Good analysis of the recently leaked memo from blogger Spencer Ackerman. When Ackerman says--But--and let me emphasize that this is just my suspicion here--it strains credulity that an ally of Al Qaeda would go all-out to note the growing strength of the U.S. in Iraq; further note that jihadists are being "suffocat[ed]"; believe that the June 30 handover of power would spoil all hope of holy war; and lament somewhat ostentatiously--or, to use the Times's words, "with a rhetorical flourish"--that "we will have no pretexts" to mount attacks when "the sons of this land will be the authority" in "the democracy" awaiting Iraq at the end of June." --Those parts of the memo seem to me to be the silliest and clumsiest of forgeries. Why on earth would there be "no pretexts" for attacks after elections? Especially the caucuses that are currently planned. But any election held while the US is there can easily be called bogus. And they obviously feel no compunctions about attacking Saudi Arabia. No high level sympathizer with Al Qaeda would have written that memo, IMHO.
Here are Ackerman's thoughts on it:
IS THAT AL QAEDA-IRAQ MEMO FOR REAL?: I'm a little dubious about this memo that U.S. intelligence officials in Iraq gave to Dexter Filkins of The New York Times. Purportedly written by the Qaeda-affiliated terrorist Abu Musab Al Zarkawi--you remember, the one Colin Powell identified as the key spoke in the non-existent Saddam-Osama axis--the document is supposed to be a 17-page plea for Osama bin Laden to spark a Sunni-on-Shia bloodbath as a way to draw the U.S. into a much bloodier conflict in Iraq.
I dunno. U.S. authorities captured the document at a "known Qaeda safehouse in Baghdad," an intelligence official told the Times, and under "interrogation," a suspected member of Al Qaeda told his American captors that Zarkawi authored it. An official told the paper, "I know of no reason to believe the letter is bogus in any way." I have no information to contradict him, but reading the memo, I can think of a few reasons why, even if Zarkawi wrote it and meant it for bin Laden, the terror leader would be loath to greenlight the proposals Zarkawi lays out.
Zarkawi (assuming it's him) laments the failure of Iraqis to heed the call to jihad. Presumably, only the righteous forces of jihad can succeed in bleeding the infidel U.S. into an ignominious retreat from Iraq, something the primarily Baathist insurgency has thus far failed to accomplish. So here's his solution:
[W]e need to bring the Shia into the battle. It is the only way to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us. If we succeed in dragging them into a sectarian war, this will awaken the sleepy Sunnis who are fearful of destruction and death at the hands [of the Shiites]. ...
[I]f you agree with it, and are convinced of the idea of killing the perverse sects, we stand ready as an army for you to work under your guidance and yield to your command.
And this needs to be done fast:
We have to get to the zero hour in order to openly begin controlling the land by night, and after that by day, God willing. The zero hour needs to be at least four months before the new government gets in place.
So, let's get this straight: The way to drive the Great Satan from Iraq is to mire it down in a sectarian quagmire, and the way to do that is to attack the Shia. First, let's note that the wording of the memo implies some distance between the author and bin Laden: "We stand ready as an army for you," "yield to your command," etc. That calls into question how closely affiliated the author really is with Al Qaeda. This in itself doesn't refute the prospect that Zarkawi penned the memo, since it's never been clear how closely he is tied to bin Laden. (Not that that stopped President Bush from calling Zarkawi a "very senior Al Qaeda leader" in an October 7, 2002 speech describing the threat from Saddam, another in a long list of Bush's misrepresentations of the Iraq intelligence.) But the strategy as a whole certainly calls into question how well whoever wrote the memo understands bin Laden and Al Qaeda. After all, one of bin Laden's great jihadist innovations was to attempt to bridge the Sunni Islamist-Shia Islamist divide. Here's Peter Bergen, writing in his excellent book Holy War, Inc., about the genesis of bin Laden's outreach to Shia terrorists during his mid-'90s stint in the Sudan:
Al Qaeda sought to forge alliances with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, based in southern Lebanon. Despite their disputes over religious doctrine--Hezbollah is Shia, while bin Laden espouses a conservative Sunni Islam--the two groups buried their differences to make war against their common enemy, the United States. Al Qaeda members traveled to Lebanon, where the group maintained a guesthouse, and, with Hezbollah, learned how to bomb large buildings. Bin Laden, meanwhile, met with Imad Mugniyeh, the secretive, Iran-based head of Hezbollah's security service. This was an important meeting: It was Mugniyeh who masterminded the suicide truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 ... According to the plea bargain of Ali Mohamed, an Al Qaeda member who is now a U.S. government witness against the group, the Beirut model was one bin Laden hoped to follow.
