The Imploding Insurgency
The February 22, 2006, bombing of the al-Hadi Shrine – the “Golden Mosque” – was heralded by many analysts, both Right and Left, as the beginning of an Iraqi civil war. The shrine is a Shi’ite holy site located in the Sunni-dominated town of Samarra.
There is little doubt that the triggering of sectarian strife was what motivated the perpetrators. In mid-September of 2005, Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, leader of Al-Qaeda-In-Iraq, announced, “The organization [al-Qaeda] has decided to declare a total war against the Rafidite Shi’ites throughout Iraq, wherever they may be.”
Over the next month, numerous Sunni insurgent groups disassociated themselves from this Fatwah, marking the formal dissolution of the alliance of Iraqi Ba’athists and Sunni jihadists in their war against us.
Anti-Coalition Sunni groups like “The Association of Mulim Scholars In Iraq” couched their objections in religious terms, protesting that a general Fatwah against Shi’ites, such as Zarqawi had issued, was unprecedented in Islamic law.
But there were abundant pragmatic reasons to disassociate from Al-Zarqawi. His Fatwah was issued in response to the participation of Iraqi Defense Forces in the operations against jihadists in Tal-Afar. The IDF, trained by the coalition, was growing in numbers and in competence. Its participation against the insurgency was sanctioned by the government of Ibrihim al-Jafaari, the Shi’ite Prime Minister of the Iraqi transitional government. Al-Jaafari himself was the leader of the Dawa Party, a key component of the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA). The UIA list is dominant among Iraqi Shi’ites, who constitute 60 percent of the Iraqi population.
A declaration of war against the Shi’ite majority, armed by the coalition, was essentially a death wish – or so the “Sunni Scholars” and their militant brothers concluded. In fall, 2005, they sanctioned Sunni participation in parliamentary elections for the National Council. And on December 15, when that election was held, turnout in the Sunni governates was roughly 60 percent.
In effect, the Sunni insurgents had opted out of martyrdom. They would not make jihad against the Iraqi democracy. From this time on, their violence would be tactical rather than strategic. They would kill for leverage, as a negotiating tool for amnesty for former members and beneficiaries of the Ba’athist regime. They had morphed from the IRA into Sinn Fein.
Al-Zarqawi’s plan was quite different. By attacking Shi’ite civilians and holy sites, he could never defeat Iraqi government. But he could motivate Shi’ite militias, and even Shi’ite-led IDF units, to perpetrate ham-fisted revenge against the Sunni community. And these revenge killings could be used to recruit Sunni jihadists both in Iraq and in the rest of the Sunni world.
This scheme of generating violence against one’s own community to fuel an insurgency is nothing new in the Arab world. Yasar Arafat did it for decades.
The flaw, as applied to Iraq, was mathematical. Sunnis are a mere fifth of Iraq’s population, and the Shi’ites aren’t going anywhere. In effect, Al-Zarqawi elected to fill his depleted ranks by consciously narrowing the base from which jihadists could be recruited.
His insurgency is imploding.
One measure of this is the opinion of Iraqis themselves. The “Survey of Iraqi Public Opinion,” compiled March 23-31, 2006 by the International Republican Institute, coincided with the peak of sectarian blood-letting, following the destruction of the Golden Shrine. Even then, most Iraqis wanted none of it.
- Asked, “Do you think the recent attack on the mosque in Samarra is an acceptable form of political expression?” Iraqis answered no by a margin of 96% to 2%.
- Asked “Whom do you trust to protect your personal safety?” 78% of Iraqis trusted the national army and police, 6% trusted the insurgency, and 4% trusted the armed militias.
- Even in the Sunni provinces – the core of the insurgency – the national army and police outpolled the insurgency 42% to 27%.
- In Baghdad, where bulk of the sectarian killings occurred, the insurgents were outpolled by the IDF 68%-to-1%. The militias polled better, at 10%.
As a popular movement, Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq is dead.
On April 29th, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch briefed the press on the failure of al-Qaeda to generate a civil war. He listed four “civil war indicators”, and described the status of each.
Casualties. Civilian deaths from ethno-sectarian revenge killings peaked in March, but declined in April.
Ethnic cleansing. Intimidation forced some families to move, particularly in Baghdad – but far fewer families abandoned their neighborhoods than initially reported. Not a single governate requested aid to handle an influx of refugees.
General mobilization of ethnic militias. This occurred to a limited degree in Baghdad, where “neighborhood watches” were becoming common. There was no significant mobilization of sectarian militias elsewhere.
Ethno-sectarian decision-making. At the height of the revenge killings, the Iraqi parliamentary factions moved in the opposite direction. Breaking months of deadlock, they agreed on a unity government headed by a Dawa prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.
Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq has failed to manufacture its desired civil war – the latest in its long series of defeats.