Al-Qaeda searches for unity in
Iraq By Michael Scheuer
Although the man has been dead for almost
two years, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's negative impact
in Iraq continues to be a serious problem for
al-Qaeda. Indeed, of all the dangers encountered
by al-Qaeda since September 11, 2001, Zarqawi, the
former head of the group in Iraq, was the only
strategic threat to the organization's continuing
viability.
Zarqawi's efforts to create a
Sunni-Shi'ite civil war in Iraq, which would have
been blamed on al-Qaeda, threatened al-Qaeda's
ability to keep Sunni Islamists focused on the
United States - the "far enemy" - and to an extent
would have rehabilitated the reputation of the
Arab tyrannies opposed by al-Qaeda and its allies
because those states would have quickly provided
cash and
military materiel to the
Sunni side of such a conflict.
For
al-Qaeda, Zarqawi today is an annoying memory -
though one celebrated for his knightly heroics -
but the impact of his actions still bedevil
al-Qaeda's goal of helping to establish a Sunni
organization that can govern after the withdrawal
of the US-led coalition.
In recent weeks,
Ayman al-Zawahiri and al-Qaeda's chief in Iraq,
Abu Hamza al-Mujahir, have thrice taken up the
issue of splits among Iraq's Sunni fighters and
pressed for a setting aside of differences and a
move toward unification under the Islamic State of
Iraq (ISI).
Speaking on April 18 to mark
the five-year anniversary of the US-led invasion
of Iraq, Zawahiri repeated his and bin Laden's
earlier assurances to the Iraqi mujahideen that US
and coalition forces in Iraq have been beaten and
that their future is one of "failure and defeat"
[1]. He ridiculed General David Petraeus' call for
a "pause" in the reduction of US troops as a
"ridiculous farce to cover up the failure in Iraq
and to help [President George W] Bush dodge the
decision to withdraw forces, which is considered a
declaration of the [defeat of the] Crusaders'
invasion of Iraq ... by transferring the problem
to the new president."
Zawahiri also
argued that the tide had turned against the Sunni
Awakening Councils, that they are now being
pursued by the mujahideen, and that Petraeus'
pause was required because the councils needed
protection by US forces.
Less pointedly,
but just as telling, Zawahiri explained that
although the military crisis was over, much work
still needed to be done to prepare the Sunni
mujahideen to govern Iraq and to face down Iranian
aggression. "The people of Islam and jihad in Iraq
have only to be persistent and remain firm" in
order to exploit their military success. While
"the Americans are being routed" and "they are
fighting in Washington over the date of the
withdrawal", Zawahiri warned that achieving unity
must be the mujahideen's order of the day and that
all fighting groups must rally around the Islamic
State of Iraq.
By uniting under the ISI's
leadership, Zawahiri said, Sunni fighters will be
able to prevent the Iraqi Shi'ites and their
Iranian sponsors from achieving Tehran's goal of
"annexing southern Iraq and the eastern parts of
al-Jazirah [a region of northwest Iraq between the
Tigris and Euphrates Rivers] and expanding to
establish contacts with its followers in Lebanon".
Just as Iran and the West criticized Zarqawi as a
foreign surrogate trying to usurp the leadership
of the Iraqi insurgency, Zawahiri damned Muqtada
al-Sadr as a "naive boy" who cannot decide whether
to fight or demonstrate and who is being used by
"Iranian Intelligence ... as a puppet".
On
the day after Zawahiri spoke, al-Qaeda's chief in
Iraq, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, issued a long
statement aimed at promoting the unification of
the Sunni mujahideen under the banner of the ISI
[2]. Echoing Zawahiri, Muhajir claimed on April 19
that he was speaking to "let all Muslims know that
complete victory [over the US-led coalition] is
imminent", and that "the future will be for this
religion [Sunni Islam] ... with our omnipotent
God's help".
Muhajir stressed that the
mujahideen "are not fight[ing] the Crusader
occupiers or Arab apostates or for the sake of
land, but to exalt God's word on Earth". Muhajir
warned the Sunni mujahideen that "sincere
adherence to God is the most important factor of
victory and consolidation" and that only genuine
unity can provide "pride, victory and
consolidation".
But despite this truth,
the Sunni Iraqi mujahideen remain disunited: some
have turned away from jihad, and some have proven
by their actions that "there can be no pride or
victory with disunity at all, even if our
commander is the best creation of God and the most
courageous of men".
