Iraq & The Challenges For USA - The Challenges Of Terrorism - Part 5A.

Fixing Iraq, now the epicentre of Sunni Muslim (mainly Salafi/Baathist} terrorism, is the most challenging foreign policy mission for the US. There are two immediate challenges between now and end-2005: preventing a low-intensity war between the Sunni and Shiite Arabs from causing Iraq to be split - a split which could cause the whole Middle East to be partitioned once again; and, at the same time, having a viable strategy to turn a war of attrition against the US military presence in Iraq into a national struggle for reconstruction.

In concentrating on the two challenges, the US will have to deal effectively with those of Iraq's immediate neighbours - mainly the Shiite theocracy of Iran and the Baathists of Syria - whose objective is a defeat for the American project for the democratisation of the Greater Middle East (GME). Syria's Baathist regime has been weakened by a number of factors having emerged since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 (see Syria survey serialised in SBME Vol. 49). But the Iranian theocracy has been getting stronger since March 2003 and the way the US is tackling it is not certain to bear a good result for Washington (see Iran in this volume's Part 4). Yet the strongest military power on earth is not short of resources to deal effectively with Iran, having the Kurds among its various regional cards (see news11cKurdsSep12-05).

Fighting Salafi Terrorism: At the same time, the US will have to deal a fatal blow to the Salafi terrorism of al-Qaeda. Stripped of its Afghan haven and chased across the globe, al-Qaeda's terror network is increasingly resorting to "media jihad", four years after the Sept. 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks on the US for which it took credit.

The Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF), heir to the "Global Front for Fighting Jews and Christians" set up in 1998 by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, presents itself as the hub for al-Qaeda propaganda on the Internet. Its emergence is testament to the weight now being placed by Salafi militants on winning over minds to their cause through new media in the absence of any physical command headquarters.

"Unite, O Muslims of the world, behind the Global Islamic Media Front. Set up squadrons of media jihad to break Zionist control over the media and terrorize the enemies", the GIMF's "emir", who goes by the nom de guerre of "Salaheddin II", exhorts al-Qaeda followers on the Internet. The GIMF sys it is "a new base of Islamic information on the Internet". His deputy, "Ahmad al-Watheq Billah" adds: "Our goal is to denounce the Zionist enemy. The Front does not belong to anyone. It is the property of all Muslims and knows no geographical boundaries. All IT and communication experts, producers and photographers...are welcome to join". It has so far posted some 350 documents on Islamist Websites, including footage of military operations in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and other places where "the mujahideen" (holy warriors) operate. Its latest production, a five-segment six-minute film titled "Bloody Comedy", was "the fruit of the cameras of the mujahideen in the Land of Two Rivers [Iraq]", which "exposed American soldiers, Allah's enemies". It wrote: "To all Americans, watch how your sons fight. Don't believe what your media [report]". The video showed an army Humvee blown up by an explosive device in Iraq and a reporter for the US TV network Fox News reporting that two American soldiers were wounded in the "accident", but their injuries were not serious "and they resumed their work right after [receiving] some care".

The Front recently posted a so-called "Top Ten" of bloody attacks against US forces carried out by the Islamic Army in Iraq and the al-Qaeda Organisation for Jihad in the Land of Two Rivers (Mesopotamia), the group of al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi. The 17-minute video is aimed at "those who like to see American crusader blood flowing", the GIMF said. One segment showed US soldiers' bodies torn to pieces in an attack near the Syrian border claimed by Zarqawi's group. Another scene showed seven US soldiers whose bodies were pulverised in a land mine explosion, before other US soldiers came to collect their remains.

The Internet is loaded with literature destined to recruit fighters and teach them the tactics of guerrilla warfare and - primarily - how to manufacture explosives in an effort to groom lone terrorists not necessarily linked to al-Qaeda or some local variation of the network. Agence France Presse on Sept. 10 quoted Yasser al-Sirri, head of the London-based Islamic Observatory, as saying: "With the 'war on terror' continuing, al-Qaeda can no longer find the space to meet, set up camps and train members, so it established a new 'command headquarters' on the Internet to spread fear among its adversaries and boost its men's morale. The new generation of Islamist militants realised long ago that al-Qaeda is no match for the United States and its allies. But AFP quoted Jason Burke, a British expert in terrorist groups, as saying: "the militants clearly have an edge in the propaganda battle, a crucial component of the war on terror. The terrorists have become producers and film directors, and video cameras have become their most potent weapon".