Abu Ghraib Blast: A Return to the Bad Old Days in Iraq?

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Adil al-Khazali / AP

Ibrahim Shallal, 32, an al-Iraqiya Satellite Channel correspondent, is rushed into a hospital after being wounded in a suicide-bombing attack in Abu Ghraib on March 10

The joint tour by Sunni and Shi'ite tribal sheiks was supposed to be part of an effort toward national reconciliation: a walk through the Abu Ghraib marketplace in western Baghdad after the conclusion of a nearby peace meeting. But it turned into a bloodbath. At least 32 people were killed — including security officials as well as two Iraqi television journalists — and dozens were wounded after a suicide bomber detonated his explosives belt in the crowd. (See pictures of the aftershocks of the 2004 Abu Ghraib scandal.)

Tuesday's strike was the second major attack in a week, raising fears of a return to Iraq's bad old days when such deadly blasts were daily occurrences. On Sunday, a suicide bomber wearing an explosives belt and riding an explosives-laden motorcycle targeted recruits outside Baghdad's Police Academy, leaving some 28 dead. The spike in violence comes as the U.S. prepares to reduce its troop numbers here from 140,000 to 128,000 by September. It also follows Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's attempt to cobble together a semblance of pan-Iraqi political solidarity. He has made an overture of reconciliation to low-level former members of the Baath Party, which ruled Iraq under Saddam Hussein. It was explicitly not offered to Ezzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Saddam's former Vice President, who remains in hiding, nor to al-Douri's supporters. In any case, none of the Saddam loyalists has indicated they would accept al-Maliki's offer anyway. "The Baath and its men and fighters strongly reject dialogue with the collaborators, spies and traitors," the banned party said in a statement posted on its website, Al-Basrah.net. (See the life and death of Saddam Hussein.)

Tahseen al-Sheikaly, a government spokesman for the Baghdad Security Plan, said the renewed violence was in response to al-Maliki's reconciliation efforts as well as U.S. President Barack Obama's plan to withdraw all combat troops by next year. "It appears all these things are not welcomed by Iraq's enemies, and so they are disturbing the security situation," al-Sheikaly said. "But when such pockets of terrorism do something, we follow them and we capture them. In the next few days, you'll hear that we've captured the people who have done these things."

Still, the audacity of the attacks, coupled with their lethal effectiveness and high casualty rates, may signal the resumption of a reinvigorated insurgency that has had time to regroup. A source close to the insurgency told TIME that sleeper cells in and around the Sunni stronghold of Abu Ghraib — site of the infamous prison now renamed the Baghdad Central Prison — have been planning renewed attacks for months. Tuesday's strike in the marketplace was carried out by the sheik of a local extremist Takfiri mosque, a man in his 20s named Abu Taymiyeh, the source claimed. The allegation could not be independently verified.

Iraq’s insurgency includes several disparate groups: religious zealots like the Takfiris (followers of an extremist form of Sunni Islam) and al-Qaeda, on the one hand, and remnants of Saddam’s former secular Baathist regime on the other. The two sides were united by their common enemies: U.S. troops and the Iraqis who worked with the “occupiers,” like al-Maliki, but little else. (See a who's who of combatants in Iraq.)

Major General David Perkins, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, told a press conference in Baghdad on Sunday that al-Qaeda was increasingly desperate to maintain relevance in Iraq. The source close to the insurgency told TIME that al-Qaeda was regrouping and recalibrating its focus. "The politics of the attacks have changed," the source said. "They don't want to attack the Americans because they know they are leaving. They are targeting the Awakening councils and the tribes because they are working with the government," he said, referring to the mainly Sunni councils that turned against the insurgency and sided with the U.S. "They are definitely planning bigger attacks. In due time, you will see."

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