Despite the furor over whether Al Qaida in Iraq’s leader was killed or not, the story highlights one of the central flaws in the way the “War on Terror” has been both sold to the American Public, and the manner in which it has been fought by the US military. President Bush’s speeches, and reports by American news outlets regarding major counter-terrorist operations, almost inevitably focus on a narrative in which Al Qaida is portrayed as a monolithic, if geographically diverse organization with an international reach. An organization that operates much like a large corporation, with franchises and subsidiary offices, and a hierarchical chain of command. An organization which is the driving force behind the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. As Pepe Escobar reminds us today in an article published on line at the Asia Times website, nothing could be further from the truth:

The breaking news came around noon, on state-run Al-Iraqiya TV, and it hit the Shi’ite slum, Sadr City, as well as the rest of Baghdad, as a new “shock and awe”: Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, popularly known in Baghdad as Abu al-Masri, the Egyptian-born leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, had been killed in the al-Nabai area of Taji, north Baghdad. […]

Masri has been the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq – personally approved by Osama bin Laden – since last June, when former ueber-bogeyman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed by a US air strike in Diyala. Like Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s No 2, he is a former member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. In November, al-Qaeda in Iraq announced the formation of the Islamic State of Iraq, a Salafi-jihadist constellation. Masri was the new state’s “minister of war”. The leader of the Islamic State of Iraq is Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been striving to impose the fierce Salafi-jihadist Wahhabi ethos and consolidate hegemonic power among the myriad groups in the Sunni Arab resistance. Most of these groups are patriotic and nationalist, and many are crammed with ex-Ba’athists: they view foreign “Wahhabis” with extreme suspicion. […]

Baghdadi may have recently boasted that Iraq, under US occupation, has been turned into “a university for jihad”. But the fact is the Islamic State of Iraq has been besieged by US and Iraqi forces in Baquba. There is a lot of nuance, though. According to Pentagon spin, what has been happening in Anbar is a battle of US counterinsurgency versus al-Qaeda. Wrong: what’s really happening is the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Qaeda in Iraq against the non-Salafi-jihadist Sunni Arab resistance. The 1920 Revolutionary Brigades and Ansar al-Sunnah have been attacking al-Qaeda in Iraq almost daily in Diyala, Salahuddin and Anbar. The key issue is the split between al-Qaeda and former Ba’athists – a split that has always been fierce.

Whether true or not, the killing of Masri will make absolutely no difference – as did the killing of Zarqawi. The Islamic State of Iraq’s tentacles are so far-reaching they have already deeply infiltrated Baghdad neighborhoods such as Amriya and Dora. One, two, a thousand Masris are waiting in the wings. Al-Qaeda’s strategy won’t change – and that means non-stop bloody bombings to keep inciting Sunnis to attack the majority Shi’ites.

(cont.)
We’re always told that Al Qaeda leads a grand, far reaching jihadist (or Islamofascist, if you prefer) movement of global terrorists bent on world domination and the destruction of the West. In fact, it is at best a small, disorganized and decentralized confederation of individuals and groups with often differing goals and objectives. It has been Bush’s overreaction to the 911 attacks, the bloody invasion and occupation of Iraq by American forces and the administration’s insistence (for purposes both foreign and domestic) on conflating this loose network of terrorist groups into a threat allegedly comparable in stature to the one posed by international communism during the era of the Cold War, that has fostered the myth of Al Qaida as Islamic Terrorism and Jihad, Inc. poised to destroy our way of life.

The truth is much more complicated and, pardon my french, nuanced. Al Qaida is not run like a company with yearly budgets, board meetings, business plans, production schedules and market strategies. It is, for the most part, a movement in name only. There is some rough organizational infrastructure based primarily around Bin Ladin and Zawahiri in Northwestern Pakistan, and certainly some funding and support by Bin Ladin and Zawahiri for various groups who have chosen to align themselves with Al Qaida for financial or other considerations. However, the network functions much like a group of small like minded entrepreneurs who collaborate with, but do not necessarily take direction from, Bin Ladin’s group. Think Silicon Valley during the 80’s and 90’s as a better business analogy, if you like.

This is why all the hullabaloo each time one Al Qaeda leader is captured, or another one is killed, is essentially meaningless. There are no indispensable men who we can “take out” by attacking their “command and control” structures. There is no cheap and easy way to obtain a victory through the elimination of Al Qaida’s leaders, whether in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Iraq. It isn’t the leadership of these groups we should be concentrating so much of our attention upon, but the question of how to stop many young Muslim men and women in the Middle East from either joining established terrorist groups or forming new ones. We can’t “win” by applying traditional military stratagems to oppose what are a polyglot of political, religious and social movements who happen to employ terror tactics as one means to combat their foreign, sectarian and/or ethnic rivals.

But then, the phrase coined by Bush to describe his Middle Eastern crusade, “The War on Terror,” has always been a bit of an oxymoron, has it not?

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