[NYTr] al Qaeda Urgents Iraqi Resistance to "Consolidate Victory" over Amerika

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[This is by the right-winger former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer,
published by the reactionary Jamestown Foundation. Consider the source
and take it with a grain of salt. However, the caution that the
resistance is hardly defeated, but simply keeping its powder dry, is
probably well-taken. -NYTr]

The Jamestown Foundation's Global Terrorism Analysis 4:38 - Nov 20, 2007
http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2373802

Al-Qaeda Urges Iraq’s Insurgents to Consolidate Victory Over America

By Michael Scheuer

Nearly a month since Osama bin Laden published his message to “our
people in Iraq,” it is worth taking a look at what bin Laden really
said versus what the media, Western leaders and some prematurely
mirthful pundits claim he said (IntelCenter, October 23). In the most
obvious sense, bin Laden’s October 23 statement is a post-Iraq war
statement and a further development of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s 2005 message
to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (www.dni.gov, July 9, 2005). From al-Qaeda’s
perspective the war is over and Islam has won; Washington’s
announcement last week that it intends to begin the withdrawal of 3,000
troops, as well as Congress’s recess without renewing war funding, will
bolster this perception. Bin Laden’s message is, however, a warning to
all Iraqi mujahideen—Sunni and Shiite—that the hardest task is yet to
come: namely, the creation of an Islamist state in Iraq.

Bin Laden’s October 23 message builds on the July 2005 letter from
al-Zawahiri to al-Zarqawi. At that time, al-Zawahiri told al-Zarqawi
that the mujahideen had beaten the U.S.-led coalition and urged him to
prepare for U.S. withdrawal, which might, he added, be “precipitous.”
Bin Laden’s October message mirrors al-Zawahiri’s in concluding that
the U.S. coalition has been beaten, and in stating that the only
unknown is the precise moment of its withdrawal. There is nothing in
bin Laden’s statement that criticizes the mujahideen for not fighting
well—indeed, he refers to “magnificent victories” that make Americans
“prisoners of their bases and the Green Zone”—much less anything that
suggests they are losing. “The world has stood stunned, amazed,
delighted and wonder struck” over the Iraqi mujahideen’s effectiveness
and perseverance, the al-Qaeda chief said.

"[W]atching America the tyrannical: watching its legions breaking apart
under your strikes, its brigades being wiped out in front of your raids
and its battalions being obliterated by the pounding of your squadrons…
O people of Iraq … O eminent ones of the Turks, Kurds and Arabs: the
affair of unbelief [the U.S. occupation] has been shaken and confused,
and the time of his fleeing is nigh, so increase his confusion and
disarray, and strike some more at his neck and hit it with a
bone-cutting sword. The bearer of the banner of the Cross has increased
his soldiers and claimed that he will defeat the soldiers of faith, so
be resolute—may Allah be merciful to you—and remember Him much, for he
is watching you… You have done well by carrying out one of the greatest
of duties which few carry out: repelling the attacking enemy."

Bin Laden’s words are a bit more hyperbolic than usual, but they match
the presiding sense of what he described as the “amazement” that exists
among both the mujahideen and Muslims generally over the fact that
U.S.-led forces have been beaten so easily in Iraq, and that they are
withdrawing with what Islamists surely view as minor losses for a
superpower with a population of more than 300 million. And we may
already be seeing the insurgents spreading the “confusion” bin Laden
called for among U.S.-led forces, whose leaders are perhaps too eager
to see victory in statistics that show a slowing of insurgent attacks.
Always students of Sun-Tzu, Mao and the great Afghan commander Ahmed
Shah Masood, the Iraqi insurgents and their al-Qaeda and other foreign
allies are simply not taking on U.S. “surge” forces toe-to-toe—knowing
they would be crushed—and are making fewer but more targeted attacks,
moving to other areas of Iraq or simply lying low to fight another day
[1]. As important—and this was the Masood-model during the Red Army’s
retreat—the Iraqi mujahideen have heard U.S. politicians promise
withdrawal, and they know U.S. voters favor withdrawal. In this case,
they see little sense in aggressively attacking a retreating foe, risk
humiliating him, and thereby causing him to reconsider his decision to
leave in favor of staying to fight.

