http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071111/wl_mideast_afp/iraqunrestusiranqaeda_07 1111152416;_ylt=A0WTcVzzHzdH6SIAKhSbOrgF
Qaeda losing support but Iranian arms still problem in Iraq: US military by Jay Deshmukh 7 minutes ago BAGHDAD (AFP) - Al-Qaeda is losing ground south of Baghdad but Iranian weapons still "trouble" US forces despite Tehran's assurance that it has halted the flow of arms into Iraq, a US commander said on Sunday. Major General Rick Lynch, commander in Baghdad's southern belts and the Shiite provinces of Babel, Karbala, Najaf and Wasit, said Al-Qaeda fighters were losing local support as thousands of former anti-American insurgents allied themselves with the US military. Lynch, whose command covers some of Iraq's most dangerous areas, including the notorious "triangle of death" south of Baghdad, said around 26,000 local Iraqis were now working with the military to help secure the region. "Al-Qaeda has lost support. It does not have support from the local population," Lynch told a group of reporters from Western news organisations. A large number of the "concerned local citizens" -- a term used by the US military -- were former rebels who fought the US-led forces after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. In the past year, several thousand of them have sided with US and Iraqi forces to fight Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the local affiliate of Osama bin Laden's global jihadist group. Lynch said nearly 16,000 of the 26,000 "concerned citizens" were being employed by the US military to guard checkpoints, bridges and other infrastructure and act as neighbourhood watchdogs. "A lot of these bad guys are now concerned citizens. Today they are part of the solution and not the problem," Lynch said. Al-Qaeda, he added however, has not been entirely wiped out from his area of operation. "The enemy is still out there and can carry out attacks. Al-Qaeda is changing its tactics. He has no place to sleep. He knows he has lost support. He knows local citizens will turn him in." Lynch warned that even as Al-Qaeda is losing its grip, Iranian manufactured-weapons still "troubled" his troops. Iraq's central province of Wasit, an area under Lynch's command, has a 200-kilometre (125-mile) border with Iran. Lynch said attacks by explosively-formed penetrators (EFPs), fist-sized bombs that can cut through an armoured vehicle allegedly supplied by Iranian groups, had declined. But "we are still finding large number of Iranian munitions. I am most troubled by Iranian rockets," he said. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said a fortnight ago that Tehran had assured Baghdad it would help stop the flow of Iranian arms into Iraq. On Tuesday, US military spokesman Rear Admiral Gregory Smith told reporters in Baghdad that a recent study of seized weaponry showed that the number of Iranian-made weapons crossing the border had declined. The decline, he said, had begun after "Iran's commitment to Iraq to stop arming, funding and training terrorists." However, Lynch was unconvinced. "I don't know what this Iranian pledge is, but the number of munitions has increased. It could be that we are finding them more. But it is still troublesome," Lynch said. "I have no idea when these EFP munitions came ... before or after the pledge. I don't know." The US military on Friday released nine Iranians held in its custody, two of them allegedly linked to the Quds Force, the covert unit of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards. Lynch said at least "20 Iraqi surrogates" working for the Revolutionary Guards were still active in his area of operation. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. 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