BAGHDAD, May 29, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The new “Operation Lightning” security crackdown on Baghdad and its suburbs will backfire on security troops and lay to rest bids to calm down tensions, Iraqi Sunni leaders warned said on Sunday, May 29.

“If the Iraqi security troops moved ahead with this new operation, resistance factions would find themselves on the defensive,” Islamic Party’s senior leader Iyad Al-Ezzawi was quoted as saying by the London-based Al-Hayat daily.

Dubbing the operation as a “sectarian war launched by the new state on the Sunni Arabs,” Ezzawi said the government should stop living in denial and recognizes the existence of national anti-occupation resistance.

He said some resistance factions have recently stopped targeting Iraqi security troops and entered into a constructive dialogue with the government as a preliminary step to join the political spectrum.

“But Operation Lightning will add insult to injury,” he warned.

The new security crackdown entered into force Saturday, May 28, dividing east and west Baghdad into many sections and establishing 675 mobile checkpoints.

Government spokesman Leith Kubba told journalists that “search operations and raids have allowed us to arrest 500 people,” reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

On Thursday, May 26, Iraqi Defense Minister Sadoun Al-Dulaimi and Interior Minister Bayan Baqer unveiled the operation, which would see the deployment of 40,000 of Iraqi troops into Baghdad to seal off the capital.

“We will impose a stringent blockade around Baghdad, like a bracelet around an arm….No one will be able to penetrate this blockade,” said Dulaimi.

Fakhri Al-Qaisi, the deputy head of the Iraqi Salafist Movement, called the operation “provocative”.

“It is tailored for Sunni Arabs and a conspiracy to remove them from the political landscape,” he told Al-Hayat.

He said the onslaught will lead to mass arrests of innocent civilians, citing a series of random detentions of Iraqis in the Abu Gharib district, in western Baghdad.

“It seems that the government is turning to a new Saddam. The current deteriorating security condition needs a skillful surgeon not a butcher,” Qaisi said.

He advised the new interior and defense ministers to “learn their lesson” from the American occupation forces which finally realized that massive military offensives were fruitless.

Hussein Al-Falouji, a professor of political sciences in Baghdad University, said security cannot be achieved through imposing a crippling blockade and launching massive arrests.

“The Iraqis will no longer feel secure under the new operation,” he told IslamOnline.net.

“The government would rather hunt down looters and thieves, who are mushrooming on Baghdad streets making them not safe any longer.”

Angry Falouji said it is a “terror” not security if Iraqi troops go on terrifying people.

Baghdad locals echoed similar viewpoints, believing the new crackdown would provoke more attacks on security troops in revenge for the indiscriminate raids and arrests.

Abdel Aziz, a university student, criticized Iraqis troops for imitating the US-led occupation forces in naming their onslaught on Iraqi cities and people.

The Iraqi offensive comes as American occupation forces are pursuing a massive sweep in western Iraq.

On Wednesday, May 25, US forces launched Operation New Market, another offensive in the town of Haditha, 200 km northwest of Baghdad.

New Market is the second major offensive in the area this month following the weeklong Operation Matador that started on May 7 that killed more than 30 Iraqis.