Who's the Enemy?

An interesting article and argument by Marc Lynch in the Prospect. Read.

While Sunni disenchantment with al-Qaeda is all to the good, it has little to do with American strategy and, crucially, even less to do with giving up on the anti-American insurgency. The real driving force has been the increasingly aggressive, unilateralist behavior of al-Qaeda. Since declaring an Islamic State of Iraq last October, it has overplayed its hand, alienating local Iraqi tribal leaders and major insurgent groups alike. They level a litany of complaints about their al-Qaeda counterparts: killing members of their factions, intimidating Sunnis, ransacking their homes, and stealing their money. Many insurgency factions are also put off by the absolutist rhetoric of the Islamic State of Iraq's leader Abu Omaral-Baghdadi, who in best Bush fashion declares that all who are not with the Islamic State are against it. Many Sunnis have been particularly offended by the Islamic State's cavalier use of the doctrine of takfir, declaring those who have not declared fealty to al-Qaeda to be non-Muslims and legitimate targets.

If this were only a power struggle between otherwise similar factions, or an accumulation of local grievances, then these developments might be of limited interest. But there are fundamental strategic differences between al-Qaeda and the larger insurgency's respective goals for Iraq. Their current clash mirrors a vocal debate which has broken out on the jihadi internet forums recently over whether Iraq should be seen as part of a "global" jihad or as only a national one.

Al-Qaeda presents a global vision of Iraq's role and future. In a document published by the London-based Arab newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi, al-Qaeda laid out a strategic agenda that placed Iraq at the center of a global jihad. The Islamic State of Iraq would become a central base for exporting jihad against kafir Arab regimes, the West, and Iran (with a high priority placed on the last). What that means is that al-Qaeda is in no hurry to see the Americans leave, since this would deprive it of its main source of propaganda and direct access to Americans targets. Thus, al-Qaeda rejects any negotiations with the United States. Indeed, at least some of its global rhetoric is likely tailored to feed American fears of withdrawal.

The Islamic Army of Iraq and other locally rooted insurgency factions explicitly reject this vision of global jihad, insisting instead on a strict focus on liberating Iraq from American occupation. These factions have certainly been radicalized by the spiraling civil war in Iraq, but they lack al-Qaeda's monomaniacal fixation on the Shia and have on occasion entertained proposals for a cross-sectarian alliance. In recent weeks, some of these factions have gone out of their way to reassure neighboring Arab states that they consider the jihad exclusively Iraqi, and would not tolerate Iraq becoming an exporter of jihad. These insurgent factions have said that they would talk to the United States on the condition that it commit to withdrawing. (In fact, they probably already did talk to U.S. officials earlier this year, and according to recent reports are currently talking with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.) And unlike al-Qaeda, these factions actually badly want an American withdrawal from Iraq.

The conclusion for the US? Withdraw.