Archive for the 'Islamists' Category

A few days ago saw a strange dust-up between hardened Taliban fighters - the ones who drove the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan - and young Internet jihadists (although the Taliban would not have noticed or cared even if they did).

CAIRO, Egypt —  Al Qaeda supporters on the Web have unleashed an unprecedented flood of criticism of Afghanistan’s Taliban, once seen by extremists as the model of an Islamic state.

Now extremists accuse the Taliban of straying from the path of global jihad after its leader Mullah Omar issued a statement saying he seeks good relations with the world and even sympathizes with Shiite Iran.

In February, the Taliban announced it wanted to maintain good and “legitimate” relations with neighboring countries. Then, last week online militants were outraged when the movement expressed solidarity with Iran, condemning the latest round of sanctions imposed on Tehran by the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear enrichment.

The Shiite Islamic state of Iran is viewed as anathema by the Sunni militants of the Al Qaeda and other extremist movements.

“This is the worst statement I have ever read … the disaster of defending the (Iranian) regime is on par with the Crusaders in Afghanistan and Iraq,” wrote poster Miskeen, whose name translates literally as “the wretched” and who is labeled as one of the more influential writers on an Al Qaeda linked Web site …

“The Taliban seeks to be a respected political movement that can at the same time govern Afghanistan and be at limited peace with its neighbors,” said Rita Katz, the director of the Washington-based SITE Intelligence Group which monitors militant Web traffic.

But she cautioned that the “Taliban’s surprising call to support Iran in the face of new U.N. sanctions does not mean that the group is suddenly offering unequivocal support to Iran,” though it shows readiness to coexist with the neighbor.

Cairo-based expert on Islamic movements Diaa Rashwan linked the Taliban’s quest for international legitimacy to possible future negotiations with the Afghan government.

“Mullah Omar’s statement about good relations are in response to accusations from the West that the Taliban is radical and does not accept dialogue or negotiations with others,” he said.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in September he was ready to negotiate with the Taliban, including Mullah Omar himself, to put an end to the insurgency, while U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan William Wood said in December he would support reconciliation talks, with some conditions.

“The only problem about an eventual compromise with the Taliban is the fate of Al Qaeda, whether it will be expelled from Afghanistan or commit itself to the Afghan government,” Rashwan said.

The Afghan Taliban have always been nationalistic and focused primarily on Afghanistan.  We covered the recent somewhat amicable split between the Afghan Taliban and Baitullah Mehsud’s Pakistani Taliban, with Mehsud focused not only on the overthrow of Pakistan’s regime, but on global democracy as well.

“We will teach him [Musharraf] a lesson that will be recorded in the pages of history in letters of gold. The crimes of these murderers, who were acting at Bush’s command, are unforgivable. Soon, we will take vengeance upon them for destroying the mosques. The pure land of Pakistan does not tolerate traitors. They must flee to America and live there. Here, Musharraf will live to regret his injustice towards the students of the Red Mosque. Allah willing, Musharraf will suffer great pain, along with all his aides. The Muslims will never forgive Musharraf for the sin he committed.  We want to eradicate Britain and America, and to shatter the arrogance and tyranny of the infidels. We pray that Allah will enable us to destroy the White House, New York, and London.”

Pakistan is seeing and has seen since 2007 an influx of global jihadists into the NWFP and FATA areas of Pakistan, so there is no paucity of international fighters who will participate in a global war.  The so-called “nationalistic” tendencies of the Afghan Taliban are just that - political machinations intended to place them in the best possible position to regain power in the area.  They haven’t change their core values any more than al Qaeda has.

The picture of reactionary boy-jihadists and computer jocks presuming to chastise hard core Afghan Taliban would otherwise be humorous if not for the fact that these forums and chat rooms are recruiting grounds for future jihadists.  In case anyone doubts the ongoing threat of a transnational insurgency, this incident should remind us all just what General Abizaid intended when he coined the phrase “the long war.”

