Tuesday, December 02, 2003

I try to post items in English only on this website, but this is an exception. Two hours after posting the item below about the new report about the Iraqi resistance, and its constituent elements, my friend Abu Fiona sent me the full report. It has the most detailed information on who is who in the Iraqi resistance. It shows a diverse group of organizations that cannot be reduced to "Saddam's thugs" or to "infiltrators" from Syria. Apparently, Sunni fundamentalist groups play the major part, but others play a part too: nationalist groups, the dissolved elements of the Iraqi army, and some possible presence of AlQa`idah (which distributed flyers in Iraq). AlQaedah most likely came into Iraq after the war, taking advantage of the chaoes of the battle. But AlQa`idah has no chance of gaining a foothold in Iraq, or anywhere else in the region (perhaps with the exception of Saudi Arabia). There is no popular base for that group, and Bin Laden's speeches and messages are ignored (outside of Saudi Arabia, I should add where he remains popular among the Wahhabi fanatics). AlQa`idah, we have to remember, comes out of the Wahhabi tradition, which contains a fanatically anti-Shi`ite component. For Wahhabis, Shi`ites are not even Muslims. (You will read about all that in my new book about Saudi Arabia coming out in a few months). And we have to remember that Saddam indirectly unleashed fundamentalist powers after 1995 when he declared his "faith campaign," which stressed the role of religion in politics. With every defeat, Saddam gets more religious and pious.