Saudis Back Syrian Rebels Despite Risks

By ROBERT F. WORTH
JAN. 7, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/world/middleeast/saudis-back-syria-rebels-despitea-lack-of-control.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20140108&_r=1
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In Damascus on Tuesday, men helped a wounded girl who survived what activists said
was an airstrike by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Bassam
Khabieh/Reuters
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RIYADH, Saudi Arabia On his eighth trip to fight with the rebels in Syria, in August,
Abu Khattab saw something that troubled him: two dead children, their blood-soaked
bodies sprawled on the street of a rural village near the Mediterranean coast. He knew
right away that his fellow rebels had killed them.
Abu Khattab, a 43-year-old Saudi hospital administrator who was pursuing jihad on his
holiday breaks, went to demand answers from his local commander, a notoriously brutal
man named Abu Ayman al-Iraqi. The commander brushed him off, saying his men had
killed the children because they were not Muslims, Abu Khattab recalled recently
during an interview here.

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It was only then that Abu Khattab began to believe that the jihad in Syria where he had
traveled in violation of an official Saudi ban was not fully in accord with Gods will.
But by the time he returned to Riyadh, where he now volunteers in a program to
discourage others from going, his government had overcome its own scruples to become
the main backer of the Syrian rebels, including many hard-line Islamists who often fight
alongside militants loyal to Al Qaeda.

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Clothes covered in dust after the airstrike. Saudis are prohibited from going to Syria for
jihad, but the ban is not enforced. Bassam Khabieh/Reuters
The disillusionment of Abu Khattab who asked that his full name be withheld because
he still fears retribution from jihadists helps illustrate the great challenge now facing
Saudi Arabias rulers: how to fight an increasingly bloody and chaotic proxy war in Syria
using zealot militia fighters over whom they have almost no control.
The Saudis fear the rise of Al Qaedas affiliates in Syria, and they have not forgotten what
happened when Saudi militants who had fought in Afghanistan returned home to wage a
domestic insurgency a decade ago. They officially prohibit their citizens from going to
Syria for jihad, but the ban is not enforced; at least a thousand have gone, according to
Interior Ministry officials, including some from prominent families.
But the Saudis are also bent on ousting Syrias president, Bashar al-Assad, and his patron,
Iran, which they see as a mortal enemy. Their only real means of fighting them is through
military and financial support to the Syrian rebels. And the most effective of those rebels
are Islamists whose creed rooted in the puritanical strain of Islam practiced in Saudi
Arabia is often scarcely separable from Al Qaedas.
Abu Khattab, a slight-figured man with bulging eyes and the scraggly beard of an ultraorthodox Salafist Muslim, embodies some of these paradoxes. He now volunteers here
once a week to warn young men about the false glamour of the Syrian jihad at the

governments rehabilitation center for jihadists. There is a shortage of religious

conditions for jihad in Syria, he said. Many of the fighters kill Syrian civilians, a
violation of Islam, he added.
But as Abu Khattab talked about Syria, his own convictions seemed scarcely different
from those of the jihadists he had carefully denounced (two officials from the Interior
Ministry were present during the interview). He made clear that he considered Shiite
Muslims and Mr. Assads Alawite sect to be infidels and a terrible danger to his own
people.
If the Shiites succeed in controlling Syria, it will be a threat to my country, Abu
Khattab said. I went to Syria to protect my country.
At times, his sectarian feelings seemed to outshine his unease about the excesses of some
of his more extreme comrades. He did not deny that he had often fought alongside
members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, the brutal jihadist group affiliated
with Al Qaeda.
Abu Khattab also mentioned proudly that he is no stranger to jihad. He fought as a
teenager in Afghanistan (With the governments permission!) and, a few years later, in
Bosnia. He chose not to fight the Americans in Iraq because there are too many Shiites
there, he said, with a look of distaste on his face.
Yet this is a man who lectures inmates at the rehabilitation center every week about
ethics and war. The center, like many Saudi institutions, has been somewhat embarrassed
by the contradictions of Saudi policy with regard to Syria. Although the center
incarcerates some men who have been arrested for trying to travel to Syria, last summer
the nephew of Abdelrahman al-Hadlaq, its director, was killed while fighting there. His
mother posted statements on Twitter saying she was proud of him.
More recently, the center suffered an even more stinging disappointment involving one of
its best-known graduates, a reformed jihadist named Ahmed al-Shayea. He became
famous in Saudi Arabia after surviving his own suicide bombing in Iraq in 2004, a
bombing arranged by militants with Al Qaedas Iraqi branch.
Mr. Shayea was burned and disfigured, but after months in a hospital he emerged and
proclaimed himself cured of the jihadist mind-set. He was known as the living suicide,
and in 2009 an American author, Ken Ballen, devoted an entire chapter to a glowing
portrait of him in his book, Terrorists in Love.
In November, Mr. Shayea slipped out of Saudi Arabia to Syria, where he is now fighting
with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. He proudly trumpets his return to jihad on his
Twitter feed, which features a picture of him clutching a rifle with his mangled hands.
The Saudi authorities say they have urged their citizens not to go to Syria, but cannot
keep track of every Saudi who wants to go fight there. We try to prevent it, but there are

limits to what we can do, said Mansour al-Turki, a spokesman for the Saudi Interior
Ministry. You cannot prevent all young men from leaving the kingdom. Many of them
travel to London or other places, and only then to Turkey, and Syria.

