Four years into the war, top brass in Baghdad has figured it out and been moves to drive wedges. But too often insurgent attacks still get described by both Pentagon flacks and the media as "al-Qaida" when there's plenty of evidence that in fact "al-Qaida in Iraq" represents only a small fraction of overall attacks (and, btw, it's questionable, at best, whether it's accurate describe that group as part-and-parcel of whatever is left of Osama's Bin Laden's franchise). Anyway, Abu Aardvark has a smart post that points to recent RFE/RL report that tracked claims of insurgency operations in March 2007. The report found that indeed, it's non-AQ affiliated insurgent groups that claim the vast majority of attacks.
Abu Aardvark makes a good point about the ultimate counter-productiveness of the continuing hyping of AQ. In short:
The exaggeration of al-Qaeda's role works directly and devastatingly against American goals. It magnifies al-Qaeda's perceived power, strengthening its own media campaign and feeding its most powerful propaganda instrument. Attributing all these attacks to al-Qaeda certainly doesn't hurt al-Qaeda's image: Iraq is the one place where al-Qaeda's violence is actually widely supported in the Muslim world.
Amen, brother. As I wrote in a profile of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi a few years ago:
As with Bin Laden, a feedback loop seems to have developed: The United States blames Zarqawi, increasing his street cred and thus the number of insurgents who proclaim fealty to him—giving substance to the initial charge.
The Bush administration has an obvious motivation to place an Osama-connected outsider at the center of the attacks. And it's possible that this analysis is correct. But one has to wonder: Even if Zarqawi is playing a key role in the Iraqi insurgency, is it wise for the United States to keep giving him credit for it?
Welcome back, Eric.
The administration in Washington has its own reasons for attributing insurgent attacks to al Qaeda, too well known to be worth reviewing here. Press coverage of military operations in Iraq, though, makes pretty clear that the military has been trying to hold a door open for non-AQ Sunni Arab insurgents in certain parts of the country, including by turning a blind public eye to assorted terrorist acts that American soldiers on the ground must know cannot all have been committed by AQ types. This is precisely the kind of thing many critics of the American military in Iraq have been urging it to do for years.
It's too late for this kind of thing to produce anything more than local successes, in my view. But this isn't really a case of the military just trying to promote a bogeyman. And, of course, the worst of the mass casualty attacks involving suicide bombers probably are products of the AQM organization.
Posted by: Zathras | July 07, 2007 at 08:08 PM