Recent reports of the assassinations of Sunni clerics have been sparking speculation as to who is behind their deaths. Here's the Strategy Page's take:
In the last week, two members of the Sunni Arab Association of Muslim Scholars have been assassinated. The Association has taken the lead in preaching resistance to the new government, elections and any Shia control of the government. This has caused much anger among the Shia majority. While many Shia have expressed this anger by joining the police or army, others have formed death squads, and gone after notorious murderers and hate mongers in the Sunni Arab community. This includes many Sunni Arab preachers. Shia Arabs and Kurds have thousands of names of Sunni Arabs who personally took part in supporting Saddam's decades of repression. Nearly all of these Sunni Arabs have fled to the traditionally Sunni areas in, around, and to the west of, Baghdad. But Shia death squads have been going in and killing the murderers and preachers of hate.
There are plenty of recent murders and atrocities to motivate these killers. Sunni Arab gangs have taken to setting up roadblocks and stopping Shia Arab or Kurd drivers, and torturing or killing them. The Shia get the most attention, because Sunni Arab clerics preach that Shia are heretics and blasphemers. This is a common attitude among Sunni Arabs, but usually does not result in violence. An exception is the Wahabi form of Sunni Islam. The Wahabi strain is popular in Saudi Arabia, and among al Qaeda members, and has become common among Iraqi Sunni Arabs as well.
Belmont Club has some interesting observations on al Zarqawi's fading fortunes. Among them is this:
A report from Jordan...gives Zarqawi ten days to capitulate or else his money will be confiscated. From the context, it appears the Jordanians are holding some of his property in connection with an earlier Zarqawi attack mounted inside Jordan. The interesting tidbit is that Zarqawi's money is within reach of the US.
"The Jordanian Security Court has given 10 days for the Jordanian fundamentalist leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi and three other men to turn themselves in for plotting attacks in Jordan. According to Jordanian papers publishing the Court's ultimatum, if Zarqawi and the three men, each of whom have a $25 million bounty on them from the United States, do not capitulate, the US administration will confiscate their property holdings."
The Fourth Rail has a report that overlaps with and draws from Belmont Club's analysis, but also features additional material:
Two separate reports, one from the Associated press, and another from ABC News (via Belmont Club), indicated that al Qaeda may be encountering difficulties due to recent operations in the Sunni Triangle. Abu Musab al-Zarqari, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, is angry at Muslim leaders for not doing enough to incite the faithful to take up the cause of Jihad.
An audiotape purportedly made by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi lashed out Wednesday at Muslim scholars for not speaking out against U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, saying they have "let us down in the darkest circumstances."
It was unclear whether the tape posted Wednesday on the Internet was intended as a direct threat against Iraq's Sunni religious establishment, who have come under attack recently with the slaying this week of two Sunni clerics by gunmen.
"You have let us down in the darkest circumstances and handed us over to the enemy. ... You have quit supporting the mujahedeen," said the voice on the tape, purported to be al-Zarqawi's. "Hundreds of thousands of the nation's sons are being slaughtered at the hands of the infidels because of your silence."
"You made peace with the tyranny and handed over the countries and the people to the Jews and Crusaders ... when you resort to silence on their crimes ... and when you prevented youth from heading to the battlefields in order to defend the religion," he said.
"Instead of implementing God's orders, you chose your safety and preferred your money and sons. You left the mujahedeen facing the strongest power in the world," he said. "Are not your hearts shaken by the scenes of your brothers being surrounded and hurt by your enemy?"
Moral support may not be the only problems for the insurgency and al Qaeda in Iraq. They are actively begging for manpower and leadership from Afghanis, Chechens, Palestinians and others sympathetic to the cause. The loss of Fallujah and the continuing operations in the Sunni Triangle may be having a devastating effect on enemy command, control and communications.
The new message opens with a plea for advice from Palestinian and Chechen militants as well as Osama bin Laden supporters in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "We face many problems," it reads in Arabic, "and need your military guidance since you have more experience."
The problems, the message says, are the result of losing the insurgent safe haven of Fallujah to U.S. troops. It says the insurgency was hampered as checkpoints and raids spread "to every city and road." Communications broke down as insurgents were forced to spread out through the country. The arrest of some of their military experts, more "spies willing to help the enemy," and a dwindling supply of arms also added to the organizational breakdown, it reads. But the message also lists new "advantages," claiming insurgent groups are spreading -- to Mosul, Tikrit, Baghdad, and as far south as Basra.
The United States' military appears to have the bad guys on the run. The only question is how patient the American people will be in the face of continuing casualties. The elections on January 30th will tell us a lot about both the prospects for the future of Iraq and whether the public will stick with the project of planting another democracy (along with Turkey) in the heart of the Islamic world. One thing is almost certain. If we pull out Islamo-fascism will not only prevail in Iraq it will be an irresistible tide throughout the Arab world. Muslims everywhere will see our withdrawal as a sign from Allah that the end of the infidel is near, that Islamism is vindicated, and there will be no stopping it. Our withdrawal would be a disaster for the world.
