Iraqi resistance begins to crack after elections

The Iraqi resistance has peaked and is 'turning in on itself', according to recent intelligence reports from Baghdad received by Middle Eastern intelligence agencies.
The reports are the most optimistic for several months and reflect analysts' sense that recent elections in Iraq marked a 'quantum shift'. They will boost the government in the run-up to the expected general election in May.

Though the reports predict that violence against coalition troops and local forces is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, at least two Middle Eastern intelligence agencies believe that recent 'backchannel' initiatives aimed at persuading Sunni Muslim tribes in western Iraq to cease their resistance are meeting with some success.

The talks are aimed at driving a wedge between so-called Iraqi nationalist elements of the resistance and radical Islamic militants.

'We know there is a considerable degree of animosity between the various groups that comprise the resistance and that is an opportunity for us,' said one security source.

One foreign intelligence report cites a recent incident in which members of the al-Dulaimi tribe, previously known for their antagonism to the coalition and the new government in Iraq, shot dead a number of Islamic militants from outside Iraq, whom they believed responsible for killing a senior al-Dulaimi sheikh. Although the sheikh was a senior police official and thus a 'collaborator', tribal elders felt that his death had to be avenged. The killings show tribal allegiances will triumph over any supposed 'international jihad', the report said.

The number of attacks on coalition forces has fallen since the election in January while strikes on the new Iraqi police forces and army have continued. Analysts say that this shows that locals - who favoured international targets - are abandoning violent tactics for the moment while the 'jihadis' - previously responsible for most of the attacks on locals - are still active.

Last week militants killed 15 Iraqi soldiers, assassinated a senior commander and murdered five women in an ambush.

Intelligence officials believe that ordinary Iraqis are increasingly turning against the militants.

Last week shopkeepers and residents killed three hooded men who began shooting at passers-by in Baghdad's southern Doura neighbourhood. Hours before the gunfight gunmen in the same quarter, which is ethnically mixed, killed a policeman as he drove to work, police said.

According to Iraqi authorities, townsmen in Wihda, 25 miles south of Baghdad, killed seven of a group of militants thought to be planning a raid in the town earlier this month.

However violence in Iraq is still expected to continue for the long-term. The reports were unanimous that, even in a decade, some kind of continuing low-level insurgency is likely. They also agreed that criminal violence, the major threat to most Iraqis, was likely to remain at 'current very high levels'.