Recent Comments
mcgreivy
16 days ago
Personally, it is very hard for me to believe Al Qaeda isn't funded by the Saudis. Saudi
Arabian is a police state which exists on the...

moe
16 days ago
More than 130000 people killed by Assad regime and more than 8 million fled the
country . Iran and Iraq and Assad regime is using every...

wposgay
16 days ago
The Kigdome of Saudi Arabia needs to first own up to it;s clandestin activiteis in the past
to go forword and suport the Shias and more...

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Abu Khattabs path to Syria was similar to that of many others here and across the Arab
world. He read about the uprisings in 2011, but it was Syria that touched his heart. It was
not just because of the bloodshed, he said, but because his Sunni brothers were being
killed by Alawites and Shiites.
When he first went, in the summer of 2012, he flew directly from Riyadh to the Turkish
city of Antakya, near the Syrian border, he said. There were other Saudi men heading for
the battlefield on the flight with him, he said, and no sign of a Saudi government effort to
monitor or restrain them.
In Turkey, he found many other foreign fighters, and Syrian rebels who were eager to
take them to the battlefield. They especially like Saudis, because the Saudis are more
willing to do suicide operations, he said.
Over the next year, Abu Khattab said, he returned to Syria seven more times, usually on
holidays, leaving his wife to care for their four children and staying for 10 days to two
weeks each time. He fought with a variety of groups, seeing battle many times in
Aleppo, in Homs and in the countryside of Latakia, near the coast. He wielded a

Kalashnikov rifle most of the time, but sometimes a heavier Russian-made machine gun
known in the field as a 14.5.
Gradually he became disillusioned with the chaos of the battle. He often found himself
among men who openly branded the rulers of Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states
as infidels, deserving slaughter. He said this bothered him, but it did not stop him from
returning to the battlefield.
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In the end, it was the slaughter of innocents that made him decide to quit, he said, and a
broader feeling that the rebels alongside him were not doing it for the right reasons. If
the fight is not purely to God, its not a real jihad, he said. These people are fighting for
their flags.
But there was another reason he gave up the fight.
Bashar has started to put Sunnis on the front line, he said of Syrias leader. This is a
big problem. The rebels do not want to fight them. The real war is not against Bashar
himself, it is against Iran. Everything else is just a false image.

Iraq Again Uses Sunni Tribesmen in

Militant War
By TIM ARANGO and KAREEM FAHIMJAN. 19, 2014
Inside

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Fighters at a checkpoint in Diyala Province in Iraq. Mistrust of the government and fear
of Qaeda revenge have hampered efforts to recruit Sunni tribal fighters. Ayman Oghanna
for The New York Times
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BAGHDAD At a command center in western Anbar Province, Iraqi military officials
are handing out guns and cash to local Sunni tribal fighters who are battling militants for
control of Iraqs largest province.

The United States, at the same time, is rushing shipments of small arms and ammunition
to the Iraqi government and urging the Iraqis to pass the weapons on to the tribes.
As Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki struggles to put down an insurgency led by
militants affiliated with Al Qaeda, he has embraced the same strategy the Americans used
in 2007, one that has been attempted with varying degrees of success by the authorities
here for nearly a century: paying and arming tribal militias to fight as proxies.
The American version, known as the Sunni Awakening, coupled with an American troop
increase, helped turn the tide of the Iraq war but ultimately, as recent events have laid
bare, achieved no lasting reconciliation.
Mr. Maliki has backed away from a military assault on Anbar after intense lobbying by
American officials, Sunni leaders and moderates in his government.