The News from Pakistan recently carried a commentary on the threat that the Taliban pose to the stability and future of Pakistan.  In part it states:

The sudden rise of the “Pakistani Taliban” initially puzzled the Afghan Taliban. It could be true that the Afghan Taliban initially saw this as a welcome development that would help the cause of resisting the invaders in Afghanistan and leverage the Musharraf administration’s pro-US policies. But the Afghan Taliban grew suspicious when the self-styled Pakistani Taliban, awash with money and weapons, turned their guns on Pakistan. In January, Mullah Omar withdrew recognition from Baitulah Mehsud.

To stop Afghanistan from turning into a permanent base for anti-Pakistan destabilisation activities, Pakistani officials will have to think out of the box. This will not be possible without the help of the Afghan Taliban.

The best idea to emerge is for Islamabad to declare neutrality in the war in Afghanistan. According to this idea, Pakistan could talk to both the Taliban and the Karzai administration while maintaining equal distance from both. Islamabad already has a working relationship with Kabul but will need to restore the lost relationship with the Taliban. If the Pakistani broker can establish its credentials as a neutral party, there can be hope for brokering peace between Kabul and its local enemies …

With the newly elected federal parliament preparing to take over in the next few days, hopes are growing that Pakistan’s Afghan policy will finally be freed from US blunders in Afghanistan.

One can sense in this commentary the loss of Pakistani confidence that the U.S. can win the COIN campaign.  Consider what this commentary recommended.  First of all, the notion that Mullah Omar withdrew recognition from Baitullah Mehsud is exaggerated, and we pointed out that the Afghani Taliban under the leadership of Mullah Omar has split with the Pakistani Taliban, but refused to condemn them and also denied that Mehsud was expelled.  We also discussed the fact that there are two distinct lines of Taliban now, and that the Pakistani Taliban are of a different generation, with different tools and weapons, different views (more willing to conduct suicide missions), and just as radical in their beliefs.

But the Pakistani mind now fears the Pakistani Taliban.  At first the Taliban (i.e., the Afghani Taliban) were free to roam about FATA and NWFP as a safe haven from their operations in Afghanistan.  But the truce with the Taliban brought foreigners into the region who now target the Pakistani regime.  The tribal regions are like an independent state that now threatens both Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The Afghani Taliban cross into Pakistan for safe haven, and when being pursued by the Pakistani Army, Baitullah Mehsud crosses into Afghanistan to avoid capture.

This fear is driving at least this commentator to recommend trying to leverage this split by siding with the Afghani Taliban in a war on the Pakistani Taliban, while at the same time declaring neutrality in the Afghani COIN campaign being waged by the U.S.  This strategy will fail, as Mullah Omar will have no interest in siding with the Pakistani regime to attack a brother jihadist like Mehsud.  If nothing else, this would deplete his own forces from the fight in Afghanistan.

Mullah Omar still has his eye on the prize.  In a recent interview on an Arabic-language Web site, a Taliban commander threatened to increase attacks on Kabul — not only through suicide bombings, but by targeting roads in the north and east in a bid to cut off the capital.

Prior:

U.S. Intelligence Failures: Dual Taliban Campaigns

Taliban Continue Fronts in Pakistan and Afghanistan

Concerning Killing Bad Guys and Sacking Worthless Officers

Resurrgence of Taliban and al Qaeda

The Marines, Afghanistan and Strategic Malaise

Misinterpreting the Pakistani Elections

Pashtun Rejection of the Global War on Terror

Everyone Thought the Taliban Would Not Fight!

NATO Intransigence in Afghanistan

Main stream media reports almost across the board are gushing at the rejection of Islamism that allegedly dominated the recent Pakistani elections.  There are too many such reports to enumerate here, but one extreme example will suffice from McClatchy.

Pakistani voters have handed Islamist political parties a massive defeat, virtually eliminating them from regional parliaments.

The election Monday is likely to have a wide-ranging effect on efforts to rein in growing Taliban and al-Qaida influence in Pakistan’s North West Frontier province.

