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Sunni Insurgents Launch Assassination Campaign

It began with the September 15 killing of Abu Risha, a Sunni tribal leader in Iraq's Anbar province who had been cooperating with U.S. troops against Al Qaeda in Iraq, and who had met with President Bush only a week before his death. Since then, Sunni insurgents have continued with targeted killings of other tribal leaders, police chiefs, police officers, and other Interior Ministry officials. The New York Times reports that in the last 48 hours alone, insurgents have staged 10 attacks, killing eight and wounding about 30 others. From the Times:

The latest outbreak of violence closely follows the concerted efforts of President Bush and Gen. David H. Petraeus to portray the American troop “surge” as having succeeded in bringing more stability to Iraq. Iraqi officials said Tuesday that the attacks might well have been intended to blunt that message.

“The main reason behind all these attacks are the signs of improvement of the security situation mentioned in the Crocker-Petraeus report,” said Tahseen al-Sheikhly, the Iraqi spokesman for the security plan, in a reference to the recent Congressional testimony of General Petraeus and the American ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker. “The terrorist groups are just trying to say to the world that the report did not reflect the reality of the security situation in Iraq.”

Mr. Sheikhly played down the recent violence, though, saying the groups were seeking publicity to compensate for their inability to conduct major offensive operations, which have been sharply curtailed by the surge.

Indeed, the enormous car and truck bombs that plagued Baghdad for so long have been absent in recent weeks. But the string of attacks this week served as a reminder of the insurgency’s persistence, particularly in areas outside of Baghdad and its environs.

In addition to the attack on Monday in Diyala, insurgents struck in Basra, Mosul, Kirkuk, Falluja, Kut and Samarra. The strikes occurred primarily in mixed areas of Shiites and Sunni Arabs or in exclusively Sunni Arab areas where there is fighting between Sunni Arab tribes and extremist groups like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Each attack on its own would hardly be notable, since almost every day in Iraq brings a few roadside bombings and shootings, but so many attacks singling out similar victims suggest a more concerted campaign.

Posted by Bruce Falconer on 09/26/07 at 1:04 PM | E-mail | Print | Digg | de.licio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Yahoo! MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Netscape | Google |