TURKEY
IRAN
IRAQ
SYRIA
Tigris

DIYALA
Falluja
Euphrates
Ramadi
Baghdad
ANBAR
Karbala
100 miles
He has made promises to the tribesmen of permanent jobs, pensions and death benefits
for their families if they die on the battlefield. He has also hinted at amnesty for any tribal
fighters with a history of armed resistance against the government.
Mr. Maliki began embracing the Sunni tribes last summer and increased his support after
the militants seized the city of Falluja and parts of Ramadi, the provincial capital, almost
three weeks ago.
For now, his strategy is centered on containing the Anbar crisis, but optimists in his
government hope it can be a step toward reconciliation between the Shiite-led
government and the Sunni minority. Moreover, it is far from clear if it will succeed
militarily.
Fighting continues to rage daily, and militants remain in control of Falluja and parts of
Ramadi. While the regular army has stayed outside the city, Iraqi special forces are
deeply involved in the fight and are said to be taking heavy casualties. Tribal leaders and
American officials say the government-supplied weapons are not nearly enough to beat
back the militants, who are armed with sniper rifles and heavy, truck-mounted machine
guns.
As to Mr. Malikis promises, many Sunnis say they have come too late, and point out that
the same promises were made when they fought with the Americans, only, they say, to be
abandoned by the Iraqi government after the Americans left.
From 2006 to 2008, tribesmen were able to beat Al Qaeda with the cooperation of
American forces and the support of the Iraqi government, said Osama al-Nujaifi, the
speaker of Parliament and perhaps the most important Sunni politician in Iraq. After
gaining victory over Al Qaeda, those tribesmen were rewarded with the cutting of their
salaries, with assassination and displacement.

After their success, he said, the Sunni fighters were left alone in the street facing
revenge from Al Qaeda and neglect by the government.
Sunnis in general have become increasingly bitter toward the government and what they
regard as Mr. Malikis efforts to push them to the margins of society, with little role in
national decisions. In particular, the governments heavy-handed security strategy, which
has often included mass arrests of Sunnis, and the arrest of Sunni leaders on sometimes
false terrorism charges, became a rallying point for Sunni protests last year.
As a measure of the polarization between Sunni and Shiite leaders in Iraq, Mr. Nujaifi
said he has not even spoken to the prime minister about the crisis in Anbar.
Indeed, many of the tribal leaders say they are happy to accept guns and money from the
government to fight the militants, but contend that they are not on the side of the
government. They also say they need more supplies from the government, such as winter
clothing to fight during the cold desert nights.
The reason why we returned to carry our weapons and fight is because Qaeda
returned to our cities, said Ahmed Abu Risha, a tribal leader in Anbar who was a critical
ally of the Americans.
He added, we are obliged to defend ourselves and our province, not to fight for the
Americans or the Iraqi government.
Other tribal leaders fighting the militants say that they are not aligned with the
government, and that they have not accepted any government assistance.
Qaeda killed my brother and other members of my family, said Sheikh Abdul Karim
Rafi Fahdawi, another tribal leader in Ramadi. I will take revenge.
This is our war, he added, and we dont want to be accused of working for the
government.

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Sunni Muslim gunmen during clashes with Iraqi security forces outside Falluja on
Sunday. Reuters
Ali al-Mousawi, a spokesman for Mr. Maliki, rejected the criticism that the government
had neglected the fighters, but said: Now the Awakening is part of the state, and
considered the same as the army or police in terms of benefits, salaries and retirement.
Even their wounded will be treated at government expense.
In the face of sharply escalating violence last year, the government began reaching out to
Sunni tribes across the country as part of a nationwide counterinsurgency strategy, and
has accelerated those efforts amid the crisis in Anbar. But the effort has been fraught from
the beginning, with former fighters caught between their mistrust of the government and
their fear of revenge killings by Al Qaeda, which appear to have increased recently. The
latest episode came Sunday morning, when gunmen attacked a checkpoint in Diyala
Province, killing five men.
In Baghdad, a new recruiting call has gone out in Adhamiya, a Sunni-majority
neighborhood that was once a Qaeda stronghold.
The government called us back a month ago, said Abu Karam, an Anbar Awakening
leader in Adhamiya. Until now, they have given us nothing but promises no weapons
and no money. We have depended on ourselves even to buy uniforms. They tell us,
Dont worry, everything will be fine.
He mistrusts the government, and he said he had been patrolling with army units, but was
not allowed to even carry a weapon.