In 2002, fundamentalist religious parties, some openly sympathetic to the Taliban, won 12 percent of the national vote. That was enough to form a regional government in the province that borders Afghanistan. It also allowed the parties to become part of the ruling coalition in Baluchistan, another province, and to hold 57 seats in the 342-member national Parliament.

But unofficial results of Monday’s vote indicate that religious parties won only five seats in the national Parliament. In North West Frontier province, where the country’s Islamic insurgency is strongest, religious parties won just nine seats in the 96-seat provincial assembly. In 2002, they won 67.

“This is a sea change,” said Khalid Aziz, a political analyst based in the province’s capital, Peshawar. “The people have rejected the much-hyped Islamic nation concept.”

This is strong analysis - “sea change,” and “massive defeat.”  Yet this doesn’t even qualify as good surface level cursory analysis.  In order to understand what the Pakistani voters rejected and what they didn’t, it is important to go backwards in time to understand what is being called the “next generation Taliban” by the smarter analysts.  For this we must turn to Nicholas Schmidle.  His most extensive commentary and analysis from his time spent in Pakistan is entitled Next-Gen Taliban in the New York Times Magazine (a small portion of this important analysis is included below).

Efforts at democratic integration by parties like the J.U.I. have now been overshadowed by the violence of their antidemocratic Islamist colleagues - a network of younger Taliban fighting on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border, jihadis pledging loyalty to Al Qaeda and any number of freelancing militants. Disrupting and discrediting democracy may, of course, be the point. The Bhutto assassination could well make moderation impossible, as Islamist radicals savor their disruptive power - and enraged mainstream parties threaten the stability of the government itself …

In Quetta, Maulvi Noor Muhammad, who is 62, sat on the madrassa’s cold concrete floor wrapped in a wool blanket as he leafed through a newspaper. Speaking in Pashto through an interpreter, he said that Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the J.U.I. chief, had visited three times in the previous few weeks to persuade him to enter the election. Muhammad claimed to have refused each time because he believed the J.U.I. had drifted from its core mission: to lead an aggressive Islamization campaign and provide political support to what he referred to as the mujahedeen, a term for Muslim fighters that can shift in meaning depending on who is speaking. “Participating in this election would amount to treason against the mujahedeen,” he said. I asked about the others in the party who had decided to run for office. Muhammad shook his head in disappointment and explained how, following the government operation against the Red Mosque rebels in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital city, in July, President Musharraf put religious leaders under tremendous pressure. “Musharraf threatened to raid several madrassas,” Muhammad said. “The political mullahs got scared.”

Maulana Fazlur Rehman is exactly the sort of “political mullah” whom Muhammad portrayed as running scared. In the past year, the J.U.I. chief has tried to disassociate himself from the new generation of Taliban wreaking havoc not only across the border in Afghanistan, as they have for years, but also increasingly in Pakistan. At the same time, Rehman has been trying to persuade foreign ambassadors and establishment politicians here that he is the only one capable of dealing with those same Taliban. (Rehman told me that he never offered Muhammad a chance to enter the election; he even added that the J.U.I. had already expelled the Taliban guru “on disciplinary grounds.” ) In the process, some Islamists maintain that Rehman has sold them out. Last April, a rocket whistled over the sugarcane fields that separate Rehman’s house from the main road before crashing into the veranda of his brother’s home next door. A few months later, Pakistani intelligence agencies discovered a hit list, drafted by the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, with Rehman’s name on it.

