Analysis

At least one insurgent group in Iraq is taking a greater interest in customer service these days. An anti-al Qaeda, Islamist-leaning Iraqi insurgent coalition known as the Jihad and Change Front (JCF) recently held an online question-and-answer session with forum members, who were asked to provide feedback on the group’s performance and shortcomings. This exercise yielded some interesting responses, which shed further light on the divisions engulfing Iraq’s Sunni insurgent community.

In its response, the JCF made sure to criticize the U.S.-allied Sunni Awakening Councils that have been put on the U.S. payroll to root out al Qaeda. At the same time, the group cautiously criticized the main al Qaeda node in Iraq — the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) — for focusing its targeting of U.S.-backed Sunni militias. Though the JCF referred to the ISI as the JCF’s brothers, the group’s criticism showed that it is conscious of the need to maintain a strong and viable Sunni support network in Iraq, and that targeting the Awakening Councils would only further alienate the locals and erode their longevity as an insurgent movement. This is an age-old debate in the Sunni insurgent movement and was prominently brought to light by al Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri back in 2005 when he admonished late al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for targeting Shia, thereby putting the local Sunni population at greater risk.

As evinced by a decline in attacks and a notable disruption in the group’s media network, al Qaeda’s forces in Iraq have already been placed on the defensive in the country’s Sunni strongholds, and are now trying to intensify their propaganda campaign in Mosul ahead of a major U.S.-Iraqi offensive in the North. Groups such as the JCF see the writing on the wall and are attempting to toe the middle line between the more hardcore jihadists and the more nationalist-minded insurgents, thereby creating a potential space for themselves in the Iraqi political process. Though the JCF has shown some reservations about entering the political process while U.S. forces are stationed in the country, the group reiterated in its online statement that its armed jihad is a means to an end in political activism.

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The JCF bloc includes more well-known groups such as the 1920 Revolution Brigades and the al Rashideen Army. This coalition is nationalist-minded, but still adheres to an Islamist agenda that allows it find common ground with the far-right al Qaeda front groups in Iraq, such as the ISI and Ansar al-Sunnah. Between the JCF and al the al Qaeda blocs is a relative newcomer to the scene called the Jihad and Reform Front, which has kept its distance from al Qaeda but still adheres to more extreme Salafist principles. The insurgent bloc furthest along the political spectrum includes groups such as the Resistance Islamic Front and Hamas Iraq, which has faced accusations on jihadist forums of working with the U.S. military. This bloc is believed to be most closely tied to the main Sunni coalition in the Iraqi parliament, the three-party Islamist-leaning Tawafoq Iraqi Front. With U.S. military offensives continuing in full force and talk of U.S.-Iranian negotiations and a U.S. withdrawal spreading throughout the country, divisions among all these insurgent blocs over whether to target their former Sunni colleagues, work with U.S. forces or join the political process are deepening.

Beyond the insurgent landscape, the broader Sunni community is also divided. There are the former Baathists from the Saddam Hussein regime who are eyeing an amnesty law to get back into the political system. There are the two main Sunni political blocs in parliament: the Tawafoq Iraqi Front, which holds 44 seats in parliament, and the Hewar National Iraqi Front, a secular-leaning coalition of five parties that controls 11 seats. There is the religious establishment organized under the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars led by the hardline Sheikh Harith al-Dhari. And then there are the powerful Sunni tribes — which keep their own militias and are vying for better political representation — that run the Sunni Awakening Councils that have crossed over to the U.S. side to battle al Qaeda in hopes of finding a position in the political process. Tensions are already rising between several of these Sunni militias and U.S. forces over recent U.S. airstrikes that have killed civilians. A serious power struggle is also occurring between Sunni tribal and political leaders, as the latter fear that their influence will diminish when more Sunnis are co-opted into the government.

The splits within Iraq’s Sunni community directly threaten the U.S. strategy to block Iran’s expansionist aims in Iraq. With the U.S.-Iranian negotiations hitting another impasse, and with other major sticking points still on the horizon, Washington’s main pressure point on Tehran is its backing of Iraq’s Sunnis. Through its support for the Awakening Councils, the United States is invoking Iran’s worst nightmare of a rise in Sunni power in Iraq that could again threaten Iran’s western frontier. But the meat of this threat rests in the U.S. ability to discern between the Sunni blocs that are with the United States in battling al Qaeda and those that are not. As the divisions among the Sunnis show, this is easier said than done.

The Sunnis have thus far been unable to fare much better than Iraq’s severely divided Shiite community in moving beyond their internal political rivalries. Moreover, as long as Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government stalls on integrating the U.S.-backed Sunni militias into the formal security apparatus, the chances that these forces could turn back to the insurgency under pressure will increase. Although the United States currently has the upper hand against Iran in Iraq, the fracturing of the Sunni community is just one of many factors that could still turn the tables.

This article is published at Lebanonwire by agreement with www.stratfor.com, the world's leading private intelligence provider. For any questions or comments on this article please write to analysis@stratfor.com

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