U.S. spotlights Al Qaeda in Iraq weakness
The US military released four pages of a 39-page, typewritten Arabic document believed to be from a top Al Qaeda in Iraq leader.
from the February 11, 2008 edition
Page 3 of 3
This past Wednesday, Smith released footage of a video seized in December by Coalition forces in the town of Khan Bani Saad, north of Baghdad. It shows children possibly as young as 7 wearing black masks and brandishing heavy weaponry being coached by an off-camera adult on how to kidnap people and storm buildings.
Smith says the video, which is intended by Al Qaeda as a propaganda tool for recruitment, is aimed at demonstrating especially to Iraqis the callousness of the organization. "We want to be transparent with Iraqi people, who are our primary audience."
The Dubai-based analyst Mr. Ani, who is of Iraqi origins himself, says visual tools like the video could be very effective with Iraqis. "You need to show the average man that Al Qaeda is recruiting kids and that most of its fighters are foreign."
Ani disputes, though, US assertions that this propaganda video may be used by Al Qaeda to garner support, particularly from wealthy Gulf Arab sympathizers. "Al Qaeda in Iraq is a very clever organization, and a video like this will in fact loose you credibility. What's going to give you outside support is the number and nature of your operations inside the country."
Al Qaeda diary excerpts
Oct. 15 2007: .... There were almost 600 fighters in our sector before the Tribes changed course 360 degrees [sic] under the influence of the so-called Islamic Army (Deserter of Jihad) and other known believer groups. Many of our fighters quit and some of them joined the deserters, and later on I will mention the names of Fighters who stood by us (faithful fighters), but things started to get worse ever since, and as a result of that the number of fighters dropped down to 20 or less which led us to move some of our vehicles to another location.
Oct. 24 2007: There are very few tribe members who stood by us and supported us, such as members of the [redacted] Tribes that were surrounded by al-Sahwah [Awakening] fighters.... After the raid that we did against the houses and safe havens of the deserters which led to killing and injuring a lot of them, burning some vehicles and spoiling some of their vehicles and weapons which affected their morale and resources tremendously, knowing that the number of fighters who did the raid were 16 and not 150 fighters as they claimed after that.
Oct. 28 2007: My request to you is not to be negligent with the deserters/traitors at all.... We should have no mercy on them even if they joined the Iraqi Government security forces and do not let them have any sense of relief despite the fact that some of them ran away from our strong hand to unknown locations with their families. Even though our Jihadi Movement goals are at the early stages were to recruit as many as possible of the government employees in order to have access, sources and supporters among them in order to gain more information about the Government security forces and the infidels' military and tactical movement in order to ease our movements and missions against them despite the fact that I was against such goals for security reasons. Dear brothers I would like you to know that even though the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) achieved a lot of projects for the benefit of the people of Iraq such as bringing water, electricity and agricultural help to a lot of area ... we were mistreated, cheated, and betrayed by some of our brothers who used to be part of the Jihadi Movement, therefore we must not have mercy on those traitors until they come back to the right side – the ISI side – or get eliminated completely in order to achieve victory at the end, and I would like to mention here the name of one of families [subtribe] who betrayed us and lost our trust is the [redacted] family who were very good, faithful Jihadi fighters, but later on we found out that those people were nothing but hypocrites, liars, and traitors and were waiting for the right moment to switch sides with whomever pays them the most and at the end they fought against us and they tried to prevent us from attacking the al-Sahwah [Awakening] groups in [redacted] area by blocking our entrance to that area....
Source: Multi-National Forces – Iraq
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