THE
ROVING EYE Mr Bush, your sheikh is
dead By Pepe Escobar
Some may call it divine providence, some
may call it Allah's bidding; in the end it was up
to real Iraq to intervene and shatter the "surge
is a success" story sold to US and world public
opinion by President George W Bush and his top man
in Iraq, General David Petraeus.
Only
hours before Bush recommended to the nation and
the world what he had told Petraeus to recommend
to Congress - in
essence his roadmap toward
counterinsurgency and endless military occupation
of Iraq - a key player in the "success" story was
killed, significantly right at the start of the
holy Muslim month of Ramadan.
Sheikh
Abdul Sattar Abu Risha - along with his two
bodyguards -
was killed by a roadside bomb planted near his
home in Ramadi, the capital of an Anbar province
Petraeus had sworn was "pacified".
Abu
Risha, 37, was the leader of the Anbar Salvation
Council, renamed Anbar Awakening - an alliance of
about 200 Sunni sheikhs drawn mostly from the
Dulaimi tribe and dozens of sub-clans who were
fighting against al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two
Rivers.
In his speech, Bush outlined the
plan to leave more than 130,000 troops in the
battle zone in Iraq next year, unless Petraeus and
Bush decide further withdrawals are possible
before that.
With regard to Abu Risha's
killing, as far as the White House is concerned it
was the work of al-Qaeda (12 mentions of
"al-Qaeda" in Bush's speech). Were this to be the
case, the "don't mess with us" al-Qaeda message
couldn't be more devastating. Consider the chain
of events of the past few days.
In a carefully stage-managed piece of theater,
Bush visits al-Asad military air base in Anbar
(not real Iraq) to stress his "surge" is working.
He personally meets Abu Risha.
Osama bin Laden, looking like a clone of
himself with a stick-on beard, releases his first
video in almost three years, proving he's alive
and kicking. The video may or may be not be a
fake.
Petraeus and US Ambassador in Iraq Ryan
Crocker start their presentation in front of
Congress, assuring the US and the world the
"surge" is a "success".
Bin Laden releases his second tape in four
days, praising one of the September 11, 2001,
"martyrs". His image is on freeze-frame; his lips
do not move.
Bush announces he will recommend to the nation
what he told Petraeus to recommend to Congress:
not a drawdown, but the actual extension of the
"surge" until next summer.
Abu Risha, the man Petraeus relied on for the
"success" of the "surge", is killed in Anbar. No
wonder Petraeus defined it as "a tragic loss".
The hit on Bush's sheikh happened just 10
days after they met. Al-Qaeda had plenty of
motives to order the hit. But so did other key
players.
No Iraqi guerrilla or jihadist
group claimed responsibility. Abu Risha was the
most visible of the 200 or so sheikhs in Anbar
Awakening. They were mostly from the Dulaimi
tribe. Al-Qaeda has a close bond with the
Mashadani tribe. This could well have been an
inter-tribal payback. Sheikh Jubeir Rashid, also
part of the council, cryptically said that "such
an attack was expected", but they "are determined
to strike back".
Abu Risha may have also
been killed by one of the top Sunni
Iraqi-nationalist guerrilla groups for which
throwing the occupation out remains the top
priority - way beyond fighting the
Shi'ite-dominated government in the Green Zone or
Shi'ite militias. Al-Qaeda may boast a maximum of
800 or so jihadis in Iraq. The Sunni resistance
has more than 100,000 fighters. The White House
hurricane of spinning has simply erased the
anti-occupation Sunni resistance masses from the
ground.
Marc Lynch, an expert on Arab
media and Sunni politics at George Washington
University in Washington, called remarks by
Petraeus on Abu Risha's importance "a leap to
judgment emblematic of all which is wrong with
America's current views of the Sunnis of Iraq",
Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service reported.
"In reality, there are a plethora of
likely suspects, reflecting the reality of an
intensely factionalized and divided community
which little resembles the picture offered by the
administration's defenders," Lynch said.
"Leaders of other tribes deeply resented
Abu Risha's prominence. Leaders of the major
insurgency factions had for weeks been warning
against allowing people such as Abu Risha to
illegitimately reap the fruits of their jihad
against the occupation," Lynch said.
Petraeus' chaos strategy Anbar
is not pacified, contrary to official line, and
Petraeus's tactics once again are deceptive. When
in late 2005 he was writing the new Pentagon
counterinsurgency manual, he was heavy on
"paramilitary units" and "specialized paramilitary
strike forces". These are actually the new
Petraeus-supported and armed actors in Anbar:
hardcore Sunni militias.
Some of their
foot soldiers - receiving a handsome US$900
monthly salary in a land of 70% unemployment - are
formerly unemployed "irregulars"; some are former
Sunni guerrillas (the White House makes it sound
as if they are all friendly now); and some were
until recently working closely with al-Qaeda.
Call it Afghanistan remix. Petraeus was a
godsend; local Sunni tribal sheikhs could hardly
believe their luck. They had found an eager
counterinsurgency messiah with large pockets. Now
they can't get enough of the United States' cash,
weapons, spanking-new uniforms, body armor,
helmets, pickup trucks, high-tech information.
They can patiently build their own Sunni
militias and/or death squads with no hassle. They
can take their time to settle ancient,
ever-evolving tribal scores. And sooner rather
than later, they can turn on the occupiers
themselves. All this financed with US taxpayers'
money.
Petraeus's counterinsurgency game -
arming Sunnis and Shi'ites alike - is the ideal
recipe for non-stop sectarian hatred, the perfect
justification for an indefinite US presence in
Iraq.
Petraeus did not even bother to seek
"permission" from the puppet Nuri al-Maliki
government in Baghdad to arm Sunni militias who
will try to depose this same government. There's
also the extra bonus of the militias doing part of
the dirty work for the Pentagon - going with a
vengeance after Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
Furthermore, it all fits the anti-Iran Pentagon
hysteria - the creation of a Sunni counter-power
to the Shi'ite Iran-trained Badr Organization.
So the result is of this grand chaos
strategy: Iraqis are plunged into horrific
sectarian killings on behalf of clashing foreign
powers, the US and Iran.
Don't stop
until you get enough Al-Qaeda for its
part, with or without a fake, recycled video-only
bin Laden, will keep enjoying the fruits of its
brand recognition.
Much more than the
Middle East, al-Qaeda's special target audience is
western Europe, where a legion of "white Moors" -
second-generation, radicalized, born-again Muslims
- eagerly accepts its new politico-religious
anti-imperial message. The best antidote to this
expansion would be the dawn of real representative
governments in Egypt, Jordan, Syria and the
Persian Gulf petro-monarchies. It won't happen -
at least not in the near future.
A new
report released this week by the London-based
International Institute for Strategic Studies
(IISS), one of the world's top think-tanks, is
unmistakable. As the IISS is very close to British
intelligence, its conclusions represent a faithful
portrait of how Western intelligence evaluates the
al-Qaeda nebula. For the IISS, al-Qaeda - the
network - is on a roll, is well established in
northwestern Pakistan, is already able to pull off
a new, improved September 11, and its ideological
appeal "will require decades to eradicate".
The IISS also notes how myriad "regional
jihadi groups" - especially in the Maghreb (North
Africa) and Iraq - have pledged a formal
allegiance to al-Qaeda, but also support its
global agenda.
This may be the case with
al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers. Localized,
regional or global, al-Qaeda the burning idea will
keep surging on relentlessly - killing one US
collaborator, Bush ally or - why not? -
opportunistic sheikh at a time.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
was killed by a roadside bomb planted near his
home in Ramadi, the capital of an Anbar province
Petraeus had sworn was "pacified". 
