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18/06/2006 | Eye on Iraq: The war after Zarqawi

Martin Sieff

The killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may lead to a profound change in the nature of the Iraqi insurgency. Far more U.S. soldiers may die as a result and far fewer Iraqi civilians.

 

That is because Zarqawi was the driving force behind the ferocious continuing massacres of Iraqi civilians, especially Shiites, that have been the main strategic thrust of the insurgency over the past six months. But even among the broad, complex and ever-shifting alliance of insurgent groups, Zarqawi's ferocious tactics toward fellow Muslims had caused major splits and provoked a great deal of internal criticism.

Zarqawi not only ran al-Qaida operations throughout Iraq with an iron fist, but he was the dominant figure on the Mujahedeen Shura Cuncuil, which claims to have 15 operational brigades of insurgents plus a further two suicide brigades that carry out almost all the suicide massacre attacks against Iraqi civilians.

However, as the New York Times noted in an analysis Sunday, these groups are opposed by other Sunni insurgent groups, most notably the Islamic Resistance Front and the 1920 Revolution Brigades.

Since the Feb. 22 bombing of the Golden, or al-Askariya, Mosque in Samara, Zarqawi's sectarian attacks have also provoked massive retaliation killings of Sunnis by Shiite militia groups led by the Badr Brigade, which has strong ties to the Iraqi government and its Shiite-dominated security forces.

There have been growing indications that Iran, which U.S. military intelligence believes has funneled a great deal of aid, training and logistical support to the Sunni insurgents, wanted to restrain the mass slaughter of Shiites by Zarqawi's forces.

The obvious reason for that is Iran's strong and growing ties with its fellow Shiites in Iraq. But there was a broader political and strategic reason for this as well.

Attacks on Shiite civilian workers serve a strategic purpose for all the anti-American insurgents in Iraq, and for the Iranian hard-line government led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, insofar as they undermine the credibility of the new, U.S.-supported Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. But in the longer term, a state of full-scale civil war between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq is not in Iran's interests.

For the more Sunni insurgent groups attack Shiite civilians, the more they provoke the full attention of the Shiite militias in retaliatory attacks and distract the Shiite militias from preparing to eventually join the insurgency against U.S. forces in Iraq.

Further, Iran clearly wants to eventually dominate Shiite-majority Iraq either through direct control, or through a puppet, or highly sympathetic allied government in Baghdad. This will be impossible if the 5.5 million Sunni minority in Iraq remains irreconcilably alienated from the Shiite majority.

Zarqawi was a familiar kind of figure often found in anti-colonial and guerrilla wars over the past century. He was a merciless, brutal fanatic who was also a tactical genius and a superb operational commander. But his indiscriminate killing and his bloodlust towards fellow Muslims, especially Shiites, threatened to isolate the insurgency by mobilizing the Shiite majority in Iraq, which has three times the population of the Sunnis, against them. Zarqawi was also prioritizing attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, a strategic policy that hastened his own demise.

Although U.S. casualties have grown steadily since January -- and, indeed, they peaked dramatically in the week Zarqawi was killed -- far more insurgent resources and expertise have gone into the planning and execution of mass attacks to slaughter Shiite civilians over the past half year.

It remains to be seen what impact Zarqawi's death will have on the insurgency. It is possible, though unlikely, that like the capture of Saddam Hussein and the killing of Saddam's sons, it will have no effect at all.

But it is much more likely that Zarqawi's killing will either demoralize the insurgents, by removing a commanding figure in control of them, or that subsequent leaders of groups he led will change their strategy and become more accommodating to other Shiite and Sunni insurgent groups.

The experience of al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia, next door to Iraq, over the past three years shows that al-Qaida is not an invulnerable and invincible force. The Saudi security forces have kept al-Qaida off balance in their country and reduced it to marginal significance, at least in the short term, by successfully executing a "decapitation" policy of eliminating one operational head of the organization in their nation after another. At least five have been killed in rapid succession.

Over the past two years, U.S. and British special forces have enjoyed great tactical success in eliminating dozens of relatively senior figures in al-Qaida operations in Iraq. But as long as Zarqawi survived, his iron grip, organizational skills and driving will kept the group dominant and formidable in the Sunni insurgency. Now that he is gone, his successors face the real danger that -- like their fellow al-Qaida operational commanders across the border in Saudi Arabia -- their time in command will be nasty, brutish and short.

Then, a beleaguered and insecure al-Qaida may be far more ready to compromise with other insurgent groups and shift its strategic focus. It may even lose the lead position it has enjoyed to this point in directing the insurgency.

However, that does not mean the insurgency will end. It may well turn in the direction of fewer but more politically significant directed assassinations of pro-American government figures and key administrators and security forces officers, as well as intensified pressure on U.S. forces in the country. The coming weeks and months will tell the story.

UPI (Estados Unidos)

 


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