Only days after Al-Qaida announced the completion of its latest campaign of violence aimed at avenging alleged "massacres" of Sunni Muslims in Tel Afar by the U.S. and Iraqi government, there are growing indications that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his Al-Qaida acolytes may be facing the most serious political and operational challenges they have encountered since they first joined the anti-coalition insurgency in mid-2003. The deadly glut of suicide bombings that began on September 8 has undoubtedly caused destruction and chaos--but militants were neither able to undermine the anti-insurgent operation in Tel Afar nor deter Iraqi government efforts to formulate a constitution. [English translations of Al-Qaida's various claims of responsibility for recent suicide bombing attacks are now posted online at Globalterroralert.com]. Instead, renewed apparent threats from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to massacre both Shiite and Sunni "collaborators" have been warily received by many Iraqi Sunnis, leading the respected Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars to issue a statement strongly admonishing Zarqawi:
....Indeed it is.
The AMS statement is indeed significant and represents compelling evidence of a real break between mainstream Sunni Iraqis and fringe Salafist extremists, including many foreign fighters drawn from across the Middle East.
Read the whole thing here.
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Amir Tehari has a nice piece on Sunni attitudes in the NY Post:
September 26, 2005 -- THE next vote in Iraq is the Oct. 15 referendum on the nation's constitution, but the political elite is already turning its attention to the general elections scheduled for December.Most Iraqi politicians now expect the constitution to be approved; fears have faded that Sunni Arabs might manage to vote it down. The optimism rises from several developments.
First, as more and more Sunni Arabs read the proposed text, now widely distributed, they realize it is not as bad as some of their self-styled leaders claimed. The latest suicide-killer attacks have also come as a wake-up call to Sunnis not to let terrorists provoke a sectarian war.
A passionate plea for national unity came Sept. 16 from Sheik Mahmoud al-Sumaidaei, the spiritual leader of Sunni Arabs. Speaking at the Um al-Qura Mosque in Baghdad, al-Sumaidaei called for a national conference to find a common strategy against terror. "We don't need others to come across the border and kill us in the name of defending us," he said, a reference to Arab terrorists who have joined the insurgency under the banner of al Qaeda. "We reject the killing of any Iraqi."
....
The parading of captured Arab terrorists on TV has brought home another truth: The "insurgency" is mainly a foreign invasion by forces that wish to impose on Iraq a Taliban-style government. "The insurgency has nothing to do with Iraqis," says Adnan al-Dulaimi, a prominent Sunni Arab tribal chief and political leader. "[The terrorists] chased out of Afghanistan want to set up shop in Iraq."
Read it here.
All in all things look good. The Sunnis are apparently not going to boycott; even the punk al-Sadr has withdrawn his call for boycott; and Sistani has pledged to stay out of the maneuvering for national elections after the Constitution is accepted. The terror campaign continues, but has not had the effect Zarqawi anticipated. Iraq, rather than sliding down the road to civil war is earning, with the blood of its citizens, a national constituency. A nation is being born.
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