BAGHDAD — The U.S. military reported that Sunni insurgents have
lost the capability to sustain combat operations against coalition forces in Iraq.
Officials said the insurgents, most of them commanded by Al Qaida, have
resorted to suicide bombings and roadside explosions rather than
confront Iraqi and U.S. forces. They said the reduction in insurgency
assaults has taken place over the last eight months.
"I think that the ability of the enemy to sustain high-volume attacks is
just something that we haven't seen," Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, a
Multinational Force Iraq spokesman, said in a briefing on Thursday.
Alston said the core of the insurgency amounted to several hundred
people, Middle East Newsline reported. He said the total number of insurgents could reach 20,000, with
about five percent of them being foreigners.
On Thursday, more than 1,000 Iraqi and U.S. troops continued Operation
Sword in the Sunni Triangle city of Hit. So far, 13 suspected insurgents
were said to have been captured.
"Resistance is being reported by commanders in the city as light," a
U.S. military statement said. "No foreign fighter presence has been detected
within the city."
Maj. Gen. James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Unit,
said Operation Sword and similar missions were meant to deny insurgency
sanctuaries in the Anbar province near the Syrian border. Conway said the
U.S.-led coalition was also trying to encourage Iraqis not to cooperate with
the insurgents.
"It tells the insurgent that there will be none of those types of
sanctuary in Al Anbar," Conway told a Pentagon briefing on Thursday. "It
passes a message to the local civilians that we're going to try to ensure
that you are not intimidated by the presence of these forces and that it
kills terrorists that are coming in from the Syrian border."
Officials said the last major insurgency confrontation took place in
Faluja in November 2004. They said U.S. forces drove thousands of
insurgents — a combination of Al Qaida operatives and former Saddam Hussein
officers — from the city.
In the spring of 2005, Sunni insurgents began to increasingly employ
suicide bombers and roadside explosives, officials said. They said many car
bombers were thwarted because of a steadily improving intelligence network
and poorly-assembled explosives that failed to detonate.
"We see increased use of suicide and VBIEDs [vehicle borne IEDs] — the
thing that gives you the big blast and possibly causes more casualties,
seems to be more media newsworthy — and believe me, they're very sensitive
to that," Conway said. "We see that in everything that they're doing. At the
same time, those types of blasts are having less effect on our troops."