IRAQ - Resurgence In The Shiite World - Part 8 - The Internal Forces.

Of the three main internal Iraqi forces - The Shiite Arabs, the Kurds and the Sunni Arabs - the Kurds are the most important from the US perspective. This is not only because they have proven to be the most reliable local allies of the Americans but also in view of their new position as the "king makers" in the post-Jan. 30 elections politics of Iraq.

The US wants to prevent a dismemberment of Iraq, which could be caused by civil war between the Sunni and Shiite Arabs. Among the Sunni Arab players on the Iraqi scene, the Salafis are determined to trigger this civil war. In this the Salafis - who field suicide bombers partly recruited from among Iraq's Islamist Kurds and Turkomans as well as few of Iraq's Sunni Arabs, and partly consisting of volunteers from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Sudan, Yemen and other countries - are lined into several dedicated groups.

The Salafi Groups: All of the Salafi groups are linked to Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda. This is a Wahhabi terrorist organisation bent on triggering the civil war in Iraq and on toppling regimes from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to Pakistan and the rest of the Muslim world. The affiliated Salafi groups in Iraq include the following:

Al-Qaeda Organisation for Jihad in Mesopotamia, led by Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi -Iraq's most wanted man who is a Jordanian of Palestinian origin. This acts a chief co-ordinator among the many Salafi groups. In turn, but through Zarqawi's group, these co-ordinate with the Baathist insurgents and Jordan-based leaders of Sunni Arab tribes as well as the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS). The latter consist mainly of Muslim Brotherhood (MB) religious men who used to co-operate with Saddam's Baathist regime and its various secret services (see rim2bIraqJordanFeb14-05).

Hours after an attack on a US convoy or an Iraqi police patrol, a brief statement begins appearing on Islamist Websites claiming the attack was carried out by fighters loyal to Abu Zarqawi. Every day now, new messages appear on the Web offering encouragement to resistance fighters, and recently Zarqawi's group started an Internet magazine. Other Islamist groups are joining the effort, including one calling itself the Jihadist Information Brigade.

This and the other Salafi groups have mounted a full-scale propaganda war. While the methods are not new - most militant groups now rely on the Web to recruit new adherents - the recent flurry of propaganda has had a distinctly defensive sound. The violence has not let up, but the relatively peaceful elections, and the new movements towards democracy in other Arab countries, appear to have had a dispiriting effect on the Sunni insurgents. On March 12, The New York Times quoted Rita Katz, director of the SITE Institute, a US non-profit group which monitors Islamist Websites and news operations involving terrorists, as saying: "I think they feel they are losing the battle. They realize there will be a new government soon, and they seem very nervous about the future".

One recent Web posting, for instance, angrily disputed "the infidels' claim that the mujahedeen are weakened and their attacks are fewer". Another insisted that Zarqawi was "in good health" and still planning operations. Yet another warned against recent entreaties to insurgents to "sit down at the bargaining table" with Americans and their allies. Even before the Jan. 30 elections, Zarqawi released a tape of a lengthy didactic speech explaining why democracy was heretical.

The new Internet magazine repeats some of that material and makes further efforts to persuade Iraqis that, when it is finally formed, the new elected government will not be legitimate. Zarqawi's group is also making efforts to cast itself as a defender of Muslim lives. After a March 9 attack on a hotel in central Baghdad, the group quickly released an Internet statement taking responsibility. It noted: "As for the time, the deadly attack should always be before the start of the working day so that it won't harm Muslims who are passing by". In the previous week, the Zarqawi group quickly denied news reports that it was responsible for a suicide car bomb in the Shiite town of Hilla, south of Baghdad, which killed 136 people. The attack was aimed at police and army recruits gathering outside a clinic, but many civilians, including women and children, were also killed. Residents of Hilla staged large and angry demonstrations against the violence which was featured on Arabic TV and Websites. The Zarqawi group's denial noted, correctly, that it had taken responsibility for a separate attack on the same day aimed at American soldiers in southern Baghdad, not for the Hilla attack.

Terrorist groups around the world rely increasingly on Internet chat rooms, more anonymous than traditional Websites, to recruit fighters and to communicate with one another. Zarqawi became widely known last year after his group released a videotape of the beheading of an American hostage, Nicholas Berg, and in a sense he is simply bringing his news operation up a notch. But the Salafi jihadists seem highly sensitive to perceptions that they have been weakened or demoralised in recent weeks. Many of the groups' new messages, for instance, refer to US claims that some of Zarqawi's loyalists have been captured, and that the noose is tightening around him.

