Al Qaeda starts to wear out its welcome

Al Qaeda's effort to create its own territory of terror in Sunni areas of Iraq is running into difficulties: the tribes there, which at first were willing to accept financial aid from Al Qaeda to look the other way, are now sick of the violence and domination that Al Qaeda has brought with it. They are starting to work with American forces in order to help drive Al Qaeda from their territories.

In the aftermath of America's recent troop surge in Iraq, tribal leaders throughout this country are turning on Al Qaeda, and American military commanders are trying to exploit the new development by bringing tribe members into the Iraqi Security Forces.

For those officers overseeing the new tribal diplomacy, signs are emerging that Iraq's deepest social networks — its tribes — are withdrawing their tacit acceptance of Al Qaeda and are becoming more willing to cooperate with American authorities to combat the terror network.

The plan is inspired by some successes that the Marines and the Army had with tribes in Anbar province, but it is still in the early stages.
While the military and CIA have tried to reach out to Iraq's tribes since before the war, those efforts yielded mixed results. The majority of Sunni tribes cut deals with Al Qaeda for cash — between $30,000 and $40,000, according to sheiks here — to turn a blind eye to Al Qaeda's activities. That arrangement is starting to fall away.

"I see what I think is becoming a national trend, especially in areas influenced by Al Qaeda, where they have made inroads, and even in places where you see other forms of religious extremism, such as Jaish al-Mahdi, you have it from the South. It's coming, it's there," Lieutenant Colonel Richard Welch said in an interview. Colonel Welch, a public prosecutor in Ohio, spends his days meeting Iraqi tribal chiefs as he oversees tribal and religious outreach for the Multi-National Force in Baghdad.

Sheikh Hussein al-Tamimi, whose tribe has been friendly to American forces since the invasion, agrees that many of his fellow chieftains have changed their position on Al Qaeda in recent months. "I think the motivation behind the change is to protect their interests," he said in an interview. "They lose business."

And the surge has provided an impetus to work with the Americans. The cooperation is temporary, but the tribal chieftans are beginning to understand that it is in their interest to help the Americans in order to achieve their own goals.

Despite the rising antipathy toward Al Qaeda, the tribal sheikhs in the Sunni regions in particular are very clear that their new alliance with the Americans is merely a tactical one. Sheikh Hussein summed it up: "We would like America, a friend, to rebuild the country. This is what we want, what the tribes want. But to stay here as a military force indefinitely is unacceptable." For Sheikh Hussein, however, the prospect of a speedy exit is also unacceptable. At a luncheon at a home of one of his cousins, he asked this reporter, "Please, tell the Democrats for now to stop pressuring Bush."

Perhaps stories like these will help inform the Democrats who say that they are willing to fight Al Qaeda but they want to pull out of Iraq in order to do so that we are actually fighting Al Qaeda right now in Iraq. If we left now, Al Qaeda's efforts to control their own no man's land in Iraq as a base similar to what they had in Afghanistan. Whether you supported the war in the first place, it doesn't make sense now to say that leaving Iraq would leave us in a position to better fight Al Qaeda. Instead, it would leave Al Qaeda with an actual as well as a propaganda victory that would come back to haunt us for a long, long time.

Perhaps they might do well to listen to some of the milbloggers whom Lorie Byrd heard at the Milbloggers Conference last week.

In Arlington last week, someone asked military blogger Jim of Sgt. Hook what he would say to those who want to support the troops by bringing them home. He said he would tell them "I don't want to come home until we win."