Posted on 08/19/2003 10:36:37 AM PDT by veronica
The United States has concluded that Al Qaida and its allies are taking over the Sunni insurgency war in Iraq.
U.S. officials said Central Command officers in Iraq have seen increasing evidence of Al Qaida and Islamic volunteer forces participating and even leading the insurgency war in the Sunni Triangle. They said Al Qaida has succeeded in presenting Iraq as the next arena for what the movement terms the Islamic holy war against the United States.
"Foreign terrorists are attracted to areas where the coalition is on the offense in the global war on terror, and in Iraq we are on the offense in the global war on terror," Defense Department acting spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said. "There's clearly an indication that foreign terrorists are involved in the kind of violence that we see here."
[On Monday, an Al Qaida spokesman said in a tape broadcast on the Dubai-based Al Arabiya television that Osama Bin Laden and Taliban chief Mullah Omar were alive, Middle East Newsline reported. The spokesman, identified as Abdul Rahman Al Najdi, reiterated a call to Muslims to fight U.S. troops in Iraq.]
Officials said the methods of Al Qaida differ from those of loyalists to deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. They said the Al Qaida insurgents favor truck and roadside bombs rather than engaging U.S. troops with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades or small arms fire.
"I think we clearly are adapting as, as you understand, that what began as attacks that were primarily small-arms based evolved into mortars and then rocket-propelled grenades, and now increasingly is through the use of improvised explosive devices," Lt. Gen. Norton Schwartz, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said. "We will adapt to that reality and appropriately provide for force protection for our forces while we engage the perpetrators, both during an event but, more importantly, to engage them prior to an act of violence against our forces."
Officials and analysts have asserted that Al Qaida and aligned groups will increase their involvement in Iraq. They cite the re-entry of Al Qaida-sponsored groups such as Ansar Islam and Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, both of whom were active in Iraq before the U.S.-led war in March.
"They're [U.S. military] going after these foreign terrorists and finding them," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said on Monday. "And they will continue to do that and defeat them wherever they may be."
Kurdish sources in northern Iraq said Ansar Islam has infiltrated the cities of Kirkuk and Suleimaniya. They said the Ansar operatives have been inciting residents of those cities to attack U.S. troops.
"What I think they're [Al Qaida] attempting to do is to make Iraq into the 21st century version of what Afghanistan was," Bruce Hoffman, vice president for external affairs at the Washington-based Rand Corp. and a consultant on terrorism, said. "In other words, a rallying cry, a place where foreign fighters are supposed to come to defend Islam, that now is not the time to operate."
Al Queda sees a weakness and is doing the rightthing to exploit that weakness. Reports from Iraq indicate America and GWB are much loved.
Al Queda will not prevail. they will be anniaiated by the Iraqui's.
There were American Rat Congressmen involved with Saddam..... but America was not .
So it is with Saudi Arabia. There aqre disgruntled individuals but not the nation.
Certainly. But would you call that an earmark of Al Qaeda? I would not.
AQ is funded by money'ed Saudis, including royals. And among the royals are members of the regime. That much is public information. Until recently they were funding insurgencies in every country in Central Asia, the Balkans, the Philippines, India, Indonesia, and on and on. These insurgencies all had several elements in common: Saudi funding; Wahab missionary activity also paid by the Saudis, and they were all trained by Bin Ladin at his Afghan camps.
You cannot separate these insurgencies from Wahab missionary work, nor can you separate them from Saudi funding. That is what makes them almost by definition Al Qaeda. We call them AQ because they are Saudi funded, Wahab inspired, Bin Ladin trained, and because Saudi volunteers are prevalent.
When you read about volunteers and mercenaries fighting among the Chechens, for example, they are referring to Saudis in great number. The Chechen leadership has been taken over by Wahabs and the leadership is Saudi funded.
During the previous decade, our policy was to look the other way. If you will remember, Clinton and Albright were steadfast in their support of the Chechens, regardless of the atrocities committed. They led us to directly support every Saudi-backed insurgency where we could, or turn a blind eye where we could not back them.
It was only with the advent of Bush's new Russia policy that we backed away from the Chechens, which must be understood as backing away from the Saudis. This was the first break in our relationship with the Saudis. And then after 9/11 we declared war on every one of the Saudi backed insurgencies in Asia, leaving only the Balkan insurgencies unscathed. That is the unspoken story of the war on terror, which is that we have in effect declared war on the Saudis and have set about to annihilate every one of their operations.
All of this while publicly embracing them and declaring our undying friendship with the Saudis.
We have, out of respect for our long alliance with them, avoided a public break with them, and we have offered them the chance to repudiate AQ, and to back us. But they can't repudiate AQ without declaring war on the Wahab faith that undergirds it. And at this point they can't do that without civil war even among the royals. You cannot separate the Saudi royals from AQ. To say that AQ and Bin Ladin are not Saudi operations is, I think, to misunderstand the nature of the Saudi ruling clique.
The only point at which the Saudis have broken with AQ is to oppose their operations within the kingdom. This is similar to our nineties policy which was to merely slap at them, to re-direct their attacks away from us, while supporting or ignoring their operations throughout the rest of the world.
The Iraqi's are in a position to see people who stand out like a sore thumb in their country. If it is Al Queda, they will face the same problem as Uday and Qusay did with informers.
This is especially true if water mains etc. continue to be targeted. Even if it isn't Al Queda, the Iraqui's will be looking for anyone capable of causing the problem. Water is almost worth more them than oil is right now.
You may have a point there. Solving the so called guerilla and terror problems in Iraq is going to require average Iraquis to do things that they aren't accustomed to doing......like risking their lives to report thugs.
Whether it's al-Qaida or Palestinians or Saudis is irrelevant to the main point we should be taking from this article, which is, that MILITANT ISLAM sees Iraq as it's potential Waterloo, and fears that their goal of the return of the caliphate will become un-sellable when the "Arab street" sees what the embrace of democracy can bring in the way of peace and prosperity.
They're ALL going to be in Iraq, and the side which shows the most resolve wins.
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