As Al-Qaeda in Iraq gets more Desperate, the Atrocities get Worse

Things have been getting a little ugly lately as we've seen a spate of suicide attacks in northern Iraq. The Secretary of Defense was warned about extremists being pushed to the north when he visited last week, and this is due to combined operations in and around Baghdad and the Awakening movement in Anbar province causing terrorists to flee north. Attacks are still down in northern Provinces due to a lot of courageous work by coalition troops and Iraqis, but it's still bearing the brunt of the violence. Like the cowards that they are, Al-Qaeda has chosen to go after "soft" targets, which usually includes small bands of Concerned Local Citizens. Reuters has the story here while interviewing MG Hertling, military commander of the northern Provinces:

"As far as an upsurge in attacks, we have not seen that," Hertling told Reuters in an e-mail. "What we have seen is some instances of different types of attacks," he said, referring to the use of suicide vests and "desperate" attacks against neighborhood police units which the military calls "concerned local citizens". On Friday, a woman wearing a vest packed with explosives killed 16 people in the Diyala town of Muqdadiya. The attack targeted former Sunni Islamist insurgents who had joined security forces to fight al Qaeda, a rare attack by a female suicide bomber.

While Al-Qaeda is indeed being defeated as illustrated by this post from The Captain's Journal, they are still able to conduct some vicious attacks (see Long War Journal post). Terrorism was once described to me as the method of waging violence, destroying property, and influencing the public with little infrastructure or assets. Kind of like when the kid down the street keys your car; the logic being that the key was cheap and caused a lot of damage. Unfortunately, these are no kids and their campaign still has the ability to cause massive loss of life and destruction to a fragile country. I truly hope it is beaten once and for all out of Iraq.

The Egyptian Al-Masri, leader of AQI and public enemy #1