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The U.S. military says the number of its troops in Iraq is now less than 50,000, the lowest level since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. 

The announcement comes ahead of an August 31 deadline to switch the U.S. mission in Iraq from combat to training and counter-terrorism.

President Barack Obama had promised the lower levels shortly after taking office.  He also reaffirmed a prior agreement to remove all U.S. troops by the end of next year.  

But the terms appear to be somewhat fluid.   U.S. troops were still manning key positions in Baghdad this year, long after the June 2009 announcement they had withdrawn for Iraqi cities.

Peter Harling is a senior analyst on Iraq with the International Crisis Group, based in Syria.

“I’m not sure you can draw a line very clearly between combat troops and troops conducting an advisory mission,” said Harling. “I think Americans will remain armed and very vigilant when it comes to their own security.  But indeed there is no doubt that the U.S. wants to withdraw.  I think, U.S. policy in Iraq boils down to withdrawal; there’s not much more to it than bailing out.”

U.S. popular support for the war has fallen over the years, as casualties mounted and no clear victory appeared in sight. 

Tuesday’s announcement coincides with Iraq’s continued struggle to form a new government, five months after inconclusive elections.  

Harling says that many of the basic questions about a post-invasion Iraq remain unresolved, including power sharing, and the clearly-defined role of the military, the constitution and various branches of government.

“You can add to that, obviously, relations between Sunnis and Shi’ites, Arabs and Kurds, Iraq and all its neighbors - none of these questions have been answered,” added Harling.  “So withdrawing at a high pace, within the context of a framework which gives the U.S. very little flexibility, when all these questions remain unanswered is obviously a gamble.”

A recent increase in violence has raised fears that the U.S. drawdown, along with Iraq’s political vacuum, could further embolden insurgents.

U.S. officials said last week that they will increase the number of private security forces in Iraq by as many as 7,000.  The duties of the temporary contract workers would include protecting U.S. officials.

By Elizabeth Arrott

Trucks transport U.S. military Humvees, MRAPs and other vehicles recently arrived from Iraq at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, 20 Aug 2010.

BAGHDAD — On Sunday, a journalist for Al Arabiya, an Arabic-language news channel, sat in the newsroom and explained that his staff had recently returned to the bureau after being forced to leave for weeks by threats from Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

“Thank God we are able to work,” said the journalist, Mohammed Zuhair, the chief of the channel’s newsroom.

Less than 24 hours later, a suicide bomber drove a white minibus packed with explosives past several checkpoints and detonated the vehicle in front of the news channel’s office, killing 6 and wounding 16. The dead included security guards and a cafeteria worker, but no journalists. Among the wounded was a former Iraqi deputy prime minister who lives nearby. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia took responsibility for the bombing.

On Monday evening, two other explosions struck Shiite pilgrims as they marched from Najaf to Karbala to commemorate the birthday of Imam Mahdi, a revered Shiite saint. The attacks, which also bore the hallmark of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, killed close to 20 and wounded more than 50, according to officials in Baghdad and Karbala.

While the bombing at Al Arabiya’s office spared the newsroom, the attack was a brutal reminder of the dangers Iraqis face in practicing journalism, which they have had the freedom to do for only seven years. The war here has been the deadliest in history for journalists. More than 140 have been killed in Iraq since the war began, the vast majority of them Iraqis, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Many newsrooms in Baghdad display photographs of slain colleagues. At Al Sumariya, another popular TV news channel, large photos in a hallway serve as reminders of two correspondents who were kidnapped and killed.

The attack on Monday came as officials have again been debating proposals for a new law to protect journalists — in the event that the country’s political class can end the nearly five-month stalemate that has followed March’s parliamentary elections and form a new government.

Among the ideas are to provide government protection for targeted journalists; offer compensation to the families of those killed; and set up regulations aimed at protecting the newsgathering process. A new law might also elevate a crime against a journalist to a higher level, a parallel to hate crime laws in the United States.

A draft law was sent to Parliament last year but never enacted; many here expect it will be taken up again. Officials recently held a workshop to discuss the proposals.

Mr. Zuhair, who was not hurt in Monday’s bombing, said a law would “give a capability to journalists and a stature.”

The need for a media law — which could also impose fines for publishing false information — is itself a matter of debate. Mindful of prior abuses — when the press was a propaganda arm of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny, and the death penalty could be imposed for criticizing his government — some want no government interference in the news media, even with the aim of protection. Last year, journalists in Baghdad protested against a media law, fearing it would restrict them.

