Interesting report in the Washington Post on the intelligence progress being made in Iraq. I think we knew, as a generality, that tribalism was, and still is, a huge factor in how the Saddam Hussein regime was organized, but getting the level of detail needed for operational success is new. Impressive work by the good guys.
Unfortunately, there is still a lot to do and attacks by bad guys will continue. Iraq is a very nasty stable to clean out.
As U.S. forces tracked Saddam Hussein to his subterranean hiding place, they unearthed a trove of intelligence about five families running the Iraqi insurgency, according to U.S. military commanders, who said the information is being used to uproot remaining resistance forces.Posted by Alan at December 26, 2003 07:56 AMSenior U.S. officers said they were surprised to discover -- clue by clue over six months -- that the upper and middle ranks of the resistance were filled by members of five extended families from a few villages within a 12-mile radius of the volatile city of Tikrit along the Tigris River. Top operatives drawn from these families organized the resistance network, dispatching information to individual cells and supervising financial channels, the officers said. They also protected Hussein and passed information to and from the former president while he was on the run.
At the heart of this tightly woven network is Auja, Hussein's birthplace, which U.S. commanders say is the intelligence and communications hub of the insurgency.
U.S. commanders have blamed the violence on a combination of Hussein loyalists, Islamic guerrillas and foreign fighters, but the structure and operations of the insurgency have been the subject of speculation and debate. The commanders say the detailed picture that they now have of the Iraqi campaign is the result of months of sleuthing, including raids targeting suspected Hussein loyalists in the Tikrit area.
The interrogations and documents uncovered in the raids, coupled with electronic and other intelligence, repeatedly revealed the involvement of the same extended families and marked the way toward the inner circle.