Al Qaida groups 'leaving Iraq for Sudan, Somalia'

Baghdad: Some groups of Al Qaida terror network in Iraq have started leaving the country towards other hot spots in Africa like Sudan and Somalia, security sources tell Gulf News.

A key reason behind the change in strategy by the so-called Al Qaida Organisation in Mesopotamia is the intensity of the latest military strikes launched by Iraqi and US forces against the network, which has been the major challenge to restoring the stability of Iraq, the sources said.

"Our intelligence information indicates the withdrawal of certain groups of Al Qaida from Iraq because of the military strikes. Many of them have escaped through the borders with Syria and Iran to hotter zones such as Somalia and Sudan," Major General Hussain Ali Kamal, head of the Investigation and Information Agency at the Interior Ministry, told Gulf News.

"I believe this is the beginning of the complete withdrawal of Al Qaida from Iraqi territory."

A source at Iraqi Ministry of National Security said that documents and letters found in hideouts of "some elements of Al Qaida" during search operations in Sunni suburbs in Baghdad, which were previously under the control of Al Qaida, "prove these elements left Iraq for Somalia and Sudan".

The information, which could not be confirmed by independent sources, could represent a victory for the Iraqi government, headed by Nouri Al Maliki.

The number of bloody attacks by Al Qaida has declined remarkably in Baghdad in the past 12 months, an indication the terror network faces a difficult situation on the ground, said Major General Abdul Jalil Khalaf, former police commander in Basra province.

"This also highlights the increasingly improving performance of the Iraqi armed forces and the speed by which they can operate in different places," Khalaf told Gulf News.

Khalaf, who is said to be considered for a top post at the Ministry of Defence, said the recent campaign against the Shiite militias in Basra negatively affected Al Qaida.

"Al Qaida began to lose a lot of sympathy on the Sunni streets after realising that Al Maliki government launched a war against the Shiites fighters, believed to be backed by Iran."

The latest political rapprochement between Iraq and other Arab states has also led to the weakening Al Qaida and "its gradual withdrawal from Iraq", he explained. But Khalaf warned that Al Qaida will not withdraw fully from Iraq. "This will take years," he said.

Via Gulf News.


Comment:

I admit to having been vehemently against Maliki's crackdown, but it seems to have paid off. I appear to have underestimated him.

US and Iraqi forces drive al-Qa'ida from stronghold

AMERICAN and Iraqi forces are driving al-Qa'ida in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country.

After being forced from its strongholds in the west and centre of Iraq in the past two years, al-Qa'ida's dwindling band of fighters had made a defiant "last stand" in the northern city of Mosul. A huge operation to crush the 1200 fighters who remained from a terrorist force once estimated at more than 12,000 began on May 10.

Operation Lion's Roar, in which the Iraqi army combined forces with the US 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, has already resulted in the death of Abu Khalaf, the al-Qa'ida leader, and the capture of more than 1000 suspects.

The group has been reduced to hit-and-run attacks, including one that killed two off-duty policemen at the weekend, and sporadic bombings aimed at killing large numbers of officials and civilians.

Even in the district of Zanjali, which was previously a hotbed of the insurgency, it was possible for reporters to accompany an Iraqi colonel on foot through streets of breeze-block houses studded with bullet holes. Hundreds of houses were searched without resistance.

US and Iraqi leaders believe that while it is premature to write off al-Qa'ida in Iraq, the Sunni group has lost control of its last urban base in Mosul, and its remnants have been driven into countryside to the south.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has also led a crackdown on the Shia Mahdi Army in Basra and Baghdad in recent months, claimed yesterday that his Government had "defeated" terrorism.

"They were intending to besiege Baghdad and control it," he said. "But thanks to the will of the tribes, security forces, army and all Iraqis, we defeated them."

The number of foreign fighters coming over the border from Syria to bolster al-Qa'ida's numbers is thought to have significantly declined.

Brigadier General Abdullah Abdul, a senior Iraqi commander, said: "We've limited their movements with check-points. They are doing small attacks and trying big ones, but they're mostly not succeeding."

Major-General Mark Hertling, US commander in the north, said: "I think we're at the irreversible point."

Mr Maliki was speaking at ceremonies marking the fifth anniversary of the 2003 assassination of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, a leading opponent of Saddam Hussein who was killed in a truck bombing in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf after returning from exile in Iran.

Such attacks plagued Iraq following the US-led invasion, but violence in the country has fallen to its lowest level in four years. The change has been driven by last year's build-up of American forces, the Sunni tribal revolt against al-Qa'ida in Iraq and Mr Maliki's crackdowns, among other factors.

Mr Maliki plans to visit the United Arab Emirates today and also Italy and Germany later in the month - hoping that improved security at home will lead to greater international support.

Iraq is enjoying a surge in oil revenue driven by record crude prices and the highest production levels since Saddam's ouster. The Government expects to earn $73 billion from oil this year if prices remain high.

Putting some of this money to work, the Iraqi Government held a groundbreaking ceremony at the weekend for a project to refurbish the main road to the Baghdad airport.

Via The Australian. H/T Muslims Against Sharia.

Comment:

Hallelujah. If Bush manages to avoid screwing things up in the next 197 days, we will essentially have won — a Pyrrhic victory, to be sure, but victory nonetheless. Hopefully, once President Obama is debriefed by the brass, he'll accelerate the withdrawal, and we can finally turn our attention to bin Laden. In fact, Bush could probably start withdrawing now, and have all of our troops out before the election, but, having refused to heed calls for withdrawal for so long, he is now invested in an eternity of war, as is John McCain. It's ironic: the Right accuses us of being invested in defeat, but in reality it's the other way around.

Talks on US-Iraq pact at 'dead end'

Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, says talks with the US on a new long-term security pact have reached a "dead end". The US and Iraq are negotiating a new agreement to provide a legal basis for US troops to stay in Iraq after December 31, when their UN mandate expires.

They are also negotiating a long-term strategic framework agreement on political, diplomatic, economic, security and cultural ties.

"We have reached a dead end, because when we started the talks, we found that the US demands hugely infringe on the sovereignty of Iraq, and this we can never accept," al-Maliki said during a visit to Jordan on Friday.

[More]


Comment:

Thank God. If Bush had successfully been able to push this through, it would have been a catastrophe. Not only would it have tied up the troops that are so badly needed in Afghanistan, but it would have eliminated any credibility that the Iraqi government may have had, almost certainly throwing the country into turmoil as the current fragile political coalition disintegrates. This would have made it immensely more difficult for President Obama to redeploy.

Speaking of Afghanistan, I am making progress on figuring out which districts are currently held by the Taliban. Most of the country is actually much quieter than I had realized, with almost all of the fighting being confined to a relatively small area.

Iraqis rally over US security deal

Tens of thousands of Iraqi Shia have taken to the streets of Baghdad and other cities to protest against a long-term security deal with the US. The rallies after Friday prayers follow a call by Muqtada al-Sadr for weekly protests against the deal that could lead to more US troops and a long-term US presence.

Washington wants the Iraqi government to provide a legal framework for US troops to remain in Iraq beyond the expiration of a UN mandate in December. Officials from the administration of George Bush, the US president, told Al Jazeera they expect to finalise the deal by the end of July.

A statement from al-Sadr's office called the negotiations "a project of humiliation for the Iraqi people".

Sheikh Salah Obaidi, a spokesman for al-Sadr's bloc in parliament, said the call for protests is not a "threat" to the Iraqi government, but a "warning". Al-Sadr, a Shia leader who has the backing of the al-Mahdi Army militia, called for the weekly protests on Tuesday and warned the government against signing the agreement, saying "it is against the interests of the Iraqi people".

Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, another leading Shia figure, spoke out against the agreement, saying it would violate Iraq's sovereignty.

Last week, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most revered Shia cleric, also reportedly expressed his anger, saying he would not permit the Iraqi government to sign a deal with "US occupiers" as long as he lived.

Via Al Jezeera.


Comment:

Why is the Bush administration so averse to victory? Once we finally reduce al-Qaeda in Iraq to utter insignificance — and I would be absolutely flabbergasted if that still had not happened by the time the mandate expires in December — our job will be complete. We will be able to withdraw; when we do so, the attacks against our troops will obviously stop, and Iraq will have become as stable as can reasonably be expected for a country in the Middle East. If, however, we do make this deal, then the current fragile peace that exists between the government and the Shia (and, most likely, the Sunni as well) will be broken. If we make the deal, we will have needed to make it; if we do not make it, we will not have needed to make it.

We must withdraw, not only for Iraq, but for us as well. I have calculated that by freeing up all of the troops who are currently deployed in Iraq, and allowing them sufficient time between deployments, we would be able to triple, if not outright quadruple, the size of the Coalition forces in Afghanistan. President Obama will then be able to show Bush what a real surge looks like.

US ambassador: al-Qaida close to defeat in Iraq

BAGHDAD — The U.S. ambassador to Iraq said Saturday that al-Qaida's network in the country has never been closer to defeat, and he praised Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for his moves to rein in Shiite and Sunni militant groups.

Ryan Crocker's comments came as Iraqi forces have been conducting crackdowns on al-Qaida militants in the northern city of Mosul and on Shiite militiamen in the southern city of Basra. Thousands of Iraqi forces also moved into the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad last week imposing control for the first time in years.

[snip]

Al-Qaida fighters or other Sunni insurgents struck back in Mosul on Saturday. A roadside bomb in the city's Sumer neighborhood hit an Iraqi army patrol, destroying a vehicle and killing four soldiers, a police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

Near Baqouba — where a U.S. offensive last year targeted al-Qaida in Iraq — gunmen assassinated a member of the local Awakening Council, a U.S.-backed group of Sunni tribesmen who are fighting al-Qaida. The attack occurred in the village of Had, north of Baghdad, police said.

U.S Ambassador Crocker spoke as he visited reconstruction projects in the southern city of Najaf.

"There is important progress for the Iraqi forces in confronting the Sunni and Shiite militias," he said, speaking Arabic to reporters. "The government, the prime minister are showing a clear determination to take on extremist armed elements that challenge the government's authority ... no matter who these elements are."

"You are not going to hear me say that al-Qaida is defeated, but they've never been closer to defeat than they are now," Crocker said.

The U.S. military says attacks have dropped dramatically — down to an average of 41 a day across the country, the lowest rate since 2004 — amid the crackdowns and truces. The U.S. military, backed by Sunni Arab tribal fighters, have scored successes in battling al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni insurgents in western parts of the country.

The Mosul sweep aims to dislodge the terror network from its most prominent remaining urban stronghold. The operation has met little opposition, suggesting that many al-Qaida militants fled, intending to regroup elsewhere as they have in past crackdowns.

Via Comcast.


Comment:

This is good news. Now if Maliki can avoid starting another civil war in the south, things might be looking up.

Hundreds held in Mosul crackdown

About 1,100 people have been arrested during the first four days of an Iraqi military operation in the country's main northern city of Mosul, the defence ministry says.

Major-General Mohammed al-Askari, the ministry spokesman, said on Saturday there had been no clashes or killings during the mission, which is ongoing.

The military said al-Qaeda operatives who had regrouped in the region were the target of the arrests. Al-Askari said 530 of those being held, three of them senior al-Qaeda members, were wanted by the authorities.

He said security forces had recovered 1,400kg of explosives, 45 missiles, 263 mortar bombs and 175 assorted weapons.

Fighters disperse

Iraqi leaders said many of the fighters had fled to nearby areas, where troops were hunting for them. However, the operation is being described as successful in depriving the fighters of their urban stronghold. But the flight of al-Qaeda fighters to nearby areas raises the concern they can regroup elsewhere, as has happened in the past. Yassin Majid, an adviser to Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, said most of the group's leaders had fled to the outskirts of Mosul or to a neighbouring country. He did not name the country, but Mosul is about 96km from the Syrian and Turkish borders. Major-General Mark Hertling, the senior US commander in northern Iraq, whose forces are working with the Iraqi troops in the operation, said he did not believe significant numbers of fighters had escaped. He said Iraqi forces had surrounded the city with barriers and checkpoints controlling entry and exits. "It's been very successful," he told the Associated Press. "I think the combination of the arrests plus the uncovering of a number of weapons caches will reduce the number of attacks in Mosul."

Arms amnesty

On Friday, al-Maliki had announced a 10-day amnesty for those surrendering weaponry, but officials said there had been no response to an offer of cash in exchange for heavy and medium weapons. "Any house in Mosul has the right to have only one small weapon - a pistol or rifle," al-Askari said on Friday.In February, al-Maliki unveiled plans for a campaign against al-Qaeda in Iraq and in March was involved in an assault on Shia militias in the southern city of Basra. This crackdown prompted fighting in other urban areas between the Iraqi army and members of the al-Mahdi Army militia loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, a populist Shia leader. Hundreds of people have been killed in seven weeks of battles, which saw the US military stepping in to support the Iraqi army. Despite a truce being agreed last Saturday one woman was killed and two children were wounded in overnight violence, medics in the Baghdad district of Sadr City said on Friday.

Via Al Jazeera.

Mosul operation enters fourth day

An operation against what Iraqi and US military officials call "al-Qaeda forces" in Mosul has entered its fourth day, amid claims that "indiscriminate arrests" are being conducted in the area.

According to the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), at least 120 former Iraqi army officers have been arrested, as well as students and academics.

The statement released on Wednesday by the AMS comes as Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, arrived in Mosul to "supervise the military operation". The AMS also claims that a number of university professors and students from various areas in Mosul have been detained.

"This ... [operation] clearly indicates that the military campaign has further dimensions than those announced, and that its goal is to crack down on the sons of this governorate [of Mosul] who reject the occupation and its allies, a statement said. "The AMS denounces this brutal operation which aims to liquidate all the city's people who reject the occupiers and their destructive plans."

Deteriorating conditions

Nizar Fahmy, a journalist working in Mosul, told Al Jazeera that the situation on the ground has deteriorated during the operation, to a degree where residents are struggling to obtain basic necessities. The city is under curfew, with only pedestrians allowed out onto the streets during the day. He said: "People have resorted to getting vegetables and fruit from the outskirts of the city - where the first checkpoint leading to Mosul is. "Merchants have been forced to resort to peddling their wares on carts, as they travel to different neighbourhoods." Fahmy also said that security forces have constructed a list of names of so-called "suspects" that are wanted and are conducting house-to house searches based on this list. Al-Qaeda fighters are said to have regrouped in Mosul and the surrounding province of Nineveh after being pushed out of Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, and western Anbar province by US and Iraqi forces. It is unclear how long al-Maliki will stay in Mosul, but his visit is similar to his trip to the southern city of Basra in late March when he oversaw a military operation against fighters loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, a populist Shia leader.

'New phase'

Iraqi security forces backed by the US military launched a "new phase" of operations on Saturday in Nineveh province, which borders Syria and Turkey, the US military said. In February, al-Maliki had announced plans for an operation against al-Qaeda and called on the population to support the security forces to get rid of "terrorists". On Monday, he told parliament his troops had only begun preparatory operations and that a major operation was yet to come. He said: "When this phase of preparation is completed, we will announce the start of the military offensive". Mosul, the capital of Nineveh, 370km north of Baghdad, has been described by the US military as the centre of the fight against al-Qaeda. The city, one of the most dangerous places in the country, has been the scene of many bombings and attacks. On January 23, an explosion at an ammunition dump killed more than 60 people and destroyed dozens of homes. Nineveh's police chief was killed in a suicide bombing when he visited the site of the explosion on the following day.

