Leader of the Anbar Salvation Council and key US ally Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha’s assassination on September 13, 2007, was both a great loss and a rallying call for the people of Anbar and the US Armed Forces who fight alongside them. Sheikh Abu Risha’s assassination on the first day of Ramadan followed al-Qaeda in Iraq’s (AQI) announcements that it had created, “special security committees” tasked with targeting tribal leaders allied with the US and that its operations would increase during the month of Ramadan, making it a month of “conquest and victories.” The Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), AQI’s umbrella organization in Iraq, claimed responsibility for the leader’s assassination on September 14, 2007, on its official website.
Though AQI and ISI continue to celebrate the assassinations of prominent tribal leaders, the tactic continues to backfire as members of assassinated leaders’ tribes who were previously sympathetic to AQI join forces with the US.
Revenge, the Great Motivator
Sheikh Abu Risha was succeeded by his brother Sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha, who was elected to lead the Anbar Salvation Council following his brother’s death. In his statement to the 1,000 mourners attending his brother’s funeral in Ramadi, Sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha swore, “We will have revenge against anyone who claims responsibility for this operation. We will follow him wherever he goes.”
Sheikh Abu Risha was the fourth member of Sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha’s family to be killed by insurgents since the inception of the War in Iraq. In fact, it was the assassination of Sheikh Abu Risha’s father and two brothers that first drove him to approach US forces in Ramadi for assistance in fighting AQI’s presence in the Anbar region. The successful partnership that followed, known as the Anbar Awakening (a coalition of 25 prominent tribes), is now being mirrored by tribes in Diyala, Salahadin, and Baghdad who were angered by similar AQI attempts to co-opt and upset the balance of tribal authority in their regions.
The Fight Will Continue
Though Sheikh Abu Risha’s death is a symbolic blow to the Anbar Salvation Council, his death will not end the struggle in Anbar, nor of other tribal councils, against AQI’s presence in their territories. The tribal leaders and their followers are accustomed to death and the promise of it. On June 25, 2007, six members of the Anbar Salvation council were killed in a bombing at the Mansour Hotel in Baghdad .
On the other hand, the governor of Ramadi, Mamoon Sami Rashid, has survived 29 assassination attempts since joining the Anbar Salvation Council. Likewise, Sheikh Abu Risha was himself targeted by three unsuccessful roadside bombs prior to his death. Yet he, like all members of the Anbar Salvation Council who are threatened or targeted by AQI daily, did not waiver in his commitment to defeat AQI’s presence in Anbar.
Echoing in the chants of mourners at Sheikh Abu Risha’s funeral and in the Hall of the Iraqi Parliament, the resounding sentiment among the people of Iraq, Anbar in particular, is that the fight against non-nationalist insurgencies, most prominent of which is AQI, will continue. If AQI made one strategic blunder during its insurgency in Iraq, it was to underestimate the tribal allegiances in Iraq’s countryside. It has nonetheless continued in its policy of targeting Iraqi tribal leadership allied against it, and is, consequentially, adding to the ranks of men willing to fight for retribution.
