In a follow-on to last week?s WAR Report on Abu Mussab al Zarqawi?s reported demotion within the insurgency in Iraq because of political and operational miscalculations surrounding his group?s tactics and its effect on the wider insurgency in Iraq, these reports might suggest that groups within the insurgency are seeking to take political considerations and effects into greater account in the planning of insurgent operations. This development might suggest that these groups are undergoing organizational and political-strategic adaptation that could result in a more coherent, organized, and politically-operationally potent insurgent strategy and violent campaign to exploit and leverage the current political climate in Iraq.
A goal of such a strategic and operational shift to an insurgent campaign integrating greater political and societal considerations may be to avoid alienating popular support and other potential Iraqi insurgent allies with gratuitously bloody, indiscriminant, and/or strategically-operationally counterproductive attacks and gruesome propaganda, for which Zarqawi is particularly known. Earlier WAR Reports have discussed the reported strategic, political, and tactical tensions and dissonance?and resulting conflict?between Zarqawi?s jihadist elements and native Iraqi (largely Sunni) insurgents.
A particularly concerning potential goal may be to win over more moderate and politically oriented segments of the Sunni community and insurgents that have tempered violence and entertained or engaged in political avenues to serve their goals. As noted in the WAR Report, Sunnis, who are increasingly disillusioned by the prospects of achieving viable political power and voice via the Iraq national political project and central government and who are menaced by sectarian attacks perceived to be at the hands of Shia militias, may be driven to participate in the insurgency as either the most advantageous or the only available course of action to pursue their communal interests. A major shift of these Sunni elements toward the insurgency, potentially increasing operational collaboration with more entrenched insurgent groups, would likely swell fighting ranks and invigorate and enhance operations with the infusion of both fighters and societal support.
Thus, the developments regarding Zarqawi?s role in the insurgency, the apparent political-strategic considerations of the Mujahedeen Shura (Group Profile forthcoming) and associated groups, and the ebb and flow of the Sunni community between political engagement, sectarian conflict, and full-scale insurgency all highlight the critical importance of the political and societal dimensions and dynamics of insurgent conflict. Further, these developments underscore the advantages of calibrating insurgent/counterinsurgent operations to leverage those dynamics toward the particular goals. As earlier WAR Reports have repeatedly argued, cultivating a commanding and active degree of societal support?in terms of operational assistance, intelligence, political legitimacy?is the sine qua non of ?winning? either insurgent or counterinsurgent campaigns. Thus, Iraqi and US counterinsurgency efforts aimed at isolating insurgent groups, particularly jihadist groups, from the operational support of other Iraqi insurgent groups and societal support, must be redoubled. The landscape and positioning of the insurgent groups in Iraq is at a pivotal point. It remains critical that the Sunni community be dissuaded from abandoning the political process and joining the insurgency, and the more implacable jihadist and insurgent groups must be prevented from mounting a more politically and tactically refined and sophisticated insurgent campaign that might win over greater operational collaboration from Sunni insurgent groups and greater societal support from the Sunni community.
This is part II of II. Please see Part I at WAR Report.