“The religious forces are very divided right now,” I was told by Abdul Hakim Akbari, a childhood friend of Rehman’s and lifelong member of the J.U.I. I met Akbari in Dera Ismail Khan, Rehman’s hometown, which is situated in the North-West Frontier Province. According to this past summer’s U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, approved by all 16 official intelligence agencies, Al Qaeda has regrouped in the Tribal Areas adjoining the province and may be planning an attack on the American homeland. “Everyone is afraid,” Akbari told me. “These mujahedeen don’t respect anyone anymore. They don’t even listen to each other. Maulana Fazlur Rehman is a moderate. He wants dialogue. But the Taliban see him as a hurdle to their ambitions. ”

Rehman doesn’t pretend to be a liberal; he wants to see Pakistan become a truly Islamic state. But the moral vigilantism and the proliferation of Taliban-inspired militias along the border with Afghanistan is not how he saw it happening. The emergence of Taliban-inspired groups in Pakistan has placed immense strain on the country’s Islamist community, a strain that may only increase with the assassination of Bhutto. As the rocket attack on Rehman’s house illustrates, the militant jihadis have even lashed out against the same Islamist parties who have coddled them in the past.

The next generation Taliban, unlike their predecessors in the tribal region who also want total Islamism in Pakistan and Afghanistan, completely reject democratic means to accomplish such change.  They are also more savvy technically and have no theological baggage regarding reluctance to suicide missions.  The Taliban in Afghanistan are learning from the jihadists across the globe who have travelled to Pakistan to fight, and suicide missions in Afghanistan are increasing, and increasingly carried out by Afghanis themselves.

More recently, Schmidle weighed in on what the vote from the North-West Frontier Province means.

Does this mean the end of Islamism in Pakistan? Not quite. In fact, while the defeat of Musharraf’s political allies in the PML (Q) signals a new political leadership in Islamabad, the defeat of the MMA could also signal a new political and religious leadership in the troubled areas along the border with Afghanistan. In the North West Frontier Province, where the MMA formed the provincial government last term, the Islamists’ vote bank was a combination of die-hards who desired the creation of an Islamic state and those less ideologically driven who were attracted to the MMA’s promises of justice, economic renewal, and security. This time around, the latter voted for the Awami National Party. The former, such as Iqbal Khan of the Swat Valley, joined the Taliban.

Note well Schmidle’s analysis.  The less ideologically driven voter abandoned the Islamist party, but then, he never voted for that party for the purposes of institution of sharia law anyway.  He voted for jobs, sewers, electricity, water supply and good governance several years ago and got none of what he voted for. Hence, he overthrew the clerics this time around.  The die-hards joined the Taliban.  There are various colors and stripes of jihadists the world over, from Salafism to Wahhabism, from the purist Sunni radicals in Saudi Arabia to the Shi’a Mullahs and their followers in Iran.  But one common element among them all is the utter rejection of democracy.  Democracy is deemed to be directly contrary to Islam, and the Taliban, al Qaeda and their sympathizers and advocates sat out the election.  They had no stake in it.

So what will be the likely outcome of the Pakistani elections?  No military action against the Taliban, just more talk, based on sentiment expressed just prior to the election.

“We must sit with [the Taleban], we must talk to them, we are from the same origin, we are from the same people, we’ve got the same language.”

Mardan candidates also believe a democratic, civilian government would have more legitimacy to negotiate with the Taleban than one led by a former general, like President Musharraf.

That has yet to be proven, says Rahimullah Yusufzai, an expert on the Taleban.

“I don’t think they have a strategy to deal with this,” he says.

“All are saying that if they’re in power they will negotiate with the Taleban, the extremists. That policy has been tried by Mr Musharraf. So I think the same policy will continue: military operations, peace accords, ceasefires, I think this trend will continue.”

The situation is even more shaky than that.  Combined U.S.-Pakistani operations were planned in the tribal region prior to the election and are now cancelled.  Further, the U.S. finds herself in the position of needing Pakistan more than she needs the U.S.

“Americans cannot do anything if we stop the operations in tribal areas. If they stop military aid, they are welcome to do so. We don’t need military aid. All we need is economic aid and they just cannot afford to stop it. Why? Because all NATO supply lines pass through Pakistan and if they stop economic aid, Pakistan can stop supply lines which would end their regional war on terror theater once and for all. This is the biggest crime of Musharraf - that he could not understand the strategic value of Pakistan in the region and could not exploit it.”

