MAHMUDIYAH, Iraq, Dec 3 (AFP) - Sheikh Abdullah al-Janabi, an insurgent leader who battled US-led forces in Fallujah, will sooner or later come back to his ancestral country home in Iraq's "triangle of death."
And when he does, US marines will be waiting for him, intelligence officers said Friday in Mahmudiyah, some 35 kilometres (22 miles) south of Baghdad.
"Fallujah was a sideshow. The centre of this insurgency is the landed gentry from this area," said an officer at a US base in Mahmudiyah.
"Their centre of gravity is the family unit. They've got to come home, and when they come home we're going to own them," said the officer, who asked not to be named.
Marines raid Janabi's house two or three times a week and detain any military age males they find there, he said.
Janabi, a Sunni Muslim cleric in whose mosque in Fallujah US marines last month found a huge store of weapons and explosives, is believed to have fled the city, which faced the biggest US-led offensive since the invasion last year.
Intelligence officers say he is also influential in Baghdad and Mosul.
Janabi was born into a leading family in a village near the town of Yusufiyah, about 40 kilometres south of Baghdad.
Like old-style European aristocracy, members of the leading families in his tribe would go into politics, the army or become religious leaders.
"Janabis were the fist of Saddam in this area," said another officer. "A lot of them were special forces or senior intelligence officers. We have reports that a Janabi was a close bodyguard of Saddam."
During the former Saddam Hussein's long reign a Janabi was head of the Al-Qaqaa arms factory and depot near here on the banks of the Euphrates.
Another Janabi was head of rocket-testing, and another ran the Qarq oil depot, the officers said.
Abdullah al-Janabi made his career in Fallujah, a city of some 300,000 to the northwest of here. There, he found uneducated, jobless workers living in squalor.
"You bring in a powerful figure who has a lot of money and influence and you've got an insurgency," one said.
The officers said the Janabis were also well connected criminally, engaging in smuggling and arms dealing. "The insurgent and the criminal side are tied together."
Janabi's brother, Sheikh Mehdi, was the leading figure in Yusufiyah. He is also wantd for questioning by coalition forces and has gone into hiding. His home also gets regular visits by the marines.
This region is today awash with weapons looted from munitions factories in the chaos that followed the invasion that ousted Saddam.
The insurgents, almost all Sunni Muslims, do not want to see democracy come to Iraq because they know the majority Shiites will become the dominant group. But beyond that they appear to have no clear political objective, said the officers.
"They know they can't bring back Saddam, so what is the goal? I think they're trying to figure that out. So with the Americans and the British here, there's something to attack," said one officer.
The region where the Janabis and another powerful tribe, the Cargulis, hold sway, has become known as the "triangle of death" because of kidnappings and daily attacks on both military and civilians.
Even before the large-scale offensives in November to bring Fallujah, east of Baghdad, and Mosul in the north, back under government control ahead of key elections planned for January, the security forces turned their attention to the "triangle of death".
British troops from the Black Watch regiment were brought in to block off what the military called "rat lines" along which insurgents traveled back and forth to Fallujah from this area.
US marines set up bases in Yusufiyah and Latifiyah, from where insurgents had driven out Iraqi security forces. They say that was one of the best strategic moves they have made.
Officers say a major firefight in mid-November, in which marines killed up to 40 insurgents, may have been a bid by fighters returning home from Fallujah to retake their town.
But the marines remain in their heavily fortified base in an abandoned school next to a bombed police station. They regularly raid Sheikh Janabi's house a couple of kilometres to the south.
And the day he dares to come home, the marines say they plan to be there.
12/03/2004 14:16 GMT - AFP