Throughout the country, al-Qaida in Iraq, an insurgent organization thought to be affiliated with the global terrorist network but comprised mainly of Iraqis, has lost so much clout it is close to becoming irrelevant to the outcome of the war.

When President Bush announced in January 2007 that he was sending more than 21,000 extra U.S. combat troops to Iraq — mostly to the Baghdad area — as part of a new approach to fighting the insurgency, commanders said their No. 1 focus was degrading al-Qaida’s ability to foment sectarian violence.

In the Latifiyah area, it’s not hard to see that goal appears to have been achieved — an accomplishment that adds to the expectation that Bush will be able to further reduce U.S. troop levels this fall.

That soldiers are looking elsewhere for a battle is a testament to how much Iraq has changed from a year ago, when violence was at its height. Now it’s the lowest in four years, thanks to the U.S. troop surge, the turn by former Sunni insurgents against al-Qaida in Iraq, and Iraqi government crackdowns on Shiite militias.

There is no available official estimate of the number of al-Qaida fighters in Iraq. A U.S. intelligence estimate early this year put it at a maximum of 6,000, although it probably has fallen far lower recently. Perhaps more importantly, U.S. officers said in a series of Associated Press interviews over the past 10 days that so many al-Qaida leaders have been captured or killed that its remnants are ineffective.

Col. Al Batschelet, chief of staff for the U.S. command overseeing military operations in the Baghdad area, said that once the leadership began disappearing, lower-level technicians were pressed into duty.

That had the effect of accelerating the group’s decline: the technical experts were not as good at organizing and executing attacks, and by taking the lead they exposed themselves to being captured or killed. That, in turn, has left even less-technically skilled fighters to perform the specialized work of assembling bombs like al-Qaida’s signature weapon, the vehicle-borne improvised explosive device, officers said.

Stephen Biddle, an Iraq watcher in Washington at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in an interview that without an urban hideout, al-Qaida is reduced to the role of being ”furtive terrorists.”

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