Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice openly criticized Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in a recent unannounced visit to Iraq. “He is still living in Iran,” she said. “I guess it’s all-out war for anybody but him. His followers can go to their death and he will still be in Iran.”
While some might say the same of her after her role in promoting what is now widely acknowledged as an unnecessary and counterproductive war. The ongoing U.S.-Iraqi confrontation with al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Baghdad and Basra, as well as Rice’s comments, highlight that al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) is not the primary catalyst of instability in Iraq, but rather intra-sectarian feuding within the Shi’ite community is.
Al-Qaeda is a Sunni group and are minorities within Iraq, comprising between 32 to 37 percent of the overall population, with al-Qaeda now being a small movement within the Sunni community.
According to Fawaz Gerges of Sarah Lawrence College, AQI militants account for less than 5 percent of all insurgents in Iraq.
With the success that the U.S.-backed Sunni militias are having in driving al-Qaeda out of their communities, there is practically no chance that al-Qaeda could take over the country, as John McCain and Bush administration officials have claimed.
Not only would the Sunni groups violently oppose AQI, so too would the majority of Shi’ites and their Iran-backed militias, such as the Mahdi Army and the Badr Corps.
Also spurious are the Bush administration’s claims that AQI is the same organization that attacked our country on Sept. 11 and that they aspire to launch attacks inside of the United States.
According to Brian Fishman of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, AQI is connected to Osama bin Laden’s organization in name only and adapted the al-Qaeda name as a status symbol.
In other words, AQI is a local franchise. Adopting the al-Qaeda name has allowed AQI to harness anger emanating from the Arab world about what they perceive as American annexation of Muslim lands.
While Iraq may seem like a backwater berg to many Americans, it is the complete opposite for Muslims – occupying a central place in their historical memory.
Gerges indicates, were it not for the individual poverty of many Muslims and U.S. pressure on Arab governments, the flow of young Muslims to Iraq would exceed that of the flow of young men to Afghanistan during the 1980s.
Americans need to look at the likelihood that U.S. presence in Iraq is actually inflaming the situation and making us less safe, as we are sustaining a conflict that is to this generation of Muslims what Afghanistan was to bin Laden’s generation.
Furthermore, the jihadists gaining combat experience in Iraq also are developing skills in bomb making, urban warfare and organization that can be easily adapted for terrorist attacks in their home countries, Europe and America.
How is this in our best national interest?
Christopher Herrin is a graduate religious studies major and a contributing writer for the Daily Forty-Niner.
