Gen. Petraeus ranked the enemies the U.S. is fighting in Iraq at the behest of Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL), and there was a notable absence: the non-al-Qaeda Sunni insurgency. All of a sudden, practically every Sunni anti-U.S. fighter is now defined as al-Qaeda.
Petraeus listed al-Qaeda as “the wolf closest to the shed,” followed by Shiite militias, who are the cause of much of the “ethno-sectarian violence in Baghdad.” After that came the “non-kinetic” enemies, such as getting the “institutional structures” established for the Iraqi government, problems with training the Iraqi security forces, corruption and so forth. As he was finishing his list, Petraeus then realized he had forgotten someone: “There are certainly still some Sunni insurgents out there.”
Al-Qaeda in Iraq is, at most, 15 percent of the Sunni insurgency. One expert, Malcolm Nance, who’s worked with the U.S. military and intelligence in Iraq, puts AQI at two to five percent of the Sunni insurgency. It’s good news that several insurgent groups, like the 1920 Revolution Brigades, have turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and toward us. The August National Intelligence Estimate is silent on the Sunni insurgency, but certainly doesn’t say it has been marginalized.
That shouldn’t be surprising: the recent ABC/BBC/NHK poll found that 93 percent of Sunnis believe that attacks on the U.S. are justified. What’s more, the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni clerical powerhouse, recently issued a communique to the entire, fractious Sunni “resistance.” If there’s only a rump Sunni insurgency, someone forgot to tell the AMS.
Petraeus has repeatedly referred to himself as a “realist” over the past two days. But suggesting the Sunni insurgency is diminished to the point of marginality after the anti-al-Qaeda shift is, at best, wishful thinking.