The Awakening was an American idea, and the Iraqi government has returned to it now
because they are facing the same situation the Americans faced back in 2005, Abu
Karam said. They know this is the best idea, because it proved to be successful. But the
government, like with everything it does, they dont know how to use the Awakening in
the right way like the Americans did.
Separately, the government is pushing other former combatants onto the battlefield in
Anbar with another program. In recent years, the government pursued a reconciliation
program with former fighters from Iraqs myriad insurgent groups that sprung up to fight
the Americans. The government has bought back nearly 100,000 weapons from these
men, in exchange for their signing a statement that they had never killed Iraqis (having
killed Americans, though, did not disqualify anyone) and promised to not return to
militancy.
Now the government is rearming about 1,000 of these men and sending them to Anbar,
according to Amer al-Khuzai, a government official in charge of reconciliation programs.
Adil Abd al-Mahdi, a former Iraqi vice president who is considered a moderate Shiite
leader, said the fight in Anbar could finally push the Maliki government toward a lasting
reconciliation with the Sunnis, potentially breaking Iraqs perpetual cycle of crisis.
It is very dangerous, Mr. Mahdi said of the Anbar crisis. But it also opens certain
options.
Still, he confessed, of Mr. Malikis true intentions, We dont know his real plans.
Few analysts are optimistic that Mr. Maliki is intent on pursuing a durable reconciliation
with the Sunnis, especially before elections in April, when he will seek a third term. He
has privately told American officials that he believes that were he to offer political
compromises to Sunnis now it would weaken him politically among Shiites.
The tribal Awakening was made possible because Al Qaeda had thoroughly alienated the
people and the U.S. offered not just protection but a measure of rehabilitation within the
political system, said Maria Fantappie, Iraq analyst for the International Crisis Group.
This time, she said, it is the Iraqi government that has alienated the Sunni community.
And without any promises to the Sunnis for greater inclusion in the political system, any
alliance between the tribes and the government is extremely fragile.
Still there are modest signs of what a reconciliation could look like. In the Shiite holy city
of Karbala, the citys religious establishment is housing dozens of Sunni families from
Falluja who have fled the fighting in a camp built for Shiite religious pilgrims.
Some of the families had been displaced from their homes for the fourth time since the
American invasion of 2003. One of the refugees, Abdul Aziz, 45, a driver, said that he
was stunned by the Shiite hospitality and that it reminded him of an earlier time, before
the worst of the sectarian bloodletting began almost a decade ago.

When he finally returns to Falluja, he said, I will say proudly that I was in Karbala.

The Rise of Al Qaeda in Iraq and

the Threat from Prime Minister
Maliki

By Anthony H. Cordesman
Jan 13, 2014

No one can deny that al Qaeda is a violent extremist threat wherever it

operates. It poses a threat in terms of transnational terrorism in the United
States and Europe, and a far more direct threat to the people who live in
every area it operates. It has consistently been horribly repressive, violent,
and often murderous in enforcing its political control and demands for a
form of social behavior that reflect the worst in tribalism and offers almost
nothing in terms of real Islamic values.
Like all extreme neo-Salafi movements, al Qaeda is also an economic and
social dead end. It does not offer any practical way of operating and
competing in a global economy, it is too dysfunctional to allow meaningful
education and social interaction, and it finances itself largely through
extortion in ways that cripple the existing local economy. Moreover, it does
not tolerate competition even from other Islamist fighters. In Syria, it has
provoked its own civil war with other hardline Islamist movements a civil
war it now seems to be decisively losing to other Sunni rebel factions.

It is precisely that type of behavior, however, which should lead U.S.

officials, analysts, and media to do a far, far better job of reporting on
exactly what has really happened in Anbar, and in cities like Fallujah and
Ramadi. Bad as Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) is, far too much of the evidence
points to Prime Minister Maliki as an equal threat to Iraq and to U.S.
interests. Ever since the 2010 election, he has become steadily more
repressive, manipulated Iraqs security forces to serve his own interests,
and created a growing Sunni resistance to his practice of using Shiite
political support to gain his own advantage.
He has refused to honor the Erbil power-sharing agreement that was
supposed to create a national government that could tie together Arab
Sunni and Arab Shiite, and he has increased tensions with Iraqs Kurds.
As the U.S. State Department human rights reports for Iraq, Amnesty
International, and the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI)
make all too clear; Malikis search for power has steadily repressed and
alienated Iraqs Sunnis on a national level. It has led to show trials and
death sentences against one of Iraqs leading Sunni politicians including
former Vice President Taqris al-Hashimi, who has been living in asylum in
Turkey since being convicted nad sentenced to death in absentia by an
Iraqi court. It has shifted the promotion structure in the Iraqi Security
Forces to both give the Prime Minister personal control and has turned
them into an instrument he can use against Sunnis.
Al Qaeda in Iraq - nor its recent incarnation the Islamic State of Iraq and
Syria (ISIS) or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) - has not
risen up as a rebirth of the opposition the U.S. faced in 2005-2008. In spite
of attempts by the Maliki government to label virtually any major Sunni
opposition as terrorists, the steady increase in that opposition orginated
primarily in the form of peaceful and legitimate political protests against
Malikis purges of elected Iraqi Sunni leaders, and a regular exclusion of
Sunnis from the government including the Sons of Iraq in areas like
Anbar. It came because Maliki used the Iraqi Security Forces against
segments of his own population in the name of fighting terrorists and
extremists. It came because of the failure to use Iraqs oil wealth effectively
and fairly resulting with an economy that the CIA ranks Iraq 140th in the
world in per capita income. The opposition to Maliki's government also
resulted from corruption so extreme that in December 2013 Transparency

