While drinking my morning coffee today in a small courtyard outside the Coalition Press Information Center in the International Zone (IZ, also sometimes known as the “green zone”), an alarm rang out. An automated voice declared, “Incoming! Incoming! Incoming!” Indeed, the increase in deadly mortar attacks in the IZ has caught the media’s attention of late. Last Thursday, two people were killed and eight wounded when ten mortars hit the IZ. The two fatalities and six of the wounded were Iraqi, with the other injuries “third country nationals” who were neither Iraqi nor American. On May 3, four contractors from Asia were killed in a rocket attack on the IZ. And the U.S. embassy has “ordered its staff to wear flak jackets and helmets while outdoors or in unprotected buildings following an increase in mortar and rocket attacks against the heavily protected Green Zone.”

As is often the case, the media has done a terrible job of reporting on the deteriorating security situation in the IZ — not necessarily due to any overt bias, but because reporters have been characteristically ignorant and lazy in pursuing this story. Some basic questions that need to be asked are: has there been an increase in attacks, or just an increase in their lethality? When did the IZ begin to see the increase in lethal mortar strikes? Are they being carried out by Sunnis are Shias? What is motivating these attacks?

The media hasn’t even attempted to address these questions — but unfortunately my own investigations suggest that we may not be able to answer all of them at this point. Apparently, the IZ began to see more lethal mortar attacks beginning about two months ago. I spoke with several U.S. Army sources who have been stationed in the IZ during this time who told me that there didn’t seem to be an increase in the actual number of attacks, just an increase in the attacks’ accuracy. “It used to be that mortars would be way off the mark, landing in the middle of nowhere,” one soldier reported. “Then suddenly they started hitting their mark.” I don’t consider these sources’ views conclusive because I couldn’t get intelligence sources with relevant statistical data to comment. All the sources I spoke with could only speak from personal observation, which tends to be suspect on matters such as this.

The timing of the increase in deadly mortar attacks is significant. About two months ago, the U.S. military announced its “surge,” after which many al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) fighters relocated from Baghdad to the Diyala region and Moqtada al-Sadr fled to Iran. Subsequently violence has diminished in Baghdad despite the rash of high-profile suicide attacks. (Note that the security situation in Baghdad is terrible despite the improvements, as I will discuss in a future blog entry. It has, however, improved since the surge was announced.) So paradoxically, the security situation worsened in the IZ just as it began to improve in Baghdad as a whole.

Who is responsible for the mortar attacks on the IZ? At this point, we don’t know who is coordinating them. One Army source I spoke with said they didn’t know whether Sunnis or Shias were carrying out the mortar strikes, but that the military has been doing a good job of “getting” the guys responsible. I replied that it seemed like they should be able to figure out whether the mortar attackers were Sunni or Shia after they picked up the attackers. “You don’t understand,” he replied. “When I say we’ve been getting them, I mean we’ve fired back at the attackers and killed them. We haven’t been able to pick them up for interrogation.”

The fact that we don’t know what faction is orchestrating the attacks and haven’t been able to carry out relevant interrogations makes it impossible to know the real motivation behind the attacks. However, the fact that deadly attacks on the IZ increased as the overall Baghdad security situation began to improve should be considered significant.

One Army public affairs officer (PAO) with whom I spoke felt it was likely that the mortar attacks are designed to attain maximum PR value for the enemy. Major attacks inside Baghdad are down, as are sectarian killings, but mortars are a way to keep attack reporting up. Whenever a mortar attack on the IZ succeeds, it makes a splash in the news — and stories are generally framed along the lines of “things are getting worse even in the heavily-fortified IZ.” The PAO thought that despite soldiers’ above-noted observations that overall mortar attacks didn’t appear to be rising, there may really have been an increase in the overall number of mortar attacks (he also did not know the relevant statistical data). Alternatively, he thought it was plausible that AQI could be channeling more resources into training fighters for mortar attacks in Diyala, or that Iran may be devoting more resources to preparing Mahdi Army fighters for mortar attacks. Either way, he thought the most likely scenario is that the attacks on the IZ serve a PR purpose, and are meant to keep the media from focusing on an overall improving security situation. This speculation cannot be verified until the U.S. is able to pick up and interrogate some of the fighters responsible for mortar attacks, but it intuitively strikes me as correct.

Again: Baghdad’s overall security situation is not good, and in some ways is worse than what you would glean from general news reports. But without measuring current levels of violence against where they were months ago, readers are not given the context they need to judge the direction in which the surge is moving the country. And for things like the mortar attacks on the IZ, it’s important to look beyond the headline of the day and get a sense of the big picture — as well as what the enemy is likely attempting to accomplish.

Thanks to Public Multimedia Inc. for its assistance in organizing my embedded reporting from Iraq.

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