Feryad Rawandozi straddles the worlds of politics and the press. A former member of Parliament, he is the spokesman for the Kurdistan Alliance, a coalition of politicians from Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region, and a newspaper columnist. His position is nuanced.

“Without a law, we cannot compensate families for losing their sons,” Mr. Rawandozi said. “Some areas are still very dangerous for journalists, but not all the Iraqi areas.”

As a politician, however, he believes the Iraqi press is not advanced enough to police itself on ethics, and favors a law to regulate the profession. “Some people think we need some sort of regulation because we are not exercising freedom of speech in the right way,” he said, mentioning an article that he said misquoted him. “It’s very hard to say that journalists stick with the ethics.”

Iraq’s Constitution protects freedom of opinion and speech, but some Western groups are urging the government to give the media a deeper constitutional imprimatur. A group of press advocacy groups working with Unesco recently published an open letter advocating the passage of a freedom of information law, writing, “We still lack the legal mechanism that guarantees the citizen’s right to have access to information.”

The Iraqi government is wading into the affairs of the news media in other ways, recently establishing a special press court to adjudicate libel offenses and press freedom issues. Western advocates have criticized the court, saying the government has not disclosed enough information about the court’s procedures.

“A specialized press court is hardly the solution to the problems Iraqi journalists face on a daily basis,” Mohamed Abdel Dayem, Middle East director for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in a recent statement. “Historically, press courts have been used for restriction rather than protection.”

On Monday afternoon, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia took credit for the bombing at Al Arabiya on a Web site it often uses to communicate, suggesting the attack was in response to a broadcast about the influence of the extremist group. The program was called “Creation of Death.”

“Wait for more,” the group’s statement said.

The capabilities of the group, which is homegrown but is believed to have some foreign leadership, have diminished in recent months with the killing of many top leaders, but it is still able to regularly carry out suicide attacks against institutions of Iraq’s nascent democracy.

Ayad Allawi, the former interim prime minister whose coalition won the most seats in the parliamentary elections, went to the scene of the bombing.

About a month ago the Interior Ministry notified Al Arabiya, whose headquarters are in Dubai, that it had intelligence that the network’s Baghdad office might become a target of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, according to Tariq Maher, a local correspondent for the channel who is a former employee of The New York Times in Baghdad.

The network’s Iraqi staff decamped to the Al-Rasheed Hotel for several weeks, and only in the last couple of days had returned to its office, with a scaled-down staff and added protection from the Interior Ministry, according to Mr. Maher, who was in the building when the explosion occurred. He had been up late working, and he and a colleague had gone to bed for a nap just after 9 a.m. He said a blanket that he pulled over his head saved him from falling debris.

“That is how the miracle happened, why we survived,” he said. “Two guards turned completely to ash.”

By TIM ARANGO

Soldiers inspected the Baghdad office of Al Arabiya, an Arabic news channel, after a bombing Monday in which six people died.

A car bomb has exploded in a marketplace near the Iraqi city of Baquba killing at least 15 people and wounding more than 40, police say.

The blast went off near a mosque in the predominantly Shia village of Abu Sayda, about 45 miles (70km) north of the capital, Baghdad.

Police said the latest explosion caused buildings to collapse, and women and children were among those injured.

The Baquba area has suffered several attacks in recent days.

At least six people died in a car bombing on Monday near a restaurant in Baquba, and on Tuesday several Iranian pilgrims were injured in an attack west of the city.

Officials have imposed a curfew in Abu Sayda in case there are more explosive devices planted nearby.

Baquba is the ethnically mixed capital of Diyala province, which has become a bastion of al-Qaeda in Iraq and remains one of the country’s most unstable provinces.

A US soldier was killed on Wednesday as his convoy was hit by a roadside bomb as it drove through Diyala.

Meanwhile, Iraqi politicians have not yet agreed on the formation of a new government more than four months after parliamentary elections.

The BBC’s Gabriel Gatehouse, in Baghdad, says there are fears that the longer this political stalemate continues, the easier it will be for insurgents to exploit the power vacuum.

By BBC

There have been a string of attacks in the area lately.

A deadly series of blasts in Uganda has been blamed on al-Shabaab, the Somali Islamist group which claims to have links to al-Qaeda.