There are strategically difficult and tenuous times ahead for Pakistan-U.S.-Afghanistan relations.  The existence and strength of the Taliban and al Qaeda and the future of the counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan hangs in the balance.  Whatever the future holds, the Pakistani voters have not rejected Islamism.  They have rejected lack of jobs and financial security because leaders of the Madrasah didn’t know what they were doing when they tried to govern a society.  Islamism has nothing whatsoever to do with it.  Making up fairy tales about what they meant when they cast their vote doesn’t help the counterinsurgency campaign in this troubled region of the world.

Following closely on the heels of British negotiations with mid-level Taliban, the governorship of Musa Qala has been handed over to a Taliban commander.

A Taliban commander who defected hours before British and Afghan forces retook the Taliban stronghold of Musa Qala has been rewarded with the governorship of the town.

Mullah Abdul Salaam switched sides after months of delicate secret negotiations with the Afghan government, as part of a programme of reconciliation backed by British commanders in Helmand.

In a move clearly intended to send a message to other potential Taliban defectors, the Afghan government has announced that he had become the new district governor with the backing of local tribes.

An Afghan government spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, said that the move was consistent with the policy of President Hamid Karzai’s government.

“The president has said before that all those former Taliban who come and accept the constitution and who want to participate in the political process through non-violent means … they are welcome.”

He added that Mullah Salaam had provided crucial intelligence to the Afghan government.

Mullah Salaam is a leader of one of the three sub-tribes of the Alizai, the dominant tribal group in Musa Qala.

As The Daily Telegraph reported in November, Mullah Salaam opened channels of communication with the government after a violent rift emerged in the Taliban around Musa Qala, during which he survived an assassination attempt.

Mullah Salaam told The Daily Telegraph: “There are two groups of Taliban fighters in Musa Qala and I have the backing of the major one. The Taliban who are against peace and prosperity in Afghanistan - I will fight them.”

Local people confirmed that he enjoyed the backing of a large swathe of the inhabitants of the town.

The issue of Taliban defections remains a highly sensitive one, following the expulsion of a British and an Irish diplomat from Kabul last month on charges of having “inappropriate contacts” with militants.

Afghan government officials accused the two men of holding meetings with Taliban leaders in Helmand without authorisation.

The British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has ruled out direct talks with the Taliban leadership, but it is well known in Kabul that both the British and Afghan intelligence agencies are devoting considerable resources to trying to “turn” Taliban-aligned tribal leaders.

As we have discussed before, this is the British version of the Anbar awakening combined with payment for concerned citizens who protect the people and fight al Qaeda.  But the problem with this analogy is that it is no analogy at all.  It has nothing at all in common with a true awakening such as occurred in Anbar.  It is true that the last decade of rule by Saddam saw the birth of a small element of youth who were motivated by religious radicalism.

By the late 1980s it had become clear that secular pan-Arabism fused with socialist ideas was no longer a source of inspiration for some Ba’th Party activists. Many young Sunni Arabs adopted an alternative ideology, namely, fundamentalist Islam based essentially on the thought of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. A minority even moved toward the more extreme Salafi, and even Wahhabi, interpretation of Islam. The regime was reluctant to repress such trends violently, even when it came to Wahhabis, for the simple reason that these Iraqi Wahhabis were anti-Saudi: much like the ultraradical Islamist opposition in Saudi Arabia, they, too, saw the Saudi regime as deviating from its original Wahhabi convictions by succumbing to Western cultural influences and aligning itself with the Christian imperialist United States. This anti-Saudi trend served the Iraqi regime’s political purposes.

But this proves the bifurcation that was inherent in the Anbaris which led to the awakening.  These radical youth were an insignificant fraction of the population and were not ever fair game in the strategy to win hearts and minds.  They were the enemy, and there was never a time when they weren’t the enemy.  They quickly aligned with al Qaeda, and the less radical citizens were really the ones in play in the overall strategy.  Al Qaeda and those with whom they were aligned have been essentially defeated in Anbar and are losing in Diyala.  Peace was sought with those from the indigenous insurgency who saw themselves as something other than jihadis.  In Afghanistan, the Taliban are by very definition religiously defined.  Even the casual reader might consider Afghanistan seven years ago (Taliban in charge) and compare it to the Afghanistan of today (with the Taliban in charge if the British strategy plays out) and recall that the only real change is that Hamid Karzai is at the helm, a tenuous charge and precarious perch to be sure.

