U.S. commander in Iraq says insurgency homegrown

By Alistair Lyon
Reuters

KIRKUK, Iraq, Nov. 21 — The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq's northern province of Kirkuk said on Friday he had no evidence foreign Muslim militants were fighting alongside former Baathists he blamed for anti-U.S. attacks.

"I'm very uncomfortable about saying Islamists are involved," Colonel William Mayville told Reuters at a sprawling air base on the edge of Kirkuk.

"It's 90 percent former regime loyalists and 10 percent is a margin of error. I have no evidence of links to Islamists."

But Mayville, commander of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, said that view might change if it was confirmed that Thursday's bomb blast that killed five people outside a Kurdish party office in Kirkuk was the work of a suicide attacker.

"If it was a suicide bomber, it ain't Iraqi," he said. "Though maybe he was supported by Iraqis. It could be former regime loyalists working with al Qaeda."

Whoever drove the bomb-laden pickup truck was blown to shreds in the powerful explosion. Iraqi police at the scene said they were convinced it was a suicide bombing.

Mayville said he would wait for investigators to report, adding that it was possible the bomb had gone off prematurely or that the attacker had intended to park the vehicle and flee.

"These guys can miscalculate. In terms of execution, their field craft is not very impressive," he said of insurgents who have killed 181 U.S. soldiers since President George W. Bush declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1.

Mayville said he believed his forces were being attacked by people with grievances against the U.S.-led occupation, primarily Sunni Muslim tribesmen who had the most to lose as nascent democratic institutions emerge in postwar Iraq.

Loyalists of Saddam Hussein used money and intimidation to pursue their goals and enjoyed a limited regional support network in the deposed dictator's Sunni heartlands.

"But it's far more local than people realise. It's not this big global thing where once you find the golden thread it will all unravel," Mayville said. "You have angry locals, farmers who didn't get their crops subsidised, unemployed people."

He said Iraq was awash with arms and ammunition, while most Iraqis had some military training from army service. "It's complicated, but there is no sophisticated organisation."

U.S. officials have said hundreds of foreign militants have infiltrated into Iraq to fight American troops.

"We had some AI (Ansar al-Islam) in the spring and we killed them," said Mayville, referring to a group whose bases in Kurdish-held northern Iraq were destroyed during the U.S.-led invasion.

But in the last seven months, the only foreigners his men had captured were "less than half a dozen" Syrians, at least some of whom appeared to have tribal links in the Kirkuk area.

Mayville said he was obtaining better intelligence as Iraqis became more involved in counter-insurgency efforts in an ethnically and religiously mixed province where "everyone sees themselves as victims of Saddam Hussein."

The 173rd Airborne is carrying out six to eight operations a day as part of a recent U.S. crackdown on guerrillas.

"The calculation of the former regime loyalists is that we lack the capacity to ramp it up, or that we are reluctant to do so," Mayville said. "This is absolutely not the case."