The “Myth” or the Routing of Al Qaeda in Iraq?

Andrew Tilghman of the Washington Monthly has a well-argued piece that suggests the role and influence of Al Qaeda in Iraq is a fraction of what official estimates (read: White House and Pentagon stats) claim:

How big, then, is AQI? The most persuasive estimate I've heard comes from Malcolm Nance, the author of The Terrorists of Iraq and a twenty-year intelligence veteran and Arabic speaker who has worked with military and intelligence units tracking al-Qaeda inside Iraq. He believes AQI includes about 850 full-time fighters, comprising 2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. "Al-Qaeda in Iraq," according to Nance, "is a microscopic terrorist organization."

Tilghman also provides evidence that the Golden Mosque bombing — which Ayman al-Zawahiri all but castigated his lieutenant, the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, for carrying out* — was actually a sophisticated demolition job of former Baathists:

The man who the military believe orchestrated the bombing, an Iraqi named Haitham al-Badri, was both a Samara native and a former high-ranking government official under Saddam Hussein. (His right-hand man, Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi, was also a former military intelligence officer in Saddam Hussein's army.) Key features of the bombing did not conform to the profile of an AQI attack. For example, the bombers did not target civilians, or even kill the Shiite Iraqi army soldiers guarding the mosque, both of which are trademark tactics of AQI. The planners also employed sophisticated explosive devices, suggesting formal military training common among former regime officers, rather than the more bluntly destructive tactics typical of AQI. Finally, Samara was the heart of Saddam's power base, where former regime fighters keep tight control over the insurgency.

However, this begs a further question: If Saddamists were responsible for the most devastating symbolic attack on Iraqi civil society since the war began, did they not foresee that it would lead to Shia death squads and a possible genocide of Sunnis? How does the old regime presume to retake power (its one true goal) if it ignites a civil war that will likely devour its already minuscule ethnic base? Zarqawi had a much clearer motive in razing the holy shrine: It was only holy to a sect of Muslims he believed were polytheistic and thus no better than atheists, Christians or Jews. His vision was decidedly less realist than regime dead-enders; he salivated for a regional war that would cull fighters from all corners of the Middle East and culminate in a 21st century caliphate. This is why his bosses in Waziristan tried to rein him in.

Tilghman also admits that if any cross-pollination between AQI and the Saddamists has taken place, then it is the former that are joining the larger ranks of the latter. He quotes Nance: "Al-Qaeda can't operate anywhere in Iraq without kissing the ring of the former regime."

AQI recruits often find themselves taking orders from a network of former regime insurgents, who assemble their car bombs and tell them what to blow up. They become, as Nance says, "puppets for the other insurgent groups."

So there is every reason to believe that, even if AQI is as small a force as Tlighman imagines, it is still responsible for executing the violent designs of the Baathist leadership. This makes it something of a vanguard force of the insurgency worth taking seriously, doesn't it?

More telling is what Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor reports today: That Al Qaeda is, apart from atrophied, almost non-existent in Iraq — not because it never was there, but because it has been soundly beaten:

The Brookings Institution's Iraq index, which monitors security indicators in the country, appears to back up Mr. Crocker's assessment. In its latest report, the index found that the flow of foreign fighters to Iraq has dropped from about 85 to about 50 over several recent months. US officials say the number of suicide bombings in Iraq has fallen from more than 60 in January to about 30 a month since July.

Suicide-bombings are the worst kinds of attacks because the perpetrators can't be captured or interrogated, and thus their affiliations are always open to speculation and paranoia. Though AQI has made suicide bombing its heinous specialty, so a 50% reduction in attacks per month is, even for a tiny organization, a stark sign of that organization's attrition. Moreover, if the Mujahadeen Army of Iraq — another Sunni terrorist outfit but with nationalist rather than imperialist aims — is responsible for any number of those suicide-bombings, then the above suggests they're being defeated as well.

* See Zawahiri's letter to Zarqawi. He doesn't address the Golden Mosque atrocity directly, but the pedantic rhetorical questions he asks of his man in Mesopotamia seem to hint at it: "If the attacks on Shia leaders were necessary to put a stop to their plans, then why were there attacks on ordinary Shia? Won't this lead to reinforcing false ideas in their minds, even as it is incumbent on us to preach the call of Islam to them and explain and communicate to guide them to the truth? And can the mujahedeen kill all of the Shia in Iraq? Has any Islamic state in history ever tried that? And why kill ordinary Shia considering that they are forgiven because of their ignorance? And what loss will befall us if we did not attack the Shia? And do the brothers forget that we have more than one hundred prisoners – many of whom are from the leadership who are wanted in their countries – in the custody of the Iranians? And even if we attack the Shia out of necessity, then why do you announce this matter and make it public, which compels the Iranians to take counter measures? And do the brothers forget that both we and the Iranians need to refrain from harming each other at this time in which the Americans are targeting us?"