Insurgents Report a Split with Al Qaeda in Iraq

[SWJED]

27 March LA Times - Insurgents Report a Split with Al Qaeda in Iraq by Ned Parker.

Insurgent leaders and Sunni Arab politicians say divisions between insurgent groups and Al Qaeda in Iraq have widened and have led to combat in some areas of the country, a schism that U.S. officials hope to exploit.

The Sunni Arab insurgent leaders said they disagreed with the leadership of Al Qaeda in Iraq over tactics, including attacks on civilians, as well as over command of the movement.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, on his last day in Iraq, said Monday that American officials were actively pursuing negotiations with the Sunni factions in an effort to further isolate Al Qaeda.

"Iraqis are uniting against Al Qaeda," Khalilzad said. "Coalition commanders have been able to engage some insurgents to explore ways to collaborate in fighting the terrorists."

Insurgent leaders from two of the prominent groups fighting U.S. troops said the divisions between their forces and Al Qaeda were serious. They have led to skirmishes in Al Anbar province, in western Iraq, and have stopped short of combat in Diyala, east of Baghdad, they said in interviews with the Los Angeles Times...

[wm]

27 March LA Times - Insurgents Report a Split with Al Qaeda in Iraq by Ned Parker.

Seems like this an example of what Edward Luttwak has proposed ought to happen in war: let the internal conflict burn itself out by self-attrition. An example of his position is in this LA Times Op-Ed piece:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...mment-opinions
He also pushed this line in his 1999 Foreign Affairs piece entitled "Give War a Chance."

As another deja vu, we might consider the Spanish Civil War. Iraq now seems to be rather like that conflict with the current government akin to the Nationalists and the the displaced Saddamist power elite being similar to the Republicans. Just as Iraq is splinteredinto a number of factions, each side in the Spanish Civil War had internal issues. For example, the Carlists and Falangists had issues with their allies, the Nationalist generals, and the Republicans were split amongst Anarchists, Socialists, and various Communist groups, not to mention Catalonia and Basque separatists/nationalists.

[JHR]

Might this also be construed as the internal parties seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and trying to maximize their share?
JHR

[TROUFION]

"...we might consider the Spanish Civil War."-WM

Not to mention: the German 'Condor Legion'; the Soviet supported troops and the American and other Nations Volunteer troops. If they had IED's and 'martyr' bombers then it would be a great example of the chaos that is mutli-party civil war.

[Sarajevo071]

More like a fight between religious and secular (nationalistic) fractions inside of Insurgency.

[Sarajevo071]

A military leader of one of Iraq's biggest Sunni Arab insurgent groups, the 1920 Revolution Brigades, was killed on Tuesday in a bomb attack west of Baghdad, the group said in an Internet statement.

The group identified the leader as Harith al-Dari, who is also the son of an anti-al Qaeda tribal leader. The Brigades is believed to have given tacit backing to a group of Sunni Arab tribes who have formed an alliance against al Qaeda in volatile western Anbar province.

Dari's relatives blamed the attack on the hardline Sunni Islamist group, which has come into conflict with some tribes because of its adherence to a radical form of Sunni Islam and indiscriminate killings.
...

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/YAT764068.htm

[wm]

"...we might consider the Spanish Civil War."-WM

Not to mention: the German 'Condor Legion'; the Soviet supported troops and the American and other Nations Volunteer troops. If they had IED's and 'martyr' bombers then it would be a great example of the chaos that is mutli-party civil war.

I didn't really want to bring in the outside actors in the Spanish Civil War. To do so would make it too easy for American involvement in Iraq to be likened to that of Mussolini's Italians in Spain or the other possible connections that might be made for the Coalition presence in Iraq..

[Sarajevo071]

Attackers killed a prominent member of an Iraqi tribe that had taken a stand against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and in other violence today more than 10 people were killed in gunfire and bomb attacks, including a suicide blast at a bus stop west of Baghdad, Iraqi authorities said.

Gunmen attacked a car carrying Harith Thahir Khamees al-Dari and fired a rocket-propelled grenade, killing him and wounding his driver, in Abu Ghraib, the authorities said.
...
“There is a real struggle going on in the Sunni Arab part of Iraq between those of Al Qaeda and the other more patriotic groups who want a successful Iraq, an Iraq in which everyone’s rights is respected,” Mr. Khalilzad said Monday. Most of these “patriotic groups” were linked to Mr. Hussein’s former government rather than to the Sunni religious militants with ties to Al Qaeda.
...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/wo...d-iraq.html?hp

[TROUFION]

WM- I dont think, particularly with the readership here on SWC, that you'd have to mention that. No analogy is perfect. But to represent the idea of chaotic multi-party conflict it works. Ideologies aside. chaos is chaos.

[wm]

WM- I dont think, particularly with the readership here on SWC, that you'd have to mention that. No analogy is perfect. But to represent the idea of chaotic multi-party conflict it works. Ideologies aside. chaos is chaos.

I do no think that we cannot leave the ideologies out of the picture. They tend to be the things that produce much of the chaos. In fact, when ideologies dominate, as seemed to be the case for much of the Spanish Civil War and now seems to be the case in many discussions about military action in Southwest Asia and GWOT in general, the possibilities for rational discussion and logical argument contract rather severely.

On a constructive note, how does one explain the rather painless transition of Spain from a dictatorship under Franco to the modern democratixc state it currently represents, particularly in light of the Iberian Peninsula's history of violent change? What lessons might be learned and applied in SWA, if any?

[Culpeper]

Divide et impera. Some are all too willing to help for their own ends. In other words, ethnic and cultural freedom, clamor for power, region and money, and the rush for fighting between tribal groups. All of which contribute to the classic "divide and conquer", which was a successful policy in sub-Saharan Africa. It keeps the region from rising up against the government. It's a sort of a Catch-22 atmosphere that ends up working in favor of the ruling government.

Yossarian: Those bastards are trying to kill me.
1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: No one is trying to kill you sweetheart. Now eat your dessert like a good boy.
Yossarian: Oh yeah? Then why are they shooting at me Milo?
Dobbs: They're shooting at everyone Yossarian.
Yossarian: And what difference does that make?
Dobbs: Look Yossarian, suppose, I mean just suppose everyone thought the same way you do.
Yossarian: Then I'd be a damn fool to think any different.