate. Hodges is clearly disappointed. The black propaganda effort needs a lot more street cred than Matthew is giving him.

They climb back into the Humvees, drive around the corner, and try again.

Hodges sees writing on the wall, but he has to ask to make sure that it is insurgent sloganeering and not something else, such as a sign advertising someone’s vegetable stand.

He asks about one long sentence. Matthew tells him it is a Koranic verse. “Leave that one alone,” Hodges says.

Finally they find a message telling the occupiers to leave. Matthew scribbles over it. Then Hodges tries again. “This time, I want you to write that Al Qaeda has killed many in the Islamic Army,” he says.

“Al Qaeda has killed many from the Islamic Army,” Matthew writes.

Then the local Iraqi police step in, not to handcuff Matthew and charge him with vandalism, but to offer suggestions on how to spice up his prose.

Many of the police are well-practiced themselves, having sprayed messages like “Long live Iraq, Long live the First Battalion,” and “the First Battalion are Heroes” on the blast walls surrounding their bases and compounds.

An argument ensues between Matthew and the police – three men in mismatched uniforms with AK-47 assault rifles slung around their necks.

One cop finally suggests something that is greeted with enthusiasm. Matthew amends the message.

“Al Qaeda has killed many FIGHTERS from the Islamic Army.”

The paint is running out. Hodges tells Matthew that his writing is too large, and orders everyone back to the vehicles.

The heavily armed US soldiers who had fanned out along the darkened street return to the Humvees, the police climb into their pickup trucks, and under the cover of darkness and an all-night curfew they head back to base.

Again, the use of graffiti to incite conflict between competing insurgents is adaptive, innovative, and apparently effective.  It is not learned at Quantico or Leavenworth.  It is learned in the school of the hard knocks.  The U.S. troops are the best in the world, but there are two cautionary comments that are appropriate at this point.

First, troops (most of the time) are given some basic instruction in Arabic as part of the training for deployment.  This training is based on the philosophy of phonetics (i.e., sounds, proper pronunciation).  With limited time, money and resources, this is the best approach and sure to yield the best possible results in the short term.  But proper planning for the long war needs to take the next step.  Immersion in Arabic (both spoken and written) needs to be part of the planning for not only officers, but enlisted men as well.  A better knowledge of Arabic would cause a remarkable step change in warfighting capabilities in Iraq (and throughout the Middle East) given the nature of COIN.

Second, we must remember that the counterinsurgency will morph upon the potential demise of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).  It doesn’t end, and in fact it might become more complicated given the potential support of the broader population if this revised and restructured insurgency no longer engages in acts of brutality towards the population.

In Sistani, Maliki and Sadr Versus the U.S., I made the case that Maliki was in the pocket of both Sistani and Sadr, and had effectively become nothing more than a sectarian political puppet (while also pointing out that all three were enemies of U.S. interests).  The degree to which this is true is becoming increasingly manifested with time.  Now from MEMRI we learn that “An investigative article by journalist Mahdi Mustafa, published March 31, 2007 in the Egyptian government weekly Al-Ahram Al-Arabi, featured photographs of documents indicating that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki has ties with Muqtada Al-Sadr and with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.”  The following is a summary of one important document.

Al-Maliki Calls to Withdraw Iranian Revolutionary Guards Commanders from the Iraqi Front in Order to Protect Them

The first document, labeled “secret, personal, and urgent,” is a January 2007 letter from Al-Maliki’s office to the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, with copies to the presidency of the [Shi’ite party] Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and to the Al-Shahid Al-Sadr organization.” [2] In it, Al-Maliki requests that the commanders of the Mahdi Army, who have ties with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, be pulled off the Iraqi frontlines, in order to protect them from being arrested or killed. The following is a translation of the document:

“Secret, Personal and Urgent

“Based on a phone conversation with Sayyid Muqtada Al-Sadr and [after] consulting with [Iraq’s National Security Advisor] Dr. Muwafaq Al-Rubai’i, in order to preserve our great achievements and in light of what the present circumstances demand, we ask to temporarily conceal the commanders of the Mahdi Army, who are connected to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, [and to remove them] from the front line [of battle] in order to protect them from being arrested or killed by the American forces. [The names of the commanders] are listed below. It would be best to send them to Iran for the time being, until the crisis passes.