-Al-Shabaab, which means “youth” in Arabic, has taken control of large areas of south and central Somalia. The Horn of Africa nation has been mired in anarchy since warlords toppled military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

The interim government’s attempts to restore central rule have largely been paralysed by infighting and the Islamist-led insurgency. Fighting has killed more than 21,000 people since the start of 2007 and uprooted at least 1.5 million civilians. The chaos has also helped fuel kidnappings and piracy offshore.

Al-Shabaab’s hardline militia was part of the Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) movement that pushed US-backed warlords out of Mogadishu in June, 2006, and ruled for six months before Somali and Ethiopian forces ousted them.

In June 2009, al-Shabaab officials in one of the group’s Mogadishu strongholds ordered four teenagers to each have a hand and a leg cut off as punishments for robbery.

Al-Shabaab’s interpretation of Islamic law has shocked many Somalis, who are traditionally more moderate Muslims. However, some residents give the insurgents credit for restoring order to the regions under their control.

The Somali government claims hundreds of foreign fighters have joined the insurgency from countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Gulf region and Western nations such as the United States and Britain. Some of the foreign jihadists have taken up leadership positions in militant groups including al-Shabaab.

One American national of Somali origin was killed while fighting for al-Shabaab in Mogadishu last July.
Also last July Australian police arrested four men linked to the group, raising concern it may be seeking targets outside Somalia.

In Sept 2009, al-Shabaab insurgents struck the main African Union military base in Mogadishu with twin suicide car bombs and killed 17 peacekeepers. Rebels said the bombing was revenge for the US killing of Kenyan-born Salah Ali Saleh Nabhan, a most-wanted al-Qaeda militant.

Two French security advisers were kidnapped by Shabaab last July but one escaped a month later. The group issued a statement of demands in September, which included an immediate end to French support for the Somali government and the withdrawal of African Union peacekeepers.

Al-Shabaab has threatened to strike Uganda’s capital Kampala and Burundi’s capital Bujumbura because both nations contribute troops to the 6,100-strong AU peacekeeping force AMISOM.

The UN’s World Food Programme suspended its work in much of southern Somalia in January due to threats against its staff and unacceptable demands by al Shabaab rebels controlling the area.

By Telegraph

Al-Shabaab fighters Photo: AP

A suicide bomber drove an explosives—laden car into an Iraqi army check point in western Baghdad, killing six people and injuring 20 on Friday morning, officials said.

Although violence in Iraq has subsided significantly in the past years, members of the security forces are still frequently targeted by insurgents seeking to stoke sectarian tensions. There are also concerns such attacks could increase amid a political deadlock four months after an inconclusive election and just weeks before U.S. troops begin heading home.

Police and hospital officials said three Iraqi soldiers and three civilians were killed in the early morning attack that occurred when the bomber detonated a car bomb in the predominantly Sunni neighbourhood of Ghazaliyah.

Officials said 20 people were also wounded in the blast and taken to Baghdad’s Yarmouk hospital. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

Friday’s attack comes after almost 70 people were killed in suicide bombings and roadside bombs targeting hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims who converged on the Iraqi capital to commemorate the death of a revered Shiite holy man, buried in Baghdad Kazimiyah neighbourhood.

The bloodshed comes at a time when Iraq’s nascent democracy is particularly vulnerable as officials jostle for power while struggling to ensure security and stability.

Four months after the March 7 election produced no clear winner, Iraq’s two main political rivals, current Prime Minister Nouri al—Maliki and his main challenger Ayad Allawi, who narrowly won the parliamentary vote, are locked in a bitter power struggle.

With a July 14 constitutionally—mandated deadline to select a new government approaching without a solution in sight, the political uncertainty in Iraq is providing the militants with greater opportunity to strike.

On Thursday, three separate roadside bombings in eastern and northern Baghdad, left 14 people dead and at least 63 wounded, Iraqi hospital and police officials said. A car bomb in southern Baghdad killed another person.

The incidents followed a particularly gruesome night in which nearly 60 people were killed in a series of attacks late Wednesday that marked the worst violence since late April. The deadliest was a suicide bombing that killed 35 people and wounded more than 100, when the bomber struck pilgrims as they were about to cross a bridge from the mostly Sunni neighbourhood of Azamiyah into the predominantly Shiite area of Kazimiyah.

The deadlock between al—Maliki’s State of Law party and Allawi’s Iraqiya party prompted a visit last week by Vice-President Joe Biden, who tried to bring the parties together to form a government.

