Canadian allegedly leading insurgency

[georgev]

Hi!
Need to know and be aware!
Regards,
George
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1164409811916&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home

[SWJED]

Excerpt from the Toronto Star article:


A top U.S. military commander says the most disciplined, intense attacks from insurgency forces in Iraq to date are being masterminded by an Iraqi Canadian.

Abu Abdul Rahman, who reportedly left Canada in 1995 after marrying an Iraqi woman, is now one of the leaders of a disciplined insurgency unlike anything the American troops have experienced in the past, the New York Times reported yesterday.

The paper said training camps are now providing military instruction for insurgents so they can withstand lengthy fights with the U.S. forces, as opposed to the "hit-and-run" tactics employed during the past.

A battle last week in the village of Turki, east of Baghdad, lasted for 40 hours of close combat, killing at least 72 insurgents and two American officers, the Times noted.

"We hadn't seen anything like this in years," said Lt.-Col. Andrew Poppas of the 82nd Airborne Division.

Poppas singled out the leadership of Rahman and told the newspaper the Iraqi Canadian had been mentioned on jihadist websites as a future replacement for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who once headed Al Qaeda in Iraq, a group known for its beheadings of foreigners...

[Uboat509]

I just KNEW the Canadians were up to something. I have never trusted them, the way they just loom over us like that. Everybody knows that curling isn't a sport but they insist that it is. Clearly they are trying to distract everyone from something. What are they hiding?:)

SFC W

[Bowman]

At what point does an "insurgent" lose his or her citizenship when fighting in another country ? Or do they ?

[Jedburgh]

From the original NY Times article:

...Insurgents were apparently able to establish a training camp after American combat forces moved out of the area in the fall of 2005, Colonel Poppas said. Sunni Arab militants there belong to the fundamentalist Wahabbi strain of Islam and are believed to be led, at least in part, by a man known as Abu Abdul Rahman, an Iraqi-Canadian who moved from Canada to Iraq in 1995 after marrying a woman from Turki, the colonel said...
"Canadian", but of Iraqi descent, who moved to (back to?) Iraq 11 years ago. Puts it in a bit of a different context.

Given the TTPs evidenced by the bad guys supposedly led by the "Canadian", it is also probable that he served in the Iraqi military sometime - or during most of - the past decade.

The article is not only titled to mislead, it is also written in a tone of surprise that insurgents are "beginning" to find leadership that provides discipline and formal military training. Hell, with the number of former Iraqi Army officers footloose in-country, it is only the fragmented nature of the insurgency in its reflection of a atomized, tribal and sectarian society that has saved us from the emergence of a unified and disciplined insurgent force. But to be surprised by the emergence of a well-trained, hard-hitting group of bad guys willing to close up and fight? Ignorance kills just as dead as complacency.

[979797]

Why does it need to be Iraqi military experience? Perhaps he has experience in the Canadian (or some other western) Army.