Via Al Jazeera.


Comment:

The Association of Muslim Scholars is an influential Sunni group that opposes the occupation and the government through non-violent means. Although it does not object to armed resistance in principle, it does believe that attacks against civilians and sectarian violence are against Islamic law, and is thus no great friend of al-Qaeda.

False Alarm

It wasn't al-Masri after all.

Al Jazeera has more info, if you're interested.

Al Qaeda in Iraq leader reportedly arrested

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was arrested in the northern city of Mosul, the Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman said Thursday.

CNN is working to confirm the information.

Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said the arrest of al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, was confirmed to him by the Iraqi commander of the province.

"The commander of Ninevah military operations informed me that Iraqi troops captured Abu Hamza al-Muhajir the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq," al-Askari told The Associated Press by telephone.

Al-Masri, an Egyptian militant, took over al Qaeda in Iraq after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed June 7, 2006 in a U.S. airstrike northeast of Baghdad.

The U.S. military in Baghdad said "we are currently checking with Iraqi authorities to confirm the accuracy of this information."

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said that Mosul police "arrested one of al Qaeda's leaders at midnight and during the primary investigations he admitted that he is Abu Hamza Al-Muhajir."

News of the arrest was also reported by Iraqi state television.

The state channel, Iraqiya, said that Minister of Interior Jawad al-Bolani would reward Mosul police for the capture.

Interior Ministry spokesman Khalaf told the station by phone that a source close to the al Qaeda leader informed Mosul police that al-Masri would be at a house in the city's Wadi Hajar area at midnight Wednesday.

"The police raided this house and arrested him. During the primary investigation, he confessed that he is Abu Hamza Al-Muhajir, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq. Now a broader investigation of him is being conducted," he said to Iraqiya.

If confirmed, the arrest would represent a major blow to al Qaeda in Iraq, which has been on the run for the past year following an influx of thousands of U.S. troops and a shift in alliances by Sunni tribesmen in western Anbar province, and elsewhere.

The U.S. military considers the organization its number one enemy in Iraq.

He did not have any further details nor did he say when the al Qaeda leader was arrested. According to unconfirmed reports he was caught Thursday evening in the Tayran area in central Mosul, 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad.

Mosul is currently a major battleground for U.S. forces and al Qaeda.

The Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella organization that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq, last year announced an "Islamic Cabinet" for Iraq and named al-Masri as "minister of war."

U.S. officials said al-Masri joined an extremist group led by al Qaeda's No.2 official in 1982. He joined al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan in 1999 and trained as a car bombing expert before traveling to Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

According to associates in Afghanistan, al-Masri has been involved in Islamic extremist movements since 1982, when he joined Islamic Jihad, a terror group led by Ayman al-Zawahri, who became bin Laden's chief deputy.

Al-Masri fought with Muslim rebels against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s and later ran al Qaeda training camps there.

Via CNN.

Al-Zawahiri: 'Iraq war a failure'

Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's deputy leader, has in a new audiotape said that the US occupation of Iraq has brought only "failure and defeat".

The authenticity of the recording posted on a website late on Thursday could not be independently verified, but it appears to be the second recording in April by al-Zawahiri.

Al-Zawahri, considered to be the network's chief strategist, said that building Iraq as a "fortress of Islam" is the "most important duty" for Muslims.

Passing on problem

Marking the fifth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, al-Zawahiri said that the administration of George Bush, the US president, is passing on a "problem" to the president's successor by guaranteeing that a heavy foreign military presence stays in Iraq for the rest of Bush's term. Following the advice of General David Petraeus, the US' senior commander in Iraq, to delay troop withdrawals, the current total of 160,000 soldiers is scheduled to shrink to about 140,000 by the end of July.

"The truth is that if Bush keeps all his forces in Iraq until doomsday and until they enter hell, they will only see crisis and defeat by the will of God", al-Zawahiri said. Al Jazeera's Owen Fay in Baghdad reported: "What is interesting is the timing [of the message] in so far as it relates to the attacks that have been going on here ... It came just after an attack on a funeral, it came two days after a series of bombing attacks across the country that have been blamed on al-Qaeda in Iraq. "The question that people are asking right now, is whether the al-Qaeda leadership in Iraq is reacting to events that have taken place here or if they are directing a new campaign." The deputy al-Qaeda leader also blasted the Awakening Councils, groups comprising Sunni fighters who switched sides and started to work with the US to pacify predominantly Sunni areas of Iraq.

'Liberating' Jerusalem

In Thursday's tape, al-Zawahiri also said a fight to liberate Jerusalem would be launched from Iraq, reiterating earlier statements attributed to Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda. In the latter part of the recording, al-Zawahiri decried the "exploitation of Muslims" in Egypt. Citing riots over rising bread prices, he said that those who are "starving the people of Egypt" are the same as those "who are denying food to the people of Gaza", connecting the two as "part of a Zionist-American plot to humiliate the Muslim nation".

Via Al Jazeera.



Comment:

That last part is especially interesting (to me, anyway). I have been following the food crisis, which I have come to think of as the Rebelyon (from the Haitian Rebelyon an Viv!, "Long live the Revolution!"), because I strongly suspect that it will be to the 2010's what terrorism has been to the 2000's. It is interesting to see al-Qaeda begin to stick its tentacles into it.

In other news, I am strongly considering moving this blog to Word Press, and making it more general. Thoughts?

Time to forget the Crusades

The following is an editorial written by John Tolan for Al Jazeera:

French historian Joseph Francois Michaud (1767-1839), in his Histoire des Croisades, affirmed that the Crusades had proven the superiority of Europeans over Muslims and showed the way to the conquest and civilisation of Asia.

Shortly thereafter, Louis Philippe, the King of France from 1830 to 1848, commissioned a Salle des Croisades at Versailles, replete with monumental romanticised paintings of scenes from the Crusades. It is perhaps no accident that at the same time the French were embarked upon the conquest of Algeria.

For numerous French and British of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, the Crusades were a precursor to their brave new colonial adventures in the Orient.

In reaction, Turkish and Arab writers denounced the European colonial enterprise as a re-enactment of the fanaticism and violence of the Crusades.

The Crusades have long stirred emotions of admiration or revulsion, from Tasso's epic Gerusalemme Liberata (1580) to Youssef Chahine's film Saladin the Victorious (1963) and beyond.

Arguing the clash

The legacy of crusading, simplified and distorted, is evoked to argue the inevitability of a present and future "clash of civilisations".

When Osama bin Laden speaks of countering the attacks of American and European "crusaders", he taps into a 19th-century European tradition of seeing the medieval crusades as precursors to the colonial (and subsequently post-colonial) relations between Europeans and Arabs.

But, the Crusades played little part in Arab conceptions of history from the 14th to the 19th centuries.

Until that time, the Crusades were a relatively minor phenomenon in the broad sweep of Muslim history. Of course, chroniclers such as Ibn al-Athir, Ibn Al Qalanisi or al-Maqrizi, close to rulers who fought against the Faranj (rulers like Saladin, al-Kamil, Baibars), made much of the threat posed by the Europeans and the heroic exploits of the sultans who defeated them.

Ibn al-Athir explained that the attack on the Muslim Mashreq (Middle East) was part of a movement of Faranj that included the Castilian capture of Toledo (in 1085) and the Norman conquest of Sicily (1072-91).