“In addition, [we ask] to send the commanders from the second line [of battle] to the southern regions, since we know that intensive efforts are underway to persuade the Americans to leave the situation [there] as it is. All administrative and security arrangements for the transportation of these commanders have [already] been made.

“We ask you to implement [these orders] and report to us.

“[Signed,] Nouri Al-Maliki, Prime Minster [of Iraq]

“[List of commanders]…

“Cc:

“The Iranian Embassy [in] Baghdad,

“The presidency of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq,

“The office of Al-Shahid Al-Sadr.”

Maliki has worked directly against not only U.S. interests in Iraq, but Iraqi security as well.  The Sunni minority has been reluctant to enjoin the political process simply because they know that the government is riddled with sectarian power plays.  Not surprisingly, they are threatening to withdraw, thus seriously weakening the government and ending what little reconciliation effort there has been thus far (what little effort that has been expended has been on the part of the Sunnis).

Iraq’s top Sunni official has set a deadline of next week for pulling his entire bloc out of the government — a potentially devastating blow to reconciliation efforts within Iraq. He also said he turned down an offer by President Bush to visit Washington until he can count more fully on U.S. help.

Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi made his comments in an interview with CNN. He said if key amendments to the Iraq Constitution are not made by May 15, he will step down and pull his 44 Sunni politicians out of the 275-member Iraqi parliament.

“If the constitution is not subject to major changes, definitely, I will tell my constituency frankly that I have made the mistake of my life when I put my endorsement to that national accord,” he said.

I had previously said that “Maliki’s government is dead, and the real question is how clever the military and political thinkers are and how quickly they will figure it out.”  The U.S. has so far refused to support replacement of Maliki.

It has been reported earlier that the Kurdish parties and the Fadhila party had not agreed to join the Allawi bloc, but the withdrawal of support from the Tawafuq Front would set Allawi’s efforts back to square one. The alliance of Allawi’s list and the Tawafuq Front, the largest Sunni bloc in the Parliament, was expected to be the core of the new opposition front.

The admission of a lack of American support for the efforts, if proven to be true, would also dispel suspicions that the US had decided to back Allawi’s attempt to bring down the Maliki government and replace it with a “strongman

From Adnkronos International:

It’s been a bad week for the al-Qaeda franchise in Iraq. While initial reports that its leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri or allied Islamist State of Iraq chief Abu Omar al-Baghdadi had been killed were proven false, it did lose one top man, ‘information minister’ Muharib Abdulatif al-Juburi. But far more damaging in the growing isolation of al-Qaeda has been the birth of a new alliance between part of Sunni insurgent groups Ansar al-Sunna and the Islamic Army calling itself the Jihad and Reform Front.

The Ansar al-Sunna in a statement posted Friday to the internet made a scathing criticism of the new born front which comprises three groups, the Islamic Army the Mujahadeen and a breakaway cell of al-Sunna.

The declared cause of their anger is that inside the new formation is a group calling itself “Ansar al-Sunna Sharia Committee”.

“We write this letter on your first day of activity” said a statement from Ansar al-Sunna’s leadership “because we see that you have committed a horrible mistake. You say that among the founder members of the Front there is a so-called Sharia Committee of Ansar al-Sunna”.

“There is no such thing as a Sharia committee inside al-Sunna” the group complained. “What happened is that two leaders of our group, Abi Sajad e Abu Hind, who formed a new outfit with their name”

The damaging split within Ansar al-Sunna was first revealed by the Al Jazeera network two weeks ago, to the amazement of Islamist cybernauts who, not having found any trace of the news on Islamist forums asked whether the report was true or whether the Qatar based broacaster had got it wrong. Only the official launch of the new Jihad and Reform Front on Thursday provided proof of what was really happening inside the Sunni insurgent formation.

Though not explicitly stated in the foundation document posted to Islamist internet sites on Thursday, the group has a clear anti al-Qaeda role, challenging the principles and strategies of its armed struggle.

“The group’s aim is to continue the resistance in Iraq and throw out the occupiers but at the same time to restate that Jihadi operations will strike the occupiers and their agents and not innocent civilians whom we should protect,” reads the statement.

