Better intelligence needed on insurgency and militias, says Iraq Study Group / Some insurgents want contact

"The Iraq Study Group's "final report harshly criticized United States intelligence officials for failing to answer basic questions about the nature of the Sunni insurgency or the increasingly powerful Shiite militias, both of which pose grave threats to American forces.
The intelligence community has had some success hunting Al Qaeda in Iraq, the report found, but that terrorist organization is small and is not the main enemy confronting American troops.
. . . The study group’s findings echo complaints quietly voiced in recent months by a number of current and former American officials, who have warned of the failure by American intelligence officers in Iraq to adequately penetrate the Sunni insurgency. These officials say the level of violence in Baghdad makes it extremely difficult for American intelligence officers to move around the country to gather information, and as a result they rely far too heavily on Iraqis who come to them in the Green Zone or to other major American bases, and on information from the intelligence service of the new Iraqi government.
That leaves the Central Intelligence Agency and American military intelligence vulnerable to manipulation by Iraqis who feed the Americans disinformation because they have an ax to grind or simply as a way to make money by selling information to the United States." [1]

"To arrest the slide to civil war, international mediators must negotiate directly with the elements of the Sunni insurgency (secular nationalists and more tactical Islamists) that have been seeking talks with the United States for three years." [2]

"Iraq's ambassador to Jordan, Saad al-Hayani, says that meetings have taken place in the Iraqi Embassy here between US representatives and members of the resistance in the past few months, as well as between Iraqis who have accepted and rejected the political process under US occupation, some of whom were directly involved with the insurgency.
. . . Moayed Abu Subieh, a Jordanian journalist who has written about such meetings, says that for the majority of those fighting, their foremost demand remains US withdrawal. Previously, insurgent groups had called for a timetable for withdrawal as a condition for laying down arms, but that demand appears to have solidified into a call for immediate withdrawal.
Mr. Abu Subieh, who writes for Al-Ghad, says that he has knowledge that talks have occurred between US officials and members of the Islamic Army of Iraq, which is made up mostly of members of Mr. Hussein's former military and has been claiming responsibility for attacks on US troops since 2003.
. . . Others, however, say that such meetings are of little significance. "As far as we know, America has not spoken with any of the really active resistance," says Bashar al-Faili, a member of the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), a Sunni political group." [3]

source
[1] The New York Times. Sunni and Shiite Insurgents Remain Mystery to U.S., Iraq Report Charges. December 11, 2006.
[2] The New York Times. Close the Bases. December 10, 2006. (Larry Diamond).
[3] The Christian Science Monitor. Quiet US bid to talk to Iraqi insurgents. December 07, 2006.

posting: thursday, december 14, 2006, 3:18 PM ET
update: monday, december 25, 2006, 7:03 PM ET