The Darkness Before the Dawn in Iraq?

The news from Iraq has been so unrelentingly horrible lately that it must be a sign we are winning: how else to explain the incredible depths of depravity the Al Queda operatives in Iraq have sunk? Only a Wahabbi fanatic would see blowing up a holy shrine or executing 47 innocents pulled from buses as steps toward restoring the Caliphate. Clearly, they are desperate, quite likely because they see their support among the Sunni insurgency slipping away. If the US is successful in luring Sunni leaders into active participation in the elected government, Al Queda in Iraq's days are numbered.

Zarqawi himself saw this situation developing back in February, 2004 when he wrote in an intercepted letter to Bin Laden:

. . . America did not come to leave, and it will not leave no matter how numerous its wounds become and how much of its blood is spilled. It is looking to the near future, when it hopes to disappear into its bases secure and at ease and put the battlefields of Iraq into the hands of the foundling government with an army and police that will bring the behavior of Saddam and his myrmidons back to the people. There is no doubt that the space in which we can move has begun to shrink and that the grip around the throats of the mujahidin has begun to tighten. With the deployment of soldiers and police, the future has become frightening.

To prevent these developments, he planned to try and foment a civil war between Iraq's Shia and Sunni communities in order to widen the conflict and wage jihad against the heretic Shia:

Our fighting against the Shi`a is the way to drag the [Islamic] nation into the battle. We speak here in some detail. We have said before that the Shi`a have put on the uniforms of the Iraqi army, police, and security [forces] and have raised the banner of preserving the homeland and the citizen. Under this banner, they have begun to liquidate the Sunnis under the pretext that they are saboteurs, remnants of the Ba`th, and terrorists spreading evil in the land. With strong media guidance from the Governing Council and the Americans, they have been able to come between the Sunni masses and the mujahidin. I give an example that brings the matter close to home in the area called the Sunni Triangle -- if this is the right name for it. The army and police have begun to deploy in those areas and are growing stronger day by day. They have put chiefs [drawn] from among Sunni agents and the people of the land in charge. In other words, this army and police may be linked to the inhabitants of this area by kinship, blood, and honor. In truth, this area is the base from which we set out and to which we return. When the Americans disappear from these areas - and they have begun to do so - and these agents, who are linked by destiny to the people of the land, take their place, what will our situation be?

If we fight them {and we must fight them}, we will confront one of two things. Either:

1. - We fight them, and this is difficult because of the gap that will emerge between us and the people of the land. How can we fight their cousins and their sons and under what pretext after the Americans, who hold the reins of power from their rear bases, pull back? The real sons of this land will decide the matter through experience. Democracy is coming, and there will be no excuse thereafter.
   
   
2. - We pack our bags and search for another land, as is the sad, recurrent story in the arenas of jihad, because our enemy is growing stronger and his intelligence data are increasing day by day. [Emphasis added]

Of course, Zarqawi left out a third option -- and my favorite -- that Al Queda in Iraq stay and fight until the last "martyr" has gone in search of their promised virgins. Of course, I may be deluding myself. And the Shia may yet rise to Zarqawi's bait and begin a religious civil war to exterminate the Sunni minority. But I hope not... for Iraq's sake as well as for our own.