The new cartel goes on to ask the Islamist militiamen to think seriously about the consequences of their attacks before carrying them.

These words, and the final part of the document which refers to an interpretation of Sharia law which can change according to the requirements of a military strategy, appear to be a pointed criticism of al-Qaeda in Iraq which is increasingly isolated within the insurgency.

This report by AKI leaves some things in need of clarification.  The loss of senior al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) leadership was possibly at the hands of competing insurgent groups, but is has been speculated that the loss in AQI leadership was at the hands of insurgents who are now working with coalition forces.  This seems somewhat dubious, but be that as it may, this alignment with U.S. interests (if it exists) must be seen as temporary and tenuous.  In Counterinsurgency Paradigm Shift in Iraq, I said “The much-heralded tribal split with al Qaeda is a positive sign in the Anbar Province, but it must be remembered that even if AQI loses in this showdown, the insurgency is not defeated.  One side of the insurgency has merely gained supremacy over the other.”

Foreign fighters are still a significant influence in Iraq, especially concerning suicide bombers (crossing the Syrian border) and weapons supply (crossing the Iranian border).   It is certainly the case that should AQI diminish or even disappear from Iraq, the results will be positive.  But in the total absence of AQI and Ansar al Sunna (AAS), there would still be an insurgency among the hard line Baathists and Fedayeen Saddam (although it is now becoming apparent that the Baathists, as a political party, are beginning the process of self-destruction).  This reorganized insurgency will be opposed to the U.S. presence in Iraq, and in fact, the real purpose of the split in the current insurgency is made clear in their vision for the future.

The Islamic Army in Iraq, the Mujahideen Army and Ansar Al Sunna (Shariah Council), an offshoot of the established Ansar Al Sunna group, said they would avoid spilling civilian blood, according to an Internet statement.

“The Jihad and Reform Front … pledges to continue with the duty of jihad in Iraq until all objectives, including the complete withdrawal of the occupiers in all their guises and the establishment of God’s religion …. are met,

In another reminder of the real nature of the enemy, a plot was uncovered where bombs had been pre-deployed inside a girl’s school.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — American soldiers discovered a girls school being built north of Baghdad had become an explosives-rigged “death trap,” the U.S. military said Thursday.

The plot at the Huda Girls’ school in Tarmiya was a “sophisticated and premeditated attempt to inflict massive casualties on our most innocent victims,” military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said.

The military suspects the plot was the work of al Qaeda, because of its nature and sophistication, Caldwell said in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

The plot was uncovered Saturday, when troopers in the Salaheddin province found detonating wire across the street from the school. They picked up the wire and followed its trail, which led to the school. Once inside, they found an explosive-filled propane tank buried beneath the floor. There were artillery shells built into the ceiling and floor, and another propane tank was found, the military said.

The wire was concealed with mortar and concrete, and the propane tanks had been covered with brick and hidden underneath the floor, according to a military statement. Soldiers were able to clear the building.

“It was truly just an incredibly ugly, dirty kind of vicious killing that would have gone on here,” Caldwell said.

Iraqi contractors were responsible for building the school, which was intended to bring in hundreds of girls.

“Given the care and work put into emplacing this IED, it is likely it had been planned for a long time” and it is thought that “the IED was not intended to be set off until the building was occupied,” the military said.

We may speculate that since the planning was so detailed and (likely) time consuming, the Iraqi contractor (or more specifically, at least some of the workers) knew beforehand that this plot existed.  The possibilities are that the insurgency infiltrated the contractor, or that threats forced the silence of the balance of the uninvolved workers.

This is not atypical of the insurgency.  They have targeted children in the past, and there has been in radical Islam an ongoing war against education and those who conduct it.  See my article Radical Islam’s War on Education.

Watch Interview (YouTube)

In another reminder of the real nature of the enemy, a plot was uncovered where bombs had been pre-deployed inside a girl’s school.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — American soldiers discovered a girls school being built north of Baghdad had become an explosives-rigged “death trap,” the U.S. military said Thursday.

The plot at the Huda Girls’ school in Tarmiya was a “sophisticated and premeditated attempt to inflict massive casualties on our most innocent victims,” military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said.

