By Alexis Debat
In The National Interest, 14 October 2004
It is has been long enough since the handover of power from the CPA to the Iraq interim government on June 28 to try to gather a few conclusions about whether and how this development has impacted the spread of the foreign fighters phenomenon in Iraq.
While the texture (how many groups ?) and uniformity (what are their relations ?) of this complex assemblage of individuals and agendas is still as blurred as before June 30, its most visible effects have been far more spectacular and deadly, to the point that the foreign jihadis are now giving the impression to have essentially taken over the insurgency.
The numbers or the images speak for themselves. The wave of suicide attacks launched since August in Baghdad and the Anbar province by terrorist groups dominated by foreign fighters has so far claimed the lives of more than two hundred people, in vast majority Iraqis. Overall, the suicide bombings committed in the 19 months since the invasion began in March 2003 have killed around 700 people according to US sources, far more than Palestinian terrorist groups inflicted on the Israeli population in three and the half years (around 475 people in 112 bombings). Kidnappings have also been rampant. So far, insurgents in Iraq have kidnapped more than 150 foreigners, and the numbers are increasing exponentially. Most have been traded for a ransom, but at least 28 have been killed by their abductors, which has sent around the world the impression that Iraq had slipped beyond the coalition’s control, and that the insurgents’ political project in Iraq was on par with the proponents of reconstruction.
The foreign fighters’ new strength
But while the violence increased, the gradual transition to a more “local” Iraqi intelligence network in the recent months has, despite the risks involved in gathering human intelligence on the ground, and according to US and Iraqi intelligence sources, brought a fresh and more successful approach to intelligence collection efforts on the Sunni insurgency. As a result, both the CIA station in Baghdad and Iyad Allawi’s government now seem to have a much clearer picture of the foreign fighters phenomenon in the Sunni triangle. According to an Iraqi intelligence report recently shared with some European governments, the number of foreign volunteers currently involved in insurgency groups in Iraq, which had been subject to a wide range of estimates, has settled around one thousand. The same report identifies eight such terrorist groups, most of them rather loose and clustered in nature[1], but two more structured, and much deadlier: Jaysh Muhammad, which claimed responsibility for a number of operations (including the August 2003 bombing of the UN compound in Baghdad), and is made of a lot of young Saudi volunteers, and the now infamous Al Tawhid wal Jihad (“Unity and Holy War”).
Among the insurgent groups including significant numbers of foreign fighters, Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s Al Tawhid wal Jihad has been identified as the main organization behind the most recent wave of suicide bombings and beheading of foreigners. According to the above-mentioned Iraqi intelligence report, it is composed of between 1000 and 1500 active militants, approximately a third of whom have crossed into Iraq from other countries in the Middle East or Europe. Most of the foreign Arab volunteers now fighting under this organization’s banner come from Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan (the vast majority of these originate from the towns of Salt and Zarqa, Zarqawi’s birthplace). This movement, according to the same Iraqi intelligence report as well as intelligence sources in the Near East, is organized by geographical branches, and keeps its headquarters in Fallujah. Most of the organization’s leadership is still active and operational, despite the many American raids on that city, one of which, according to US intelligence sources, has recently (September 26) succeeded in killing Abu Ahmed Tabouki, a Saudi believed to be one of Zarqawi's main lieutenants. Like Al Qaeda in the 1990s, Al Tawhid wal Jihad’s core leadership is organized thematically around a handful of advisers, all long-time associates of Zarqawi, and reporting directly to him. These men include a Syrian named Abu Mahdi Al Shamy, believed to be his second in command, a Jordanian “media advisor” named Hassan Ibrahim, and at least two military advisors: a former missile expert identified by Iraqi intelligence as Abu Ali, and a former Lebanese soldier and explosive expert named Abu Mohammed. The same sources also indicate that Al Tawhid wal Jihad’s “battle area” is divided in 9 zones, where the fighters are deployed: 500 reported in Fallujah, 400 in Mosul, 60 in Anbar, at least 50 on Baghdad, 50 in Samarra, 80 in the Al Diyali province, and 150 in Al Qa'em, close to Syria’s border. Each of these “battle areas” is placed under the responsibility of a “sheikh”, who is responsible for hiding weapons and explosives, raising money and providing the logistics of suicide operations (safe houses, documents and vehicles), as well as handling day to day military operations according to directives communicated through couriers from Abu Musab al Zarqawi himself[2]. Far from weakening under the intense military pressure of the past three weeks, Iraqi and US intelligence sources indicate that Zarqawi’s organization has grown more structured and more sophisticated. For example, the intelligence reports cited above alleges that Al Tawhid wal Jihad has already started establishing “foreign subsidiaries” in Jordan and Syria, and ultimately aspires to carry out operations abroad. Even more worrisome, it reports that the organization has started putting together a program which, it hopes, will lead to the development of crude biological and chemical weapons.