To correct these
problems and preserve Sunni power in Iraq, Muhajir
then argued that the Prophet Mohammad's uniting
example should be followed and all Sunni fighters
should be welcomed under the flag of the ISI,
including those who have fled the battle or
deserted the jihad:
The important point here is that
despite the sin of fleeing and the enormity of
the fleer's crime [al-Muhajir appears to be
referring here to Sunnis who joined the
Awakening Councils or stopped fighting them] - a
dangerous crime for it is feared that the person
who commits it will not be able to atone for it
- yet the Prophet did not rebuke those who fled
or used [their flight] as justification for
vituperation.
On the contrary, he
invoked their pride in their clans after
reminding them of their precedence in jihad and
embracing monotheism. It is useful at times of
hardship for a commander after turning to God to
turn to those who had precedence in jihad, and
to follow that by turning to the good sons of
the clans, and he should never discredit any of
them. He should also communicate with all those
who had abandoned jihad and remind them of the
fact that they were the first to engage in jihad
in the cause of God, and return them to the
ranks of their brothers. If we leave them, then
we leave them to the devil and his party, which
is a loss to jihad and its soldiers. No sane
person would advocate that.
Zawahiri
completed al-Qaeda's trio of efforts to promote
unity among Iraqi Sunnis in the second installment
of answers to the questions he solicited on the
Internet [3]. In his first few responses, Zawahiri
focused on Iraq, and especially on the criticism
of one questioner that Iraq's minority Sunnis
cannot prevail and that the formation of the ISI
caused acrimony among the Sunni mujahideen. "I
differ with what he said," Zawahiri replied,
because "the Sunni community is not a minority in
Iraq but they are a majority because the Kurds as
well as the Turkomens are also Sunnis." Regarding
the ISI, Zawahiri argued that it was created to be
a force for unity, not factionalism:
The brothers in the mujahideen
shura council [of the ISI] have exerted
their utmost to absorb all the jihad resources
in Iraq and they delayed the declaration of the
state for several months in order to contact all
the mujahid leaderships in Iraq. The declaration
of the state was not a cause of dispute but was
and will continue to be, God willing, the reason
for preventing the mujahideen from falling into
the sedition of infighting, which happened in
Afghanistan.
If there is a group, a
faction, or a body of people that agrees with
the Islamic state of Iraq in its pure line,
which is distant from nationalist fanaticism and
secularism, and which endeavors to establish the
Islamic caliphate and liberate all the Muslim
lands from the Crusaders and Jews, then I call
on them and the Islamic state of Iraq to hold
talks and reach understanding on merging into
one entity, and I think they will succeed, God
willing, if their intentions are good.
It is doubtful that these three
messages will unite the Sunni Iraqi mujahideen,
but their production and careful orchestration by
al-Qaeda show that the group continues to labor to
clean up Zarqawi's mess.
The timing and
content of the two messages by Zawahiri and the
one by Muhajir are unlikely to have been a
coincidence. Zawahiri's first statement discussed
Iraq in a global context, while Muhajir's gave
scant notice to that context and instead almost
exclusively focused on problems and opportunities
in Iraq. Zawahiri's interview answers then
affirmed the positions taken by Muhajir, thus
giving them al-Qaeda's official imprimatur. For
fullest impact, the three messages needed to
appear seriatim - starting with Zawahiri's first,
stage-setting message - and the fact that they did
so suggests close and effective cooperation
between the media arms of al-Qaeda and the ISI.
Indeed, it might not be too much of a jump
to suggest that the two media arms are really one
and the same. The messages also show how strongly
jihadi history dominates the thinking and actions
of Zawahiri and bin Laden: Both are pulling out
all the stops to try to prevent the Iraqi
mujahideen from militarily winning the war but
then losing its political aftermath because of
disunity, as did the Afghan insurgents after they
forced the Red Army's withdrawal.
While
Zawahiri and Muhajir must be encouraged by the
Iraqi insurgents' recent, bloody successes against
several leaders of the Awakening Councils, as well
as by the spread of al-Qaeda's influence from Iraq
into the Levant and North Africa, both men surely
recognize that the post-US withdrawal Sunni unity
they deem absolutely mandatory for the creation of
a stable Islamic state is still far beyond the
horizon.
Notes 1. Ayman
al-Zawahiri, "Five years after the Invasion of
Iraq and Decades of Injustice by Tyrants,"
al-Sahab Media Production Organization, April
18. 2. Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, "The Paths of
Victory," al-Fuqran Establishment for Media
Production, April 19. 3. Ayman al-Zawahiri,
"Open Interview, 2," al-Sahab Media Production
Organization, April 22.
Michael
Scheuer served in the Central Intelligence
Agency for 22 years before resigning in 2004. He
served as the chief of the bin Laden Unit at the
Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is
the once anonymous author of Imperial Hubris:
Why the West is Losing the War on Terror and
the newly released Marching Toward Hell:
America and Islam After Iraq. Dr Scheuer is a
senior fellow with The Jamestown Foundation.
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