The military suspects the plot was the work of al Qaeda, because of its nature and sophistication, Caldwell said in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

The plot was uncovered Saturday, when troopers in the Salaheddin province found detonating wire across the street from the school. They picked up the wire and followed its trail, which led to the school. Once inside, they found an explosive-filled propane tank buried beneath the floor. There were artillery shells built into the ceiling and floor, and another propane tank was found, the military said.

The wire was concealed with mortar and concrete, and the propane tanks had been covered with brick and hidden underneath the floor, according to a military statement. Soldiers were able to clear the building.

“It was truly just an incredibly ugly, dirty kind of vicious killing that would have gone on here,” Caldwell said.

Iraqi contractors were responsible for building the school, which was intended to bring in hundreds of girls.

“Given the care and work put into emplacing this IED, it is likely it had been planned for a long time” and it is thought that “the IED was not intended to be set off until the building was occupied,” the military said.

We may speculate that since the planning was so detailed and (likely) time consuming, the Iraqi contractor (or more specifically, at least some of the workers) knew beforehand that this plot existed.  The possibilities are that the insurgency infiltrated the contractor, or that threats forced the silence of the balance of the uninvolved workers.

This is not atypical of the insurgency.  They have targeted children in the past, and there has been in radical Islam an ongoing war against education and those who conduct it.  See my article Radical Islam’s War on Education.

Watch Interview (YouTube)

Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s office is responsible for the removal of high level Iraqi security forces and police for being too efficient in the engagement of the Mahdi army.

A department of the Iraqi prime minister’s office is playing a leading role in the arrest and removal of senior Iraqi army and national police officers, some of whom had apparently worked too aggressively to combat violent Shiite militias, according to U.S. military officials in Baghdad.

Since March 1, at least 16 army and national police commanders have been fired, detained or pressured to resign; at least nine of them are Sunnis, according to U.S. military documents shown to The Washington Post …

“Their only crimes or offenses were they were successful” against the Mahdi Army, a powerful Shiite militia, said Brig. Gen. Dana J.H. Pittard, commanding general of the Iraq Assistance Group, which works with Iraqi security forces. “I’m tired of seeing good Iraqi officers having to look over their shoulders when they’re trying to do the right thing.”

This is part of a larger whole in which what has been called a ‘shadow cabinet’ has been operating based on a sectarian agenda.

Iraq’s prime minister has created an entity within his government that U.S. and Iraqi military officials say is being used as a smokescreen to hide an extreme Shiite agenda that is worsening the country’s sectarian divide.

The Office of the Commander in Chief has the power to overrule other government ministries, according to U.S. military and intelligence sources.

Those sources say the 24-member office is abusing its power, increasingly overriding decisions made by the Iraqi Ministries of Defense and Interior and potentially undermining the entire U.S. effort in Iraq.

Predictions and reporting of the splintering of the Shi’ite militias and leadership are exaggerated.  Sadr has not stood down on the rhetoric, calling Bush a “leader of evil.”  The U.S. and the Sadrist militias have also been recently engaged in combat action.  Sadr, in absentia, is still able to field large numbers of people to chant slogans against the U.S.  But perhaps even more powerful than Sadr is Sistani, and his power has been wielded against U.S. interests in Iraq.

Ali Sistani established his nationalist credentials early on. As the invading American forces neared Najaf on March 25, 2003, he issued a religious decree requiring all Muslims to resist the invading “infidel

Due in part to a failure to listen adequately to Eric Shinseki and Anthony Zinni regarding Iraq war planning, along with premature cessation of conventional operations (bypassing large urban areas leading to costly MOUT later in the war) and halting invocation or implementation of counterinsurgency TTPs, the Iraq campaign has been problematic.  In Concerning the Failure of Counterinsurgency in Iraq, I said “we were utterly unprepared for the toll that IEDs would take on U.S. troops, and even after it became obvious that this was a leading tactic of the enemy, we reacted with lethargy.”  IEDs became one of the two most effective weapons of the insurgents, specifically because of two reasons: their cheap and ready availability, and the fact that they are a stand-off weapon, something unthinkable for the insurgents 40 or 50 years ago.