But Mr. al—Maliki is in a tight spot. Along with finding common ground between the two parties, he also must appease powerful Iranian—backed Shiite parties, like those headed by anti—American cleric Muqtada al—Sadr and the Iraqi National Alliance.

Both Mr. al—Maliki and Mr. Allawi must also win the support of the influential Kurds, who hold the presidency and seek greater autonomy in Iraq’s oil—rich north.

The attacks on pilgrims and security forces of the past days bear the hallmark of Sunni insurgents in Iraq.

And while they pale in comparison to attacks in previous years, the bloodshed has raised fears the sectarian violence that had Iraq teetering at the brink of civil war in 2005—2007 could be reignited as the U.S. brings down the number of troops in the country to 50,000 by the end of August.

By Thehindu

Iraqi Army soldiers examine the wreckage of a car bomb in Baghdad, on Friday. Photo: AP.

BAGHDAD — Ten people died in a series of attacks in Iraq on Monday, including three killed when a car bomb exploded in a Baghdad shopping area.

The late morning blast in the capital’s western Mansour neighborhood came a day after another car bombing killed five people outside a Baghdad police station.

Monday’s explosion wounded at least nine people and damaged several shops, according to security and hospital officials. Ball bearings, apparently packed inside the car to increase the number of casualties, littered the bomb site.

Although violence has fallen sharply in recent years, Iraqi security forces still struggle to stop deadly attacks from happening as U.S. troops prepare to withdraw.

The attacks threaten to further destabilize the country as political leaders jostle for control three months after indecisive parliamentary elections.

A third person was killed and eight were wounded when a bomb stuck to a minibus exploded in Baghdad’s overwhelmingly Shiite slum of Sadr City in the morning, police and hospital officials said.

Outside the capital, attackers shot and killed a father and two of his sons at home in the al-Zaidan village, near the town of Abu Ghraib, west of the Iraqi capital.

A police official said the dead man’s brother is a prominent member of anti-insurgent Sunni fighters known as Sons of Iraq, and that the gunmen likely believed he was staying in the house.

The area is at the doorstep of Iraq’s western Anbar province, which is dominated by Sunni Arabs and is the birthplace of the Sons of Iraq movement, also known as Sahwa, or the Awakening Councils. Members of the group once fought U.S. forces, but later switched sides to fight al-Qaida in Iraq.

Remnants of al-Qaida and its allies are blamed for many of the bombings and other attacks that continue to plague the country.

In another nearby village, al-Abid, gunmen forced the families of four policemen out of their houses at dawn and then bombed the buildings, police said. Officials said many in the area are Sahwa supporters, though others remain sympathetic to insurgents.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the were not authorized to speak to the media.

Elsewhere, gunmen dressed in military uniforms killed three brothers and wounded a fourth in Sunidij, a village between Baghdad and Hillah to the south, according to Maj. Muthana Khalid, the media spokesman of Babil police.

A local police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the brothers’ father is an outspoken critic of al-Qaida because other members of his tribe had been killed by insurgents.

By ADAM SCHRECK

Iraqi soldiers secure the site of a car bomb in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, June 7, 2010. Iraqi officials say a car bomb has exploded in a shopping area in western Baghdad, killing three people. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

Sahara region’s nomads face growing threats from militants, traffickers.

GAO, Mali - Dozens of Malian troops rush through the sweltering desert, yell war cries and open fire, spitting hundreds of bullets from rifles and machine guns. It’s all part of a training session — run by the United States.

The U.S. is trying to help nations bordering the Sahara and the arid Sahel region to contain a growing threat of terrorism. More than 200 U.S. Special Forces and 500 African troops trained together in May, in the latest of several large military maneuvers over the past few years.

Intelligence officers estimate there are some 400 Al-Qaida extremists based in the vast emptiness north of here, up from about 200 just a year ago. They worry that the militants are teaming up with smugglers carrying cocaine across the desert to Europe and with the restless nomad tribes of the Sahara.

As the extremists get stronger and wealthier, they are attracting more recruits among local youth and Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa. While Algeria’s large military has managed to contain most terror attacks to the hinterland, militants have spread southward through the porous borders of the Sahara to take advantage of weaker African governments like Mali and Niger.

Officials fear the militants could use their safe havens to mount jihadi operations against Europe and the United States.

“You can consider they’re only 400 in the desert, but they now dominate a zone half the size of Europe,” says a French official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his job is to monitor the zone. “It’s a threat everybody is taking very, very seriously.”

