LAKE THARTHAR - The rebel leader kneels against a barren white wall, his face shrouded in a red and white Keffiyeh as he grips a rusty Kalashnikov and considers his options.
He runs a five-man cell living a threadbare existence in a shack with plastic canvas walls on the dirt banks of Lake TharThar, which Iraqi commandos and US Apache helicopters assaulted one month ago.
Long after Iraqi forces said they had burnt to the ground terror camps on the lake, the cell leader, a survivor of that battle, continues to operate on TharThar, which has been described as a gateway between the insurgent haven of Anbar province and Salahaddin to the north.
Reporters chanced on him when they met insurgents who were patrolling the lakeside after the March assault. The rebels challenged Iraqi government claims that more than 80 of their fighters had been killed.
Between attacks, the five-man cell takes out their rusty red metal boat, cast fishing nets and fry their catch on a hot plate.
The rebel leader, who declines to be named, and his men sleep on thin mattresses and pour steaming cups of tea in their shack, littered with vegetable tins.
They pride themselves on their spartan existence, but are somewhat defensive when talking about car bombings and beheadings they feel have tarnished the insurgency's name.
"There are some groups who are doing some killing, robberies and other acts that does not please God and his messenger. This is aimed at distorting resistance in the eyes of the Iraqi people," the leader says, in a long rambling speech, his brown pupils staring out from the slit in his Keffiyeh.
His opinion illustrates an emerging trend in the US-Iraq battle against the insurgency.
Following the January 30 election, some insurgents now appear worried their methods, including suicide car bombings, have cost them popular support.
And some have indicated a willingness to follow the lead of the influential Sunni Muslim grouping, the Committee of the Muslim Scholars, which has said it will call a halt to violence if Americans give a timeline for a withdrawal.
"We are following the Muslim Scholars Association.... If the Muslim Scholars Association orders us to stop fighting then we would consider it. But if we see that their demand do not go in harmony with the book of God and the teaching of his prophet then we will keep fighting them," the rebel leader says.
The Muslim Scholars, said to number around 3,000 mosques and thought to have channels to the insurgency, has sent mixed messages in recent weeks, authorising representatives to sit in on negotiations for government cabinet posts.
Key members have called for Sunnis to join the Shiite and Kurdish dominated security forces and urged Iraqi president Jalal Talabani to consider an amnesty for insurgents.
It is a moment of transition and what unfolds depends on whether the Iraqi government can peel away those elements of the insurgency, not tied exclusively to a radical Islamist ideology.
The head of Iraq's elite commando force, Major General Adnan Thabet, believes the government is winning the war for hearts and minds.
"Insurgent numbers are decreasing. Some have left the resistance after they saw what these terrorists did.... The people are starting to hate them."
But the window of opportunity could prove fleeting.
General George Casey, head of US forces in Iraq, said last month that the average 20th century insurgency lasted nine years.
Some counter-insurgency experts even worry the resistance has taken advantage of the post-election period to regroup.
Large-scale attacks like the April 2 double car bombing and 40-60 man assault on the US-run Abu Ghraib prison are seen as unprecedented.
"I am not sure the insurgency can be losing momentum when (Abu Musab) Zarqawi's group... suddenly develops the capability to stage en masse, simultaneous force-on-force attacks," says Bruce Hoffman, an analyst at the Rand Corporation think tank, which advises the Pentagon.
And on windswept Lake TharThar, the rebel leader, a onetime day labourer, is content to carry on his fight.
"Saddam Hussein was an oppressive ruler. He was unjust to us and to Iraq. But a more oppressive power bigger than Saddam Hussein has come... We are against oppression and against what is being done by the occupiers."

04/22/2005 08:48 GMT