Sometimes the most effective countermeasure to the tactics of the insurgency is human manpower.  The Government Accounting Office tells us just how this is relevant for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Unattended Iraqi ammunition depots provide the majority of explosives used by insurgents to attack U.S. and coalition troops with improvised explosive devices, according to a Government Accountability Office report released April 27.

“There’s an unknown number of sites that remain unsecured today,

There appears to be a paradigm shift in the counterinsurgency strategy being employed by the U.S. forces in Iraq.  This shift goes further than the changes associated with the security plan of which many observers are aware (e.g., deployment out of Forward Operating Bases into the cities to combat operation posts).  The changes point to a fundamental shift in the way the U.S. sees the battle for Iraq.

The schema until now seems to have been focused on the notion that the Iraqi people, separated from the rogue elements in their midst, long for freedom and self-determination, with al Qaeda in Iraq, Ansar al Sunna, and foreign suicide bombers standing in their way.  Defeating the insurgents has primarily been seen as defeating AQI.  One need only to go back through the Multi-National force press releases to see how many references there are to AQI.  But it is becoming increasingly clear that this schema bears little resemblance to the realities on the ground in Iraq.

With AQI and AAS standing only at several thousand, for a country the size of Iraq, there simply aren’t enough to pull off destabilization of a country.  There are more gang members in most medium size American cities than there are al Qaeda in Iraq. Until recently, the Sunni militants were seen in the role of assisting AQI, but the view seems to be changing to one of the disaffected Sunnis (i.e., Fedayeen Saddam, former Iraq security police, former senior Iraqi army leadership and hard line Baathists) being primarily in the lead with AQI and AAS being secondary in their affect and power.

There are reports that the security situation in Ramadi might be improving.  Once again, AQI is mentioned as of paramount importance regarding the security situation in Ramadi, but the NewsDay article ends with an interesting admission concerning the Anbar province and other areas of Iraq.

The U.S. military has struggled for nearly four years to secure this city, which had become a magnet for Sunni insurgents and a lawless haven for al-Qaida militants.

Now – slowly, and in halting steps – something appears to have given way. At least by its own tortured standards, Ramadi seems to be calming.

“It’s much safer than it was, but is it perfectly safe? No,” said Army Col. John Charlton, the commander responsible for the city 75 miles west of the capital.

“As long as al-Qaida is operating in Iraq, it’s not going to be.”

Ramadi offers a snapshot of the Pentagon’s latest strategies to quell violence in Iraq. Neighborhoods are being walled off to keep insurgents out. Military units are moving off major bases and setting up smaller U.S.-Iraqi posts in violent areas downtown.

Alliances are being struck with influential Sunni sheiks once arrayed against the Americans, and tribal leaders have provided people for a police force …

While the U.S. military claims progress, Ramadi remains a place where fear shadows even commonplace acts. Shoppers and school children carry white flags in desperate attempts to show neutrality.

“A lot of people are still scared in their hearts,” said Mahmoud, an elderly man who gave only his first name.

“Jihadists were all around … killing everybody. They could come back anytime.”

In large part to allay those fears, Charlton said 70 percent of U.S. forces live downtown.

“We used to go on patrols and get shot at, then go back to base, eat chow and do it all again,” said Army 1st Sgt. Michael Jusino, also in Ramadi two years ago.

“But we realized … you have to go into the city and stay there.” Suicide bombers still strike, the most recent one on April 6.

But troops show off graphs indicating a recent turnaround in violence. Compared to 20 to 30 daily attacks a year ago, now there often are just a few bursts of small-arms fire in a day.

Marine Brig. Gen. Charles Gurganus, commander of U.S. ground forces in Anbar, said insurgents who fled Ramadi are still in Anbar.

“They’re going to places we aren’t. They regroup … but wherever they go, we’re going to go with them.”

As I have discussed before, Fallujah is currently a hot spot of insurgent activity, so some of the Sunni fighters have fled from Ramadi only a few kilometers East.  Another hot spot is Baqouba, in the Diyala Province.

