Sixteen months after the war's supposed end, Iraq's insurgency is
spreading.

It's Worse Than You Think
As Americans debate Vietnam, the U.S. death toll tops 1,000 in Iraq. And

insurgents are still getting stronger

It's Worse Than You Think
As Americans debate Vietnam, the U.S. death toll tops 1,000 in Iraq. And

insurgents are still getting stronger

By Scott Johnson and Babak Dehghanpisheh
Newsweek
Updated: 1:14 p.m. ET Sept. 12, 2004Sept. 20 issue -

Iraqis don't shock easily these days, but eyewitnesses could only blink in
disbelief as they recounted last Tuesday's broad-daylight kidnappings in
central Baghdad. At about 5 in the afternoon, on a quiet side street

the Ibn Haitham hospital, a gang armed with pistols, AK-47s and

shotguns raided a small house used by three Italian aid groups. The

none of them wearing masks, took orders from a smooth-shaven man in a gray
suit; they called him "sir." When they drove off, the gunmen had four
hostages: two local NGO employees-one of them a woman who was dragged out

the house by her headscarf-and two 29-year-old Italians, Simona Pari and
Simona Torretta, both members of the antiwar group A Bridge to Baghdad.

whole job took less than 10 minutes. Not a shot was fired. About 15

afterward, an American Humvee convoy passed hardly a block away-headed in
the opposite direction.


Sixteen months after the war's supposed end, Iraq's insurgency is

Each successful demand by kidnappers has spawned more hostage-takings-to
make Philippine troops go home, to stop Turkish truckers from hauling
supplies into Iraq, to extort fat ransom payments from Kuwaitis. The few
relief groups that remain in Iraq are talking seriously about leaving.

forces have effectively ceded entire cities to the insurgents, and much of
the country elsewhere is a battleground. Last week the total number of

war dead in Iraq passed the 1,000 mark, reaching 1,007 by the end of
Saturday.

U.S. forces are working frantically to train Iraqis for the thankless job

maintaining public order. The aim is to boost Iraqi security forces from
95,000 to 200,000 by sometime next year. Then, using a mixture of force

diplomacy, the Americans plan to retake cities and install credible local
forces. That's the hope, anyway. But the quality of new recruits is
debatable. During recent street demonstrations in Najaf, police opened

on crowds, killing and injuring dozens. The insurgents, meanwhile, are
recruiting, too. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once referred to
America's foes in Iraq as "dead-enders," then the Pentagon maintained they
probably numbered 5,000, and now senior military officials talk about
"dozens of regional cells" that could call upon as many as 20,000

Yet U.S. officials publicly insist that Iraq will somehow hold national
elections before the end of January. The appointed council currently

as Iraq's government under interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is to be
replaced by an elected constitutional assembly-if the vote takes place. "I
presume the election will be delayed," says the Iraqi Interior Ministry's
chief spokesman, Sabah Kadhim. A senior Iraqi official sees no chance of
January elections: "I'm convinced that it's not going to happen. It's just
not realistic. How is it going to happen?" Some Iraqis worry that America
will stick to its schedule despite all obstacles. "The Americans have
created a series of fictional dates and events in order to delude
themselves," says Ghassan Atiyya, director of the independent Iraq
Foundation for Development and Democracy, who recently met with Allawi and
American representatives to discuss the January agenda. "Badly prepared
elections, rather than healing wounds, will open them."

America has its own Election Day to worry about. For U.S. troops in Iraq,
one especially sore point is the stateside public's obsession with the
candidates' decades-old military service. "Stop talking about Vietnam,"

one U.S. official who has spent time in the Sunni Triangle. "People should
be debating this war, not that one." His point was not that America ought

walk away from Iraq. Hardly any U.S. personnel would call that a sane
suggestion. But there's widespread agreement that Washington needs to
rethink its objectives, and quickly. "We're dealing with a population that
hovers between bare tolerance and outright hostility," says a senior U.S.
diplomat in Baghdad. "This idea of a functioning democracy here is crazy.

thought that there would be a reprieve after sovereignty, but all hell is
breaking loose."

It's not only that U.S. casualty figures keep climbing. American
counterinsurgency experts are noticing some disturbing trends in those
statistics. The Defense Department counted 87 attacks per day on U.S.

in August-the worst monthly average since Bush's flight-suited visit to

USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003. Preliminary analysis of the July and

numbers also suggests that U.S. troops are being attacked across a wider
area of Iraq than ever before. And the number of gunshot casualties
apparently took a huge jump in August. Until then, explosive devices and
shrapnel were the primary cause of combat injuries, typical of a "phase

insurgency, where sudden ambushes are the rule. (Phase one is the
recruitment phase, with most actions confined to sabotage. That's how

started in Iraq.) Bullet wounds would mean the insurgents are standing and
fighting-a step up to phase three.

Another ominous sign is the growing number of towns that U.S. troops

avoid. A senior Defense official objects to calling them "no-go areas."

could go into them any time we wanted," he argues. The preferred term is
"insurgent enclaves." They're spreading. Counterinsurgency experts call it
the "inkblot strategy": take control of several towns or villages and

outward until the areas merge. The first city lost to the insurgents was
Fallujah, in April. Now the list includes the Sunni Triangle cities of Ar
Ramadi, Baqubah and Samarra, where power shifted back and forth between

insurgents and American-backed leaders last week. "There is no security
force there [in Fallujah], no local government," says a senior U.S.

official in Baghdad. "We would get attacked constantly. Forget about it."

U.S. military planners only wish they could. "What we see is a classic
progression," says Andrew Krepinevich, author of the highly respected

"The Army and Vietnam." "What we also see is that the U.S. military is not
trained or organized to fight insurgencies. That was the deliberate choice
after Vietnam. Now we look to be paying the price." Americans aren't safe
even on the outskirts of a city like Fallujah. Early last week a suicide
bomber rammed his vehicle into two U.S. Humvees nine miles north of town

the four-lane concrete bypass called Highway 10. Seven Americans died. It
was one of the deadliest blows against U.S. forces since June, when Iraqis
formally resumed control of their government.

As much as ordinary Iraqis may hate the insurgents, they blame the

for creating the whole mess. Three months ago Iraqi troops and
U.S.-dominated "multinational forces" pulled out of Samarra, and

took over the place immediately. "The day the MNF left, people celebrated

the streets," says Kadhim, the Interior spokesman. "But that same day,

arrived in town and started shooting. They came from Fallujah and other
places and they started blowing up houses." Local elders begged Allawi's
government to send help. "The leaders of the tribes come to see us and

say, 'Really, we are scared, we don't like these people'," Kadhim

"But we just don't have the forces at the moment to help them." Last week
negotiators reached a tentative peace deal, but it's not likely to survive
long. The Iraqi National Guard is the only homegrown security force that
people respect, and all available ING personnel are deployed elsewhere.

Will Iraq's troubles get even worse? "The insurgency can certainly sustain
what it's doing for a while," says a senior U.S. military official. Many
educated Iraqis aren't waiting to find out. Applicants mobbed the

of the Baghdad passport office last week, desperate for a chance to

Police fired shots in the air, trying to control the crowd. "Every day

is shooting, gunfire, people killed, headaches for lack of sleep," said

Hussein, 34, a Ph.D. in computer science who has spent the past year and a
half looking for work. "I want to go to a calm place for a while." It's

bad for Iraq-and for America-that the insurgents don't share that wish.

With John Barry in Washington