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Al-Zarqawi Overplays Hand: Even Anti-American Elements Unite Against Him
EFL Key Iraqi opponents of the U.S. occupation expressed unease Friday over the wave of insurgent attacks that killed more than 100 Iraqis a day earlier, and rejected efforts by foreign guerrillas to take the lead in the insurgency and mate it with the international jihad advocated by Osama bin Laden. "We do not need anyone from outside the borders to stand with us and spill the blood of our sons in Iraq," Ahmed Abdul Ghafour Samarrae, a Sunni cleric with a wide following, declared in his Friday sermon at Umm al Qurra mosque in Baghdad. Since they were appointed three weeks ago, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and members of his U.S.-sponsored interim government have railed against the car bombings and other attacks. But Fridayâs show of disgust — expressed in mosques and, in Sadrâs case, with fliers calling for cooperation with Iraqi police — marked the first time anti-occupation clerics and fighters sided against violence associated with the insurgency, for which Zarqawi has increasingly asserted responsibility. In that light, it could be an important moment in the U.S. struggle to win acceptance for the military occupation and for the interim government scheduled to acquire limited authority next Wednesday. While far from embracing the U.S. occupation or the new government, the anti-occupation leaders seemed to disavow the bloodiest edge of the violence and Zarqawiâs attempt to make it part of al Qaedaâs vision of international jihad. Samarrae said he had learned that some Iraqi insurgent leaders have begun to clash with Zarqawi loyalists, insisting the jihadists do not represent the "right and true resistance." He warned against those who he said want to tear the country apart in the name of Islam and suggested they were foreigners who should not be part of Iraqâs conflict. "This is the first time we have heard the minaret broadcast support for the Iraqi government," said Edward Peter Messmer, the occupation authorityâs coordinator for the Baqubah region, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. "And it couldnât come at a better time." Sadr, whose Mahdi Army has fought U.S. troops in the Sadr City slum in eastern Baghdad and in Najaf, 90 miles to the south, ordered his followers to lay down their weapons and cooperate with Iraqi police in Sadr City to "deprive the terrorists and saboteurs of the chance to incite chaos and extreme lawlessness." Aws Khafaji, a cleric in Sadrâs militantly political stream of Shiite Islam, disowned Thursdayâs violence even more clearly in a sermon at the Hikma mosque in Sadr City. "We condemn and denounce yesterdayâs bombings and attacks on police centers and innocent Iraqis, which claimed about 100 lives," he said. "These are attacks launched by suspects and lunatics who are bent on destabilizing the country and ruining the peace so that the Iraqi people will remain in need of American protection." Posted by: sludj 2004-06-26 |
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