They maneuver in squads, like the U.S. infantrymen they try to kill. One squad fires furiously so another can attack from a better position. They operate in bad weather, knowing U.S. helicopters and surveillance drones are grounded. Some carry GPS receivers so mortar teams can calculate the coordinates of U.S. armored vehicles. They kidnap and massacre police officers.

The Sunni guerrillas and extremists who now dominate this city demonstrate a sophistication and lethality born of years of confronting U.S. military tactics. While the “surge” plays out in Baghdad just 35 miles to the south, Baqouba has emerged as a magnet for insurgents from around the country and, perhaps, the next major headache for the U.S. military.

Some insurgents have moved into Baqouba to escape the escalation in Baghdad. But the city has been attracting insurgents for years, and particularly after U.S. officials in Baghdad proclaimed it and surrounding Diyala province relatively pacified more than a year ago and drew down their troop presence.

When 70 insurgents broke out of a Mosul jail last month, for example, escapees from Chad, Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan were apprehended here, the Iraqi police said. And Sunni fighters continue to heed calls by insurgent leaders to converge here.

It is impossible to say how many insurgents there are in Baqouba now. Some military officials put the number around at least 2,000, a nasty stew that includes former members of Saddam Hussein’s army and paramilitary forces, the Fedayeen; angry and impoverished Sunni men; criminal gangs; Wahhabi Islamists; and foreigners. That is similar to the number of insurgents in Fallujah in 2004, before a bloody Marine offensive to retake the city, said Lt. Col. Scott Jackson, deputy head of the provincial reconstruction team in Diyala, who fought in Fallujah.

As the insurgent ranks have swelled, attacks on U.S. troops have soared. The 5,000-strong brigade that patrols Diyala province has had 44 soldiers killed in five months, more than twice the number who died in the preceding year.

This account more clearly summarizes the current state of the insurgency than merely calling them al Qaeda.  U.S. forces are reponding to the increased insurgent activity in Baqouba, even if senior leadership still points to AQI as being the primary enemy.  “Soldiers with 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment continued their systematic attack on terrorist forces in Baqouba with another clearing operation in the city April 10.  In this latest effort, Soldiers of 5-20 Inf. Regt., 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, from Fort Lewis, Wash., spent three days clearing the neighborhood of Buhriz, described by Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Bruce Antonia as “al-Qaida’s battleground.”

The much-heralded tribal split with al Qaeda is a positive sign in the Anbar Province, but it must be remembered that even if AQI loses in this showdown, the insurgency is not defeated.  One side of the insurgency has merely gained supremacy over the other.  This modified schema of seeing the insurgency as being primarily borne on the shoulders of disaffected Sunnis is supported in this informative and interesting report by Michael Totten from Kirkuk (Patrick Laswell has an equally interesting report from Kirkuk).

“Most, if not all, the terrorists are the old Baath Party members,

From the Daily Mail:

The youngest of the Iranian hostages has been accused of embarrassing the Royal Navy after pictures emerged of him apparently poking fun at their ordeal while drunk.

Arthur Batchelor – who has already been condemned for selling his story – and the 14 other captured sailors and Marines have been on two weeks’ compassionate leave following their ordeal last month.

Instead of quietly recuperating, however, 20-year-old Batchelor was caught on camera at a nightclub in Plymouth staging a tasteless re-enactment of his treatment.

The Operator Mechanic said he had cried himself to sleep after his Iranian captors likened him to Mr Bean and stole his iPod.

But pictures taken by the club DJ show him blindfolded with a tea-towel and laughing as a friend pretends to hold him at gunpoint.

Another shows the 5ft 2in tall crewman pulling a face while a reveller holds a toy rifle under his chin.

In a third, he is seen wearing a nightie while he poses with three girls.

From Power Line (h/t Roger Barnett), we read this inspiring story of heroism that serves as a contrast to the pusillanimous behavior described above:

The recent episode of the British hostages in Iran brought to mind the late Adm. James Stockdale. He spent seven years in Hoa Lo Prison, a.k.a. the Hanoi Hilton. For his valor and leadership while captive he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Though tortured 15 times, though kept in leg irons for two years, though held in solitary confinement for four, he would not aid his captors. Refusing to be paraded in front of foreign journalists, he slashed his scalp with a razor blade and beat his face with a wooden stool, rendering impossible that disgrace. Few are capable of such feats of will — Admiral Stockdale was a student of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus — and we could probably not have expected such bravery from the British sailors and marines. Yet we must remember the standards our greatest warriors have set if we are to prevail in this and coming wars.