Gao
A dust bowl of adobe mud houses surrounded by sand dunes, the small town of Gao lies at the junction between al-Qaida and organized crime. The Tuareg nomads pitch tents on the town’s outskirts, along with Arab and Moorish Bedouins. The Peul, a black tribe of cattle herders, live in round, wooden huts right next to a gated hotel compound transformed into a U.S. military camp.

Gao, in northeastern Mali, marks the start of an area twice the size of Texas that has been declared a no-go zone, where al-Qaida is holding hostage two Spaniards and a Frenchman.

The northern halves of Mali and of neighboring Niger, the eastern part of Mauritania and the southern tip of Algeria are now “red zones” banned for travelers by the French Foreign Affairs Ministry, which maintains close ties to the region — a French colony until the 1960s. American and British authorities have also issued strong terrorism warnings.

Malian soldiers trying to patrol the area have lost several men during clashes with drug traffickers, arms smugglers, bandits and al-Qaida.

“The real problem is that it’s getting hard to know who’s an Islamist and who’s just a criminal,” said Col. Braihama Tagara, the military commander for Gao region. “They support each other more and more.”

The gunmen’s weaponry has improved hugely of late, Tagara said. They can open fire with automatic riffles, heavy machine guns and even R-Pgs, and they all have Thuraya satellite phones to share intelligence.

By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU

A nomad from the famed Tuareg tribe of the Sahara Desert brings his herd for vaccination to a team of U.S. Special Forces in the Sahara Desert in northeastern Mali.

Officials in Iraq say the death toll from a wave of shootings and bomb attacks across the country Monday has risen to at least 67.

In the deadliest attack, at least 36 people were killed and 100 were wounded when two car bombs exploded in the central Iraqi city of Hilla.  Investigators say explosions occurred outside of a textile factory in the city, which is about 95 kilometers south of Baghdad.

Earlier Monday, 13 people were killed and 70 others injured in a double bombing in the town of Suwayra located about 50 kilometers south of Baghdad.

In the capital, gunmen killed seven Iraqi soldiers and policemen in attacks on six checkpoints.

In separate incidents, two people were killed in two separate bombings that targeted police officers south of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, a car bomb in Tarmiya, located north of the capital, killed three people and injured 16 others.

In the western city of Fallujah, four bombs were detonated outside of the homes of police officers, leaving four people dead and several injured.

Also, in the northeastern city of Mosul, two Kurdish soldiers were killed when a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb near a checkpoint manned by Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

An Iraqi man walks through rubble at the site of a bombing that targeted police in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, Iraq, 10 May 2010.

Attacks Could Be Backlash After Iraq Touted Series Of Blows Against al Qaeda.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A series of bombs targeting Shi’ite areas rocked Baghdad Friday, killing at least 56 people in an apparent backlash after Iraq touted a series of blows against a weakened al Qaeda-led insurgency.

Eight people were also killed by bombs in the Sunni west of the country, less than a week after Iraqi security forces backed by U.S. troops killed al Qaeda’s top two leaders in Iraq.

Thirteen blasts hit different areas of the Iraqi capital around the time of Muslim prayers, mostly near Shi’ite mosques and at a marketplace, an Interior Ministry source said.

Three bombs targeted worshippers outside the main office of fiery anti-American Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the crowded Sadr City slum. Those blasts killed 39 people and wounded 56, generating denunciations of the security forces. Some youths threw stones at an Iraqi army vehicle.

“Why do they always target us? We are peaceful people. We come to pray and then go on our way,” one survivor told Reuters Television in an angry tirade, without identifying himself.

The attacks, one of Iraq’s deadliest in recent weeks, also wounded around 120 people and signaled the possibility of a rise in violence after a March national election produced no clear winner and left a power vacuum for insurgents to exploit.

“Targeting prayers in areas with a certain majority,” Baghdad security spokesman Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said, referring to Iraq’s Shi’ite Muslim majority, “is a revenge for the losses suffered by al Qaeda.

“We expect such terrorist acts to continue.”

Last Sunday, al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the purported head of its affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq, were killed in a raid in a rural area northwest of Baghdad by Iraqi and U.S. forces.

The strike against al Qaeda’s Iraq leadership has been accompanied by a string of smaller battlefield victories in which more than 300 suspected al Qaeda operatives have been arrested and 19 killed, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.

