Relative of Chief Judge in Saddam Trial Killed in Baghdad

CHRISTIAN CARYL: Well, I think there are a lot of reasons behind the up-tick in violence, but one thing that's very important to note is that a lot of those attacks were not directed against U.S. forces.

This has, indeed, been a very bloody time for American troops -- especially in Baghdad, where there has been a very large American security operation, coalition security operation aimed at securing the city, and that means, of course, also the losses from those troops will be greater -- but the important thing to keep in mind is that a lot, the vast majority of these killings that we're hearing about now are due to sectarian violence.

Suicide bombings these days are very much a terror weapon used, it would seem, primarily by Sunni groups who are out to terrorize Shia communities. And that wave of violence has been countered by Shia communities in a variety of ways, Shia groups.

And it's suspected that much of the death squad activity that we're hearing about, although it's very, very hard to pinpoint who's behind it, it's suspected that much of that activity is actually from various Shia factions and groupings, some of them perhaps allied quite closely with the present government, with the Ministry of the Interior, or the police.

CHRISTIAN CARYL: Well, I think we've always assumed that the actual amount of violence is greater than what the Pentagon has been saying, simply because there are huge amounts of violence that simply don't go reported by the Pentagon or by the coalition forces.

That's been the case, I think, pretty much from the beginning, because there's always been a lot of violence in Iraq that was never of a kind directed against coalition forces themselves. There's been a lot of what one military official here recently called "background violence," criminal violence, a variety of different things going on at a particular time.

And I think it's quite clear that a lot of the American statistics have not captured some of this violence. And we've seen that recently, particularly in the case of the United Nations statistics that came out recently on, for example, sectarian killings, where the number that they captured was actually quite a bit higher than what coalition spokespeople have named.

And I think, from the beginning, there's been a tendency on the side of the American military to minimize certain kinds of violence and to be rather selective in what they considered actual insurgency-related or politically related violence.

You know, we hear every day from our Iraqi colleagues who are out there on the street reporting -- which is somewhat more hard for us to do -- about various events of violence that never get mentioned in the press reports, never get captured in coalition statistics. We hear that all the time. So it's just clear there's a lot that isn't making it into these numbers.

CHRISTIAN CARYL: Well, I think it's pretty much clear to everyone at this point -- and I think most informed observers can see -- that it's simply not going to be possible for the coalition to regain control of the situation in Anbar Province if troop levels remain the way they are.

And there's no indication that I can see that anyone is seriously thinking about increasing the level of coalition troops involved in operations in Anbar Province. And as long as that's the political reality, I suspect that we'll be seeing the same people in command of that area for the foreseeable future. And those people are Sunni insurgents and who are, to a large extent, dominated by an al-Qaida-like ideology, if not al-Qaida itself.

JEFFREY BROWN: And finally, Christian, there have been in the past few days reports that American military officials there were not satisfied with Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki in his dealings with combating the militias. What is going on? What are you hearing from local officials?

CHRISTIAN CARYL: Well, you know, I was very struck by a whole series of articles that came out in the American press over the past week or two that were striking, it seemed. And then fairly recently, within just the past few days, we actually had senior military officials on the record saying very cautiously and delicately, but unmistakably, that they would desire that the Maliki government move a bit more forcefully to combat this kind of sectarian violence which is now sweeping through Baghdad.

It seems that the problem is a very simple one: The Maliki government is dependent on support from the bloc of Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite populist strongman, and it's precisely his militia that is often pointed to when we're talking about some of the those vicious of the recent sectarian killings, basically Shia on Sunni.

And until there's some different political configuration in the government in Iraq, it's hard to imagine how the government here can actually crack down on this kind of violence.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Christian Caryl of Newsweek, thanks very much.

CHRISTIAN CARYL: My pleasure.