ZARQAWI DESPERATE?

There were more than a dozen bombings in Baghdad Sept. 14th, four of them suicide bombings, which killed at least 152 people. Strategic Forecasting, a private intelligence service, considers them "early signs of diminishing jihadist capability." Here’s why:

There were 39 major suicide bombings throughout Iraq in July. In August, there were 22. The total so far for this month is 14. This could "indicate a dwindling supply of willing suicide bombers."

Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the Al Qaeda chieftain in Iraq, announced on Al Jazeera that the Baghdad bombings were in retaliation for the recent coalition offensive in Tal Afar, a city near the Syrian border where Al Qaeda had established a base.

That offensive, conducted by the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and the Iraqi 3rd Division, was successful. More than 200 "insurgents" — roughly 80 percent of them foreigners — were killed and more than 300 captured. One American and eight Iraqi soldiers were killed.

"One of the great pieces of information that we got recently is 80 percent of the Al Qaeda network in the north has been devastated," said Col. Robert Brown, commander of the Stryker Brigade (1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division) in Mosul in a teleconference the day of the Baghdad bombings.

"Those are not our figures," Brown said. "Those came from the last six leaders in Mosul, Al Qaeda leaders that we captured." Col. Brown said there has been a significant deterioration in the quality of the "insurgents."

"Last October, we faced a foreign fighter that was very well trained," Brown said. "As we got to February and March, we saw a completely different foreign fighter…That younger foreign fighter that we’re seeing now – very poorly trained."

Whereas about 25 percent of the attacks on his troops prior to the Iraqi elections last January were tactically sophisticated, only about five percent are now, he said. "And we’re at the lowest number of attacks by far in the last three months," Brown said.

Further, cooperation from the local population – mostly Sunni Arab — has increased enormously since the Iraqi elections. "We were able to gain access to intelligence here by a very good relationship with the people, who recognized the enemy for who they are and were very forthcoming with human intelligence." An example was a raid in Tal Afar in June, in which his cavalrymen rounded up 26 "targeted individuals" in half an hour.

"The other huge change (after the decline in the quality of foreign fighters) is the population," Brown said. "When we got here, the people were intimidated, and they were neutral. Now they are turning them in. The terrorists swim in a sea of anonymity, and that sea has been taken away from them."

"Zarqawi is getting desperate," concludes StrategyPage, the web site of war gamer James Dunnigan. "More and more of his key subordinates are being rounded up or killed. His bases in Sunni Arab areas are being captured or bombed."

"The Sunni Arabs have lost most of their military edge. That was not so bad when most of the troops they faced were American. But the recent battles along the Syrian border saw a majority of the troops being Iraqi. While the Americans still did some of the most difficult fighting, it was the Iraqis that went in and screened the civilian population, and battled any stray holdouts."

The improving quality and quantity of the Iraqi security forces have made many Sunnis reluctant to participate in the civil war Zarqawi is trying to provoke, for fear of effective retaliation.

"While the illusion of Sunni Arab superiority dies hard, the fear of revenge attacks against the Sunni Arabs grows daily," StrategyPage said. The next few weeks figure to be bloody, as Zarqawi desperately tries to disrupt the referendum on the Iraqi constitution scheduled for Oct. 15th, and to use his assets before Coalition forces destroy them.