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2008 Campaign
Family Security Matters does not stand behind or endorse any candidate for president (or any other public office). However, as the President is also Commander-in-Chief and is responsible for setting national security policy, we will be publishing a variety of articles on both the Republican and Democrat candidates for President during this election year. As always, the opinions of our Contributing Editors are their own, and do not necessarily reflect those of Family Security Matters.
- IN THIS SECTION
July 22, 2008
Is Iraq the “Central Front” in the War on Terror?
When the Bush administration made the fateful decision in 2003 to open an active military frontline in Iraq, for many al Qaeda supporters, the experience was not unlike witnessing the fulfillment of divine prophecy. Former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke would later write in his memoirs, “It was as if Osama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting ‘invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq.’” Given the opportunity to confront an aggressive American invasion of the Islamic world, bin Laden would “become a hero in the minds of people,” explained noted Saudi Jihadi ideologue Dr. Saad al-Faqih to me over cups of sweet black tea shared at his suburban London flat. “It is a golden opportunity for them, for the American, for the infidel - the invading infidel - to be in his [military] uniform in a Muslim country, in an Arabic country even.”
The conditions facing arriving al Qaeda envoys in Iraq in 2003 were nothing short of ideal: an embattled Sunni minority under siege by marauding Shiite militias; a weak and shamelessly corrupt post-Saddam government in Baghdad firmly divided along religious and sectarian lines; and, most importantly, an intensely unpopular “crusader” occupying force, which was unprepared for a real insurgency and spread thinly across vast geographic regions. Inside Iraq’s Sunni Triangle, al Qaeda’s forces were spearheaded by a charismatic and resourceful commander named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - a daring underdog who was revered among untold numbers of younger devotees as the so-called “Shaykh of the Slaughterers.” In April 2006, Al-Qaida Deputy Commander Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri boasted, “The group Qaida al-Jihad in Mesopotamia alone has carried out 800 martyrdom operations in 3 years, besides the sacrifices of the other mujahideen, and this is what has broken the back of America in Iraq.”
Yet, somewhere along the way to establishing a utopian Islamic state and a fortified base for Jihad in the Middle East, something went terribly wrong for al Qaeda. Indeed, it can hardly be denied that, over the past two years, al Qaeda has suffered a series of crippling setbacks in Iraq - marked by consistent and startling accusations from fellow Islamic militants of corruption, fanaticism, and even murder. Major Sunni insurgent organizations in Iraq, even former al Qaeda allies, have adamantly distanced themselves from Zarqawi and his ilk, even going so far as to suggest that “the Al-Qaida network has actually made people here think that the occupation forces are merciful and humane by comparison.” When asked about the repeated, insistent demands by al Qaeda’s Deputy Commander Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri for Sunni insurgents to join under the banner of al Qaeda in Iraq, a spokesman for a dominant insurgent faction known as the “Al-Rashideen Army” countered, “There is a problem in Tibet for China - is it possible for me to prescribe the solutions for their problem? We are a people in this region for 6000 years before Christ, end[ing] with Islam, and we are fully capable of rolling and managing our own affairs. We do not need others to tell us what to do.”
In light of these realities, it seems difficult to see how anyone can reasonably argue, as presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain recently has, that Iraq remains the “central front” in America’s war on terrorism. It is even tougher to rationalize when one considers the dramatic upswing in violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan - and that more U.S. soldiers are now dying in that conflict than even the most treacherous reaches of Iraq’s Sunni triangle. Meanwhile, as Pakistan continues to serve as an active base for major international terrorist plots (such as the 7/7 bombings in London and the smashed plots targeting the U.S. Ramstein Airbase in Germany last September), al Qaeda has utterly failed in its mission to turn Iraq into parallel hub for terrorist activity. When asked to assess the sole major al Qaeda terror plot conclusively linked to the Jihad in Iraq - the November 2005 bombings of civilian hotels in neighboring Jordan - Dr. Saad al-Faqih’s eyes flashed with frustration as he insisted to me, “In their own standards, it was a very stupid act - just a children’s game. There is no aim to be achieved by that.”
A new analytical chart from the NEFA Foundation which contrasts the shifting patterns in propaganda releases by the Taliban in Afghanistan versus al Qaeda ‘s “Islamic State of Iraq” (ISI) over approximately a one year period (from April 2007 to July 2008) seems to confirm this general trend. The numbers on the chart represent the total number of political communiqués and claims of responsibility for military operations issued by a respective organization over a given month. At least according to these numbers, the ISI seems to be in the midst of a free-fall collapse in Iraq, while the Taliban has been sharply on the rise in Afghanistan - and markedly so since February 2008.
No doubt, we are still a long way from resolving the serious problems challenging both the Iraqi government in Baghdad and U.S. military forces struggling to maintain stability in the region. But the idea that al Qaeda has any long-term viable future in Iraq - or that Iraq somehow poses more of a terrorism problem than the lawless regions along the Afghan-Pakistani border - which have become a hotbed for terrorist guesthouses and training camps of every shape, size, and variety - plainly ignores the basic facts. Both the administrations of President Bush and his eventual successor in the White House owe it to the American people to fight the war on terrorism in an intelligent, thoughtful, and focused manner. Ironically, it seems that there is near universal agreement - among senior U.S. military commanders, terrorism experts, Iraqi insurgents, and even former colleagues of Osama bin Laden - that such a campaign should be squarely targeted on Pakistan and Afghanistan, and not the counterproductive occupation of Iraq.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Evan Kohlmann is an international terrorism consultant with years of experience tracking and analyzing Al-Qaida and other global terrorist movements. Feedback: editorialdirector@familysecuritymatters.org.
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