By Suleiman al-Khalidi
Reuters, 29 October 2006
AMMAN, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Sunnis radicalised by brutal U.S. tactics and disillusioned mainstream insurgents are swelling the ranks of Al Qaeda, which believes it can turn part of Iraq into an Islamic emirate, a moderate Sunni politician said on Sunday.
Saleh Mutlaq, whose Iraqi National Dialogue group supports the U.S.-backed political process, said al Qaeda's growing control of strongholds at the heart of the country's Sunni insurgency was paving the way for an Islamic fundamentalist state in western, central Iraq and even the capital Baghdad.
"In the beginning it was a percentage that did not exceed two to four percent of the total resistance," Mutlaq said in an interview in Amman. "Now al-Qaeda's growth is at the expense of the nationalist resistance."
Last week dozens of al Qaeda-linked gunmen took to the streets of Ramadi in a show of force to announce the city was joining an Islamic state comprising Iraq's mostly Sunni Arab provinces, Islamists and witnesses said.
The western Anbar province encompasses a third of Iraq, has been the deadliest region of Iraq for U.S. forces.
Mutlaq said the decision this month by the Shi'ite-controlled parliament to pass a law allowing provinces to form federal regions encouraged Islamist Sunni groups to launch their own rule in areas under their control.
"They are saying we also have our provinces and will set up an Islamic emirate and this is terrifying," Mutlaq said.
ZEALOTS
Mutlaq said heavy-handed U.S. tactics against civilians have propelled many ordinary Sunnis into the arms of al-Qaeda.
"American prisons have become the school for suicide bombers and transformed many prisoners into al-Qaeda elements when they were not before," Mutlaq said.
He said al Qaeda plans to turn its territorial gains into a launching pad for expansion in Iraq and beyond its borders.
"They want to capture territory to attract more jihadists to destabilise everywhere and they think they can take over all of Iraq later when they have the territory to operate," he said.
He said al Qaeda's growth has exposed a flaw in U.S. military strategy which conceived Iraq as a place where Islamists zealots from across the region could be drawn into a battlezone far from the United States and wiped out.
Mutlaq said he also saw signs that U.S strategists -- reeling from growing casualties and domestic pressure for an exit strategy -- were ready to talk to mainstream nationalist insurgents opposed to al Qaeda's harsher aspirations for Iraq.
The moderate Sunni politician who has pressed the U.S. military to talk with mainstream insurgents said direct dialogue could emerge in the "next few months."
But he warned mainstream Sunni insurgents whose backbone were former army officers and former regime loyalists were not ready to drop their arms without tangible political concessions.
"The nationalist resistance wants those who talk to them to bring them a plan that attains the goals they fought for... Then it will ready to give up its arms," Mutlaq said.
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Citation: Suleiman al-Khalidi. "U.S. tactics swelling Al Qaeda in Iraq-Sunni moderate," Reuters, 29 October 2006.
Original URL: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L29887817.htm
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