WASHINGTON, June 25 (UPI) -- The attacks were predictable, but not their precision, coordination and strength. An enemy that had been perceived as audacious and fanatical but fragmented, turned out to be organized, cohesive and disciplined. Thursday's multiple operations -- which left some 100 dead, including three U.S. soldiers -- bore all the signs of a carefully planned action.
One Italian correspondent called it "robust and spectacular."
Sunni insurgents and other Islamic militants struck simultaneously in five locations -- the three main towns of the Sunni triangle, Baquba, Fallujah and Ramadi, plus the northern town of Mosul and Baghdad. The targets were U.S. forces and Iraqi police. In Mosul, there were car bombings of Iraqi police stations, a police academy and a hospital at dawn and street fighting went on throughout the day. One U.S. soldier was killed.
In Baquba, masked guerrillas attacked the police headquarters and occupied neighborhoods of the town. They distributed leaflets in which Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant leader with ties to al-Qaida, claimed responsibility for the attack. Two U.S. soldiers were killed in the fighting. Fighting faded out when U.S. combat planes dropped three 500-pound bombs on houses where several fighters had taken cover, according to reports from Iraq.
There was more street fighting in Ramadi and Fallujah. In the latter, a large guerrilla force attacked U.S. positions on the edge of the town. Fighting went on for two hours until Cobra helicopters and combat planes dislodged the attackers and a truce with Fallujans was agreed to.
In Baghdad, a suicide bomber blew himself up near an Iraqi army checkpoint killing himself, four soldiers and several civilians. Four police stations in the city were also attacked.
The simultaneous offensive six days before the handover of sovereignty on June 30 to the interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi had two political objectives. One was to cast doubt on the reality of the handover by showing that Allawi's survival depended on the presence of 140,000 U.S. troops. Without the intervention of the U.S. Air Force, things could have gone seriously wrong on Thursday. This dependence was common knowledge to officials. The insurgents staged a blockbuster to deliver the message to the whole nation. June 30 would be a sham: The Americans will still be in charge.
The second aim was to demonstrate that Sunni insurgents and other militant groups -- in this case Zarqawi's al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad (Monotheism and Holy War) organization -- could work together against the common enemy.
Furthermore, according to Baghdad sources, Iraqis are steeling themselves for another coordinated attack centered on Baghdad itself within the next 48 hours.
Security is the make or break challenge for Allawi. A serious breakdown in his first few weeks would lose his government any chance of gaining popular acceptance. Any prospect of bringing normal life to his war ravaged country would be gone and with it all prospects of economic recovery. As a result, diplomatic sources in Washington expect the Shiite politician who has long-established ties with the CIA will take tough measures to counter the violence. "Allawi will hit the ground running and wielding a big stick," predicted one Western source with knowledge of the Iraqi political situation.
He could be tempted to impose immediate martial law. That would certainly limit the violence and would boost the morale of the Iraqi armed forces who would have to enforce it. But martial law would scarcely be an auspicious start for the new government. And besides, observers say that Washington would attempt to dissuade him from doing so. Allawi could probably get away with introducing a curfew in trouble-prone areas, and perhaps also temporarily limit freedom of movement from one province to another.
On Thursday Allawi, contradicting the conventional wisdom, declared that he did not believe the day's attacks were coordinated. He said that what the U.S. military had perceived as a joint operation involving Zarqawi's terrorists was instead a series of "isolated incidents." The prime minister attributed the Mosul attack to an Islamic militant group called Ansar al-Islam, and the offensives in Ramadi and Baquba to Baathist guerrillas loyal to Saddam Hussein.
"We will confront these aggressors, and we will wipe them out," he was quoted as saying. "We think there will be an escalation (of violence) in the next few days, but the Iraqi people must close ranks and give us information about these criminals."
Allawi has clearly been reading the polls that say Iraqis want a strong leader. But the test of his political ingenuity will be how to translate the tough language into effective action without a heavy reliance on the 140,000 U.S. and 25,000 other foreign troops deployed in Iraq. His military forces consist of 60,000 men, according to a NATO official, many of them militia limited to serving in a specific area of Iraq.
Even before officially taking office he has differed sharply with the Bush administration by declaring that he wants to strengthen the army by drafting the militia into its ranks. The Americans were, and still are, against creating a strong Iraqi military and resurrecting Iraq's officer class that had helped sustain Saddam Hussein in power. Allawi believes a strong army is his only route to a security that does not rely on a prolonged foreign presence. He has written to NATO asking for help in training his troops and for other forms of support, but not for sending troops.
Circumstances have forced Allawi into an early gamble. Iraq's new army will once more become a key factor in the country's internal politics. Just like old times.
