The day insurgents began to lose their war against the occupation forces was when the violence unleashed by them began to be seen by ordinary Iraqis as directed against them, their homes and their children — when they found that they had more to fear from the “defenders” than from the invaders. This week showed signs that the war has been lost. It happened when two carloads of hooded insurgents shot their way down a busy shopping street in a part of Baghdad little visited by trouble. Several passersby were wounded before something totally unforeseeable happened. Furious shopkeepers produced their own weapons and shot back at the attackers three of whom were killed outright and others were wounded and captured.
This is not what the insurgents have come to expect. As their writ of terror seemed to run ever wider, they have become used to mounting murderous attacks and ambushes with little risk of being killed or captured. Yet suddenly in a peaceable street in Baghdad, they were confronted for the very first time by ordinary Iraqis sick to death with their remorseless aggression, intimidation and murder. The men who attacked the attackers are unlikely to be the last to strike back in this way.
And there has been further bad news for them. A secret training camp near Tikrit was attacked by Iraqi commandoes backed up with US reinforcements. In a bloody fire fight, at least eight government troops were slain but the rebels may have lost as many as 80 men killed with a significant number captured. That same day, Iraqi forces made a sweep through Mosul arresting 70 suspected insurgents. Twenty-four hours earlier, an ambush on a US convoy went badly wrong for the terrorists, when they were outflanked, apparently by men from the rear of the convoy. In that battle 26 terrorists died and more were captured and wounded.
If estimates of some 200,000 active insurgents are anywhere near the mark, such relatively high losses in such a short period of time, would still appear to be sustainable. However, though part of the insurgency is being lead by senior ex-officers from Saddam’s army, the majority of them are unlikely to have the discipline and cohesion of a formal military unit. This rapid series of defeats will dent morale which is also now being undermined in a more subtle manner. The insurgents appears to be leading them nowhere. They are unlikely to foil the creation of a government of democratically elected politicians. Their assaults on Iraqi police and army, especially recruits, has diminished but by no means stopped the flow of new men stepping forward.
It is also patently clear that intelligence officers are finally getting on top of the situation and know a great deal more about the terrorists. The Tikrit training camp attack is unlikely to be the last such success. Besides highly sophisticated signals intelligence, important information is now coming from ordinary Iraqis who want only peace and stability and are no longer prepared to be intimidated into silence. These quiet, decent and very angry people are in fact the most deadly enemy the terrorists face.
