Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) Resources

On GWOT is a collection of resources, news and links to information about the US Global War on Terrorism. The posts are excerpts and links to other resources about the war.

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Zarqawi's declining ideological support among Islamists

Stephen Ulph, Terrorism Focus, July 22, 2005, Vol 2, Iss 14

In the wake of the kidnapping and assassination of the Egyptian ambassador to Baghdad, Ihab al-Sherif, condemnation for the military policies of al-Qaeda in Iraq came from an unexpected source. The two major militant Islamist organizations in Egypt, al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya and al-Gihad, launched an attack on Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda group, accusing it of "fighting the Shi'a and the Kurds more than fighting to liberate Iraq." The statement, published on the jihadi forum al-Sakifa on July 14, noted how "the strategic mistakes committed by al-Qaeda when it followed this path [including the assassination of the ambassador] in combating the occupation are clear to everyone… it is built upon impossible aims and targets." It lamented how al-Qaeda's strategy was not limited to removing the occupier, "but an attempt to wipe out the Shi'a or remove them from the political map, despite their numerical majority in Iraq, and similarly for the Kurds."
The groups' statement also, in its way, repudiated the connection between al-Qaeda's targeting strategy and the nationality of the victims, arguing it amounted to little more than killing "those that disagreed with their strategies without distinction...whether or not their governments supported the occupation." The statement asks where does al-Qaeda's intelligence lie if it heaps up enemies and their forces around them, and goes on to ask why al-Qaeda "cannot learn from its past mistakes" citing the futility of its previous attacks on Egyptian or American targets, which changed nothing, but rather "lead to the killing and expulsion of members of Islamist groups in general — and of al-Qaeda in particular — to the fall of Muslim Afghanistan and the occupation of Iraq." It also lamented the result of its actions, which was to "make the average Muslim opposed to Islamist groups and cast doubt upon their credibility in changing their societies for the better" [www.alsakifa.net].

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