After praising the insurgents’ victory, bin Laden delivers the crux of
his message and puts it frankly: “But some of you have been tardy in
performing another duty which is also among the greatest of duties:
combining your ranks to make them one rank as loved by Allah, who said,
‘Truly Allah loves those who fight in His cause in ranks, as if they
were a solid cemented structure’.” Bin Laden here is reaffirming
al-Qaeda’s consistent post-2003 position on Iraq: (a) the U.S.-led
coalition will be evicted because the Iraqi mujahideen will prolong the
war and kill unacceptable numbers of U.S. military personnel—thereby
causing political discord in America—and (b), in al-Zawahiri’s words to
al-Zarqawi, it will be a harder struggle for the insurgents “to fill
the void stemming from the departure of the Americans, immediately upon
their exit and before un-Islamic forces attempt to fill the void...”
Bin Laden, like al-Zawahiri before him, warns the Iraqi mujahideen that
the Islamist movement has a wretched record in consolidating victory
over infidel forces, and warns them that they must be fully alert to
“the full magnitude of the [infidel] conspiracies being hatched against
you.”

Even before U.S. forces withdraw, bin Laden explains, “infidelity on
all its levels—international, regional and local—is combining to
prevent the establishment of the state of Islam” as they effectively
did after the Red Army left Afghanistan, once the Taliban took power
there and after Hasan Turabi stated his intention to make Sudan an
Islamic state. As always, however, bin Laden does not blame these
Islamist failures on the infidels; rather, he damns the Islamists for
not recognizing that only mujahideen unity can prevent the wasting of
military victory. Bin Laden reminds the Iraqi insurgents:

"And the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him)
said: 'Observe the group and avoid factionalism, for Satan is with the
loner and farther away from the pair. Whoever wants the comfort of the
Garden must stay with the group… Sticks refuse to break when banded
together. But if they come apart they break one by one.'

My brothers, the amirs of the Mujahid groups [in Iraq]: The Muslims are
waiting for you to gather under one banner to enforce truth. And when
you carry out this act of obedience [to God], the Ummah will enjoy the
birth year of the group. And how it longs for this year, and perhaps it
will come soon at your hands. So seek—may Allah have mercy on you—to
carry out this great lost obligation."

Bin Laden goes on to urge “sincere people of knowledge and
virtue”—Islamist scholars not in the Arab rulers’ pay and control—to
help the mujahideen to rectify their “faults and lapses,” and to
“engender reconciliation between every two parties in dispute, and they
must judge between them according to the law of Allah.” Bin Laden also
instructs the Iraqi insurgents to seek the masses’ support and active
assistance, implicitly reminding the mujahideen of al-Zawahiri’s 2005
warning to al-Zarqawi that “in the absence of this popular support, the
Islamic mujahid movement would be crushed in the shadows … our planning
must strive to involve the Muslim masses in the battle, and to bring
the mujahid movement to the masses and not to conduct the struggle far
from them.” Finally, bin Laden warns the Iraqi fighters to “beware of
your enemies, especially the hypocrites who infiltrate your ranks to
stir up trouble among mujahid groups.” Bin Laden is here referring to
Saudi officials or agents who deliver advice, money and weapons to the
Iraqi mujahideen in a way that favors the groups that are most
Wahhabist in their orientation and therefore most disruptive of efforts
to promote insurgent unity. Bin Laden has long believed this kind of
Saudi activity prevented the formation of an Afghan mujahideen regime
after the Soviets’ defeat (Through Our Enemies’ Eyes, pp. 53-54).