International ranked Iraq the seventh most corrupt country in the world,
with only Libya, South Sudan, Sudan, Afghanistan, North Korea, and
Somalia ranking worse than Iraq in terms of corruption.
Any analysis or news report that focuses only on al Qaedas very real
abuses is little more than worthless it encourages the tendency to
demonize terrorism without dealing with the fact that terrorism almost
always only succeeds when governments fail their people. Just as serious
counterinsurgency can never be successful if it only addresses the military
dimension, counterterrorism cannot succeed if it is not coupled with an
effort to address the quality of the nations political leadership and
governance, and the legitimate concerns of its people.
Any failure to analyze Malikis actions since the 2010 election his
disregard for the Erbil agreement that called for a true national
government, his manipulation of the courts to create multiple trails and
death sentences for political oppponents, including one of Iraqs vice
presidents Tariq al-Hashemi; his use of temporary appointments to take
control of key command positions in the Iraqi Security Forces; his efforts to
bribe senior Iraqi Sunni politicians to support him with ministerial posts;
and his steadily increasing suppression of Sunni popular opposition and
protests is dishonest, lazy, intellectual rubbish.
It is the Maliki threat that actually reinvigorated al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and
gave the extremist group a toehold among some alilenated and
disenfranchised Iraqi Sunnis. His increasingly violent repression of protest
camps and Sunni opposition in Anbar during 2013 culminated in efforts to
shut down protest camps with lethal force. When this provoked massive
opposition among Sunnis and key Sunni tribal leaders, he pulled the army
out of key cities and tried to rely on a police force that was seen as corrupt
and as a toolof the regime. AQI/ISIS fighters took advantage of the
resulting power vacuum and did so at time they were facing what
became major military opposition from other Sunni Islamist fighters in
Syria.
Since that time, Maliki has threatened the tribal leaders and people of
Fallujah and Ramadi with sending in the army to deal with al Qaeda in
ways that would kill large numbers of civilians and destroy much of their

property. Unlike much of the reporting on the situation, he realizes that

AQI/ISISs control is marginal and faces major potential tribal resistance
resistance that has been limited largely because of anger at Maliki and his
actions. Once again, AQI is repeating all of its past excesses and mistakes
the same excesses and mistakes that have led to its recent defeats in
Syria.
Proper reporting and analysis should be a net assessment of these facts
and a comparison of the Maliki governments actions relative to those of
AQI and the vast majority of Iraq Sunni who now have reason to be angry
with both. It would push as hard for reform in Iraqs leadership and
government as for efforts that can defeat AQI/ISIS without causing a
massive rise in Sunni anger, endorsing more Maliki government
repression, and creating more seeds for civil conflict.
At the same time, proper reporting and analysis on U.S. policy options
should take account of the dilemma the Obama Administration and
Congress faces. There are no good options in Iraq. The Maliki government
controls the security forces, it has all the money it can possibly need from
Iraqs oil revenues, it can manipulate the courts and Iraq's parliament, and
it can play Iran off of the United States if the United States puts too much
pressure on the Maliki government and particularly if the United States is
too open in official criticism of Malikis actions.
In fairness, the United States also has done more at the official level than
many media reports and analysts have done outside it. Key U.S. officials
like Secretary Kerry and Anthony Blinken have publically stressed the
need for basic reforms by the Maliki government within the limits imposed
by realpolitik. Key Senators have pushed for limits on U.S. aid to Iraq and
changes in the behavior of the Maliki government.
When Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Brett McGurk
visited Iraq last week, he met with national and local leaders from across
the political spectrum to discuss the security situation in western Iraq. A
press release from the US Embassy in Baghdad noted that:
McGurk's itinerary included meetings with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki,
Speaker Osama Nujaifi, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Deputy Prime