It’s the politics, stupid
Short of such a WMD capability, which intelligence analysts do not yet seem to be seriously taking into account, neither of these groups possess the military capability to inflict significant damage to coalition forces or the Iraqi government. What they are seeking instead is to weight significantly on the political and economic processes driving the reconstruction of Iraq. Kidnappings and suicide bombings have seriously crippled reconstruction efforts by driving educated Iraqis, expatriates and capital away from the country, and driving security costs as well as insurance premiums to levels so high that, in some sectors, investing in Iraq today no longer represents an interesting business opportunity. Worse still: this offensive has created in the west and southwest of Iraq as well as the capital a climate of fear, chaos and hopelessness among the Iraqi civilian population, even in areas not directly concerned with the violence, where the images of destruction carried by local and regional news channels have inflicted significant political damage.
Even if this situation does not reflect the military reality on the ground (14 of the 18 Iraqi provinces are considered “secure”) or puts the entire economic reconstruction in jeopardy, it has been a public relations disaster for the Iyad Allawi’s government. By creating the widespread impression that neither the Interim government nor the American forces have a grip on the situation (hence the renewed attacks inside the Green Zone), at the most politically crucial time: when the Iraqis of all religions and ethnicities are making their minds for the January elections. How they forge their newfound political consciousness and vote in January will weight on the future of Iraq in a much greater fashion than the insurgency. This multiplier effect of the elections for the Sunni minority has not been lost on the part of the foreign fighter groups, on the contrary. From the start they have, for the most part, put their insurgency in a political perspective by nesting their fight into the fears and aspirations of the Sunni minority, which had been ruling Iraq for the past 500 years, and has been looking for a way to survive as a viable religious, ethnic and political entity in the post-Baathist Iraq. Dubious about Allawi’s willingness to give them an equal voice in the future of Iraq, Sunni Baathists were reluctant to relinquish the use of violence, which they considered their only means of pressure.
While “bleeding” the coalition effort to reconstruct Iraq and carving out a “safe area” from which to regroup and conduct terrorist operations abroad, the insurgents ensured that the Sunni minority would not be weakened in Iraq’s “partition of assets”: the oil for the Shi’as, a functioning state as well as privileged relationship with Washington and the European Union for the Kurds, and the capacity to wreak havoc on all of the above (the country’s reconstruction) for the Sunnis.
The political nature of this complex situation, together with the diversity of the Sunni insurgency as well as the heavy presence of foreigners in its midst, create some real opportunities for the current Iraqi government and its American sponsors to secure a strong and sustainable solution. If he can find a way to both satisfy the Sunni leadership whether Baathist or fundamentalist, on the one hand, and threaten it with military action on the other, prime minister Iyad Allawi will be able to split the insurgency by isolating groups such as Al Tawhid wal Jihad from the rest of the Sunni population, or even turn the terrorist groups against one another. This tactic has already proven very successful for the CIA and the Jordanian General Intelligence Directorate in the 1970s and the 1980s in crippling such Palestinian groups as Fatah, PFLP or Abu Nidal. But this game will be much harder to play for US and Iraqi intelligence this time around, and it will have to be played on a much more subtle ground, where American military and intelligence forces have shown very little prowess since the 1980s. It will also require dealing with political forces that have been behind some of the rhetoric behind the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
The emergence of tensions from within the Sunni insurgency, as well as the discreet contacts between the Allawi government and Fallujah’s “Council of Mujahedeen” and the flurry of communication by the US military on the “impending offensive in Fallujah” in the US and Iraqi media, suggest that this strategy is already ongoing. But time is running out, and the foreign fighters phenomenon is also gaining in strength from its links with some of Iraq’s neighbors, which the US government will necessarily have to enlist in its struggle to stabilize Iraq, despite their status as ambiguous allies (Saudi Arabia), or long-standing enemies (Syria and Iran). Such is the cruel irony of the war in Iraq: not that it was necessarily a bad move (the jury is still way out, and for a long time) or a truly significant “diversion” in the war on terror, but that it put the credibility of US foreign policy in the hands of the governments who most want to see it fail.
1] Among the other groups mentioned in the Iraqi intelligence report we find: Ansar al Islam (created in December 2001 in the Iraqi Kurdistan, with links to Iran), Jaysh Ansar al-Sunnah (which kidnapped and killed 12 Nepalese on Aug. 23, 2004), the Khalid-Bin-al-Walid Brigades (believed to have kidnapped and killed Italian journalist Enzo Bladoni in August 2004), the Assadullah Brigades, The Islamic Army in Iraq (a mostly unknown organization which claimed the kidnapping of Iranian Consul Feredion Jahani and two French journalists), the Black Banners (group of local Arab Sunni mujahedin very active in Fallujah, where it operates in close cooperation with Jaysh Muhammad), The Iraqi Resistance Islamic Front’s Salah-al-Din and Sayf-Allah al-Maslul Brigades (which have carried out dozens of operations against the U.S. occupation forces in the Ninwi province).
[2] Among these “regional commanders”, the Iraqi intelligence report names Abu Nawas Al Falluji as the emir of Fallujah, Hussein Selim for the northern area, Abdullah Abu Azzam for the Al Anbar province, and Abu Talaat for Mosul.
This piece is a follow-up to Dr. Debat's original essay in the summer 2004 issue of The National Interest.
Citation: Alexis Debat. "Vivisecting the Jihad: Part Two," In The National Interest, 14 October 2004.
Original URL: http://www.inthenationalinterest.com/Articles/October2004/October2004DebatPFV.html