HUNDREDS DIE IN NAJAF BATTLE, BUT REPORTS UNCLEAR WHY

by Jim Lobe

(IPS) WASHINGTON -- Two incidents involving U.S. forces in predominantly Shiite southern Iraq over the past week appear to demonstrate the growing complexities and dangers of the country's civil conflict.

Sunday's day-long battle near Najaf, in which two U.S. pilots were killed when their military helicopter was shot down, was first reported as an attack by Sunni insurgents and "foreign fighters" on the holy city and the tens of thousands of Shiite pilgrims who are converging there for Ashura.

But later reports identified the heavily armed and highly organized assailants as members of the Army of Heaven, an obscure Shiite sect that believes the killing of Najaf's senior ayatollahs, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, will hasten the return of the Mahdi.

The Iraqi government claimed that 200 Army members were killed, including the group's leader, and another 120 captured after some 15 hours of fighting, which reportedly came as a major surprise to U.S. officials despite the large number of Army fighters involved and the firepower -- a heavy machine gun downed the U.S. helicopter, according to the Pentagon -- at their disposal.

"If they had succeeded in their plans, the political consequences would have been catastrophic," said one Washington official who noted that this was by far the heaviest fighting in the south since the 2004 insurrection by Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

"The fact that we had no forewarning when so many people were involved shows how limited our intelligence is not just in al-Anbar (province, the stronghold of the Sunni insurgency) and Baghdad, but in the south, too. We really don't know much about what is going on there."

U.S.-led coalition forces formally returned control over security to Iraqi forces just last month.

Meanwhile, officials here are still trying to figure out who was behind the Jan. 20 surprise attack on a U.S. security team that was meeting with their Iraqi counterparts in the regional government offices in Karbala, some 70 kms north of Najaf.

After initially reporting that five U.S. soldiers were killed defending the compound, the Pentagon reported late last week that only one was killed in the initial attack, while the other four were abducted and later shot execution-style about 40 kms to the east where their bodies were found.

As reported by the Associated Press, as many as a dozen attackers traveled in the kind of convoy of SUVs frequently used by U.S. officials in Iraq. They wore U.S. combat fatigues, and at least several of them spoke English, according to Iraqi soldiers who waved them through a checkpoint on the outskirts of Karbala. The SUVs and uniforms apparently involved in the attack were later found abandoned with the bodies in Mahawil in Babil province after Iraqi guards at one checkpoint gave chase.

"The precision of the attack, the equipment used, and the possible use of explosives to destroy the military vehicles in the compound suggests that the attack was well rehearsed prior to execution," a military spokesman in Baghdad told AP.

While the U.S. military has announced the arrest of four suspects in the attack, which was unprecedented in its sophistication, no further information has been released, fueling speculation both within the government and among independent analysts as to who was behind it.

Juan Cole, an expert at the University of Michigan, said he believed the attackers' final destination in Mahawil, a mixed Sunni-Shiite city in an area of intense Sunni guerrilla activity, suggests that Sunni insurgents were responsible and that the raid "was aimed at harming security arrangements" for the Ashura pilgrimage that ends Tuesday in Karbala where tens of thousands will commemorate the martyrdom of the Prophet Mohammed's grandson, al-Hussein.

But both the precision of the attack -- only U.S. soldiers were singled out -- also points to an inside job, according to Cole. "(S)o how would there have been Sunni Arab guerrilla sympathizers at this police and army meeting at Shiite Karbala?" he asked, suggesting that perhaps "mixed units" were involved.

But, as perplexing to U.S. officials as Cole's question may be, answers put forward by other sources are perhaps even more ominous.

Ray Close, a retired top Middle East analysis at the CIA suggested that the attack and the abductions may have been retaliation for two recent raids in which the U.S. military seized and abducted Iranian officials in Iraq -- the first in Baghdad on Dec. 21, the second in the Kurdish city of Arbil on Jan. 10 -- as part of an increasingly dangerous "game of tit-for-tat."

After protests by the Iraqi central government, as well as by Tehran, the Iranians arrested in the first raid were released and deported home. The fact that the raid took place at the offices of the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who had just returned from Washington where he was treated as an honored guest at the Bush White House, naturally added to consternation over the incident.

The five Iranians seized in the second raid, which also elicited protests from both Baghdad, notably President Jalal Talabani and the local Kurdish authorities, have not yet been released, although Iranian officials in Tehran hinted Monday they had received a message from Washington regarding a resolution of the case.

Both raids came amid escalating charges by Bush, as well as other senior U.S. officials, that Iran is providing "material support for attacks on American troops" and threats to, in Bush's words' "seek out and destroy the networks" that are allegedly doing so. On Wednesday, the U.S. embassy in Baghdad is expected to elaborate on U.S. charges based in part on materials seized during the two raids.

In widely circulated memo, Close cites a "very knowledgeable friend" and recently retired analyst from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), who noted Washington has had contingency plans for "specific paramilitary actions against Iranian personnel inside Iraq in case Iranian support for the insurgency became a significant problem," and that such actions would likely provoke retaliation.

"My friend looks at the recent incident in Karbala as very probably an Iranian operation carried out in retaliation against the recent seizures of Iranian operatives by the U.S. in Baghdad and Irbil," Close wrote. "He says that the sophistication of the Karbala operation seems far beyond the capabilities of the Iraqi insurgents, and indicates the high probability of Iranian planning and execution."

"We need to watch carefully now to see if the 'tit-for-tat' game between the U.S. and Iran continues to escalate, and if in the end it proves to be a game that we might have been wiser to avoid or to minimize as much as possible," Close wrote.

At least one thing is relatively clear: Iran was unlikely to have been behind Sunday's attack on Najaf. Adherents to the Army of Heaven are reported to be violently anti-Iran and burned down Iranian consulates in Basra and Karbala last year.