Base Instincts

We still keep hearing the name “al Qaeda” even though some of our leaders seem to insist that we have disabled that organization, cutting its head off with the assassination of Osama bin Laden. But al Qaeda remains a central clearing house for Sunni militant extremists, and every time a Sunni extremist group forms, they seem to participate in that military effort. That “al Qaeda” simply means the “base,” referring to a coordinating base of operations, that caters to anti-Western, anti-Shiite powers who apply their own brand of angry Sunni extremism, really says it all.

Wherever in the world there are clear battle lines between Sunnis and these “demon” Shiite or Western-backed forces (including Israel), you can expect to find foreign al Qaeda fighters entering the fray, trying to win new Sunni recruits and send a powerful message to their enemies, perhaps moving forward their goal of a unified Sunni superpower. To most Sunnis, who believe in a literal reading of the sacred tome, Shiites are blasphemers who describe the holiest of Islamic books, the Qur’an, as a mystical book that can only be understood by the most senior cleric in the land. Many fundamentalist Sunnis hate that interpretation more than they hate Israel. With Shiites maintaining over a 90% majority in Iran, 60% majority in Iraq and that the ruling class in Syria is a Shiite affiliate (Alawites, who constitute 10% of that population), that enemy is clear.

The 9/11/2001 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon remain the signature events that seem to have defined al Qaeda to most Americans. That these militants were trained under a Taliban government in Afghanistan drew us into a seemingly endless conflict in that continues to this very day. The Taliban, with their strong al Qaeda roots, are strongly embedded in too many sections of Afghanistan (mostly outside of the capital city of Kabul and environs). Their constant chipping away at NATO and Afghan forces suggests that they are just biding their time to come back.

In Iraq, where our war against Sunni Saddam Hussein unleashed powerful factional instability, the Shiite majority has used its democratically elected majority parliament to run roughshod over the former ruling sect, Sunnis (with a 20% minority vote). And Iraqi Sunni extremists, feeling disenfranchised, have serially and frequently deployed bombers (suicide and those using targeted detonated devices) against Shiites, the majority of which explosions have been in the capital city, Baghdad. Additionally, the battles in the Sunni provincial strongholds have pitted local irregulars against the mainstream military, a rather tasty battle line that has drawn infiltration “in support” of the Sunni cause from foreign fighters with allegiance to al Qaeda.

“A rejuvenated al-Qaeda-affiliated force asserted control over the western Iraqi city of Fallujah on [January 3^rd], raising its flag over government buildings and declaring an Islamic state in one of the most crucial areas that U.S. troops fought to pacify before withdrawing from Iraq two years ago.

“The capture of Fallujah came amid an explosion of violence across the western desert province of Anbar in which local tribes, Iraqi security forces and al-Qaeda-affiliated militants have been fighting one another for days in a confusingly chaotic three-way war.” Washington Post, January 3^rd. Did someone say “three-way war”? It does seem that while most combat-involved local Iraqi Sunnis really don’t like the incumbent Iraqi government and its “security forces,” they perhaps resent the interference and high-handedness of these al Qaeda-link foreign fighters even more.

“Elsewhere in the province, local tribal militias claimed they were gaining ground against the al-Qaeda militants who surged into urban areas from their desert strongholds this week after clashes erupted between local residents and the Iraqi security forces… In Fallujah, where [U.S.] Marines fought the bloodiest battle of the Iraq war in 2004, the militants appeared to have the upper hand, underscoring the extent to which the Iraqi security forces have struggled to sustain the gains made by U.S. troops before they withdrew in December 2011.

“The upheaval also affirmed the soaring capabilities of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the rebranded version of the al-Qaeda in Iraq organization that was formed a decade ago to confront U.S. troops and expanded into Syria last year while escalating its activities in Iraq. Roughly a third of the 4,486 U.S. troops killed in Iraq died in Anbar trying to defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq, nearly 100 of them in the November 2004 battle for control of Fallujah, the site of America’s bloodiest confrontation since the Vietnam War… Events [January 3^rd] suggested the fight may have been in vain.” The Post. It’s gotten so bad that there are rumors that even the local Sunni militants are at last addressing their hated Shiite-dominated government counterparts to contain this unwanted al Qaeda resurgence. Iraqi tribal forces have counterattacked al Qaeda forces with varying success.

Further, Al Qaeda is involved in Islamic militancy beyond its other strongholds in Yemen and Somalia, reaching into additional African nations like Mali or even into Asia where their operations in India’s disputed Muslim state of Kashmir keep relations between that country and Pakistan in a constant state of instability.

Al Qaeda’s penetration into the Syrian insurrection, supporting Sunnis trying to topple the Shiite-affiliated Assad government, has made Western aid to the rebels difficult. Echoes of “blowback” from our support of the anti-Soviet Afghan mujahedeen forces in the 1980s rings in the minds of American policy-makers who want Assad out but fear al Qaeda-sympathetic militants who seek to take over that country.

Indeed the same schism that has pitted local Iraqi Sunni militants against al Qaeda forces originally drawn to support them has also developed inside Syria. “Antigovernment activists in the Aleppo area said that fighting had broken out near the Idlib Province town of Atareb, west of Aleppo, pitting members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, a powerful Qaeda affiliate that includes foreign fighters, against an array of seven homegrown Syrian rebel groups. The rebels call themselves the Mujahedeen Army, and they resent what they see as the affiliate’s hijacking of their struggle, now nearly three years old, to depose President Bashar al-Assad.

“The Mujahedeen Army also issued a statement in Arabic on Facebook essentially announcing that it now considered the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria an enemy… ‘We, the Mujahedeen Army, declare that we will defend ourselves, our honor, properties and land and we declare the fight against the ISIS organization, the unjust to God’s law, until it dissolves its formation and its members join other military formations or abandon their arms and leave Syria,’ the statement read.’ New York Times, January 3^rd.

This portends a very long period of instability with unknown consequences. Religious zealots here not only do not fear death, many welcome martyrdom as the fast-track to heaven. If the Middle East were unstable before these uprisings, it is increasing volatile, a status our involvement in the region seems to have accelerated. In the end, Western policy-makers are unlikely to get their way, facing a litany of twists and turns as they seek an elusive solution. Add a few nuclear weapons and increasingly sophisticated missile systems that are leaking into combat zones, and what seems bad today could get a whole lot worse.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the myths we are told by our own political leaders need to be examined in the harsh light of experience and facts.