Bombings raise fear of al-Qaida in Iraq

By HAZIM al-SHARA

BAGHDAD — A recent spike in suicide bombings has some concerned that al-Qaida in Iraq and other insurgent groups are trying to stage a comeback, threatening the country’s fragile security gains.

March was the deadliest month this year in Iraq, as suicide attacks across the country claimed the lives of at least 115 people, compared with 51 in February and 70 in January.

Suicide bombers struck in Hilla, Baghdad, Mosul and Diyala during March, targeting security forces, civilians and leaders. The deadliest attack, a suicide car bombing in Abu Ghraib in western Baghdad, killed 33 military officials and tribal leaders.

Blame placed

Security officials and experts have said al-Qaida in Iraq and its affiliates carried out the bombings.

Retired police Brig. Gen. Raed Fadhil Jasim said the Islamic extremists were exploiting “security gaps” which they are “always on the lookout for.” Juma al-Hilfi, an Iraqi journalist, said the government needs to step up security “as there are still many dormant al-Qaida cells that are waiting for the right opportunity to re-emerge.”

“As the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq draws closer, al-Qaida and its affiliate groups are flexing their muscles. They’re doing this to embarrass the government and to shatter public confidence in (its) ability to take over security,” he said.

Even residents of Baghdad, where security is seen as the tightest, have been unnerved by the uptick in violence.

Even after living through six years of war, Ahmad Munthir, 34, a taxi driver, said he was badly shaken by a recent car-bombing.

“It was horrible,” he said, adding that he nearly lost control of his taxi during the massive explosion. “I stopped the car and saw mutilated bodies lying everywhere. The scene brought bitter memories from several years ago, when violence was really high.”

Muhsin al-Sadun, a member of parliament with the Kurdistan Alliance in Baghdad, said the recent rise in suicide bombings should prompt the government to “thoroughly review the intelligence service and its capability to anticipate terrorist activities.”

Interior ministry spokesman Lt. Abdulkarim Khalaf said Iraqi intelligence services have discovered 16 armed groups in the last three months, and that “most of the active members in these groups have been arrested.”

Khalaf agreed that the recent bombing appear to be an attempt by al-Qaida to “prove that they are still active in Iraq.”

Some optimistic

Many in Baghdad, however, refused to be cowered by the renewed violence and say they believe the government will eventually bring conditions under control.

Abbas Abdulkhaliq, 53, who owns a market in the once-turbulent Baghdad neighborhood of al-Sayidiyah, fled to Syria during the sectarian violence in 2006. This time, despite the increase in violence, he’s not leaving.

“The state will grow stronger,” he said, and the “armed groups will never come back again.”

X Hazim al-Shara is a reporter in Iraq who writes for The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization that trains journalists in areas of conflict. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services..