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Al Qaeda faces Iraqi insurgent backlash

July 13th, 2007 by Double Tap

Michael Yon, as usual, is kicking the main stream media’s collective ass.

Yon, an independent embed in Iraq funded solely by reader contributions, isn’t afraid to get out in a Stryker, move with American forces, and provide hard-hitting and very accurate updates on what’s really going on in the parts of Iraq he’s visiting. That’s as opposed to the majority of media that parks itself in the Baghdad Green Zone and has Iraqi “sources” call in their information.

Today, Yon has a great piece on the turn-around in Anbar province, to include former Iraqi insurgents of the 1920 Revolution Brigades working with American forces to drive out the foreign-led Al Qaeda forces in that area. Here’s some excerpts:

I was standing there with Abu Ali, with American soldiers and 1920s people milling all around. We had certainly killed a lot of his people, and the 1920s certainly had killed many American soldiers. During severe fighting with al Qaeda in April 2007, the 1920s reached out to American soldiers, and together they have been dismantling al Qaeda here in Baqubah and other places…

…Al Qaeda’s ultimate failure in much of Anbar and now in parts of Diyala relates back to one of the pillars of success—or failure—in this war: Values. People who understand how to tamp down this war realize the critical pillar that values can play into success or failure in counterinsurgency, or COIN…

…Abu Ali said that on 1 April 2007, he and his people attacked al Qaeda in Buhriz for their crimes against Islam. He also said something that many Muslims have said to me: al Qaeda are not Muslims. (Both Sunni and Shia have said nearly the exact same words, at times on video.) Abu Ali said they fought hard against al Qaeda, and on 10 April, they asked the Americans to join the attack. It worked…

…Speaking through LT David Wallach, a native Arabic speaker, Abu Ali said that “al Qaeda is an abomination of Islam: cutting off heads, stealing people’s money, kidnapping . . . every type of torture they have done.”

The recent stories of baked children came to mind. I asked if Abu Ali had heard about children being baked. Ali said no, he had not heard such a story, but he would not be surprised if it were true because al Qaeda had done so many crimes, such as cutting off a man’s head, putting it up on a stick and parading it around town…

Some, especially those who do not understand the conduct and nature of counterinsurgency warfare, would question our current alliance with insurgent groups like the 1920s. However, both the 1920s and us know that the real problem in Iraq is Al Qaeda. The left scoffs at this notion, but the facts continually bear themselves out. Yes, the 1920s want us to leave. If I was an Iraqi, I wouldn’t want a foreign occupier either. But they also know that Al Qaeda is also an occupier - an occupier that beheads those who don’t play along.

Over here, the fact of al Qaeda murdering children is just that: it’s a fact. How they chose to commit the murders is a variable that changes from incident to incident. I’ve written often about how Iraqis, as a rule, love and greatly value their children. This makes the children especially vulnerable as targets for terrorists. That is a brutal fact.

Al Qaeda drinks and uses drugs here. This is not propaganda. This is not even news, it’s a fact that I wrote about back in 2005. Zarqawi, the now-dead former leader of AQI, was best known for causing the deaths of thousands or tens of thousands of Iraqis, and raping women all over the land and over in Jordan. Whether Zarqawi raped women from village to village, or one woman from each village, I do not know. But Zarqawi cultivated his image like a pro. Rape and murder were his trademarks.

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