Militants' challenge to new Iraq

By Gordon Corera
BBC News security correspondent

Blood is still being shed on the streets of Iraq

The recent wave of attacks in Iraq appears indicative of a new stage in the insurgency.

Attacks on police and army recruitment centres illustrate the way in which the insurgents are targeting the most critical function of the new government - its ability to provide security.

Attacks had increased in the run up the 30 January election but then appeared to have dropped back slightly - although they were still at about the same level as a year ago according to General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, with about 400 attacks a week.

This figure covers everything from major bomb blasts to smaller incidents with no casualties.

But a spate of attacks in the last two weeks indicates that we may be encountering a new spike closely related to political manoeuvrings in Baghdad, as insurgents try to destabilise the new government.

Click here for details of recent attacks

The sophistication and scale of some of the attacks appears to be increasing, including the use of tandem bombings, when one device is timed to go off soon after another as rescuers rush to the scene.

There have been military-style assaults, such as on the Abu Ghraib prison.

There also appears to be a continuing trend towards the targeting of ethnic communities, as witnessed by attacks on Kurds in Irbil and Talafar.

Creating Iraqi forces does not make them combat effective or capable of ending crime Anthony Cordesman Center for Strategic and International Studies

This is seemingly a sign of the way in which politics and violence are closely intertwined in Iraq.

While foreign fighters have often been the most visible of those involved in the insurgency due to their extreme methods, the bulk are thought to be former-Baathists and from the Sunni community.

The challenge now is to bring Sunnis, most of whom stayed away from the polls on 30 January, back into the political process.

Not about numbers

But so far the signs are not good.

The new government, with its Shia prime minister and Kurdish president, has struggled to draw in Sunni figures. Its talk of further de-Baathification may alienate Sunnis further and undermine the attempts to reach out to tribal leaders and other figures of influence, and to try to persuade them to stem the violence in favour of politics.

Along with the political tasks, the other key challenge for Iraq in trying to stymie the insurgency is developing its own security forces.

With a newly elected government at least partially in place, building up the ability of the Iraqi forces remains the key determinant of how long US, UK and other coalition forces stay in the country.

Police capability cannot be measured just in terms of numbers

But trying to establish the real strength of these Iraqi forces is not easy, not least because the raw numbers can be misleading.

On 6 April 2005, the Multinational Command in Iraq reported there were more than 150,000 men in the Iraqi military, security and police forces.

Recently, the Pentagon has had to lower its estimate for the number of Iraqi security forces - because the US had been counting police and soldiers who were technically on the payroll rather than those actually reporting for duty, and had been counting those who were not yet fully equipped.

One military planner admitted that tens of thousands still included might still actually be absent.

The repeated attacks on recruitment centres are clearly an attempt to undermine morale and recruitment as well as the ability of the security forces to combat the insurgency.

And, as Anthony Cordesman of the US think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies points out: "The bad news is that such head counts say nothing about combat power."

Militia danger

He estimates that most of the national guard is still too lightly equipped and trained to perform more than limited security missions.

In other words, even if the numbers are at last picking up, the capabilities are still a long way from matching those of the multi-national coalition, and allowing them to take greater responsibility.

"The key point as people rush to talk about early exit strategies, and timelines for US withdrawal, is that creating Iraqi forces does not make them combat-effective or capable of ending crime," wrote Mr Cordesman in a recent report.

The attacks may also increase pressure from the Kurdish and Shia communities to use their own well trained militias to put down the insurgency.

But the fear is that sending Kurdish troops into predominantly Sunni towns may only further fuel sectarian tension.

The election in January was a success. But the challenge was always going to be building on it, in order to stabilise the country in the long term and quell the insurgency. That challenge still remains.

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