Eye on the Middle East -- Has Al Qaeda Left Iraq? Has U.S. Strategy Changed?

In the past three years Iraqi guerrillas worked with Al Qaeda fighters, or Arab Afghans, in attacking U.S. occupation forces and undermining the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government. There are now reports in Arab media, however, that Al Qaeda fighters are leaving Iraq because the resistance has turned against them.

Al Watan Al Arabi magazine reported that Arab Afghans fighting in Iraq are now returning to Afghanistan and the tribal areas in Pakistan by the hundreds. They are settling in areas under Taliban control in preparation for increasing the number of attacks, to more than 500 a month, on Afghan government and NATO forces in the spring.

Mullah Muhammad Atta, an Afghani Mujahdeen leader, told the Al Watan Al Arabi that leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban will coordinate their attacks under a new strategy aimed at expanding their influence to new areas in Afghanistan, instead of hit-and-run guerilla tactics.

According to Atta, Al Zawahiri, who personally called on Arab Afghani fighters to return to Afghanistan, has formed alliances with tribes in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region through a series of meetings. According to Al Watan Al Arabi, the U.S. air strike that targeted Al Zawahiri on Jan. 13, 2006, in Pakistan, was in fact was aimed at one of those meetings. Al Zawahiri was supposed to meet with tribal leaders to get their help in ensuring the free movement of Al Qaeda fighters, especially those returning from Iraq.

The arrival Al Qaeda fighters to Afghanistan may explain the sudden increase of suicide bombings there which, according to Abu Dhabi television, totaled 14 in the past three months.

Why is Al Qaeda leaving Iraq?

Riyad Alam Dean wrote in Al Watan Al Arabi that the American administration has decided to turn its strategy in Iraq "180 degrees" by dropping previous plans to hand Iraq to the Shiites. Instead, the United States has decided to empower Sunnis and use them to undermine Iran's role in Iraq.

Dean's article, published on Feb. 10, claims that the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has finally persuaded the Sunni resistance, including senior Baathists in the former Iraqi army, to get rid of Al Qaeda fighters in Iraq in exchange for 1) the reappointment of Baathist officials to sensitive political positions and 2) the removal of Shiite militias, especially the Badr Corps from the interior ministry. These militias were implicated in torture and reprisal killings of Sunnis.

Two days latter, on Feb. 20, Khalilzad publicly threatened to cut off funding to the Iraqi government if the ministries of defense and interior remained under "sectarian" control.

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