The White House eagerly portrays the 30,000 soldier "surge" of the past few months as a great success and there have indeed been positive signs, especially a decline in sectarian butchery in Baghdad and a sharp reduction in attacks on American troops. But not everyone has been certain just what the surge actually accomplished. There has been a lot of speculation that the warring parties, the Shia militias and the Sunni insurgency, just decided to lay low and wait it out, relying on reports that the surge would only be temporary. Now, a senior member of the Sunni insurgency has told The Guardian that was indeed the case.
Iraq's main Sunni-led resistance groups have scaled back their attacks on US forces in Baghdad and parts of Anbar province in a deliberate strategy aimed at regrouping, retraining, and waiting out George Bush's "surge", a key insurgent leader has told the Guardian.
US officials recently reported a 55% drop in attacks across Iraq. One explanation they give is the presence of 30,000 extra US troops deployed this summer. The other is the decision by dozens of Sunni tribal leaders to accept money and weapons from the Americans in return for confronting al-Qaida militants who attack civilians. They call their movement al-Sahwa (the Awakening).
The resistance groups are another factor in the complex equation in Iraq's Sunni areas. "We oppose al-Qaida as well as al-Sahwa," the director of the political department of the 1920 Revolution Brigades told the Guardian in Damascus in a rare interview with a western reporter.
Using the nom de guerre Dr Abdallah Suleiman Omary, he went on: "Al-Sahwa has made a deal with the US to take charge of their local areas and not hit US troops, while the resistance's purpose is to drive the occupiers out of Iraq. We are waiting in al-Sahwa areas. We disagree with them but do not fight them. We have shifted our operations to other areas".
Omary predicts the deal negotiated last week between Bush and the Shia prime minister al Maliki for a permanent American military presence in Iraq will fracture the American's cease-fire with al-Shawa.
If Omary is right, the surge may have accomplished very little perhaps save for giving everyone involved a much needed respite.
Iraq's main Sunni-led resistance groups have scaled back their attacks on US forces in Baghdad and parts of Anbar province in a deliberate strategy aimed at regrouping, retraining, and waiting out George Bush's "surge", a key insurgent leader has told the Guardian.
US officials recently reported a 55% drop in attacks across Iraq. One explanation they give is the presence of 30,000 extra US troops deployed this summer. The other is the decision by dozens of Sunni tribal leaders to accept money and weapons from the Americans in return for confronting al-Qaida militants who attack civilians. They call their movement al-Sahwa (the Awakening).
The resistance groups are another factor in the complex equation in Iraq's Sunni areas. "We oppose al-Qaida as well as al-Sahwa," the director of the political department of the 1920 Revolution Brigades told the Guardian in Damascus in a rare interview with a western reporter.
Using the nom de guerre Dr Abdallah Suleiman Omary, he went on: "Al-Sahwa has made a deal with the US to take charge of their local areas and not hit US troops, while the resistance's purpose is to drive the occupiers out of Iraq. We are waiting in al-Sahwa areas. We disagree with them but do not fight them. We have shifted our operations to other areas".
Omary predicts the deal negotiated last week between Bush and the Shia prime minister al Maliki for a permanent American military presence in Iraq will fracture the American's cease-fire with al-Shawa.
If Omary is right, the surge may have accomplished very little perhaps save for giving everyone involved a much needed respite.
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