U.S.: Iraqi Insurgents Show Coordination

Monday, December 1, 2003
(5:43 PM ET)
By Jim Krane

Associated Press Writer

The operation, dubbed "Operation Iron Justice," aims at smugglers of gasoline, cooking fuel and other items, Brig. Gen. Dempsey said. "Our human intelligence suggests a link between price gouging and the financing of these networks. I can't say for sure it exists. But I have enough to know it's worth addressing."

Iraqis inspect cars destroyed during yesterday's gun battle in Samarra, some 110 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad, Monday, Dec. 1, 2003. The U.S. military said 54 Iraqis were killed in the northern city of Samarra as U.S. forces used tanks and cannons to fight their way out of simultaneous ambushes Sunday.

Image Credit: Hadi Mizban -- AP

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- AP
The Iraqi insurgency in Baghdad appears to have a central leadership that finances attacks in the capital and gives broad orders to eight to 12 rebel bands - some with as many as 100 guerrillas, U.S. Army generals said Monday.

Decisions on individual attacks against U.S. occupation forces in the capital, however, are left up to the men who carry them out, said Brig. Gen. Martin Dempsey.

There is still no sign of a military-style command structure in the city or in Iraq as a whole, Dempsey told a group of reporters in an unusually detailed account of the Iraqi insurgency.

"I'm increasingly of the belief that there's central financial control and central communications," said Dempsey, who commands the Army's 1st Armored Division, which controls Baghdad and the surrounding region.

The division's picture of the insurgency has grown clearer as its intelligence gathering has improved, he said. Last month, the Army rounded up what Dempsey believes is one of the guerrilla cells blamed for attacks in Baghdad, including the Oct. 26 rocket strike on the Al-Rasheed Hotel that occurred during the stay of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

Although Dempsey spoke about the Baghdad operation, an ambush Sunday in the town of Samarra north of the capital also showed heightened coordination. U.S. forces successfully routed a group of about 50 fighters who laid in wait at banks and ambushed two American convoys carrying Iraqi currency, killing dozens of Iraqis.
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Dan