Let Iraq's Sunnis chase Al Qaeda out

Further, a coalition of nationalist guerrillas in the Anbar region have released a joint statement urging fellow Sunnis to vote Thursday and warning Al Qaeda militants not to attack voters. This warning is another indicator of the widening rift between homegrown Iraqi fighters and the Al Qaeda network, who have been, until recently, cooperating in their efforts to expel US forces.

Zarqawi's indiscriminate slaughter of civilian Shiites reportedly pushed many Iraqis who had fought under his banner to join the Islamic Army, a local resistance faction. According to Sheikh Mahmoud Mehdi al-Sumaydai, a member of the Association of Muslim Scholars, Iraq's highest Sunni religious authority with links to the rebellion, called on Iraqis to resist not just foreign occupation but also Zarqawi's "masked terrorism." Now more and more Sunnis say Zarqawi is impeding their ability to regain a measure of political influence in the new Iraq. They resent the lumping of their nationalist resistance with Zarqawi's small but deadly operation.

Al Qaeda lacks the military capability or the broad power base for a permanent foothold in Iraq. In fact, thought prevails within the country that once US troops have withdrawn, Zarqawi would be chased out. Since the hotel bombings in Zarqawi's native Jordan, Sunni public opinion in Iraq and elsewhere turned against his global jihad ideology. Zarqawi is a creature of the war in Iraq, and his fate depends on the social turmoil there. Once Sunni Iraqis are fully brought into the new political order in Baghdad, they will find it in their own interests to defeat the terrorists in their midst.

The Cairo tentative agreement, a pivotal milestone, brought all Iraqi communities together and offered a peaceful vision - a way out of the violent struggle - that must be translated into action in a much larger reconciliation conference in late February.

The US should not cut and run from Iraq. But setting a realistic timetable for withdrawing forces is crucial to co-opting disaffected Sunnis into politics and weaning them off the armed struggle. That would also force Iraqi communities to compromise with one another and resolve their political differences. Equally important, extracting the US from Arabia's shifting sands would make young Muslims, enraged by the American occupation of an Islamic country, less receptive to Al Qaeda's global jihad call.

• Fawaz A. Gerges, a professor of Middle Eastern studies and international affairs at Sarah Lawrence College, is the author of "The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global."

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