This article says the tactic is increasingly common:
They're not very accurate, but they're portable, easy to fire and can cause plenty of death and destruction. Mortars are quickly becoming the weapon of choice as Sunnis and Shiites fight it out in Baghdad. Having mortar rounds fall like rain is now a daily occurrence in some parts of the Iraqi capital.
Throughout Baghdad and in towns and villages within a 50-mile radius, whole populations have shifted as Shiite and Sunni flee violence from death squads and suicide bombers to the safety of places where their Islamic sect is the majority.
But as this physical separation between Sunni and Shiite grows, the mortars cut that gap, allowing sectarian fighters to fire into a district from a distance.
Mortars can be quickly pulled from the trunk of a car and fired over several miles, causing death and destruction without the dangers of close-quarters combat or the sacrifice of a suicide bomber.
The article implies that the mortars are perhaps replacing other forms of killing like sending in hit teams or suicide bombers.
If the Shia and Sunni killers are losing the stomach for going into people's homes and shooting innocents (from fear and not from a change of heart about killing other Moslems, I hasten to add), might we be seeing the peak of sectarian killing?
If the Sunnis are using mortars because they can't pull off the number of suicide bombings that they want, is this a good sign that the Sunnis are failing to recruit the bombers? (And why isn't our presence in Iraq making suicide bomber recruiting easier as critics of the war assert?)
Normally, you'd want to move people to areas where they can be protected by friendly security forces. So the voluntary movement of people is just a decentralized version of what a counter-insurgency program would to anyway with your own people.
And if mortars are becoming the primary means of killing between Shias and Sunnis, our military should be able to do something about them. If we mix persistent surveillance, counter-mortar radars, and rapid response with GPS-guided rockets and shells, we could make firing mortars a far more hazardous tactic for the mortar teams. Extra patrols in the firing areas would help, too.
I've been at a loss about how to stop the killings that make a political deal between the Sunnis and Shias far more difficult to pull off as each side fears letting down their guard will just allow the other side to kill even more if they don't reciprocate standing down. I don't want our troops trying to stop this killing. We'd just anger Shias for protecting Sunnis and we'd hardly get the gratitude of the Sunnis who hate us for toppling Saddam and ending their glory days of neck stomping.
But stopping mortar attacks is something we can do. And if mortar attacks are as significant as the article implies, we could contribute to a calmer environment to foster political moves to end major elements of the Sunni-based insurgency.
