An Inside Job

The last few months the insurgency in Iraq has demonstrated a new sophistication to disrupt the infrastructure in Baghdad.
Insurgents Wage Precise Attacks on Baghdad Fuel

Insurgent attacks to disrupt Baghdad's supplies of crude oil, gasoline, heating oil, water and electricity have reached a degree of coordination and sophistication not seen before, Iraqi and American officials say.

The new pattern, they say, shows that the insurgents have a deep understanding of the complex network of pipelines, power cables and reservoirs feeding Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.

This should not be surprising as those responsible before the Baghdad infrastructure were the Sunnis' who are now the group that is out of the power loop.

The shadowy insurgency is a fractured movement made up of distinct groups of Sunnis, Shiites and foreign fighters, some of them aligned and some not. But the shift in the attack patterns strongly suggests that some branch of the insurgency is carrying out a systematic plan to cripple Baghdad's ability to provide basic services for its six million citizens and to prevent the fledgling government from operating.

A new analysis by some of those officials shows that the choice of targets and the timing of sabotage attacks has evolved over the past several months, shifting from economic targets to become what amounts to a siege of the capital.

In a stark illustration of the change, of more than 30 sabotage attacks on the oil infrastructure this year, no reported incident has involved the southern crude oil pipelines that are Iraq's main source of revenue. Instead, the attacks have aimed at gas and oil lines feeding power plants and refineries and providing fuel for transportation around Baghdad and in the north.

This is just one more aspect of the Iraqi fiasco that the lame Bush administration failed to anticipate. As much as the administration likes to think in terms of good guys and bad guys they are dealing with several groups of bad guys resulting in multiple fronts to fight. The best way to make to make it impossible for a government to function is to attack the infrastructure and make it difficult for the central government to provide basic services.

An Inside Job

The overall pattern of the sabotage and its technical savvy suggests the guidance of the very officials who tended to the nation's infrastructure during Saddam Hussein's long reign, current Iraqi officials say.

The only reasonable conclusion, said Aiham Alsammarae, the Iraqi electricity minister, is that the sabotage operation is being led by former members of the ministries themselves, possibly aided by sympathetic holdovers.

"They know what they are doing," Dr. Alsammarae said. "I keep telling our government, 'Their intelligence is much better than the government's.' "

One thing the insurgents know that the Bush administration doesn't is that insurgency always works. Just ask the French, they learned that lesson in Algiers.