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Out of the shadows | Guardian Weekly | Guardian Unlimited

Out of the shadows | Guardian Weekly | Guardian Unlimited: "Both men are leaders of the Iraqi resistance - or insurgency, as it is usually known in Britain and the US. Zubeidy is the political spokesman of Ansar al-Sunna, an Islamist armed group with a ferocious reputation. Omary is head of the political department of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a more nationalist organisation whose name commemorates an uprising against British rule after the first world war.
For four years the resistance has stayed in the shadows, without a public face and apparently leaderless, while delivering an ever more violent and devastating campaign that has brought the world's most powerful army to the brink of defeat and changed the balance of global power. As al-Qaida-style suicide atrocities against civilians and Sunni-Shia sectarian death-squad killings have escalated in the past couple of years, they have shifted attention away from the guerrilla war against the US and British occupation forces and the Iraqi army and police. But that growing war of attrition - there are more than 5,000 attacks a month against US forces and the past three months have been the bloodiest for the Americans since the invasion (more than 330 deaths and more than 2,000 wounded) - has pushed the demand for withdrawal from Iraq to the top of the political agenda in Washington."

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