By Muhanad Mohammed

Men carry a victim injured in one of a series of parked car bombs in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, April 23, 2010. Triple bombings hit a Sadrist office Friday as worshippers were finishing their prayers, killing 14 and wounding an estimated 75 in a rash of attacks on Shiites across Iraq's capital.Explosions outside three other Shiite mosques in Baghdad, all timed around the end of Friday's prayers, appeared to be the work of insurgents looking anew to inflame sectarian tensions.

BAGHDAD — A series of bombings on Friday struck mosques, a market and a shop in Baghdad, as well as the homes of a prosecutor and police officers in western Iraq, killing dozens, only five days after a joint Iraqi-American raid killed the top two leaders of the insurgency.

Iraq’s leaders had hailed the killings and arrests of insurgent leaders this week as a devastating blow to the group known as Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia but warned that retaliation was almost certain to come. It was not clear that the group, also known as Al Qaeda in Iraq, was behind the latest jolt of violence.

The attacks were the worst of an intermittent wave of bombings since the parliamentary election on March 7, providing a violent backdrop to stalled efforts to finalize the results of the vote and form a new government.

According to preliminary accounts by the Ministry of the Interior, 12 bombs — including car bombs and improvised explosive devices, but not suicide bombers, an insurgent hallmark — killed at least 50 people in Baghdad and wounded more than 100. In Anbar, the sprawling mostly Sunni province to the west, seven people died when a series of explosions struck houses in a small village.

The deadliest attacks struck near three mosques in Sadr City, the Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, just as worshipers departed Friday afternoon prayers. Those attacks, involving car bombs, occurred near the headquarters of the political movement led by the cleric Moktada al-Sadr. The movement’s candidates did well in last month’s election, giving them increased leverage in forming a government its leaders say should not include the incumbent prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

The attacks came a day after senior Iraqi officials said that the previously undisclosed arrest of a senior insurgent leader in Baghdad last month had provided a breakthrough that has allowed Iraqi and American security forces to kill or arrests dozens of the group’s leaders and fighters.

The deaths of the two leaders and the killings and arrests that followed — with 12 more suspects seized in raids in Baghdad and Mosul, in the north, on Thursday — may be the most significant blow yet to a deadly movement that only a few months ago appeared to be regrouping, the officials said.

The officials asserted that the series of raids, and the apparent cooperation of the leader arrested last month, had devastated the group’s leadership ranks, its financing and possibly its links to Al Qaeda’s international leaders on the borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“The map of the entire insurgency in Iraq is now clear to us,” Sharwan al-Waili, the minister of national security affairs, said Thursday.

The lasting impact on Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia remains to be seen, given the group’s resilience and previous overstatements by American and Iraqi officials of its imminent demise. Many details of the recent raids remain secret, and thus impossible to verify. Mr. Maliki’s government is also eager to portray itself as strong on security as negotiations continue to form a coalition after the March 7 election. Any significant weakening of the group could help smooth the Obama administration’s primary goal in Iraq: the steady withdrawal of combat forces by the end of the summer. The withdrawal has appeared increasingly uncertain because of the political impasse over the election.

Mr. Waili and the senior Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta, said that the intelligence trove resulted from the arrest on March 11 of a man who was called Al Qaeda’s “governor” of Baghdad, Manaf Abdul Rahim al-Rawi.

His arrest had not been previously announced, as Iraqi security officials quietly gathered what General Atta called “a huge quantity of important documents and information that were and are useful for the security agencies.”

Mr. Waili said Mr. Rawi’s arrest had led to the “dismantling of the entire network” over the month that followed, culminating in Sunday’s raid and another in Mosul on Tuesday that killed Ahmed al-Obeidi, said to be the group’s leader in three provinces in northern Iraq.

With the arrest of the Baghdad governor, it appeared that the group’s principal leadership had been sundered. “We have reliable information indicating that there is a state of confusion among Al Qaeda now,” General Atta said at a news conference.

In the past, however, new leaders have sprung up to replace those killed. General Atta also warned that retaliatory attacks were possible.

General Atta said that Mr. Rawi had planned and supervised a series of catastrophic attacks in Baghdad that began last August on government buildings, universities, hotels and, before the election, polling stations.

Those bombings killed hundreds, disrupted government functions and heightened anxiety across the capital.

The successes in striking Al Qaeda’s leadership appeared to reflect improved coordination between the American military and Iraqi forces.

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

People rushed to extinguish a burning car moments after a bomb exploded in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad on Friday.