Yet for other Arab writers of the Middle Ages, the invasions of the Faranj were a minor inconvenience: they were simply another group of Christians who, like the Byzantines or Armenians, could seize small territories and pose threats to local Muslim rulers.

The Mongol threat

Far more troubling were the invasions of the Mongols, who captured and plundered large swaths of the Muslim heartland, sacking Baghdad in 1258 and Damascus several times.

The Mamluks' victory over the Mongols at Ayn Jalut in 1260 was far more vital than their victories over the string of small and powerless crusader enclaves such as that of Acre, which the Mamluks captured in 1291, ending the Crusader presence in the region.

Ibn Khaldun, in his great works of historiography, the Muqaddima and the Kitab al-'Ibar, has little to say of Crusades and Crusaders, much more about Mongols (including Timur, whom he met) and about the Berber dynasties of the Maghreb.

Few Arab authors of the following centuries take much interest in the Crusades, which are largely seen as a footnote to the sweep of Muslim history.

In Europe, meanwhile, the Crusades, and their failure to galvanise and unify European Christendom, were an obsession to many authors. In the aftermath of the loss of Acre in 1291, various Europeans called on kings, princes and popes to organise fresh crusades against the Mamluks and increasingly against the Ottomans.

Most of the anti-Turkish "crusades", like those of Nicopolis (1396) and Varna (1443) ended in crushing defeat for the European troops. But various European Christian authors continued to use the language of the Crusades to try to fire their co-religionists into attacking the Ottomans or other enemies, including Protestants and "heathen" American Indians.

The historians and philosophers of the 18th-century Enlightenment, in contrast, vilified the notion of war in the name of God: for them, holy war represented the epitome of medieval fanaticism. Voltaire depicts the Crusaders as blood-thirsty fanatics, while portraying their opponents, particularly Saladin and al-Kamil, as wise and just monarchs.

European nationalism

Yet this negative vision of crusading is swept aside in 19th-century Europe by three powerful forces in European culture: Romanticism, nationalism, and colonialism.

The Romantics rehabilitated the Crusades which they portrayed as, at times, bloody and senseless, yet redeemed by a remarkable and admirable idealism. This idea is embodied in the novels of Walter Scott, such as Ivanhoe (1819) and the Talisman (1825).

Francois de Chateaubriand, in his Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem (1811), takes umbrage at those who speak ill of the Crusades.

On the contrary, for him, despite their shortcomings the Crusaders were imbued with a faith and a selfless sense of mission that pushed them to abandon wives, children, lands and material riches to wrest Christ's tomb from the grasp of the Muslims.

In Jerusalem, at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Chateaubriand was dubbed into the Order of the Holy Sepulcher by a Franciscan friar wielding what was supposed to be the sword of Godfrey of Bouillon, knight and first ruler of Crusader Jerusalem.

Chateaubriand and other Europeans dreamed of a return to the heroic age of the Crusades.

European colonialism

Their dream was not long in the waiting. Beginning in 1830, French troops undertook the conquest of Algeria. French Crusader historians Francois-Joseph Michaud and Jean-Joseph Poujoulat praised kings Charles X and Louis-Philippe as new incarnations of Saint Louis.

In a preface to a school textbook on the Crusades, the authors present the feats of medieval French Crusaders as models for the youth sent off to conquer Algeria: "The narration of the great events of olden times shall serve as lessons of patriotism for our youth."

When Napoleon III addressed the troops ready to set off for Lebanon in 1860, he exhorted them to be "the worthy children of those heroes who gloriously carried Christ's banner into those countries".

The British similarly painted their victories over the Ottomans in the first world war: Richard the Lionhearted, who failed to take Jerusalem from Saladin, appears in the pages of Punch in December 1917, in the aftermath of Allenby's capture of Jerusalem, saying "At last, my dream come true!"

One could multiply the examples of British and French authors of the 19th and early 20th centuries who affirmed that their colonial empires were reviving the best traditions of medieval crusading: its idealism, its mission to bear European civilisation into the heart of the Middle East.

Independence dashed

At the Versailles peace conference at the close of the first world war, when the French and British argued over the partition of the Arab lands wrested from the Ottoman empire and the Arab envoys increasingly realised their hopes for independence would be dashed, one of the French representatives tried to ground his claims on French prominence in the Crusades.

Amir Faisal, in frustration, shot back: "Would you kindly tell me just which one of us won the Crusades?"

It is through the French and British, principally, that Arabs of the 19th and 20th centuries rediscovered the Crusades. Modern Arabic terms for the Crusades, such as harb al-salib, were coined in the 19th century as translations of European terms; there had previously been no Arabic word for "crusade".

Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II (1876-1909) warns that "Europe is now carrying out a Crusade against us".

The first book in Arabic devoted specifically to the Crusades is Sayyid Ali al-Hariri's al-Hurub al-Ṣalibiya, published in Cairo in 1899. His work is grounded in both European scholarship and in knowledge of the medieval Arabic chroniclers.

Unify the Arabs!

Al-Hariri, like subsequent Arab scholars, accepted Michaud's assertion that the Crusades were a precursor for European colonialism. Arab nationalists responded by drawing their own historical lessons from this comparison: the new crusaders can be defeated just as their predecessors had been by the unification of the Arabs under leaders who, like Saladin and Baibars in the Middle Ages, will expel the intruders from Arab soil.

Since the middle of the 20th century, if Europeans or Americans compare the Crusades to colonialism, it is in order to denounce one, the other, or both. In the late 20th and 21st centuries, Westerners tend to see the Crusades as manifestations of violent fanaticism, not as expressions of admirable idealism.

It is now principally in the circles of radical Islam that the 19th-century European paradigm equating Crusades with European colonialism lives on.

Sayyid Qutb in the 1960s affirmed that "the Crusader spirit runs in the blood of all Westerners".

Similar statements have been proffered by more recent Islamists, including bin Laden or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: Crusaders and Zionists are implacable enemies with whom one neither speaks nor compromises.

The mirror term among more extreme western writers is Jihadists: Islamists (or for some, more broadly Muslims) are seen to be inordinately hostile to non-Muslims, against whom holy war is a sacred duty.

What clash?

These Manichean world views fuel pessimistic scenarios such as Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilisations". Yet when one looks closely at the age of Crusades, one finds that the lesson to be drawn is far less simplistic than Huntington or bin Laden would have us believe.

It is a time of trade, when Egyptian merchants bought spices in India and sold them in Spain, when Venetians and Genoese traders sold English or Flemish wool cloth in Alexandria and brought back to Europe Egyptian glass, Damascene metalwork, Indian spices.

Pilgrims - Christians, Muslims and Jews - bound for Mecca and Jerusalem, travelled together on Genoese or Pisan ships, along with merchants, mercenaries and adventurers.

It is a time when storms tossed their ships and all raised their voices to God in a multilingual supplication. Conflict, as always, was endemic, but it often crossed confessional lines.

The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (and the other Crusader principalities) did not, as some have claimed, comprise an "apartheid" regime of boorish European louts lording over cultured but abject Muslims.

Its inhabitants were in fact a cosmopolitan mix of Arabs, Turks, Armenians, Italians, Normans, Provencaux, etc.

In religion they were Shia and Sunni Muslim, Druze, Catholic, Monophysite, and Jewish.

The Latin rulers gradually "orientalised", marrying the daughters of prominent indigenous Christians, learning Arabic, eating and dressing like natives, making truces and alliances with neighbouring Muslim rulers and promoting commerce.

Yet one should not imagine an idyllic land of tolerance: social distinctions were real, and often followed lines of religion and ethnicity.

