July 8, 2005: Captured messages, and terrorists, reveal that there is a major disagreement inside the Iraqi al Qaeda organization. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the Jordanian leader of the al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq, has ordered his killers to go after Iraqi Shia Arab militias, and has declared the Shia Arabs heretics and targets for al Qaeda fighters. While this has long been a fundamental attitude of al Qaeda, there had never been universal agreement about Shias within the Sunni community. But Islamic conservatives, especially those in Saudi Arabia, regularly preached hatred of Shias. This hatred is now causing violent dissent among the al Qaeda fighters in Iraq. Thus, in addition to Sunni Arab terrorist groups fighting al Qaeda fighters in western Iraq, there is now deadly disputes between al Qaeda gunmen over what to do with the Shia. These disputes make it easier to take down the terrorist gangs, even while the dispute generates more attacks by the terrorists.
Meanwhile, al Qaeda has murdered the kidnapped Egyptian ambassador to Iraq. Egypt is particularly hated by al Qaeda, as most of the senior leadership of al Qaeda are survivors of Egypt’s 1990s counter-terrorism efforts against Islamic terrorists. The terrorism didn’t work against Egyptians then, and won’t now. Al Qaeda had its chance in Egypt, and was rejected by the vast majority of the population, even if this meant supporting the corrupt and ineffective leadership of Egypt. The same thing has happened in Iraq, where the Islamic terrorists (both al Qaeda, and Sunni Arab supporters of the Baath Party and Sunni domination) are seen as the enemy. For some reason, this development is not received very enthusiastically by the world media. But there it is. |