Extending Stockdale’s story, The New York Sun gives us this:

On the morning of the day he died, it has been said of a few individuals over the years, he was the greatest man alive, and among Americans this could well be said of Admiral James Stockdale, who died Tuesday at the age of 81. He won the Medal of Honor for his leadership of the American prisoners of war held in Hanoi during the years of the Vietnam War, and his death, coming as America is in the early years of a new war, offers much about which to think.

The Medal of Honor, which is impossible to alloy, is usually awarded for acts that disclose the courage of an individual in a few split seconds – in the time it takes to save the lives of one’s comrades by throwing oneself on a grenade, say, or by leaping from a foxhole to attack an enemy machine-gun nest. Such medals are worth no less for the fact that the character that won them was glimpsed in an instant.

Admiral Stockdale’s courage, however, was disclosed over and over again, and was sustained for the entire span of the seven and a half years he spent in the infamous prison known as the Hanoi Hilton and other dungeons, where he was held four years in solitary confinement and two with his legs clamped in irons. He was a prisoner of one of the most savage enemies America has ever fought. It was Stockdale who invented the code prisoners used to communicate, and he told other prisoners, as Los Angeles Times put it, to defy their captors at every turn and never act like helpless captives.

The Medal of Honor citation refers to Stockdale’s efforts at “self-disfiguration to dissuade his captors from exploiting him for propaganda purposes.” In plain English, what he did was use a wooden stool to beat his face to a pulp so he couldn’t be used in an enemy film. One reason that he is so admired by his fellow prisoners is that, when he inflicted what the citation calls “a near-mortal wound to his person in order to convince his captors of his willingness to give up his life rather than capitulate,” the enemy backed off in its torture and harassment of other Americans it was holding.

May God grant to America men like Stockdale.

In an odd occurrence today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates argued that diplomatic efforts to resolve the nuclear standoff with Iran are working and should be given a chance to succeed.  This pronouncement comes on the heels of an announcement by General Peter Pace that Iran is supplying weapons and other support to insurgents in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Iran is shipping arms and explosives to Afghanistan, in addition to providing deadly armor-piercing bombs covertly to Iraqi insurgents, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said yesterday.

“It is not as clear in Afghanistan which Iranian entity is responsible, but we have intercepted weapons in Afghanistan headed for the Taliban that were made in Iran,” Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace told reporters at a breakfast meeting …

A U.S. official with access to intelligence data confirmed that there are new signs of Iranian arms shipments to the Taliban in recent months. “We are concerned about Quds Force links to the Taliban, and there is reason to believe that shipments of rockets, mortars, small arms and other weapons are making their way from Iran to Afghanistan,” the official said …

“We know that there are munitions that were made in Iran that are in Iraq and in Afghanistan,” Gen. Pace said. He noted that members of the Quds Force are part of the IRGC, which is under the direction of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei …

There are also reports Iran is stepping up support for Iraqi insurgents. Army Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of Multinational Corps-Iraq, told reporters Friday there are new signs that Iran is “not only providing support to Shia groups, but also Sunni insurgent groups.”

Just why Gates feels that whatever bargains are struck with Iran can be relied upon when Iran has denied a thousand times that they are involved in Iraq is not manifestly obvious.  But a far better indicator of the danger that lies ahead may be found the in reaction of Iran’s neighbors.  There appears to be a mad rush throughout the Middle East to go nuclear.

Two years ago, the leaders of Saudi Arabia told international atomic regulators that they could foresee no need for the kingdom to develop nuclear power. Today, they are scrambling to hire atomic contractors, buy nuclear hardware and build support for a regional system of reactors.

So, too, Turkey is preparing for its first atomic plant. And Egypt has announced plans to build one on its Mediterranean coast. In all, roughly a dozen states in the region have recently turned to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna for help in starting their own nuclear programs. While interest in nuclear energy is rising globally, it is unusually strong in the Middle East.

“The rules have changed,