Iraq's Interior Minister Faleh Hassan Al-Naqib admitted for the first time at a press conference in Baghdad that the interim government and the US led coalition faced a broad insurgency covering the Sunni heartland of the country.
Naqib made a number of other major revelations:
"Contrary to previous assumptions that the insurgency consisted of dozens of disparate groups, it is a unified movement with a large measure of central command and control.
"The overwhelming majority of the insurgents are Iraqis, not foreign fighters. In fact, non-Iraqi Arab fighters represent between four and six percent of the combatants. In Fallujah of the 1,200 insurgents killed, only 24 were non-Iraqis.
"The remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime play a much bigger role in the insurgency than previously assumed.
"The insurgency has developed some form of political leadership, operating from Syria. Naqib named the principal coordinator as Muhammad Yunus Ahmad, a former Baath party security official.
"Saddam's regime had prepared special units for waging urban guerrilla warfare long before the US-led invasion in 2003. Those units have now been activated throughout the Sunni Triangle."
The insurgents aim at dispersing American firepower in what looks like a dress rehearsal for fomenting enough chaos to disrupt the elections scheduled for January 2005.
A series of apparently well-orchestrated and simultaneous attacks in Baiji, Baqubah, Ramadi, Haditha, Tikrit, and other localities showed that the insurgents have switched to hit-and-run tactics, abandoning their previous strategy of seizing and holding terrain that could be turned into safe havens.
articleNaqib made a number of other major revelations:
"Contrary to previous assumptions that the insurgency consisted of dozens of disparate groups, it is a unified movement with a large measure of central command and control.
"The overwhelming majority of the insurgents are Iraqis, not foreign fighters. In fact, non-Iraqi Arab fighters represent between four and six percent of the combatants. In Fallujah of the 1,200 insurgents killed, only 24 were non-Iraqis.
"The remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime play a much bigger role in the insurgency than previously assumed.
"The insurgency has developed some form of political leadership, operating from Syria. Naqib named the principal coordinator as Muhammad Yunus Ahmad, a former Baath party security official.
"Saddam's regime had prepared special units for waging urban guerrilla warfare long before the US-led invasion in 2003. Those units have now been activated throughout the Sunni Triangle."
The insurgents aim at dispersing American firepower in what looks like a dress rehearsal for fomenting enough chaos to disrupt the elections scheduled for January 2005.
A series of apparently well-orchestrated and simultaneous attacks in Baiji, Baqubah, Ramadi, Haditha, Tikrit, and other localities showed that the insurgents have switched to hit-and-run tactics, abandoning their previous strategy of seizing and holding terrain that could be turned into safe havens.
I wonder how they'll be spinning those particulars (which people with any connection to reality have been reporting for many, many months). Perhaps the dismissal of the Interior Minister will give them a launching pad.
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