Triangle of Death 2

A glimpse into the post-Fallujah world of the Sunni insurgency may have been
provided by an evanescent web posting used to communicate between the
insurgency's leadership, its cells and external supporters.
ABC News
reports:

The new message opens with a plea for advice from Palestinian and Chechen
militants as well as Osama bin Laden supporters in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"We face many problems," it reads in Arabic, "and need your military guidance
since you have more experience."

The problems, the message says, are the result of losing the insurgent safe
haven of Fallujah to U.S. troops. It says the insurgency was hampered as
checkpoints and raids spread "to every city and road." Communications broke
down as insurgents were forced to spread out through the country. The arrest
of some of their military experts, more "spies willing to help the enemy," and
a dwindling supply of arms also added to the organizational breakdown, it
reads. But the message also lists new "advantages," claiming insurgent groups
are spreading -- to Mosul, Tikrit, Baghdad, and as far south as Basra.

It would be unwise to conclude that the insurgents are on the run without
further collateral evidence because effective disinformation is often pitched to
what we want to believe. With that caveat in mind, the message claims the
insurgency faces "many problems" due to command and control and logistical
problems. The dispersal of enemy fighters, largely as a result of the loss of
Fallujah, has made secure communications between cells slow and difficult. The
new gaps have provided the US with opportunities to insert spies or surveill
couriers. A second major factor has been the tourniquet applied on their lines
of communication from 'checkpoints and raids to every city and road'.

The earlier

River War post suggested that Fallujah was the opening US move in a campaign
to roll up the insurgency's lines of communication; specifically to detach it
from its strategic rear in Syria and to push back its principal logistical
attack base to points further from Baghdad. The web posting reported by ABC
News, if accurate, suggests the enemy is well aware of the danger they face and
are attempting to adapt to new conditions. The appeal to their jihadi
comrades in Afghanistan and Pakistan is intriguing because it suggests that the
Taliban's style of fighting may now be viewed as the relevant model by the Iraqi
insurgents. From their previous position of pre-eminence, the Taliban have been
forced to adopt a very dispersed and low intensity fight against a US force
allied to an increasingly established government. It is a position which the
Sunni insurgents, unless they can reverse their fortunes, may soon find
themselves in.