Seeking historical understanding

In this, as in the violence with which they imposed and enforced their rule, the Latins differed little from other contemporary interlopers in Syria/Palestine: Turks, Byzantines, Kurds, Egyptian Fatimids and Mameluks.

The historical fallacy of identifying modern struggles with those of the Middle Ages continues to be an impediment to a real historical understanding of Arab-European (and more broadly Western-Muslim) relations.

The motivations for al-Qaeda's violence have more to do with internal Saudi politics and resentment of US policy in the Middle East than with a supposedly eternal clash between "crusaders" and "jihadists".

The roots of Iranian anti-Americanism can be found in decades of American alliance with the Shah, rather than in centuries of a supposed clash of civilisations.

The solution to the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis is to be found in the righting of the wrongs of the past 60 years, not in invoking the age of the Maccabees or Saladin.

It is time to put to rest simplistic notions of the clash of civilisations based on a falsified image of a long-vanished past. Our current problems are real enough to merit being understood on their own terms.

John Tolan is a Professor of Medieval History at the University of Nantes (France). He is the author of Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), Sons of Ishmael: Muslims through European Eyes in the Middle Ages (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008), and St Francis and the Sultan: An Encounter Seen Through Eight Centuries of Texts and Images (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008; French edition published in Paris: Seuil, 2007).

Iraq troops prepare for Mosul push

Iraqi troop reinforcements are being sent to the northern city of Mosul for an operation against al-Qaeda fighters, security officials have said. Major-General Riyadh Jalal Tawfiq, commander of military operations in Ninawa province, said on Sunday that the extra Iraqi troops would arrive from Baghdad within hours, without giving figures.

The reinforcements come two days after Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, said that Iraqi forces were preparing for a final offensive against al-Qaeda in Iraq to dislodge them from their last urban stronghold.

US military commanders say the al-Qaeda group has regained power in northern Iraq after being forced out of the western province of Anbar and from around Baghdad last year. The US military does not have a large presence in Ninawa, of which Mosul is the capital. It was unclear what role US forces would play in the offensive, which appears to be an Iraqi-led operation.

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Comment:

Let us pray for their success.

And now for something slightly different

Up to this point, I've been analyzing terrorism from a fairly secular standpoint, largely because my religion doesn't really have a whole lot to say about it ("Don't"). However, I have just recently read a fascinating article in the New York Times magazine entitled "Where Boys Grow Up to be Jihadis". It's about the neighborhood of Jamaa Mezuak in the city of Tetouan, Morocco, from whence have come much of the cell responsible for the Madrid bombings, as well as several Iraqi suicide bombers. While it puzzled scholars, it provided me with valuable insight into how Apostasy spreads.

It began with Jamal "Chino" Ahmidan's fall from grace. Chino had emigrated from Jamaa Mezuak to Spain, where he became a drug dealer. He fathered a child outside of marriage, and killed a man during a visit home. It was around this time that he first came in contact with the concept of the Apostasy, apparently through "videos of the mujahedeen" in Chechnya. For some reason — probably guilt over killing the man — he became a "born-again" Muslim, and, for some reason, an Apostate. During an extended stay back in Morocco, he converted four of his friends to Apostasy. Returning to Madrid, they met up with another Apostate, and together they planned and executed the attacks. Those not killed during the attacks themselves died in a stand off with police.

The people of Jamaa Mezuak were at a loss as to how such nice neighborhood boys could have become cold-blooded killers, and some of the terrorists' friends decided to find out. They investigated Apostasy, searching for an explanation. In the end, they themselves became Apostates. They made contact with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb at a local mosque, and with its help, left for Iraq. Some were arrested en route, others became suicide bombers. Now, at least one of the family members of these bombers also appears to be in danger of falling to Apostasy.

The article is mystified by this pattern. Neither it, nor the experts, can explain why some people radicalize and some don't. According to the article: "The notion that poverty is to blame has been debunked again and again. And while religious extremism can feed militancy, many experts prefer to emphasize the anger generated by political conflicts, like the war in Iraq or the Arab-Israeli struggle." The article also discusses the "Bunch of Guys" theory, which identifies peer-pressure as a major factor.

For me, however, the article confirmed what I have long suspected: that Apostasy is a "spiritual disease." Let me explain.

In my religion, the Bahá'í Faith, there exists a curious phenomenon called "Covenant Breaking." On several occasions in Bahá'í history, someone has attempted to seize power. These attempts invariably fail, however, because unlike most religions, the Bahá'í Faith has a very clear and unambiguous line of succession. It's just not possible to assert legitimacy. Nonetheless, some people have tried, and some people have followed them, and they have caused us innumerable headaches over the years. The Bahá'í scriptures explain this odd behavior as being a spiritual disease. Like most diseases, it is contagious, so Bahá'ís are urged to avoid contact with Covenant Breakers (which isn't difficult, since there are so few of them. In my entire life I've only even seen a Covenant-Breaker once, and that's a lot more than most people).

If we look at the course of events outlined above, we can see a similarly epidemiological pattern. The first to be "infected" was Chino, who apparently picked it up on the internet. He spread it to his friends, and together they pulled off the Madrid bombings. Even after their death, though, they were still infectious, and the disease spread via social ties to family members and friends, who then became infected. They went off to Iraq. Now, someone else with ties to the second wave appears to be battling infection.

I realize that few, if any, readers of this blog are Bahá'ís, but I hope that this post has provided at least some insight. It certainly has helped me get my thoughts in order.

US-Iraqi assault 'targets al-Qaeda'

Reports from Iraq say 600 US and Iraqi soldiers have launched an air and ground assault on two villages allegedly sheltering al-Qaeda in Iraq fighters. The soldiers are reported to be searching villagers' homes to try to flush out al-Qaeda fighters hiding among them....

Meanwhile, a top British commander in southern Iraq said attacks plunged 90 per cent across the country's south after the UK withdrew its troops from the city of Basra. The presence of British forces in the centre of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, was the single largest instigator of violence, Major-General Graham Binns said on Thursday on a visit to Baghdad's Green Zone. About 500 British troops moved out of a former Saddam Hussein palace at Basra's heart in early September, joining some 4,500 at a garrison at an airport on the city's edge.

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Comment:

Holy cow. Ninety percent.

One of the most important parts of winning the War on Terror is resolving the situation in Iraq. Even though al-Qaeda's plans for establishing an emirate in that country have all but collapsed, the ongoing occupation is still one of their best recruiting tools, generating anger and outrage throughout the Middle East — and the world — that the Apostasy feeds on. The problem, of course, is how to end it; you can't just wave a magic wand and create a stable society. Due to the weakness and ineffectiveness of the central Iraqi government, conventional wisdom has been that simply pulling our troops out would result in a power vacuum, causing Iraq to implode in much the way Somalia did. It now appears, however, that for whatever reason this is not the case.

Clearly, more information is required than is provided in this one article. Is the unexpected stability due to increased effectiveness of the Iraqi government, or is it due to its absence and the dominion of a few groups that are acting as mini governments? If it's the later there's a problem, because it means that a general withdrawal would end up splitting Iraq into warring regions, internally stable but in bloody conflict with one another. In addition to the obvious undesirability of this for the people of Iraq, it also would not help much in the War on Terrorism, since al-Qaeda recruiters would be able to point to the corpse of what was once a functional nation and say, "America did this". Another question is what the crime rate is like in Basrah. Few military attacks won't mean much if the region is reduced to mob rule.

Bin Laden issues Iraq message

Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, has released a new audiotape calling on fighters in Iraq to unite and stand shoulder to shoulder. In the tape broadcast by Al Jazeera on Monday, a voice sounding like bin Laden admitted that mistakes had been made in Iraq and exhorted the fighters to rectify them.

