Sunni leaders press insurgents to fight US forces, not Iraqis
BAGHDAD -- Religious, tribal, and political leaders in the Sunni heartland say they are encouraging Iraqi insurgents to fight on, but to focus on attacking US troops and stop killing Iraqi civilians and security forces.
Many of the leaders also warned that they would permit their followers in the national resistance to join attacks against the interim Iraqi government if Prime Minister Iyad Allawi does not take concrete steps to wrest control over security from the United States.
Two clerics, four clan leaders, and a leading politician also said in recent interviews that the domestic national resistance has split with a separate movement of what they called terrorists. The leaders defined as terrorists those foreign and Iraqi fighters responsible for suicide bombings and attacks on civilians and Iraqi security services, tactics that they said alienate the Iraqi public and unnecessarily provoke the United States.
"The effective resistance to drive out the occupation is the one which coordinates its power against the occupier exclusively and avoids all civilians -- Muslim and non-Muslim, Arab and non-Arab," Sheik Ahmad Abed al-Gafoor al-Samarrae said after an intense Friday-morning sermon earlier this month in which he exhorted Iraqis to unite against the US occupation that he said continues in practice, if not in name.
None of the men interviewed masked their sympathy for the insurgency or their respective roles as negotiators, spiritual leaders, or operational contributors to the fighters. Some of them acknowledged that they offer spiritual advice to jihadis and insurgents about what attacks would have the leaders' backing. Some provide fighters from their clans. Others act as the political wing of the insurgency or serve as mediators, ferrying messages to Iraqi politicians or US forces.
Taken together, their views provide a stark warning of the potential for further nationalist resistance against American forces in Iraq in the months ahead, undermining US hopes that the handover of sovereignty would discourage armed opposition. The leaders' remarks also raise the specter of clashes between the nationalists and the foreign fighters, which could inject a new conflict into the volatile Iraqi arena.
The men -- all of them Sunni Muslims with family ties to Anbar Province, which stretches from Abu Ghraib and Fallujah westward to the Syrian border -- represent only one faction of the insurgency. As a group they contrast themselves with Saddam Hussein loyalists, former Ba'athists, and Shi'ite religious guerrillas fighting in other parts of the country. For now, all of them operate openly and travel freely.
The four clan leaders from Fallujah -- Sa'ad Allah Arrawi, Hamid Obeid Mohsen, Abdulsattar Hamdan, and Rushdi al-Jumaili -- spoke at length over dinner recently in Baghdad, pausing at points to place lamb and chicken into the mouth of a reporter, a traditional tribal gesture of hospitality.
All four said they supported the Fallujah uprising that began in April. Arrawi helped negotiate a cease-fire with US Marines, and Mohsen has met with Iraqi officials to convey the Fallujah leadership's rejection of the interim government.
The Fallujah clan leaders hew to a tribal vision; they yearn for the rural Iraq before Hussein, where the tribe and extended family formed the only important forum for political power. They support the return of the monarchy, and they do not want a theocracy of imams.
The leaders contrasted their views with those they associate with the West.
"You in the West, in European countries, you love life and you work in many ways to live happily. We, we work in several ways to gain martyrdom because this is what our religion orders," Mohsen said. "We live on this soil and are born to fight those who violate our freedom."
The Sunni cleric, Samarrae, and his boss, Sheik Harth al-Dhari, preach at the Mother of All Villages mosque on Baghdad's western edge, a central meeting place for sympathizers and supporters of the Iraqi resistance. It was Hussein's favorite mosque, formerly known as Mother of All Battles Mosque and adorned with minarets shaped like AK-47s and Scud missiles.
They lead the Association of Islamic Scholars, a national network of Sunni clerics, and have negotiated the release of hostages held by extremist groups. Dhari has invoked his grandfather's role in starting the 1920 revolution that eventually expelled the British occupation from Iraq.
In April, Dhari emerged as the public face of the insurgency when he exhorted the faithful to "take revenge for slaughter" and join in the battle of Fallujah. "Send your army against the occupiers," he cried in an April sermon. "Kill all of them."
Dhari has embraced an extreme form of Salafist Islam, a branch that includes the Wahhabi. In his sermons and in his crowded office, he espouses a view of an Iraq bound together by its commitment to Islam, not by ethnicity.
He has built the Mother of All Villages mosque compound into a bustling center for followers of extremist Sunni thought. Now men and women flock to seminars there throughout the week, and editors prepare a weekly newspaper called The Visions, which plasters blurry but huge pictures of dead American soldiers throughout its pages. Foreign envoys come to Dhari seeking his help to negotiate the release of hostages.
"Now Iraq is a stage for lots of plays, comic and bloody, from different theatrical groups," Dhari said in a brief interview in his office at the mosque.
He denies an active link to the resistance and said he is angry that he has been branded a leader of the insurgency after winning the release of many foreign hostages. "We don't stand with those who sabotage the country, destroy society, and kill innocent people," he said.
Another Sunni leader, Mohsen Abdul Hameed, has pursued a different route. A religious scholar who heads the Iraqi Islamic Party, he served for a year on the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. Since the spring, he often has been the only direct interlocutor between fighters in Fallujah and the Iraqi and American leadership in Baghdad.
"You must distinguish between the resistance and the terrorists," Hameed said. "There is a patriotic resistance which targets occupation forces. Then there are the terrorists, who are responsible for bombings, killing of policemen, killing of civilians. We do not consider them resistance."
The seven attribute terrorist attacks mainly to foreign Arabs and said the national resistance has ended its marriage of convenience with foreign jihadis, who brought combat experience and their own brand of Sunni religious fervor.
Last week, the clan heads of Fallujah expelled about 25 foreign fighters, the New Sabah newspaper reported. A clan member said the foreign fighters had become so arrogant that whenever tribal officials challenged them, the foreign Arabs would accuse them of collaborating with the Americans.
In another sign of the break with foreign terrorists, the mujahideen groups who claimed responsibility for many of the deadly attacks on Americans since April also issued a statement condemning suspected Jordanian-born terrorism mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whom US officials think is hiding near Fallujah.
To the seven leaders, it is more evidence of the emergence of an independent national resistance movement.
The clans of Fallujah are boycotting the National Conference scheduled for the end of July. That meeting of 1,000 Iraqis is designed to produce an interim quasi-legislature with a broader constituency than the government's executive branch, which was handpicked from a small pool by US and United Nations officials.
All of the leaders said their positions reflect their vision for the country's future.
Mohsen, one of the clan leaders from Fallujah, said he delivered a direct, unsettling message on a recent visit to the prime minister's office.
He told an aide to the interim leader: "I would welcome [Allawi's] visit to Fallujah as an Iraqi, if there is no piece of land occupied [from the north to the south of Iraq]. But until then, we will not welcome you or any other Iraqi official."
The importance of that stand cannot be underestimated, Mohsen added. "He who wins Fallujah wins Iraq. He who loses Fallujah loses Iraq."
Thanassis Cambanis can be reached at tcambanis@globe.com 