Struggle to vanquish the 'icon of jihad'

Struggle to vanquish the 'icon of jihad'
By Steve Negus, Iraq Correspondent
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: July 5 2007 03:00 | Last updated: July 5 2007 03:00


Once one target among many, al-Qaeda was last month designated by US commanders in Iraq as their number one enemy.

Offensives such as Arrowhead Ripper, a sweep by 10,000 troops of the Diyala valley north of Baghdad, are now aiming to break the power of the Iraqi franchise.

The US military blames al-Qaeda for the bomb attacks on civilians which feed Shia militia reprisals and continue Iraq's cycle of violence. Remove the radicals, they say, and peace with the more pragmatic Sunni groups becomes possible.

But some analysts question whether al-Qaeda really does have a monopoly on such attacks, and whether it is as pervasive a force as it is often portrayed.

The US military estimates that there are 5,000 "fully-fledged members" of al-Qaeda in Iraq, 5 per cent of whom are non-Iraqi, out of 20,000 or more insurgents.

Al-Qaeda itself said last October that it commanded 12,000 active fighters, with another 10,000 in training, in a statement declaring its links with an umbrella group, the so-called Islamic State of Iraq.

Analyst Anthony Cordesman, however, who describes al-Qaeda as an "informal, overlapping . . . group of networks", says both reporters and coalition spokesmen may exaggerate its importance: "When in doubt, you blame suicide bombings on foreign volunteers or al-Qaeda."

Although dozens of groups issue statements, the Islamic State in Iraq is one of the most prominent names.

Along with the Ansar al-Sunna group, it is usually said to represent a more extreme, religiously-oriented trend within the insurgency, espousing pan-Islamic jihad against the US presence in the region.

Other movements, such as the Islamic Army in Iraq and the Mujahideen Army, despite their religious-sounding names, are considered to have a more Iraqi Sunni nationalist orientation, focused on pushing out foreign forces and bringing down the Shia-dominated government.

Al-Qaeda's press statements claim attacks on "Crusaders" (US forces), "apostates" (Iraqi government forces), the "followers of Tareq al-Hashemi" (Sunni tribal militias, named after the Sunni Arab vice-president), and the "Army of the False Messiah" (the Shia Mahdi Army militia).

Notably absent from al-Qaeda's communiqués are the devastating attacks on civilian and Shia religious targets.

Kathleen Ridolfo, who co-authored a report on jihadist media published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in June, says that the Sunni nationalists make a point of rejecting such attacks, but al-Qaeda and other like-minded groups may subtly try to justify them.

"If you dig deeply through the debates within Islam over whether or not you can target or sacrifice civilians for the greater cause of striking the enemy, then proponents of the Islamic state will argue that you can," she says.

Regardless of its real strength, however, al-Qaeda does seem to have benefited from its leaders' talent for brand-name promotion.

The movement has its genesis in al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad, a radical network that US officials say began around the time of the 2003 US-led invasion. It became a household name in mid-2004 as its black banners cropped up in Sunni cities witnessing insurrection, and videotape of its leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi executing hostages was broadcast. The movement quickly capitalised on its notoriety. US military spokesmen often described Tawhid leaders as distributors of cash and other patronage, often obtained from donors outside Iraq, to smaller insurgent groups, persuading them to accept the organisation's "franchise". Tawhid scored a big coup in late 2004 when Mr Zarqawi negotiated its entry into the international al-Qaeda network.

A report released last year by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group says that this "centralising" process happened throughout the insurgency: "Progressively, as a result of fierce competition, smaller, less effective groups disappeared or merged with more successful, well-established and prestigious ones, such as [al-Qaeda, Ansar al-Sunna, and the Islamic Army]."

Despite the merger, the international al-Qaeda may have had little control over the Iraqi movement under Zarqawi and it certainly had reservations about some of its tactics, criticising Zarqawi's gruesome killing methods, including decapitating prisoners on video.

Iraqi officials and al-Qaeda experts say, however, that relations between the Iraqi franchise and al-Qaeda's leaders have significantly improved since Zarqawi's death in 2006 in a US air strike.

He was replaced by Abu Ayoub al-Masri - an Egyptian believed to have much closer ties to the core Afghan- and Pakistan-based leadership like Zawahiri, and who appears to be trying to alter his group's reputation as a foreign-dominated band of terrorists.

Mr Masri's "charm offensive" may also have made an impact on the movement's video publications - prisoners are shot, rather than beheaded. In April, according to the RFE/RL report, the movement put out a video called "The Mujahideen's Commitment To The Safety Of Muslims", showing fighters calling off an attack on a US convoy because civilians were nearby.

The propaganda campaign came as al-Qaeda's extremism seemed to be alienating other groups. This year, groups such as the Islamic Army in Iraq have lashed out at al-Qaeda for murdering other insurgents who did not accept its authority, and reportedly fought pitched battles with al-Qaeda militants in Sunni areas.

But Islamist websites suggest that considerable pressure has been brought on the Islamic Army to mend its fences with al-Qaeda - and other insurgent organisations may be reluctant to be perceived to be in direct conflict with a movement that has branded itself as an icon of jihad.

Al-Qaeda's combination of ideological cohesion and institutional decentralisation means that the US military still faces an uphill battle to isolate and defeat them.