"Some of you have been lax in one duty, which is to unite your ranks," bin Laden said. "Beware of division... The Muslim world is waiting for you to gather under one banner."

In the audio recording, entitled A Message to the People of Iraq, bin Laden called on tribal leaders and the leaders of armed groups to initiate an agreement between the different groups. "The interest of the Islamic nation surpasses that of a group," he said. "The strength of faith is in the strength of the bond between Muslims and not that of a tribe or that of nationalism."

"Mistakes"

Bin Laden said fighters in Iraq should admit "mistakes" and try to correct them in the interest of unity. The recording was aired as Iraq's government reported violence had dropped by 70 per cent since the end of June, following a series of US-led offensives.
Iraq's wing of al-Qaeda is one of the groups fighting US-led forces and the Baghdad government, but bin Laden's followers have angered other Sunni groups and tribes through their interpretations of Islam and indiscriminate killing of civilians. "The mujahidin are the children of this nation ... they do right things and wrong things," bin Laden said. "Those who are accused of violations of God's commandments should face trial," bin Laden said. In the recording, bin Laden mentioned battles in the province of Diyala, indicating that he made the remarks since the start of a US offensive there in June. He said he was addressing "mujahidin [holy warriors] in Iraq", Sunni Muslim groups fighting US-led forces. Last month, bin Laden issued three messages, including a video marking the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington in which about 3,000 people were killed. Bin Laden said in the video that the United States was vulnerable despite its power and insisted only conversion to Islam would end the conflict.

'Tension'

Phil Rees, who has written on al-Qaeda, told Al Jazeera: "I think there's always been a tension between the leadership [of al-Qaeda], wherever that is ... and elements such as, say, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. "We know there were various communications condemning some of the sectarian attacks and feeling that al-Zarqawi was something of a loose cannon." He said the tape could be an attempt by bin Laden to re-establish control over Sunni fighters in Iraq. "Maybe its a sign that he is in charge and he is trying to rein in these people," he said. In recent months Sunni tribal groups have formed alliances and worked with US forces to confront al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Via Al Jazeera.


Comment:

It had been my intention to wait a day or so for Al Jazeera to publish the full text of the message, but unfortunately it doesn't look like that's going to be happening any time soon. All they've released in English has been excerpts, and apparently even those haven't been released in Arabic.

Going by what's in this article, I'd say it's pretty clear that al-Qaeda's feeling the heat. While Osama is not, as was claimed by FOX News, "apologizing to the people of Iraq", he was definitely trying to salvage a very bad situation. He seems to have blamed everyone except al-Qaeda — individual "mujahedin", Crusaders who've infiltrated their ranks to make them look bad, the tribes, he even brings up the Jews at one point (though I'm not sure what the context is). The problem, though, is with al-Qaeda itself. Wherever it goes, whatever it does, people die. Its methods are terror, oppression, and the very disintegration of society, and any who oppose it are held to be apostates and dealt with accordingly. Osama has called for the Iraqis and the members of al-Qaeda to unite under the banner of Islam. He does not realize that this is impossible, for he has removed himself from the fold.

'Al Qaeda leader' killed in Iraq

A senior leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq has been killed in an air strike near Baghdad, according to a US military commander.

Brigadier General Joseph Anderson identified the man as Abu Usama al-Tunisi, a Tunisian reportedly viewed as the successor to Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the Egyptian previously the group's most senior figure in Iraq.

"Abu Usama al-Tunisi was one of the most senior leaders within al-Qaeda in Iraq," Anderson said.

The general said a precision strike on Tuesday near the town of Musayyib killed al-Tunisi and his death was a "significant blow" to al-Qaeda in Iraq.

He said al-Qaeda may shift its forces from Iraq to Afghanistan in order to try to expand its operations there.

"All we can tell you is that by numbers and how the groups are operating in very remote locations and not collaboratively they're fractured, ruptured, mitigated here. "The question becomes, where would they go? What would they do?" he said. Handwritten note Anderson said: "United States Air Force F-16 aircraft attacked the target. "Reporting indicated that several al-Qaeda members with ties to senior leadership were present at that time. Three were killed, including al-Tunisi," he said. "His presence was confirmed by one of the two detainees from the operation, one who left the target area just prior to the air strike, who we eventually captured minutes later," he said. Ground forces recovered a handwritten note at the site that was believed to have been written by al-Tunisi, Anderson said, displaying a slide with photographs of the note. "The key points in this hand-written note include, he's surrounded, communications have been cut and he's desperate for help," he said. "What I make of that is that we're having great success in isolating these pockets." Anderson said al-Tunisi oversaw the movement of foreign fighters in Iraq and designated areas to them from where they could launch suicide attacks and car bombings in the Baghdad area.

Via Al Jazeera.


Comment:

Well, we may not have gotten Osama, but we have killed Abu Osama, which is progress, I suppose.

Seriously, this article is very good news. If al-Qaeda is forced to retreat from Iraq, it will be a cataclysmic blow to its reputation. It would be one thing if Iraq was just another front, but it's not. Al-Qaeda's plan foresees three stages: the stage of "the power of vexation and exhaustion", during which the existing order is torn down, resulting in chaos and anarchy; the stage of "the administration of savagery", in which a sort of pseudo-state is set up within this area of anarchy; and the stage of "the power of establishment", in which the pseudo-state matures into a full fledged nation.¹ Had operations in Iraq been in the first stage, withdrawing would not be a problem; operations are expected to be fairly fluid in this stage. When al-Qaeda announced the formation of the "Islamic State in Iraq", however, operations moved into the second stage. Withdrawing now would be admitting that their plan had failed. The subtitle of the book The Management of Savagery is "The Most Critical Phase Through Which the Umma Will Pass", this certainly seems accurate, since this is where they have failed.

¹The Management of Savagery, translated with funding from the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University.

Iraq tribes vow to avenge murder

Sunni Arab tribes in Anbar, the western Iraqi province, have vowed to avenge the killing of Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, their leader. He died in a roadside-bomb attack near his home in Ramadi, the provincial capital, on Thursday.

Abdul Sattar Abu Risha was leader of the Anbar Salvation Council, an alliance of clans that supported the Iraqi government and US forces in fighting al-Qaeda in the province. An al Qaeda-led group said on Friday it carried out the killing of Abu Risha, according to a posting on a web site.

The Islamic State in Iraq said the killing of Abu Risha was a "heroic operation", but the authenticity of the statement could not be verified. "Allah enabled your brothers ... to track down and assassinate the imam of infidelity and apostasy ... one of the dogs of Bush," said the statement.

Funeral crowd

Thousands of people gathered in Ramadi on Friday to attend Abu Risha's funeral. "We blame al-Qaeda and we are going to continue our fight and avenge his death," Sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha, brother of Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, said on Friday. Ahmed Abu Risha was elected the new leader of the Anbar Salvation Conference just hours after his brother's killing.

Sunni Arab tribes in Anbar, the western Iraqi province, have vowed to avenge the killing of Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, their leader. He died in a roadside-bomb attack near his home in Ramadi, the provincial capital, on Thursday.

Abdul Sattar Abu Risha was leader of the Anbar Salvation Council, an alliance of clans that supported the Iraqi government and US forces in fighting al-Qaeda in the province. An al Qaeda-led group said on Friday it carried out the killing of Abu Risha, according to a posting on a web site.

