Internecine Warfare and Iraqi Rebels

[HemlockGrey]

Now, it ought to be fairly obvious that the unrest in Iraq is instigated by numerous factions with conflicting goals. There`s the Baathists, the Sunnis, the Shiites, the foreign "kill the Great Satan" guys, the local "Free Iraq" guys, and I am sure that each group is fractured into dozens of small cells and competiting organizations.

And, also obviously, the Shiites have no reason to love the Sunnis, the foreigners, who routinely slaughter Iraqi civilians, are probably not high on the friend-list of the local fighters (like the ones that control Fallujah), and I`m willing to bet that no-one likes the Baathists. And then you have the thugs like Sadr who simply want to carve out their own little fief.

So my question is, have there been any reports of insurgent groups battling each other? Because it seems to me that a fine strategy for cooling down Iraq without risking too many US troops would be to exploit the various schisms within the insurgency. Maybe not on a Sunni-Shiite basis, since that could catastrophically backfire, but surely between the foreigners and locals?

I remember reading in TIME some three or four months back about a local Najaf militia gunning down a few of Sadrs supporters, but nothing else like that.

[weemadando]

If you look closely at the news you'll notice that a great many attacks (that aren't reported generally because they are "local") are targetted at specific social groups within Iraq.

[Sarevok]

Well the problem is these groups are pretty small and are only good at low level attacks and terrorism. They have far less firepower than the US military. So even if some of them sides with the US it wont make much of a difference.

[Joe]

Zarqawi got a death threat a while back from an unidentified group.