Jihadists complain their own successes are not getting enough play. On March 7 they demanded in a statement: "Where are the media correspondents in Iraq, and where is the media coverage in Mosul, Anbar, Diyala, Samarra', Basra and southern Baghdad?". To some extent, the insurgents are creating their own media coverage. After the hotel attack in Baghdad on March 9, the group quickly issued their own videotape of the bombing, along with statements explaining why and how they chose their target. Within hours, all of it was appearing not only on Arabic Websites and chat rooms, but on TV and even in some Western news reports. But just in case, they are adding a forum of their own as well.

The Internet magazine is called Zurwat Al Sanam (Arabic for "the top of the camel's hump"), a metaphorical phrase meaning the ideal of Islamic belief and practice. Like other Qaeda Web publications, it is partly a reaction to Arab state media, which often refuse to acknowledge terrorist attacks. But the new propaganda effort is also motivated by a belief that, as the war grinds on, it may get harder to recruit foreign fighters. For this reason, the Zarqawi group appears to be focusing more on winning and retaining the sympathies of Iraqis.

On March 9 a message was posted on an Islamist Internet message board pointing out that the recent shooting of a newly freed Italian hostage had increased political pressures on Italy to withdraw its troops from Iraq. The writer proposed taking another Italian hostage in Iraq to "add fuel to the fire while it is hot" and perhaps force Italy out of Iraq. That posting drew a response from Abu Maysar Al-Iraqi, the pen name of the spokesman for Zarqawi's group. He promised to "repeat the nightmare, again and again".

Ansar Al-Islam, a group of mainly Kurdish and Turkoman Wahhabis who include well-trained fighters and suicide bombers, was founded by a Wahhabi religious man, Mullah Krekar, who has lived in Norway but the Norwegian government recently ordered his deportation. Ansar Al-Islam was an offshoot of Al-Qaeda based in the eastern mountains of Iraq's Kurdistan. During the US-led war in March, the group's base was heavily bombarded and its members fled across the nearby border into Iran. They returned clandestinely after the US-led invasion and established a secret base within the Sunni Triangle, mainly in the Mosul region, in Tal Afar near the Syrian border and in the nearby town of Al-Qa'im.

Jaysh Ansar Al-Sunna, another group of mainly Kurdish and Turkoman Wahabis which seems to be larger than Ansar Al-Islam. The Jaysh used to be part of Ansar Al-Islam and established its own group early on in the insurgency, after the fall of Saddam's regime in April 2003. The Jaysh is based in the Sunni Triangle, mainly in the Mosul region, in Tal Afar near the Syrian border and in the nearby town of Al-Qa'im. Like Ansar Al-Islam, Zarqawi's group and other Salafi gangs, the Jaysh operates throughout the Sunni Triangle and often penetrate Shiite areas south of Baghdad in an area called "Death Triangle".

A Salafi suicide bomber went into a Shiite mosque in Mosul on March 10 and detonated explosives strapped to his body, killing at least 50 people and wounding over 80 others. The suicide attack took place in mid-afternoon as the Sadaan Mosque in Mosul's Al-Tamin neighbourhood was packed with Shiite mourners gathered for the funeral of a man belonging to Muqtada Al-Sadr's Shiite movement who had died two days earlier.

Sadi Ahmed Pire, head of the Mosul office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of the two main Kurdish political parties, was on March 11 quoted as saying the aim of the attack was to cause a Shiite-Sunni war. Pire said the suicide bomber managed to walk into the meeting place, within the mosque, and detonated himself in the middle of the gathering of mourners.

Most of those killed in the bombing were Shiite Kurds and Turkomen, Pire said. Mosul, a city of two million, is a cauldron of ethnic groups, with the eastern part of the city mainly controlled by Kurds. The insurgency in Mosul is led by Sunni Arabs who live mostly in the city's western quarters.

In other violence on March 10, Salafi or Baathist gunmen killed two people in Baghdad, one day after authorities said they had found dozens of corpses - some bullet-riddled, others beheaded - at two different sites within the Sunni Triangle. Gunmen in two cars on March 10 opened fire on a pickup truck in central Baghdad carrying Col. Ahmad Abeis, the head of the Salihiyah police station in western Baghdad, killing him, his driver and a guard. Last month about 70 people were killed in a series of suicide bombing attacks on worshippers celebrating the Shiite holiday of Ashoura.