Minister Saleh Mutlaq, Deputy Prime Minister Husayn Shahristani, head of

the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, Ammar al-Hakim, and members of the
Council of Representatives from the Iraqiyya and State of Law blocs. He
also conferred with prominent leaders from Anbar province, including
Governor Ahmed Khalaf, Sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha, and former Minister of
Finance Rafa al-Issawi.
In all of these meetings, DAS McGurk confirmed the enduring U.S.
commitment to the Government and people of Iraq in their efforts to isolate
and defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). He noted the
encouraging trend in Ramadi where local leaders, working with tribes and
supported with resources from Baghdad, have pushed ISIL to the outskirts
of the city. He further noted the planning to separate ISIL and other militant
groups from the population in Fallujah using a similar strategy while also
accounting for the unique circumstances there. The United States, he
emphasized, will provide all necessary and appropriate assistance to the
Government of Iraq (GOI) under the Strategic Framework Agreement to
help ensure that these efforts succeed.
In addition, McGurk stressed with all of these leaders that long-term
stability requires a close fusion of security and political measures, as well
as guarantees from the GOI that courageous and patriotic Iraqi citizens
who stand to fight ISIL and other extremist groups be recognized and
ultimately incorporated into the formal security structures of the state. He
further emphasized to all parties the importance of pursuing political
initiatives and addressing the legitimate grievances of all communities
within the framework of the Iraqi constitution.
Both media and analysts need to be far more realistic and objective in
evaluating the fact there is only so much the Obama Administration and
Congress can do. Sending in U.S. forces now would mean taking sides in
what threatens to become a far more intense Sunni versus Shiite civil
conflict. Providing counterterrorism aid without tight controls on the
weapons involved would enable the Maliki government to use them
against the Iraqi people.
The Administration seems to have realized this in in making its initial
response to the crisis that began in December 2013. Sending in a few
precision-guided Hellfire missiles with limited lethality and value only

against point targets plus some limited-performance reconnaissance

drones that left the Maliki government dependent on broader and quieter
U.S. intelligence aid was such an approach.
So does trying to find ways a U.S. advisory team could control later
transfers of systems like the AH-64 weapons that could only be delivered
and operated months after the December/January crisis peaked, as well
as sending in small advisory teams.
The U.S. government cannot stand by and let AQI/ISIS gain more power,
and it has to provide some aid in counterterrorism. At the same time, it
needs every bit of outside leverage that is possible to push the Maliki
government towards reform and equitable treatment of Sunnis and Kurds,
and that lays the groundwork for demanding an honest outcome from
Iraqs upcoming election and an outcome that moves back toward the level
of national unity called for in the Erbil agreement.
These are actions that require the best possible reporting in the media,
and equal depth of analysis from outside analysts and NGOs. To date, far
too much of the output from both has had narrow and often partisan focus
on counterterrorism and the threat from AQI/ISIS. The Maliki threat is at
least if not more important.
Anthony H. Cordesman holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Note:
These issues, and a history of the Maliki governments actions, are
presented in detail in a CSIS report entitled Iraq in Crisis, available on the
CSIS web site at
www.csis.org/files/publication/140106_Iraq_Book_AHC_sm.pdf.
Council on Foreign Relations
>
>
> Daily News Brief
>January 6, 2014
> Sponsored by
>Top of the Agenda: Tactical Setbacks for al-Qaeda in Syria, Iraq

>After the al-Qaeda franchise Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS)
took over swaths of Iraq's Anbar Province, Sunni tribesmen joined forces with
the Iraqi military to retake part of the city of Ramadi, where air strikes over
the weekend reportedly killed two dozen militants (Reuters). The army on
Sunday prepared to lay siege to the city of Fallujah while Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki exhorted tribesmen there to expel the militants (BBC). Across the
border in northeastern Syria, where many have come to resent al-Qaeda's
cooption of the revolution, rebel groups that have joined forces to rout ISIS
made gains against since launching an offensive on Friday (LAT).
>Analysis
>"Extremist organisations have found a ready audience in Iraq, where [Prime
Minister Nuri al-]Maliki's policies continue to alienate the Sunni population.
Sunnis, who consider themselves the true Iraqis and still have trouble
accepting the indisputable fact that they constitute a statistical minority in the
country, would be difficult for any Iraqi government to appease. Mr Maliki has
worsened the situation by allowing and encouraging purges of Iraqi
politicians in the name of de-Baathification and largely discontinuing the USinitiated policy of working with Sunni tribal leaders and their militias - the socalled Sons of Iraq - to isolate al-Qaeda," writes Marina Ottaway for the BBC.
>"What Iraq needs now is what it saw in 2007 when Gen. David Petraeus
orchestrated a full-blown counterinsurgency strategy. Such a strategy has
many facets, but one of the most important is a political 'line of operations,'
which in this case means fostering reconciliation between the prime minister
and tribal leaders of Anbar. The U.S. lost most of its leverage to do that when
it foolishly pulled its troops out of Iraq at the end of 2011 after the failure of
halfhearted negotiations overseen by Vice President Joe Biden. Selling Iraq
Hellfire missiles, as the Obama administration has just done, is a poor
substitute. It is positively destructive because it only further inflames the
situation and creates the impression that the Americans are siding with
militant Shiites in a sectarian civil war," writes CFR's Max Boot in the Wall
Street Journal.
>"The al-Qaeda narrative that only violent jihad and terror can bring change
to the Muslim world came under attack as dictators were toppled from Tunis
to Cairo to Sanaa by mostly peaceful protest. It was Awlaki who predicted
al-Qaeda's comeback. Writing in his English-language journal Inspire, Awlaki
described the Arab Awakening as a 'tsunami' of change that would inevitably
benefit al-Qaeda. He said the hopes of reformists and democrats would be

shattered against counter-revolutionary plots by reactionaries and that the

breakdown of law and order would benefit the global jihad," writes Bruce
Riedel for al-Monitor.
>
>Daily News Brief Sponsored By:
>
>
>Kerry Signals Openness to Sideline Role for Iran at Geneva II
>U.S. secretary of state John Kerry indicated for the first time Monday that
the United States might be open to Iran's participation from the sidelines in
the Syria peace talks, which are slated to take place January 22 near
Geneva (WaPo).

