Only a U.S. Withdrawal Will Stop Al Qaeda in Iraq

AlterNet

One of the last justifications for continuing the U.S. occupation of Iraq despite overwhelming opposition from Iraqis, Americans and the rest of humanity has come down to this: U.S. forces must remain in order to battle "Al Qaeda in Iraq."


Like so many of the arguments presented in the United States, the idea is not only intellectually bankrupt, it's also the 180-degree opposite of reality. The truth of the matter is that only the presence of U.S. forces allows the group called "Al Qaeda in Iraq" (AQI) to survive and function, and setting a timetable for the occupation to end is the best way to beat them. You won't hear that perspective in Washington, but according to Iraqis with whom we spoke, it is the conventional wisdom in much of the country.


The Bush administration has made much of what it calls "progress" in the Sunni-dominated provinces of central Iraq. But when we spoke to leaders there, the message we got was very different from what supporters of a long-term occupation claim: Many Sunnis are, indeed, lined up against groups like AQI, but that doesn't mean they are "joining" with coalition forces or throwing their support behind the Iraqi government.


Several sources we reached in the Sunni community agreed that AQI, a predominantly Sunni insurgent group that did not exist prior to the U.S. invasion -- it started in 2005 -- will not exist for long after coalition forces depart. AQI is universally detested by large majorities of Iraqis of all ethnic and sectarian backgrounds because of its fundamentalist interpretation of religious law and efforts to set up a separate Sunni state, and its only support -- and it obviously does enjoy some support -- is based solely on its opposition to the deeply unpopular U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.


We spoke by phone with Qasim Al-jumaili, a former member of Falluja's City Council, who was confident that his local militias would eliminate Al Qaeda in Iraq from Fallujah if U.S. forces were to withdraw. "The U.S. presence is making our work harder," he said. "For example, the Anbar Salvation Front [the Sunni tribal leadership group that declared war against Al Qaeda in Iraq], is not getting a lot of public support because they think we're collaborating with the U.S. and the Al-Maliki government."


Al Jumaili was confident that Iraqis wouldn't tolerate Al Qaeda in Iraq's presence in an independent Iraq. "If the U.S. was to pull out from Iraq and let Iraqis have a national government instead of the puppet one now, Iraqis with their government and tribal leaders would quickly eliminate Al Qaeda from all Iraq," he said. It's a credible statement -- most estimates of the terror group's strength suggest its membership is in the low thousands, no match for the larger organized militias or the fledgling security forces without the support of some of the residents of the areas in which they operate.


[..]In July, three of the most prominent Sunni insurgent groups agreed to join forces in a concerted effort to end the occupation. Abd al Rahman al Zubeidy, a spokesman for one of the groups, told the Guardian: "Resistance isn't just about killing Americans without aims or goals. Our people have come to hate Al Qaeda, which gives the impression to the outside world that the resistance in Iraq are terrorists. We are against indiscriminate killing, fighting should be concentrated only on the enemy." He added that "a great gap has opened up between Sunni and Shia under the occupation and Al Qaeda has contributed to that … Most of Al Qaeda's members are Iraqis but its leaders are mostly foreigners. The Americans magnify their role, even though they are responsible for a minority of resistance operations."


The public opinion research shows that those views are shared by overwhelming majorities of ordinary Iraqis. All of Iraq's ethnic groups oppose Al Qaeda. They reject AQI's attacks on Iraqis, its harshly fundamentalist brand of Islam and its attempts to form a separate Sunni "caliphate" -- an independent theocratic state -- in central Iraq, but significant pluralities -- and a huge majority of Sunnis -- support AQI's attacks on occupation forces. A recent poll by the BBC found that almost half of all Iraqis backed AQI's attacks on coalition troops, but only one in 100 favored its larger separatist agenda (PDF).