While the MI6 agents who were negotiating with the Taliban have been ejected from the country, the strategy of acquiescence to the Taliban continues to be implemented by British military command.  After their failed military campaign in and pullout from Basra, the British are actively negotiating the turnover of the Afghanistan government to the very enemy defeated upon the initial invasion of Afghanistan in order to end the campaign.  This strategy has at least the tacit approval of Hamid Karzai, as U.S. troop presence and strategy is not sufficient to allow him to object.  U.S. and NATO lack of force projection gives him no other choice.

Prior:

Musa Qala: The Argument for Force Projection

Clarifying Expectations in Afghanistan

Review and Analysis of Afghanistan Counterinsurgency Campaign

Gates Sets Pretext for Review of Afghanistan Campaign

British in Negotiations with Taliban

Fates of Afghanistan and Pakistan Inextricably Tied

The British-American War Continues: MI-6 Agents Expelled from Afghanistan

Commitment to Iraq and Recommitment to Afghanistan

Osama Bin Laden has released an audio that has some interesting content regarding the campaign in Iraq.  From Al Jazeera, here is a partial transcript of his communication.

“I advise myself and all the Muslims, particularly brethren in the al-Qaeda organisation everywhere, to avoid fanaticism.

“The interest of the Islamic nation surpasses that of a group. 

“The strength of faith is in the strength of the bond between Muslims and not that of a tribe or nationalism.

“The strength of faith is not in the affiliation to the tribe, the country or the organisation.

“The interest of the group should be given priority over the interest of the individual, the interest of the Islamic state should be given priority over the interest of the group, and the interest of the Umma [Muslim community] should be given priority over the interest of the state.

“These indications must be practical realities in our life.

“I advise myself and my brethren to be pious and patient as they [these qualities] are the weapon of those who seek victory.

“My brethren, be careful of your enemies, particularly the hypocrites who penetrate into your ranks to spark strife among the mujahidin [Muslim fighters] groups. Those should be referred to trial.”

“[Committing] mistakes is of mankind’s nature. When mistakes occur, disputes emerge among people, and mistakes have occurred.

“But the ill-hearted people pursue the mistakes of the mujahidin, and they may attribute these mistakes to the ritual of jihad, under the name of violence and terrorism.

“The mujahidin are the children of this nation; they do right things and wrong things. Those who are accused of violating of God’s commandments should face trial.

“Scholars, emirs of the mujahidin, and tribal leaders should make efforts to reconcile every two conflicting sects and should rule between them according to the sharia [law] of Allah. And the two conflicting sects should act in response to the scholars.”

“Unite your ranks in one rank.

“My brethren, the emirs of the mujahidin, Muslims wait for you to unite under one banner to enforce that which is right. 

“When you perform this obedience, the nation would soon be blessed by the Jamaa year through your own efforts.

“Honest scholars should make efforts to unify the ranks of the mujahidin, and I hope that they would not feel bored of going along the path that would lead to it [unity].”

What is important here is what al Jazeera didn’t transcribe from his recording.  Al Jazeera has included only the soft words, and these words lack context, so this context will be supplied here - at least in broad strokes.

OBL speaks of “mistakes” and “uniting ranks” for very specific reasons.  He knows that al Qaeda has been guilty of unspeakable atrocities in Anbar and other places in Iraq.  Not too long ago I published Hope and Brutality in Anbar in which I discussed some of the torture tactics and rooms of horror used by AQI.  The same tactics were used in the Diyala province when AQI was run out of the Anbar Province, leading the coalition forces to discover what they termed an al Qaeda torture complex that was recently found and shut down.  OBL also knows that the unintended consequence of this has been loss of the heart and cooperation of the population.  So he wants to soften the message: al Qaeda, says OBL, has made mistakes, like all people, but this shouldn’t reflect poorly on jihad.