Al-Qaeda in Iraq (a.k.a. Islamic State

in Iraq and Greater Syria)
Authors: Jonathan Masters, Deputy Editor, and Zachary Laub, Associate Writer
Updated: October 29, 2013
Introduction
Origins
Leadership
Funding
Membership
Staying Power
Introduction

Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), a jihadist group of predominantly Sunni fighters, rose to

prominence in the ashes of the U.S.-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein. The
insurgency that followed provided the group with fertile ground to wage a guerrilla
war against coalition forces and their domestic supporters. In the face of
successful U.S. counterterrorism efforts and the Sunni tribal awakening, AQI's

campaign of violence has diminished since peak years of 2006 and 2007, but the
group remains a threat to stability in Iraq and the broader Levant.
Since the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces in late 2011, AQI has accelerated
the pace of attacks on mainly Shiite targets in what analysts say is an attempt to
reignite conflict between Iraq's Sunni minority and the Shiite-led government of
Nuri al-Maliki. A surge in violence in mid-2013 has resulted in some eight
hundred civilian deaths per month, according to the United Nations. Meanwhile,
the militant group has expanded its reach into neighboring Syria, rebranding itself
as the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (a.k.a. Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant), as its jihadists challenge both the Assad regime and other opposition
groups.

Suspected al-Qaeda militants accused of bomb attacks and armed robbery in

Kirkuk, Iraq. (Photo: Ako Rasheed/Courtesy Reuters)
Origins

Al-Qaeda in Iraq, also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS)
is a Sunni Muslim extremist group that seeks to sow civil unrest in Iraq and the
Levant, with the aim of establishing a caliphatea single, transnational Islamic
state based on sharia law. Established by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an Arab of
Jordanian descent, AQI rose to prominence after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in

2003. Zarqawi, after being released from a Jordanian prison in 1999,

commanded volunteers in Herat, Afghanistan, before fleeing to northern Iraq in
2001. There he joined with Ansar al-Islam (Partisans of Islam), a militant Kurdish
separatist movement, where he led the group's Arab contingent. Many analysts
say this group, not al-Qaeda, was the precursor to AQI.
Ahead of the 2003 invasion, U.S. officials made a case before the UN Security
Council linking AQI with Osama bin Laden. But a number of experts say it wasn't
until October 2004, when Zarqawi officially vowed obedience to the al-Qaeda
leader, that the groups became linked. The U.S. State Department designated
AQI a Foreign Terrorist Organization that same month. "For al-Qaeda, attaching
its name to Zarqawi's activities enabled it to maintain relevance even as its core
forces were destroyed [in Afghanistan] or on the run," observed Brian Fishman, a
counterterrorism fellow at the New America Foundation.
According to a 2011 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies,
Zarqawi had prepared carefully for the invasion, developing a four-pronged
strategy [PDF] to defeat the coalition: isolate U.S. forces by targeting its allies;
discourage Iraqi collaboration by targeting government infrastructure and
personnel; target reconstruction efforts through high-profile attacks on civilian
contractors and aid workers; and draw the U.S. military into a Sunni-Shiite civil
war by targeting Shiites.
Two decisions made by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)the transitional
government established by the United States and its coalition partnersearly in
the U.S.-led occupation are often cited by some critics as factors that helped feed
the insurgency and provide breeding ground for AQI and several other Sunni
extremist groups in Iraq. CPA order number one banned members of Saddam
Hussein's Ba'ath party from all government positions; number two disbanded the
Iraqi army and security services, creating hundreds of thousands of new coalition
enemies, many of them armed.
Leadership

