In Al Qaeda letter, a strategic blueprint

The bottom line is that popular support may be the difference between victory or defeat. "We are in a battle, and ... more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media," says the letter.

Last Thursday, Al Qaeda's wing in Iraq denounced the document as a fake. In the US, some experts noted its convenient release date, just prior to Saturday's Iraqi constitutional vote, and the fact that the English translation of the text did not contain many of the flowery religious asides that have characterized Al Qaeda communications in the past.

The blessing on the prophet Muhammad invoked at the letter's beginning doesn't sound right, according to Juan Cole University of Michigan Middle East expert. He claims it appears to reflect Shiite, not Sunni, language.

"My gut tells me the letter is a forgery," Mr. Cole wrote Friday on his popular Middle East website, adding that Shiite groups in Iraq may have produced it.

The US government, for its part, has vehemently defended the missive's authenticity.

"It shows clearly the nature of the enemy we're dealing with," says State Department spokesman Adam Ereli.

Other experts say the letter's contents should not seem too surprising. It's true that serious splits in the jihadist movement have emerged in recent months, centering on the war in Iraq and Zarqawi's use of suicide bombings, says Bernard Haykel, an associate professor of Islamic studies at New York University.

He says it's easy to find evidence on jihadist websites and online journals that Zarqawi's attacks on ordinary Shiites in Iraq are turning many Muslims against the jihadists altogether.

It's possible the attacks "are making them lose credibility with their support base," says Mr. Haykel.

The issue for the jihadists may well be a practical one - possible loss of support in the region - rather than respect for Shiite religious rights.

In Iraq, the most extreme of the insurgents, such as the Al Qaeda contingent led by Zarqawi, see their current activities as part of a broader struggle for an Islam dominated by their narrow view of Sunni Puritanism, writes Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The question is not whether there will be a struggle against Shiites, but when.

"Such insurgents do not have to 'win' in Iraq, at least in any conventional sense of the term," writes Mr. Cordesman in his latest report on insurgent patterns. "An outcome that leaves Iraq in a state of prolonged civil war, and forces a spreading conflict in Islam between Sunnis and other sects ..., would be seen as a prelude to a broader eschatological conflict they believe is inevitable and that God will ensure they win."

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