But on to the harder words from the audio recording.  OBL takes direct aim at the leader of the Anbar “awakening.”

In the audiotape, bin Laden denounces Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, the former leader of the Anbar Awakening Council, who was killed in a September bombing claimed by al-Qa’ida.

“The most evil of the traitors are those who trade away their religion for the sake of their mortal life,” he said.

Bin Laden said US and Iraqi officials were trying to set up a “national unity government” joining the Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds. “Our duty is to foil these dangerous schemes, which try to prevent the establishment of an Islamic state in Iraq, which would be a wall of resistance against US schemes to divide Iraq,” he said.

OBL warns the Sunnis in Anbar against joining the coalition, and goes further to say just exactly what is in store, according to him, for those who join against AQI:

He also urged Iraqis not to join the Awakening Councils which are predominantly Sunni tribal police funded by the US military to fight al-Qaeda and reduce violence.

“I advise those who follow the path of temptation should wash out this disgrace by repentance,” he said in the 56-minute recording posted on the internet on Saturday.

“This participation [in the Awakening Councils] is a great apostasy and sedition that will lead them to Hell.”

The Multinational Force was quick to trot out a rebuttal to OBL’s claims:

An audio tape released by Osama bin Laden yesterday purports that al Qaeda does not kill innocent civilians, but the terrorist network’s actions contradict this claim, a coalition spokesman said yesterday.

During a news conference in Baghdad yesterday, Navy Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, director of communications for Multinational Corps Iraq, told reporters that al Qaeda car bombings, suicide attacks and torture houses are evidence that the network targets innocent civilians, and belie conflicting messages the group avows.

“Al Qaeda’s extreme, Taliban-like ideology and deliberate disregard for human life has led to its rejection by the Iraqi people,” Smith said.

While true, this rebuttal misses the point.  The definition of “innocent” includes almost everyone to the Multinational Force.  But it includes almost no one to OBL and al Qaeda.  Notice again the caveats and qualifiers OBL has given us.  Anyone who participates in the new Iraqi government is guilty of great apostasy and sedition, and Sheikh Risha is a “traitor.”  Thus, while to the U.S. those who are not fighting the U.S. ( and some who are, as shown by payment to “concerned citizens”) are all innocent, to al Qaeda only those who are fighting alongside them are innocent.  All others are guilty.

It is a matter of definitions.  Thus OBL can claim that the innocent are spared, while apologizing for a few “mistakes” here and there, and still preach his sermons about hellfire for those who side with the coalition.  Everyone knows the game.  A more effective Multinational Force rebuttal might have gone something like this:

We have read the worthless screed published by the terrorist OBL, and conclude that he and his outlaw organization are the same duplicitous, murderous liars that they have always been.  Al Qaeda’s message is basically that if you side with them they will refrain from drilling holes in your ribcage with a power drill.  Otherwise, if you help the coaliton at all, or even if you withdraw from the struggle and try to live in peace, you side with the evil attempt to stop a fundamentalist Islamic state in Iraq.  Al Qaeda, they claim, are the ultimate arbiters of all truth, and will decide your fate as their whims dictate.  You will die if they want you to die, and if they want you to live, they will use you and your children for their own ends.  Al Qaeda has shown in actions, and now tries to justify in words, that they do not harm innocents, but then they surreptitiously define the term innocent to meet their own criteria as if the people are too stupid to see their Sophistry and tricks.  Al Qaeda, you are a loser on the field of battle, and now you are losing the war of ideas.  Your end in Iraq is surely near.

At any rate, this kind of communication would couple well with the hard fought gains on the ground in Iraq.  It’s time to take the gloves off of the Multinational Force communications.  Finally, what we learn from OBL’s audio is that nothing has changed.  We should continue to expect that AQI will use torture, brutality and other atrocities as they see fit and are able.