The Insurgency’s Sunni Schism

The U.S. military’s hope of quelling violence in western Iraq rests on the lanky shoulders of a man most Americans have never heard of: Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi, head of Iraq’s Abu Risha tribe.

Abdul Sattar al-Rishaw is a slender man with a pair of stern eyes and a bushy, jet-black mustache. Following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the collapse of law and order that accompanied it, Sattar and his tribesmen are said to have amassed a fortune raiding caravans traversing Anbar’s desolate and lawless roads. More ominously, Sattar is rumored to have been one of the developing insurgency’s initial supporters as some of his followers joined the then burgeoning armed movement against the U.S. presence inside Iraq.

Today, however, Sattar meets and greets America’s military brass and top-ranking Iraqi government officials on a regular basis, shuffling between his walled-off Ramadi compound and Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone – the epicenter of Iraq’s infantile democracy.

Maturation of an Insurgency

Anbar province has long been a thorn in the side of the American military, as it has fruitlessly attempted to pacify Iraq following the deposition of former strongman Saddam Hussein. Encompassing much of western Iraq, the province of Anbar stretches from the Syrian and Saudi Arabian borders east all the way to the outer edges of Baghdad. The Euphrates River meanders a path across the province’s arid landscape giving life to the towns and villages that dot its ancient banks.

It is in these piously religious cities that al-Qaida first established a foothold in a post-Saddam Iraq. Pouring into Iraq from across the Muslim world – many through the porously guarded border with neighboring Syria – the aspiring jihadists came to the war-stricken country with a zeal for battle accompanied by a sense of divine righteousness.

Angered over the armed removal of fellow Sunni Saddam Hussein, the tribes of Anbar initially welcomed the foreigners and the plush finances that accompanied them. And although the disparate groups differed in their motives, their ideology, and ultimately in their goals, the two formed a tacit alliance with one another against a common enemy: invading American and coalition forces.

Insurgents Heyday

Fallujah was a city rife for falling into the hands of insurgents. Deeply religious as well as almost entirely Sunni, one would be hard pressed to find an Iraqi town more opposed to the U.S.-led invasion.

The town’s simmering tensions boiled over when, in late April of 2003, U.S. forces opened fire on a crowd of Fallujans demonstrating against the American presence in their city. Over 15 civilians were killed and dozens more injured in the shooting. Following the mass shooting incident insurgents found a receptive populace amongst the townspeople. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s “Tawhid Wal Jihad” [“Monotheism and Holy War”] organization – with the help of local insurgents – quickly established Fallujah as its de-facto base in Iraq, running off what remained of the U.S.-installed security apparatus and implementing a strict version of Islamic Sharia law across the city of 350,000.

One of the vital players in helping al-Zarqawi gain control of the “city of mosques,” as Fallujah is often called, was a 30-something town native named Omar Hussein Hadid. A devout Muslim who adhered to the puritanical Salafi branch of Islam, Hadid was sentenced to death under the Hussein regime for the murder of a senior Fallujah Baath party official. Hadid escaped punishment as he fled the region before quietly returning following Saddam’s overthrow. An electrician by trade, Hadid led a small militia of locals before eventually linking forces with al-Zarqawi’s men.

It was locals like Hadid who helped bridge the tenuous gaps between Iraq’s native insurgents and al-Qaida’s foreign fighters in the early stages of the conflict. Without individuals like Hadid it would have been all but impossible for al-Qaida to establish any type of sizeable presence in the Iraqi heartland.

In March 2004 insurgents ambushed a car of American security contractors traveling through Fallujah. The four men were summarily executed, mutilated, and strung up on one of the city’s prominent bridges for all the world to see.

The ghastly images of the charred corpses swaying from the bridge’s rusted beams, to the delight of a raucous crowd of celebrating Iraqis, shocked and outraged many in America. The event conjured up American’s painful memories of the 1993 Somali “Black Hawk Down” incident.

The brutal killing of the American contractors was the proverbial straw that broke the camels back, marking the beginning of the end for an insurgent-controlled Fallujah. Within months the city of Fallujah would feel the full force of the U.S. military.

Hadid, the native son and al-Zarqawi cohort, was struck down – as were an estimated 1,000 of his guerilla counterparts – during the “Second Battle of Fallujah” as insurgents inevitably failed to fend off the massive U.S. onslaught.

Never again would Iraq’s insurgents possess a unified base as they did for over a year just 40 miles west of Baghdad in Fallujah.

After Fallujah

Many of the militants who escaped the fighting in Fallujah headed further west to Anbar’s provincial capital of Ramadi. Others sought shelter in Baghdad while still others traveled north and east to ethnically mixed and religiously diverse cities like Mosul, Kirkuk, Tal Afar, and Baqouba.

It is in these new havens that al-Qaida in Iraq transgressed its bounds and, in the process, made a great deal of enemies out of their natural allies.

After the losses sustained in Fallujah some Sunnis decided to lay down their AK-47’s, unwrap their keffiyeh’s, and join the nascent political process. After largely boycotting the nation’s preliminary elections – and as a result finding themselves all but un-represented in Baghdad – many Sunni groups encouraged their followers to partake in the democratic voting process.

A few sheikhs even urged their followers to sign up for the local Iraqi army or police. Both decisions came into direct conflict with al-Qaida’s ideological dogma of “fighting the occupier until either victory or martyrdom.”