The tone of bin Laden’s appeal to the Iraqi mujahideen is beseeching
and fretful; there is little in it to suggest he believes unity is
forthcoming. As noted, bin Laden believes the support of Saudi Arabia,
other Arab regimes and Iran for their Iraqi favorites works against
unity. He also believes that those he calls the “rulers’ clerics” will
deceive the mujahideen as to their religious obligations and thereby
obstruct unity. He may also believe that there has been too little
preparatory work in laying the groundwork for a post-U.S. Islamic
state. My Jamestown colleague Lydia Khalil recently and cogently argued
that al-Qaeda’s pivotal part in forming a wartime Islamic government in
Iraq was a “blunder,” and she may well be right. Al-Qaeda’s decision to
do so, however, was a calculated gamble based, as al-Zawahiri explained
to al-Zarqawi, on the fear that without political “fieldwork starting
now [2005], alongside the combat and war” there would be no chance of
quickly installing a post-occupation Shura council … elected by the
people of the country to represent them and overlook the work of the
authorities in accordance with the rules of the glorious Sharia.” The
wartime government may now seem a blunder, but it was not a capricious
act. It was an effort to avoid the disastrous Afghan experiences of
1989 and 1996.

Bin Laden’s near-pessimism regarding the post-U.S. unity of the Iraqi
mujahideen also derives from his realization that some substantial
portion of their disunity is the result of the actions and attitudes of
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is now a thankfully—from al-Qaeda’s
perspective—dead hero. Al-Zarqawi’s attempt to force himself into the
leadership of the Iraqi insurgency, his zeal in taking credit for most
resistance activities, his decision to televise the beheading of
captives and his indiscriminate slaughter of Shiites, whether or not
they were working for the U.S.-backed regime, all undercut what must be
regarded as the always limited potential for Shiite-Sunni cooperation
after the occupation ends. Al-Zarqawi’s actions also alienated many
neutral and anti-American Sunnis and led to the transitory success of
the so-called “Awakening” programs in Anbar Province and elsewhere; at
day’s end, Iraqi Sunnis will reconcile with al-Qaeda and other foreign
fighters because they will need non-Iraqi Sunni assistance to avoid
annihilation by the Shiites.

Thus, the negative aftershocks of al-Zarqawi’s tenure as al-Qaeda’s
chief in Iraq have begun to be tempered, but still pose tall hurdles in
the path of both intra-Sunni and Sunni-Shiite unity; indeed, had
al-Zarqawi lived longer his impact may have been more harmful to
al-Qaeda than that of the Pakistani army, which al-Zawahiri claims has
done the most damage to al-Qaeda since 2001. While al-Qaeda appears to
be playing its more traditional role in supporting but not dominating
the Iraqi insurgency since al-Zarqawi’s death, the wounds he opened in
the mujahideen ranks continue to bleed. Bin Laden seems to recognize
this and the best he can do in response is exhort his fighters to avoid
al-Zarqawi-like behavior that widens rifts in insurgent ranks. “And
before concluding,” bin Laden said in a rather dispirited tone, “I
advise myself and the Muslims in general, and the brothers in [the]
al-Qaeda organization everywhere in particular, to beware of fanatical
partiality to men, groups and homelands. The truth is what Allah (the
Most High) said and what the Messenger (peace and blessings of Allah be
upon him) said, and everyone’s statement is to be accepted or rejected
except the Messenger’s (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him): his
order is to be accepted with pleasure.” Although left unsaid, bin Laden
clearly is worried that once again the mujahideen and Muslims generally
will, in al-Zawahiri’s words, allow themselves to be “robbed of the
spoils” because of disunity, and be unable to prevent others from
moving in to “reap the fruits of their labor.”

Notes

1. Several U.S. officials have forthrightly said that the declining
number of attacks should not yet be considered indicative of permanent
success. For example, Major General Mark P. Hertling, commander of the
coalition’s multi-national division in northern Iraq, told the media on
November 19 that northern Iraq was now experiencing the highest level
of violence in Iraq and that “the enemy is shifting there” because of
the surge forces present in Anbar province and the Baghdad area.
Hertling added that “there are certainly [insurgent] cells remaining in
all the key cities” in the north. In addition, retired General
Montgomery Meigs, director of the U.S. counter-IED program, said that
IED attacks were falling faster than U.S. casualties from such attacks
because the insurgents have grown proficient in the use of IEDs against
U.S. forces (AFP, November 19; USA Today, November 20).