In July 2005, bin Laden and his number two at the time, Ayman al-Zawahiri,
believed AQI's increasingly sectarian attacks on Shiites would erode public
support for al-Qaeda in the region, and questioned Zarqawi's strategy in written
correspondence. Fishman says the relationship eventually broke down when
Zarqawi ignored al-Qaeda instructions to stop attacking Shiite cultural sites.
However tenuous the relationship between the al-Qaeda core and its Iraq affiliate,
it ended in June 2006, when a U.S. air strike killed the AQI founder. The hit

marked a major victory for U.S. and Iraqi intelligence, and a turning point for the
organization.
In the aftermath, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian-born explosives expert and
former confidant of al-Qaeda deputy Zawahiri, emerged as the group's new
leader. In October 2006, Masri established the Islamic State of Iraq to increase
the terrorist's group local appeal and embody its "caliphate," or political arm. An
Iraq native, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, was placed at ISIS's helm. For a while, U.S.
officials believed Masri and Baghdadi might be the same person, but in April
2010 the White House ended the confusion, announcing that an Iraqi-led
operation killed both men near Tikrit.
AQI is currently led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The U.S. government believes Abu
D'ua, as he is known, resides in Syria, highlighting the extent to which AQI has
exploited opportunities beyond Iraq's borders.
Funding

Experts say supporters in the region, including those based in Jordan, Syria, and
Saudi Arabia, provided the bulk of past funding. Prior to his death, a great deal of
operational funding was provided by Zarqawi's support network. AQI has also
received financing from Tehran (despite the fact that al-Qaeda is a Sunni
organization), according to documents confiscated in 2006 from Iranian
Revolutionary Guards operatives in northern Iraq.
But the bulk of al-Qaeda's financing, experts say, comes from internal sources
like smuggling, extortion, and other crime. AQI has relied in recent years on
funding and manpower from internal recruits [PDF]. In Mosul, an important AQI
stronghold, the group extorts taxes from businesses small and large, netting
upwards of $8 million a month, according to some estimates.
Membership

The makeup of AQI has evolved greatly over the years, transitioning from a group
with a significant ratio of foreign fighters--many drawn initially from Zarqawi's
networks (PDF) in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and later merged with recruits from
Syria, Iraq, and its neighbors--to a group dominated by native Iraqis. The
Washington Post reported that 2006 marked a year of "dramatic changes" in AQI
membership, shifting it from a predominantly foreign force to an "overwhelmingly
Iraqi organization."

Experts note that it's difficult to assess AQI's size, and approximations have
fluctuated greatly over the years. Terrorism analysts estimated some 15,000
fighters before numbers dropped off precipitously with the onset of the Sunni
tribal backlash in 2006 and the U.S. troop surge of 2007. According to CSIS,
more than 11,000 AQI fighters were killed or captured by early 2008.
As the Pentagon prepared to withdraw its final contingent of troops in late 2011,
defense officials estimated AQI had some 800 to 1,000 fighters remaining.
However, less than a year later, Iraqi officials said AQI ranks doubled to some
2,500, noting that counterterrorism operations "had been negatively affected by
the U.S. pullout."
Staying Power

Many analysts say heavy-handed actions taken by the Maliki government to

consolidate power in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal have alienated much of the
Sunni minority and provided AQI with potent propaganda. In 2012 and 2013,
violence attributed to AQI intensified, highlighting the group's attempts to exploit
widening sectarian cleavages. According to a report by the Congressional
Research Service [PDF], there were roughly a dozen days in 2012 on which the
group executed multi-city attacks that killed at least twenty-five Iraqis. On at least
four of those days, coordinated attacks left more than a hundred Iraqis dead.
Since Sunni protests in Anbar and other provinces began in December 2012, car
bombings and suicide attacks intensified, with coordinated attacks regularly
targeting Shiite markets, cafes, and mosques. Over six thousand civilians were
killed between November 2012 and September 2013, the United Nations
estimates, with Baghdad bearing the brunt of violence. Meanwhile, most Sunnis
have denounced the bloodshed.
In July, ISIS fighters orchestrated bold attacks on two prisons outside Baghdad
(Abu Ghraib and Taji) that freed more than five hundred inmates, including top alQaeda militants. Interpol described the incidents as "a major threat to global
security." In August, the International Crisis Group warned that the country
verged on civil war.
Meanwhile, the civil war in neighboring Syria is drawing Sunni jihadist fighters to
join the rebellion against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, which is dominated by
the Alawite sect, a minority Shiite group. ISIS has been active in Syria's northern
and eastern provinces, where it has taken administrative control of some towns,
providing services while imposing its ultraconservative brand of Islamic law.

While al-Qaedalinked groups in Syria have feuded among themselves and with
the secular opposition, the Free Syrian Army signed a truce with ISIS in late
September, an acknowledgment of their efficacy on the battlefield.
Washington has responded to al-Qaeda's resurgence in the region by increasing
the CIA's support for the Maliki government, including assistance to elite
counterterrorism units that report directly to the prime minister. At the same time,
the significant jihadist spillover into Syria has given the Obama administration
pause as it moves to provide limited arms to the rebellion against Assad. Briefing
the UN Security Council in July 2013, UN envoy to Iraq Martin Kobler
characterized the spiraling regional dynamics: "[Iraq and Syria] are interrelated.
Iraq is the fault line between the Sunni and Shia worlds."