The Battle for Anbar

A look at mainstream media coverage of events as they unfolded - this entry is designed as a companion piece to an upcoming series here.

In January, 2006, USA Today ran a story headlined "General sees rift in Iraq enemy " - a rift described as "an opportunity for American forces to try to persuade local guerrillas to put down their weapons and join the political process":

"Now you actually have a wedge, or a split, between the Sunni population and al-Qaeda in Iraq," said Maj. Gen. Richard Zahner, deputy chief of staff for intelligence for multinational forces in Iraq. "It poses a significant crossroads for these groups as they look at where they head."
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Al-Qaeda's aim of turning Iraq into a strict Islamic caliphate has turned some Iraqi fighters against the group, Zahner said.

By February 06, 2006, The Christian Science Monitor headlined Sunni tribes turn against jihadis:

"We realized that these foreign terrorists were hiding behind the veil of the noble Iraqi resistance," says Mr. Jadaan. "They claim to be striking at the US occupation, but the reality is they are killing innocent Iraqis in the markets, in mosques, in churches, and in our schools."

In Anbar Province, an insurgent hotbed that borders Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, US and Iraqi officials say they have a new ally against the Al Qaeda-inspired terrorists: local tribal leaders like Jadaan and home-grown Iraqi insurgents.

It's a statistic that Jedaan, the tribal sheikh, is well aware of. "Iraq has its men, its honorable resistance, and we will drive out the Americans and liberate our country ourselves."

A prominent Sunni Muslim cleric and civic leader who ran for a seat in Iraq's parliament and worked closely with American forces policing Fallujah was fatally shot Tuesday on his way to work in the western city.
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Residents of Fallujah described the attack on Nazzal, who died at a hospital hours after being shot, as a chilling blow to the city. U.S. and Iraqi officials recently described Fallujah as rebounding from the devastation wrought in November 2004 during a U.S. offensive against insurgents who had massed there.

"Like many people, I am worried now about myself -- maybe I will be the next target -- and I don't know how to behave," said Fawzi Muhammed, deputy chairman of Fallujah's reconstruction committee, who has worked with U.S. forces. "Really, it's such a bad situation here now. Most of the responsible people will want to leave their work."
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The Fallujah city council accused al Qaeda in Iraq of assassinating Nazzal. "They killed him because he was known for his attitude against them," said Ahmed Alwan, a council member. "He urged the people to participate in the elections and to join the police and army in Fallujah and Ramadi."

A SUNNI tribal leader was murdered in the Iraqi city of Ramadi a day after taking part in talks with American and Iraqi officials aimed at curbing violence there.
Sheikh Nasser Kareem al-Fahdawi, head of the al-Bu Fahad tribe and a physics professor at Anbar University, was shot by insurgents opposed to the talks in late December.

His killing came 24 hours after he had joined tribal leaders representing insurgent groups in a meeting with Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, and Ibrahim Jaafari, the Shi’ite prime minister.

A source within the tribe, who is also a member of Al-Qaeda, indicated that he believed al-Fahdawi had been too sympathetic towards the United States during talks. “He was a traitor who deserved to be killed,” he said.

Two other tribal leaders have also been killed after revealing that they took part in talks and encouraging people to heed the American demands.

BAGHDAD, March 6 -- First they killed the chief of the Naim tribe and his son. Then they killed a top tribal sheik who headed the Fallujah city council. Then they assassinated the leader of the al-Jubur tribe.

And now the reported killers of all these men -- al-Qaeda in Iraq, the insurgent group of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- have a powerful new enemy.

Tribal chiefs in Iraq's western Anbar province and in an area near the northern city of Kirkuk, two regions teeming with insurgents, are vowing to strike back at al-Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni Arab-led group that is waging war against Sunni tribal leaders who are cooperating with the Iraqi government and the U.S. military. Anbar tribes have formed a militia that has killed 20 insurgents from al-Qaeda in Iraq, leaders said.
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"Forming the group did not come from nothing," said Khalaf al-Fahdawi, a leader of the Sunni Albu Fahd tribe in Anbar. "It came from a need to destroy al-Qaeda, which we thought the Marines might have been able to do. We were wrong, since these armed men became stronger and raped other cities."

Leaders in Anbar and south of Kirkuk said they opposed both Zarqawi and the American military occupation of Iraq, describing them as feeding off each other to the detriment of the country.

"We are a group of the Anbar people who want to get rid of Zarqawi . . . because this is the only way to make the Americans withdraw from Ramadi or Iraq in general," said Ahmed Abu Ilaf, 30, a welder and member of the new Anbar militia from Ramadi, about 60 miles west of the capital.

Fahdawi, the sheik from the Albu Fahd tribe, said the militia was forged in a series of secret meetings among tribal leaders, each of whom was asked to help form the group. Some contributed men, some money, Fahdawi said. U.S. military officers attended some of the meetings, he said, and helped "with "all kinds of financial support."

Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, denied that American forces were funding the militia.

"All military activity is conducted through the legitimate structures of the Iraqi government and security forces," he said in an e-mail. "We are working hard to ensure these structures function properly, and funding a program such as this would only undermine that process."

An al Qaeda spokesman responded:

A fighter in Zarqawi's group, calling himself Abu Azzam, said the al-Anbar Revolutionaries "are collaborators and dogs for America. They kill the mujaheddin to get money from the American crusaders. They are cowards and we have killed a lot of them. . . . All the people here support us and our jihad against the Americans and their followers."

In fact, within a few months of that final mention negative reporting from Iraq became so overwhelming that even the death of al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi was portrayed as a marginally significant event, at best:

BAGHDAD, June 8 --Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the mastermind behind hundreds of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings in Iraq, was killed early Wednesday by an airstrike --north of Baghdad, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday.
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His killing is the most significant public triumph for the U.S.-led military coalition in Iraq since the 2003 capture of Saddam Hussein, although analysts warned that Zarqawi's death may not stem the tide of insurgency and violence any more than Hussein's capture did. Copying Osama bin Laden's leadership strategy, Zarqawi set up numerous semi-autonomous terrorist cells across Iraq, many of which could continue operating after his death.
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Amir Muhammed Ali, a 45-year-old stock broker in Baghdad, was skeptical that al-Zarqawi's death would end the unrelenting sectarian violence and said the Iraqi resistance to U.S.-led forces likely would continue.

"He didn't represent the resistance, someone will replace him and the operations will go on," he said.

The assassination Thursday of the leader of the Sunni Arab revolt against al-Qaida militants dealt a setback to one of the few success stories in U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq, but tribesmen in Anbar province vowed not to be deterred in fighting the terror movement.
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Still, the loss of such a charismatic leader is bound to complicate efforts to recruit more tribal leaders in the war against the terror network. Two Pentagon officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the matter, said the assassination sent a chilling message about the consequences of cooperating with the Americans.

But even the release of a letter from senior al Qaeda leaders to Zarqawi (a document that clearly demonstrated the weakened position of the group in Iraq) was discovered and released, many pundits chose to tout it as evidence that the hopes for coalition success in Iraq had actually diminished with Zarqawi's death.

Throughout the remainder of 2006 the growing "Awakening Movement" would be largely ignored in the American media. That trend would continue well into 2007, until the point that the turnaround in fortunes that accompanied the surge was undeniable. As noted previously, at that point it was hailed as "the real reason" for decreased violence in Iraq - the surge itself (and the efforts of American troops) was a failure.