Neo-Salafis Are Moving Their Base To Iraq, With Bin Laden-Mullah Omar Ties Strained.

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DUBAI - Al-Qaeda, the main trans-national network of the Neo-Salafi movement, has begun moving its main base of operations from Afghanistan to Iraq. The most radical among the various branches of Sunni Islam, the Neo-Salafis want to revive the Sunni caliphate in Iraq. They prefer Iraq because in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda's head Osama bin Laden is no longer as close to the Taliban leadership there as he used to be in late 2001. Bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar now are at odds with one another.

In Iraq, bin Laden is counting on the Mujahedin Shura Council (MSC) which groups the country's al-Qaeda franchise and several other Neo-Salafi organisations. But the most important factor behind bin Laden's planned move to Iraq is that al-Qaeda's trans-national system is being "re-Arabised" with Iraqis being gradually promoted to the top.

Although al-Qaeda still depends heavily on non-Arab recruits, an APS source explains, bin Laden and his deputy, Egyptian Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, now prefer to keep leadership posts in Arab hands with emphasis on Iraqi participation. They want the MSC to become the ruling council for the entire Neo-Salafi movement in Iraq, from which they hope a caliph will be chosen to rule the country.

Once ruling Iraq, with the US-led multinational forces (MNF) ousted, the caliphate will have a pan-Islamic wing to take over power first in neighbouring Arab countries and later in other parts of the Muslim world. But the pan-Islamic wing will not be limiting its actions to the Muslim world as it is today; it wants to rule over the entire globe eventually - this being in accordance with the Neo-Salafi ideology.

The MSC in Iraq is headed by two parallel figures: Abdel-Hadi al-Iraqi - an Iraqi who has been one of bin Laden's main partners even before the founding of al-Qaeda and long before Dr. Zawahiri joined the group in the late 1990s - and Abdul-Rashid al-Baghdadi, another Iraqi. Whereas al-Iraqi is the MSC spiritual/ideological leader, al-Baghdadi is the council's military commander. Al-Iraqi is superior to al-Baghdadi and is closer to bin Laden than the latter.

The rise of the MSC in early 2006 had come as a coup against Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi, Iraq's al-Qeeda leader who was killed by a US air strike near Ba'quba on June 7. To Zarqawi, a Jordanian whose status had risen above that of bin Laden, the MSC was a mere consultative body. But in reality the MSC was bin Laden's main vehicle to assume control in Iraq. (For an idea how Neo-Salafis are planning their caliphate see rim6-IraqZarqawiJun19-06 and for hints that bin Laden's allies were actually behind Zarqawi's elimination see sbme1-Iraqanti-Ba'thSalafiDriveJuly-10-06).

Zarqawi's successor as head of Iraq's al-Qaeda branch is Abu Hamza al-Muhajir (or Muhajer). The US military in Iraq believe he is an Egyptian whose real name is Abu Ayyub al-Masri who attended al-Qaeda's training courses in Afghanistan and used to be a close associate of Zarqawi even before moving into Iraq.

Put together, the Neo-Salafi groups in Iraq still do not constitute a major threat to the US-led MNF presence in the country. But they hope they will gain from US mistakes and from their war with the Shi'ites, as well as from Israel's current wars against Hamas in Gaza and Hizbullah in Lebanon (see new survey of Iraq in this week's package (fap1-IraqSectarianJuly17-06).

Al-Qaeda's network is closely tied to Neo-Salafi branches of the Muslim Brotherbood (MB) and Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT), which are also trans-national and associated with regional groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IUM). A Neo-Salafi group closely allied with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the IUM operates in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan.

Asia Times Online (ATO) on July 8 began a report with this: "Osama bin Laden is ill and invisible, but five years after...[9/11], his al-Qaeda movement has become the fulcrum of a global, Islamic resistance against the United States. Asia Times Online has learned from an operative close to the al-Qaeda leadership that bin Laden languishes on a dialysis machine, in rapidly declining health". ATO quoted the operative, whom it called "Abdullah", as saying bin Laden was "in a poor condition when my father last visited".

ATO said Abdullah's father, known as "Sheikh Ibrahim", was "number two after Tahir Yuldeshev in the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IUM)". ATO said Ibrahim's meeting with bin Laden had taken place "a few weeks ago" and that its interview with "Abdullah" had taken place "at the end of June in a northern Pakistani city". He had travelled there from North Waziristan, a Pakistani tribal agency on the Afghan border, to meet ATO's correspondent.

The report then said: "He [bin Laden] asked all of us to pray for his health. For the past many months he has been on dialysis and just cannot move. My father never told me where he was when he met Osama...but he was worried about his fast-waning health".