Pallbearers carried Abdul Sattar Abu Risha's body from Ramadi to the cemetery 10km outside the city, while the funeral procession shouted "revenge, revenge on al-Qaeda." Others mourners chanted "there is no God but Allah and al-Qaeda is the enemy of Allah" and "Abdul Sattar is the pride of Ramadi". Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, was represented by Muwaffaq al-Rubaie, his national security adviser, who condemned the killing. "It is a national Iraqi disaster. What Abu Risha did for Iraq, no single man has done in the country's history," al-Rubaie told the mourners gathered in the sheikh's house. "We will support Anbar much more than before. Abu Risha is a national hero."

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Comment:

"There is no god but God and al-Qaeda is the enemy of God." That's some pretty powerful rhetoric. For those of you who don't recognize it, that's a variation of a phrase called the Shahada: "There is no god but God and Muhammad is the Prophet of God." The Shahada is the central creed of Islam. To elevate opposition to al-Qaeda to such a level is so extreme that I'm actually somewhat taken aback. In any case, though, I think it's probably safe to say that al-Qaeda's plan for Iraq, as set out in the terrorist text The Management of Savagery and the Zawahri-Zarqawi letter, has failed. The Management of Savagery describes trapping America "in a state of war with the masses of the region"*. However, it is al-Qaeda that has become so entrapped.

This is not the first time this has happened. Back in May, when this blog was just starting out, a group of Uzbek terrorists responded to the Pashtuns' hospitality by assassinating a tribal leader. The Pashtuns responded by completely annihilating the Uzbeks. Apparently, though, al-Qaeda still has not learned that you cannot solve tribal problems simply by smashing them.

According to the article, Abu Risha has become a national hero, along the lines of Ahmad Shah Masoud in Afghanistan. It says that "'His programme now against al-Qaeda has become a national programme. Diyala province, Salahuddin province, Baghdad province are following now his programme.'" It is unfortunate that I was not aware of him prior to his martyrdom, as it would have been an honor to cover his achievements. He was a true hero, and Iraq needs heroes badly in this day and age.

*Funding for this translation was provided by the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University.

Bomb kills Iraq Sunni leaders

Five Sunni tribal leaders opposed to al-Qaeda have been killed after a suicide bomber drove a minivan packed with explosives into a house north of Baghdad. The men were meeting in Jurf al-Milih, near Taji, about 20km north of the Iraqi capital, to discuss joining US and Iraqi forces in fighting al-Qaeda.

A police source said another 12 people were wounded in Sunday's attack and the death toll could rise. An Iraqi army source said the tribal chiefs were meeting after talks with local Shia leaders were held in Taji on Friday under the protection of US forces.


Special units

US military commanders have been trying to expand their plan, first used in the violent western province of Anbar, of recruiting local Sunnis who are tired of al-Qaeda violence into special provincial police units. Al-Qaeda is blamed for stoking sectarian hatred and violence between majority Shias and minority Sunni Arabs who were dominant under Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi leader. The US military began a security crackdown in Baghdad five months ago which initially helped bring down the number of sectarian murders but which also pushed al-Qaeda fighters out of the capital and into surrounding areas. US and Iraqi forces later launched another big operation in the middle of June coinciding with the arrival of the last of 28,000 extra US troops in Iraq.

Via Al Jazeera.


Comment:

This was a rather foolish move on al-Qaeda's part. You'd think that the Uzbek incident of earlier this year would have taught them that it's usually a bad idea, when dealing with tribal peoples, to assassinate their chiefs, especially if their followers are so heavily armed they even carry AK-47s with them in the shower. Al-Qaeda has just ensured the undying enmity of these five clans.

Ironically, al-Qaeda may be one of Iraq's greatest hopes for peace. True, they have done everything in their power to sow discord and calamity, but in doing so, in fighting against all of Iraq, they are slowly uniting the nation against them. Consider the meetings described in the above article. Iraqi Sunnis, talking with Iraqi Shiites? Under the auspices of the US Army? And then going on to another meeting, to discuss joining forces with the government and the Coalition? Much has been made of the need for reconciliation. Isn't that what appears to be happening here?

This is reflected in the numbers. Another Al Jazeera article¹ provides the following statistic: "From July 13 to July 19, 2006, Anbar saw 428 incidents, including small-arm fire, indirect fire, rocker attacks and roadside bomb attacks. In the comparable period this year, that has dropped to 98 incidents." Anbar province, you will remember, is the center of the insurgency, home to Falluja, Ramadi, and Qa'im. Remember, too, that this is during the surge, which has been pushing militants out of the capital. Impressive, isn't it?

Al-Qaeda threatens war against Iran

The leader of an al-Qaeda umbrella group in Iraq, who was thought to have beeen killed by US forces, has threatened to wage war against Iran unless it stops supporting Shias in Iraq within two months. Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, head of the Islamic State in Iraq, said his Sunni fighters have been preparing to wage a battle against Shia-dominated Iran.

Al-Baghdadi made the announcement in an audiotape that was posted on a web site commonly used by armed groups. The 50-minute audiotape, which was released on Sunday, could not be independently verified.

US forces had earlier claimed to have killed al-Baghdadi. Major General William Caldwell, the commander of the multinational force in Iraq, told a press conference in Baghdad that US forces had killed Muharib Abdulatif al-Juburi on May 1. Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf, operations director at the Iraqi interior minister, told state television that al-Juburi was also known as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. Audiotape "We are giving the Persians, and especially the rulers of Iran, a two-month period to end all kinds of support for the Iraqi Shia government and to stop direct and indirect intervention ... otherwise a severe war is waiting for you," al-Baghdadi said. Iraq's Shia-led government is backed by the US but closely allied to Iran. The United States accuses Iran of arming and financing Shia militias in Iraq, charges Tehran denies. In the recording, al-Baghdadi also gave Sunnis and Arab countries doing business in Iran or with Iranians a two-month deadline to cease their ties. "We advise and warn every Sunni businessman inside Iran or in Arab countries especially in the Gulf not to take partnership with any Shia Iranian businessman, this is part of the two-month period," he said. Al-Baghdadi said his group was responsible for two suicide truck bomb attacks in May in Iraq's northern Kurdish region. He said the attacks in Irbil and Makhmur showed the "Islamic jihad" was progressing in the Kurdish areas.

Via Al Jazeera.


Comment:

This is an interesting—and somewhat disturbing—development. On the one hand, al-Qaeda launching a war against Iran would do wonders for Iranian-US relations. This silly "I'm not talking to you, so there!" mentality has gone on quite long enough. Also, I doubt there is a doubt in anyone's mind—except the Far Right's—that a war with Iran would completely break the US military. Our army was designed to be able to fight to a standstill on two fronts simultaneously (why it wasn't designed to win on two fronts is something only Rumsfeld knows); three fronts is too many. We need that army for fighting terrorists in Afghanistan, so as much as Bush might like to roll around Khorasan in a tank, blasting away at random buildings, anything that makes peace with Iran more likely is good.

On the other hand, of course, are the repercussions this would have on the people of Iran. First and foremost, being the target of a concerted campaign of terrorist attacks is no fun, in fact it is quite often fatal. Attacks on civilian targets would cause a great many casualties, attacks on Iran's precarious supply of gasoline would greatly exacerbate an already unpleasant situation, attacks on religious targets, such as the Shrine in Mashhad, would even further inflame sectarian tensions across the world, and attacks against cultural landmarks, such as Persepolis or Azadi Tower, could contribute to internal strain between Iranian Persians and Iranian Arabs. Also, as you may have heard, the Iranian government is not exactly benevolent. A war with al-Qaeda would further damage the Iranian democracy, which is already dominated by theocrats and weirdos. Of concern to me personally, the government would also almost certainly use it as an opportunity to ratchet up its persecution of the Bahá'ís. True, the notion of a Bahá'í-al-Qaeda link is so far fetched as to be laughable to the point of hilarity, but common sense has never stood in the mullahs' way before.

