Al Qaeda in Iraq: Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

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Introduction Antiwar Response Get Out: When? Logistics Post-U.S. Scenarios Civil War Refugee Crisis Permanent Presence? Al Qaeda Moral Obligation Charts and Maps Lexicon of Iraq War Lingo Interviews TOOLS E-mail article Print article BACKTALK E-mail the editor

Yet Algeria only offers so many pointers. AQI's pioneering use of the Internet means that it is in no danger of losing its ability to issue communiqués anytime soon. Unlike the Algerian GIA in the 1990s, Al Qaeda seems to be slowly waking up to the fact that violent excesses such as executing ice cream vendors because there was no ice cream at the time of the Prophet Mohammed might not be good for their cause. Masri in an audiotape last November urged his fighters to reign in their violence: "My brothers, you have been sent to make things easy, not difficult. Therefore take care of our Sunni kinsfolk…We protect their honor and money and do not speak badly of them even if they are not part of jihad and its people." This September Masri, presumably because his message had not yet gotten through, issued a lengthy communiqué advising his "commanders" to "beware spilling of innocent blood…avoid distasteful harshness…for nothing can destroy the solid structure of an authority like erratic extremism." Zawahiri has also stepped in with advice. In a videotape posted online on July 5 he urged Al Qaeda in Iraq to "open their hearts to their brothers," reminding AQI of "the critical nature of unity [which] is the gateway to victory." And on October 22, Osama bin Laden, possibly reacting to pleas for his intervention, released an audiotape warning jihadists in Iraq away from extremism and calling on Sunni insurgent groups to reunite "under one banner."

But the most crucial difference to the Algerian experience of the 1990s is that in many areas of Iraq, sectarian conflict is raging between Sunnis and Shiites. Shiite on Sunni violence legitimizes an Al Qaeda presence amongst Sunnis in demographically mixed areas and makes its hardline approach toward Shiites more attractive. It will therefore be difficult for the United States military to extend what it has achieved in Anbar, a province of just 1.3 million overwhelmingly Sunni inhabitants, to other parts of Iraq. General Petraeus conceded as much in his congressional testimony in September when he stated that "Anbar is unique, and the model it provides cannot be replicated everywhere in Iraq."

There have nevertheless been some encouraging developments in parts of Baghdad and surrounding provinces. In some parts of Diyala, a province to the northeast of Baghdad, Sunni insurgents have turned on Al Qaeda, one insurgent in Baquba telling CNN this June, "They ruled with tyranny. They really harmed our town, so we had to stop them, and they left." In the region's capital, Baquba, the same group has helped U.S. soldiers clear Al Qaeda out from local neighborhoods.

But cooperation between the U.S. military and tribal sheikhs—who are, in a wonderful euphemism, now officially termed "concerned citizens"—has very real limits. Often more the result of some insurgents' desire to settle scores with Al Qaeda at the local level, or to receive arms and funding, it hardly represents a fundamental shift in these groups' overall strategy, which remains removing the United States from Iraq and battling the Shiite-dominated government. Two key insurgent groups, the Islamic Army of Iraq and the 1920 Revolution Brigades, have, for example, in recent months continued to claim attacks against the United States military across Iraq.

Advances against Al Qaeda in Diyala, Baghdad, Salah ad Din, and other provinces have mostly been limited to majority Sunni areas where the local population does not feel threatened by Shiite death squads and therefore has a lower toleration for Al Qaeda elements. Organizing Sunni resistance to Al Qaeda in Baghdad has been further complicated by the fact that tribal structures are weaker there than in the countryside, making it more difficult to organize a cohesive response. The pattern is broadly that where there is a high degree of sectarian conflict, Al Qaeda has remained strong. AQI retains a significant presence in swaths of Diyala, scene of some of the worst sectarian fighting between Sunnis and the province's large Shiite minority, while significant numbers of the Sunni minority in Babil, for the most part living in the northern part of the province nearest to Baghdad, have sought to safeguard themselves from Shiite militias and helped Al Qaeda build up havens there. Iraqi and coalition forces have also found it difficult to dislodge AQI fighters from Samarra, a town with a significant Shiite population in the Sunni majority province of Salah ad Din where tensions have run high since the infamous bombing of the Golden Mosque last year. The sectarian conflict that is raging in large tracts of Iraq is likely to give Al Qaeda enough fuel for it not to break up anytime soon under the weight of its own implosive tendencies.

While in recent months the surge in U.S. troops has certainly put more pressure on Al Qaeda and contributed to a drop in sectarian violence in Iraq, especially in Baghdad where increased U.S. and Iraqi patrols have pushed out some insurgents and dissuaded Shiite militias from some of their violent excesses, AQI still unfortunately remains a significant and deadly force. In the four months after the surge reached full force at the beginning of June, there were 137 suicide attacks in Iraq, an average of 34 per month. Although that represents an improvement on the average 41 attacks in the first five months of the year, there have still been more suicide attacks in the last four months than in 2003 and 2004 combined. June saw 54 attacks, the highest number of attacks in one month ever in Iraq, and though the rate of such attacks have fallen since, September still saw more suicide bombings than most months in 2006. From a geographical point of view, Baghdad has seen the largest drop in the rate of suicide attacks, down to 9.5 per month since the surge reached full force in June from an average of 17 earlier in the year. But while this points to some inroads being made by the Baghdad security plan—a joint U.S.-Iraqi effort to secure the capital—some Al Qaeda activity merely seems to have been displaced to other provinces: The rest of the country has actually seen a slightly higher rate of suicide attacks in the same time period.

Although suicide attacks have recently fallen from their all-time high, it is far too early to declare victory against Al Qaeda in Iraq, as some senior U.S. military officials are advocating according to an October report in the Washington Post. AQI appears to retain some ability to launch guerrilla attacks despite U.S. and Iraqi government statements indicating otherwise. On September 16, for instance, some 100 gunmen believed to have been from AQI stormed two towns near Muqdadiya in Diyala and killed more than a dozen civilians. In September AQI also launched an assassination campaign against government officials, police chiefs, and tribal sheikhs opposed to it. The most prominent victim of the campaign was Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, the tribal leader who had spearheaded tribal opposition to Al Qaeda in Anbar province.

AQI's continued ability to sustain operations in Iraq is linked to its ability to recruit an increasing proportion of Iraqis. It remains unclear whether most of its local recruits join up because of ideology or because AQI offers them money, but anecdotal evidence suggests that Al Qaeda has had some success spreading its ideology among younger Iraqis. One young Sunni insurgent who opposes Al Qaeda told the German magazine Der Spiegel this June that around a third of young Sunnis support Al Qaeda. Youngsters growing up in the current-day conditions in Iraq are certainly vulnerable to radicalization, while a slightly older cadre of twentysomething Iraqis were also exposed to hardline Salafist teachings during the 1990s, a function of the difficulties of the sanctions years and Saddam's toleration of Salafist preachers virulently opposed to the United States.

What is certain is that the longer sectarian conflict rages in Iraq, the more young Iraqis will become radicalized. In October AQI released an online video entitled The Caravan of Martyrs that provided biographical details of 24 Iraqi Al Qaeda fighters recently killed in Iraq, some skilled in the handling of IEDs and apparently determined to die as martyrs. The increasing number of Iraqis skilled in the tools of terrorism is likely to have significant international security implications down the road.

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Page 4 of 5

Introduction
Antiwar Response
Get Out: When?
Logistics
Post-U.S. Scenarios

Civil War
Refugee Crisis
Permanent Presence?
Al Qaeda

Moral Obligation
Charts and Maps
Lexicon of Iraq War Lingo
Interviews

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