Violence picks up after period of relative calm

There are numerous explanations for the increase in violence.
San Francisco Chronicle
Despite claims of improved security, talk of drawing down U.S. forces and hopes that last month's historic elections in the country would help to defuse the insurgency, Iraq once more is experiencing a paroxysm of violence that is claiming hundreds of Iraqi and U.S. lives.
The onslaught of suicide bombs, gunfights and roadside bombs has killed more than 180 Iraqis and at least 28 U.S. soldiers and civilians since Thursday alone.
Analysts see the upsurge in violence, in part, as aimed at derailing the political process as political leaders try to put together Iraq's first full-term, four-year government. They also say it is the latest crest in an up-and-down cycle characteristic of an insurgency that has engulfed the country since the U.S. invasion in March 2003. In most insurgencies, "we see peaks and valleys in the continuous graph of violence that are often inexplicable," said Wayne White, former head of the Iraq team in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
Possibilities
The wave of violence comes after a relative lull that followed the Dec. 15 national elections. U.S. and Iraqi forces carried out major counterinsurgency operations before the elections, and the spike in attacks may be a sign that the insurgency has recuperated from the crackdown, said Rita Katz, director of the SITE Institute in Washington, which tracks electronic communications of Islamic insurgent and terrorist groups.
"Maybe it took them a while to regroup again after those operations," Katz said. "I don't see any other political reason for this."
White says the insurgents may also be trying to debunk recent statements by Iraqi and U.S. officials that security and the preparedness of Iraqi forces have improved enough to allow the United States to cut its combat brigades from 17 in 2005 to 15 later this year.
"They are responding to the statements which they view as demeaning during the election campaigns that coalition forces and security forces have driven violence down," White said.
White also says the insurgents may be flexing "their muscle as a protest" to intimidate Sunni Arabs involved in the political process.
"Insurgency is a multiheaded animal: in some cases it's tribal, in some cases it's former Baathists, in some cases it's Islamic fundamentalists," White said. "Insurgency is present in every locale, and ... they retaliate, they go after somebody who does something like taking a job with the government or collaborating."
Including Sunnis
Iraq's minority Sunnis, who boycotted the January 2005 election to form a temporary parliament and are the backbone of the insurgency, turned out by the millions during the Dec. 15 parliamentary election. U.S. officials say convincing the Sunnis that they have adequate representation in the new government is the best hope to stabilize the shaky security and political situation and help deflate the insurgency.
Election officials are still calculating the votes, and it remains unclear how many representatives Sunni candidates will have in the 275-seat legislative assembly. But Iraq's leading political groups are already negotiating a coalition government that includes Shiites, Sunnis and ethnic Kurds.
To defuse the insurgency, American officials have begun talks with Iraqi insurgent leaders, taking advantage of a rift between local groups, whose main goal is to expel U.S. forces, and the more radical, Islamic fundamentalist groups like Al-Qaida in Iraq that want an Islamic state, the New York Times reported last week.