One of the world's premier Al Qaeda experts, Rohan Gunaratna, writes that the Hezbollah-Al Qaeda partnership was "indicative of a major shift in terrorist thinking," granting Al Qaeda the ability to learn from and participate in Hezbollah's global finance network, especially in Southeast Asia. It also allowed Al Qaeda to pursue a shadowy relationship with Hezbollah's patron Iran--which of course is a Shia theocracy. (Between 1996 and 1998, phone numbers in Iran received about 10 percent of bin Laden's satellite-phone communications.) As Gunaratna summarizes in his book, Inside Al Qaeda:
Ideologically Al Qaeda differs markedly from the groups of the past. It has taken the first steps to breaking the Shia-Sunni divide that has traditionally kept apart two terrorist groupings. ... Al Qaeda has persistently argued that Islamist groups should shed their doctrinal differences and unite to take on the real enemy, the West, and strike the U.S.--"the head of the snake."
This is a key ingredient to Al Qaeda's success:
Its broad-based ideology, integrated horizontally and vertically, appeals to, and resonates among, the affluent and the less affluent, the educated and the less educated. Al Qaeda cuts across historical and sectarian barriers, drawing its membership from all strata of society.
So for bin Laden to act on the memo's recommendations would mean he would be willing to cut himself off from ideological and organizational cornerstones of his strength. To spark a Sunni-Shia conflict would mean drawing violence close to the very heart of Shia Islam, in Karbala and Najaf--and it's hard to imagine that Hezbollah, which itself has a presence in Baghdad, would limit its retaliation to U.S. soldiers and not the Sunni Islamists like Al Qaeda who engineered the assaults. And for what? The memo makes perfunctory nods at the "coward[ice]" of American troops, but it notes that "Our enemy is growing stronger day after day, and its intelligence information increases. By God, this is suffocation!" Additionally, the memo reports that Iraqis are at present unwilling to assist anti-coalition attacks, saying that they "will not allow you to make their home a base for operations or a safe house," and even laments that the lack of mountainous shelters in Iraq makes the country inhospitable to conscientious terror planning. So bin Laden is supposed to move precious assets from the safety of his hideaway on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and splinter his base of support for an operation that has a limited window of success and a high likelihood of failure?
Now, it could very well be that this memo is authentic and written by jihadists so desperate for help that they would ask bin Laden to undercut everything he's worked for. But--and let me emphasize that this is just my suspicion here--it strains credulity that an ally of Al Qaeda would go all-out to note the growing strength of the U.S. in Iraq; further note that jihadists are being "suffocat[ed]"; believe that the June 30 handover of power would spoil all hope of holy war; and lament somewhat ostentatiously--or, to use the Times's words, "with a rhetorical flourish"--that "we will have no pretexts" to mount attacks when "the sons of this land will be the authority" in "the democracy" awaiting Iraq at the end of June." After all, Iraq shows every sign of remaining pretty chaotic after July 1, and while I hope that a democratic Iraq will deal a powerful blow to Al Qaeda's long-term ability to recruit terrorists, in the near-term, Al Qaeda will probably be able to continue its activities with minimal restrictions--the Philippines, for example, is democratic, but that hasn't prevented Al Qaeda allies like the Moro Islamic Liberation Front from taking hold. And would a jihadist really write that the Iraqis who will take over on June 30, in accordance with either the November 15 Agreement or whatever replaces it, are the true "sons of this land," given that they will face every conceivable pressure from the U.S. to acquiesce to a continuing American troop presence?
Frankly--and again, this is just a suspicion--the message of this memo goes a long way toward ratifying the Bush administration's interpretation of reality in Iraq. It suggests that sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni Iraqis won't be the consequence of authentic divisions in the country, but instead would be the nefarious work of meddling Al Qaeda operatives. (Meanwhile, Sunni groups like the Iraq Islamic Front are already chafing at the prospect of U.S. acquiescence to the Shia demand for direct elections.) Isn't it strange that such a potentially important piece of intelligence about Iraq would be leaked to The New York Times? I see already that Fox News and CNN are running stories about the document, and Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor is claiming a kind of vindication: "It explicitly says that once Iraqis are in control of their government, it will make it virtually impossible for the foreign terrorists to operate."
I don't mean to sound conspiratorial, but there appears to be more to this document than meets the eye. This wouldn't be the first time that administration officials have leaked (dubious) intelligence reports to the press when it suited their interests: The Times on September 8, 2002 published a leak saying that Iraq was trying to acquire aluminum tubes "to enrich uranium," an incorrect assessment with which intelligence analysts at the State Department and Department of Energy (and ultimately the International Atomic Energy Agency) disagreed--a leak that came right as President Bush was about to make the case against Iraq to the United Nations General Assembly. It might be worth keeping the administration's propensity for such leaks in mind when considering how much stock to place in this memo.
tnr.com |
