Hit squads considered for Iraq

2005-01-09 18:37

New York - To quell the insurgency in Iraq, the Pentagon is considering sending special forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathisers, Newsweek reports in an article on its website.

According to the report, which cites unnamed US officials, these paramilitary squads - most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen - could operate across Iraq's border in Syria.

However, it remains unclear whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called "snatch" operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation.

The current thinking is that while US special forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries, Newsweek reports, citing officials.

Faced with a resilient insurgency in Iraq, "what everyone agrees is that we can't just go on as we are," one senior military officer told Newsweek.

"We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents.

"Right now, we are playing defence. And we are losing."

Also being debated is which agency within the US government - the defence department or CIA - would take responsibility for such an operation.

Some military officials are wary of any operations that could run afoul of the ethics codified in the uniform code of military justice.

That, they argue, is the reason why such covert operations have always been run by the CIA and authorised by a special presidential finding, according to Newsweek.

The interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is said to be among the most forthright proponents of the so-called Salvador option, the magazine said.

Major-General Muhammad Abdallah al-Shahwani, director of Iraq's national intelligence service, may have been laying the groundwork for the idea with a series of interviews during the past ten days.

Shahwani told the London-based Arabic daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat that the insurgent leadership - he named three former senior figures in the Saddam regime, including Saddam Hussein's half-brother - were essentially safe across the border in a Syrian sanctuary. <>"We are certain that they are in Syria and move easily between Syrian and Iraqi territories," he said, adding that efforts to extradite them "have not borne fruit so far".

Newsweek's Pentagon sources emphasised there had been no decision yet to launch the Salvador option.

Last week, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld decided to send a retired four-star general, Gary Luck, to Iraq on an open-ended mission to review the entire military strategy there.

But with the US army strained to the breaking point, military strategists note that a dramatic new approach might be needed.

- Dow Jones