Another reason this is somewhat disturbing is that it indicates al-Qaeda in Iraq is trying to get back on course. The original plan was to drive out the British, Americans, and miscellaneous crusading infidels, then use their existing resources and popularity among the pious masses to create an Islamic state, the stability of which the Iraqis would flock to as their world disintegrates around them. Unfortunately for al-Qaeda, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi screwed up that plan by exterminating as many civilians as possible, brutally beheading captive noncombatants, and generally being twisted, maniacal, and evil. By the time Osama and Zawahri woke up to what was happening and exterminated Zarqawi, it was too late, and the pious masses loathed al-Qaeda with a passion. Equally problematic was the rise of the Mahdi Army, which would have been in a far better position to take over as Iraq's de facto government even if it weren't for Big Q's image problem.

Al-Qaeda had been responding to these difficulties via the always effective Ostrich Method, wherein al-Qaeda continued on as though everything was normal, and God sends down a plague of locusts or something to defeat the Mahdi Army and the Coalition. Unfortunately, they now seem to have noticed that God, for whatever reason (and God, verily, has the best of reasons) is failing to come through, so it's up to them to do something constructive. Going after the Mahdi Army's funding by threatening—much less attacking—Iran won't work, as no sane government would give in to a terrorist demand unless it had absolutely no other choice, but I still don't like it that al-Qaeda is beginning to demonstrate some awareness of reality.

'Supporting the troops' means withdrawing them

By General William E. Odom

Every step the Democrats in Congress have taken to force the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq has failed. Time and again, President Bush beats them into submission with charges of failing to "support the troops."

Why do the Democrats allow this to happen? Because they let the president define what "supporting the troops" means. His definition is brutally misleading. Consider what his policies are doing to the troops.

No U.S. forces have ever been compelled to stay in sustained combat conditions for as long as the Army units have in Iraq. In World War II, soldiers were considered combat-exhausted after about 180 days in the line. They were withdrawn for rest periods. Moreover, for weeks at a time, large sectors of the front were quiet, giving them time for both physical and psychological rehabilitation. During some periods of the Korean War, units had to fight steadily for fairly long periods but not for a year at a time. In Vietnam, tours were one year in length, and combat was intermittent with significant break periods.

In Iraq, combat units take over an area of operations and patrol it daily, making soldiers face the prospect of death from an IED or small arms fire or mortar fire several hours each day. Day in and day out for a full year, with only a single two-week break, they confront the prospect of death, losing limbs or eyes, or suffering other serious wounds. Although total losses in Iraq have been relatively small compared to most previous conflicts, the individual soldier is risking death or serious injury day after day for a year. The impact on the psyche accumulates, eventually producing what is now called "post-traumatic stress disorders." In other words, they are combat-exhausted to the point of losing effectiveness. The occasional willful killing of civilians in a few cases is probably indicative of such loss of effectiveness. These incidents don't seem to occur during the first half of a unit's deployment in Iraq.

After the first year, following a few months back home, these same soldiers are sent back for a second year, then a third year, and now, many are facing a fourth deployment! Little wonder more and more soldiers and veterans are psychologically disabled.

And the damage is not just to enlisted soldiers. Many officers are suffering serious post-traumatic stress disorders but are hesitant to report it – with good reason. An officer who needs psychiatric care and lets it appear on his medical records has most probably ended his career. He will be considered not sufficiently stable to lead troops. Thus officers are strongly inclined to avoid treatment and to hide their problems.

There are only two ways to fix this problem, both of which the president stubbornly rejects. Instead, his recent "surge" tactic has compelled the secretary of defense to extend Army tours to 15 months! (The Marines have been allowed to retain their six-month deployment policy and, not surprisingly, have fewer cases of post-traumatic stress syndrome.)

The first solution would be to expand the size of the Army to two or three times its present level, allowing shorter combat tours and much longer breaks between deployments. That cannot be done rapidly enough today, even if military conscription were restored and new recruits made abundant. It would take more than a year to organize and train a dozen new brigade combat teams. The Clinton administration cut the Army end strength by about 40 percent – from about 770,000 to 470,000 during the 1990s. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld looked for ways to make the cuts even deeper. Thus this administration and its predecessor aggressively gave up ground forces and tactical air forces while maintaining large maritime forces that cannot be used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sadly, the lack of wisdom in that change in force structure is being paid for not by President Bush or President Clinton but by the ordinary soldier and his family. They have no lobby group to seek relief for them.

The second way to alleviate the problem is to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq as soon as possible and as securely as possible. The electorate understands this. That is why a majority of voters favor withdrawing from Iraq.

If the Democrats truly want to succeed in forcing President Bush to begin withdrawing from Iraq, the first step is to redefine "supporting the troops" as withdrawing them, citing the mass of accumulating evidence of the psychological as well as the physical damage that the president is forcing them to endure because he did not raise adequate forces. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress could confirm this evidence and lay the blame for "not supporting the troops" where it really belongs – on the president. And they could rightly claim to the public that they are supporting the troops by cutting off the funds that he uses to keep U.S. forces in Iraq.

The public is ahead of the both branches of government in grasping this reality, but political leaders and opinion makers in the media must give them greater voice.

Congress clearly and indisputably has two powers over the executive: the power of the purse and the power to impeach. Instead of using either, members of congress are wasting their time discussing feckless measures like a bill that "de-authorizes the war in Iraq." That is toothless unless it is matched by a cut-off of funds.

The president is strongly motivated to string out the war until he leaves office, in order to avoid taking responsibility for the defeat he has caused and persisted in making greater each year for more than three years.

To force him to begin a withdrawal before then, the first step should be to rally the public by providing an honest and candid definition of what "supporting the troops" really means and pointing out who is and who is not supporting our troops at war. The next step should be a flat refusal to appropriate money for to be used in Iraq for anything but withdrawal operations with a clear deadline for completion.

The final step should be to put that president on notice that if ignores this legislative action and tries to extort Congress into providing funds by keeping U.S. forces in peril, impeachment proceeding will proceed in the House of Representatives. Such presidential behavior surely would constitute the "high crime" of squandering the lives of soldiers and Marines for his own personal interest.

Via Nieman Watchdog.

Comment:

I realize that this is not the type of article I usually post. However, the issue it addresses—that of troop fatigue and resultant atrocities—is becoming ever more central to the conflict in Afghanistan. According to Wikipedia,¹ there are currently some 25,000 American troops deployed in Afghanistan. In order to function at peak psychological capacity, according to General Odom, that number would have to be increased by 25-50,000. The only place way we could get that many troops is by withdrawing from Iraq.

The Wiki reports that the United States has a quarter of a million troops in Iraq.² This number does not include those troops currently in between deployments (or preparing to deploy), but it is enough. With that many troops, you could assemble a force 83,000 to 125,000 strong, with adequate troop rotation. If transfered to NATO's command and sent to Afghanistan, this would at least triple, and possibly more than quadruple, the number of active duty soldiers at ISAF's disposal.³ I have long been in favor of quadrupling our forces in Afghanistan. It's high time this war once again became a one-sided exercise in American military might. It's been over a half a decade already, let's just get it over with so that we can all go home.

I understand that withdrawing from Iraq would have grave consequences, but short of mobilizing the country and instituting the draft (which is about as likely as Representative Ron Paul defecting to the Socialist Party) or a whole bunch of other nations suddenly offering us the use of their armed forces (which is about as likely as the Socialist Party endorsing Ron Paul), I don't see how we can succeed in Iraq. I had not thought it was possible for the United States of America to lose a war, but Rumsfeld and Bush have proven me wrong. Let's not lose Afghanistan, too.