Iraq Insurgency

The Washington Post reports on the current state of the Iraqi insurgency. The insurgency has long consisted of a large number of dispirate groups. Most operate in some local area not nationally. There has not been much in the way of national coordination. The article quotes

Many of the insurgent groups, however, are reluctant to unite. Abu Aja Naemi, a commander of the 1920 Revolution Brigades based in Duluiyah, north of Baghdad, recalled a meeting among various groups to discuss forming an umbrella organization. The idea fell through, he said, over concerns about turf.

"Every commander of an organization said, 'I have my own method that I am following, and so I am going to follow it,' " said Naemi, who said his fighters have clashed with al-Qaeda in several cities, including Haditha and Husaybah. "If there is greater organization, they worry that in the future they will lose power in their areas. So they work separately."

His own group has splintered in recent weeks, leading to the emergence of a faction of mostly Palestinian fighters calling itself Hamas, after the radical Palestinian organization. Naemi said that for now, the new group was still allied with the 1920 Revolution Brigades and serving as part of its military wing.

These groups seem a likely to splinter as to unite.

Still, it would seem that there is a growing serious split between the bulk of the Suni insurgent groups and al Quaeda. The al Quaeda groups are more deadly to the Sunni population than are the Americans and so their welcome in Iraq is all but gone. This is very good news. Removing al Quaeda's influence in the country will be a good thing. But it does point up the foolishness of this entire operation. Our invasion of Iraq has only served to increase the number of enemies we are fighting. Al Quaeda was able to become strong in Iraq because of our invasion and in addition we added a large fraction of Sunni Arabs, who were not earlier supportive of attacks on the United States, to the ranks of those who were attacking Americans. In short we have spent thousands of lives and billions of dollars to separate these groups who should never have been joined together in the first place.