ROVING
IN THE RED ZONE The man who might
save Iraq By Pepe Escobar
BAGHDAD - He is a former Sunni Arab
mujahid from Ramadi who until recently was
fighting the US occupation. He has only a secondary education
and is married with two wives. Now he is
praised even by urban, secular, highly educated
Shi'ites as a "conscious man", or "the kind of man
we need now in Iraq". Sheikh Abdul Satter Abu
Risha is the leader of the Anbar Sovereignty
Council, a powerful coalition of Anbar tribes,
including at least 200 sheikhs, that is fighting
the Salafi jihadis of al-Qaeda in Iraq/the Islamic
Emirate of Iraq in the volatile
province.
Abu Risha set up the council
after his father and two brothers were killed by
al-Qaeda's extreme methods last autumn. In an
exclusive telephone interview with Asia Times
Online, he stated, unambiguously, that al-Qaeda
"has abused our traditions and generosity" and, he
alleged, they even "take drugs" - a mortal sin in
conservative Islam.
Sheikh Ali Hattan
al-Suleiman, also from the council, was even more
direct: "I'd like to see an al-Qaeda bomber e-mail
me or telephone me and talk about his education.
They just came here with money. They gave money to
the unemployed. They are not Iraqis - only Arabs.
They are bastards. And the people who follow them
are also bastards."
Abu Risha totally
dismissed rumors that the Anbar council is forcing
families in the region to give their sons to the
cause, or is engaged in summary execution of
captured jihadis. "We only accept volunteers. And
we work by ourselves, like a team, by shifts. When
we arrest people from al-Qaeda or Iraqis working
for al-Qaeda, we take them to the Iraqi Army or
the Ministry of Interior."
It's fair to
assume, though, that once these jihadis end up in
the hands of the ministry's death squads, torture
and death are inevitable. Resistance to capture
also means jihadis are killed on the spot. And
when the going gets really rough, "sometimes we
call for American air strikes".
With
young, disfranchised Iraqis who have been seduced
by al-Qaeda's rhetoric and financial muscle, it's
a different story. "When we capture these
teenagers, we try to convince them they were
wrong, they just were seduced by money, and we try
to give them back to their families."
The
Sunni Arab resistance in Iraq is at least
100,000-strong. Salafi jihadis, mostly foreigners
- from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Palestine,
North Africa, and a few "white Moors" (European
Muslims) - may be no more than 1,000. And a small
percentage of these are Iraqi recruits.
Abu Risha swore that the Iraqi Army and US
forces now control Ramadi. Fallujah is a very
different story - according to Iraqi journalists
who have been to the front line. They say the
outskirts of west Baghdad are safe up to Abu
Ghraib, but not Fallujah, which has been an
Islamic State of Iraq stronghold. According to the
sheikh, al-Qaeda in Iraq is particularly active in
al-Rahwa (a big city near the Syrian border),
Tilal Himrin (a village also near Syria), the
village of Elbu Baly, and the big city of Balad.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had promised
more than US$100 million for rebuilding Ramadi
this year. Abu Risha said, without elaborating,
that "support from the government has not been
enough", whether financially or militarily. It is
well known in Baghdad that the sheikh has been
traveling to Syria and Jordan to rally Sunni
tribes to the council's cause - and he added, "The
borders with Syria and Jordan are all patrolled by
our forces," implying the difficulty for jihadis
to cross over.
Abu Risha insisted he gets
active cooperation "from all tribes" - and that
includes border surveillance. The fact is, 80% of
these tribes are sub-clans of the powerful
al-Dulaimi tribe. Al-Qaeda's close relationship is
with the al-Mashadani, a big tribe very much
present near Samarra and Balad. The Mashadani
tribe detests the Maliki government, and the
Ibrahim Jaafari government before it. They used to
be very close to Saddam Hussein. Now, they have an
alliance of circumstance with al-Qaeda.
Abu Risha certainly has political
aspirations. "If the government is weak, they
should move aside and leave space for other,
prepared people." The sheikh wants to set up a
tribal political coalition, which would be called
"Revivals of the Sheikhs of Iraq". Now the Anbar
Sovereignty Council has even changed its name to
"Iraq Awakening". It plans to take government
matters into its own hands, and distribute food
rations to the population of Anbar province.
Now, whose corpse is this?
The relentless info war in Iraq degenerates
virtually every day into total confusion. This Thursday,
it all started once again, at lunchtime. Two
days after breaking the news of the killing of
al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu al-Masri - which in the
end turned out to be false - state-run Al-Iraqiyah
TV broke the news of the killing of none other
than Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the leader of the
Islamic Emirate of Iraq, which includes al-Qaeda. The
greenish photo of a very bloated face in an open
coffin, with visible specks of blood, was
published.
Interior Ministry spokesman
Brigadier Abdul Karim Khalaf once again was sure:
this was Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, and he had been
killed in west Baghdad, in Ghazaliya, which has
been controlled by the Sunni Arab resistance for
quite a long time.
Later, information
circulated that his body had been handed over to
his own tribe - and they were already setting up a
huge funeral street tent in their home town,
Duluiyah, between Baghdad and Samarra, as is
custom in Iraq.
Was it Baghdadi? Well,
maybe not. It was for the Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the
SCIRI-controlled Ministry of Interior - and
apparently for no one else. The Interior Ministry
maintains that the corpse was recognized by
residents of Duluiyah as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. The
Pentagon, once again, would not confirm anything.
Instead, the Americans announced that "Masri" -
who might have died two days ago - was in fact
al-Qaeda in Iraq's minister of information, Abdel
Latif al-Jubouri, his identity confirmed on
Wednesday by DNA tests and photos. His corpse was
then handed to his tribe. Masri as well as
Baghdadi still seem to be alive.
Interestingly enough, Abu Risha reportedly
had also been "sure" by Wednesday that Masri was
dead. Initial reports attributed Masri's killing
to Abu Risha's forces. Then the Pentagon claimed
it was US forces who actually killed Jubouri. To
add to the inextricable mess, Iraqi Interior and
Defense Ministry officials started spreading the
news that Jubouri and Baghdadi were the same
person. The fact is that regarding the shady world
of al-Qaeda, nobody knows anything for sure.
What people do know and have started to
notice is the increasingly high profile of Sheikh
Abu Risha. He may not be Iraq's savior, but as the
larger-than-life tragedy of Iraq stands, a Sunni
sheikh leading a tribal coalition fighting
alongside a predominantly Shi'ite Iraqi government
against Salafi jihadist terror is better news than
any "international community" rhetorical
flourishes emanating from Sharm al-Sheikh, where
the international community was debating Iraq's
future.
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