For the first time in the war al-Qaida turned its guns on their Sunni brethren. Sunni voting proponents were labeled as heretics and targeted for death. Several high-profile suicide bombings killed and maimed scores of Sunnis lined up outside army and police recruitment centers in Ramadi and elsewhere in Iraq’s Sunni-dominated regions.

By the time al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike in June 2006, al-Qaida had seen its popular support in Anbar erode drastically. The fact that al-Zarqawi was killed in the country’s eastern Diyala province as opposed to his former stronghold of Anbar is as telling of a testament as any to just how unpopular al-Qaida had become in its onetime power base of western Iraq.

Enough is Enough

While a number of Iraq’s Sunnis – including some associated with the insurgency – longed voiced concern over al-Qaida’s relentless barrage of bombings against the country’s Shiite populace, the real breaking point in Anbar province is said to be the result of two developments: (1) al-Qaida’s decision to attack members of its own religious sect and (2) al-Qaida’s increasing encroachment on the power historically enjoyed by the regions sheikhs.

Sheikh Sattar’s Anbar Salvation Council (ASC) appears to have developed as a result of both. The group claims they decided to take up arms against the al-Qaida network after growing tired of the indiscriminate violence al-Qaida unleashes across Iraq on a daily basis. Many speculate, however, the real reason behind the tribal chieftains’ about-faced decision to fight al-Qaida is a more pragmatic one: to regain the power al-Qaida and the foreign element of the insurgency has taken from them since the war began.

Like so many of his fellow Sunnis, Sattar initially supported al-Qaida’s actions in Iraq. It wasn’t until al-Qaida began infringing on his territorial turf and challenging his authority that Sattar turned against his one-time allies.

Sattar’s decision to turn on al-Qaida has not come without a heavy personal price. He has lost his father and at least three of his brothers at the hands of al-Qaida or likeminded militants. Sattar himself has been the target of assassination attempts on a number of occasions. The attacks have been unsuccessful thus far – although they did prompt the U.S. military to permanently station a tank outside his Ramadi fortress to ensure that their most valuable counterinsurgency weapon to date stays operational – and Sattar continues his crusade to eradicate al-Qaida from Anbar province.

As part of his ongoing effort, Sattar has reached out to other disenfranchised tribal heads persuading at least 26 of Anbar’s 31 major tribal chieftains to join his fledgling alliance.

The ASC’s plan is simple enough: encourage tribesmen to join Iraq’s security forces in a grassroots effort. They have and in numbers never before seen. Since the inception of the ASC, the Iraqi army and police force in Anbar have been overrun with willing recruits, a development unthinkable just a year or so ago when many cities in Anbar were without a functioning government security force at all. In essence the tribesmen form a Sunni militia outfitted in Iraqi military fatigues. While the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad officially plays the role of headmaster, their ultimate control and say-so is limited at best. Anbar’s security apparatus – much like in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq – takes their orders from the local level instead of the national.

Today the ASC, through its numerous militant wings, is actively battling al-Qaida and its remaining Iraqi supporters. Some of the fiercest clashes in recent months have been between the ASC and elements of al-Qaida.

The U.S. military, desperate for any morsel of progress in a conflict that is witness to fewer and fewer with each passing year, has welcomed and trumpeted the drastic change of course in Anbar. The military is going so far as to help train and equip the very men who, just months ago, were planting roadside bombs and launching mortar strikes against U.S. forces across the western province.

Al-Qaida’s Counter Measures

Watching their power slip in Anbar, al-Qaida has made several attempts to improve its PR image in the minds of the regions citizens.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s successor, Abu Hamza al-Mujahir, is said to have placed a much higher priority on winning over the locals than his savage and uncompromising predecessor did.

At around the same time the ASC started to gain strength, al-Qaida announced that it had created the so-called Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), an umbrella guerilla organization that is comprised of a handful of formerly independent insurgent groups as well as at least five of Anbar’s tribes. As part of the effort to win back some of its local supporters al-Qaida chose an Iraqi national to head the ISI. The heretofore unknown Abu Omar al-Baghdadi – a nom de guerre in all likelihood chosen to emphasize his status as a native of Baghdad – was selected to lead the organization. In seeking the legitimacy of a functioning governing body the group recently took the step of naming a ten person “cabinet” of which al-Baghdadi is the emir.

However, in Iraq, just like everywhere else in the world, actions speak louder than words.

Despite a slick new message of Sunni jihadist unity al-Qaida in Iraq remains as brutal and cutthroat as ever. Indiscriminate bombings – many aimed at nothing more than further sowing the seeds of sectarian discord – remain a daily occurrence in war-torn Iraq while reports of torture and mass murder frequently trickle out of areas where al-Qaida wields some control.

Al-Qaida in Iraq has, from the very onset, prided itself as a group that doesn’t discriminate in its targets. Anyone al-Qaida views as an enemy – the “occupying” American, the “heretic” Shiite, or the “apostate” Sunni – will find themselves squarely in their trigger-happy crosshairs. They make no wiggle-room for exceptions. In the end it is their defiant stubbornness, and not all the might and power of the American military that may in fact bring about the group’s very demise in Iraq.

UPDATE: On September 13, 2007 a powerful roadside bomb ripped through the convoy of Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi, instantly killing the man who was the first to stand up against al-Qaida and their ilk in Anbar province.

While al-Qaida finally got their target number one – the Islamic State of Iraq, al-Qaida’s front group in Iraq, quickly took credit for the assassination – the movement al-Rishawi formed and the legacy he leaves behind will in all likelihood live on well past his death.