The 9/11 Wars (116 page)

    5
.
Some of the worst were the blast at the end of August 2003 which had killed ninety-five Shia in Najaf, including Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim, and the series of attacks on Shia mosques during the Ashura holiday in March 2004, which killed nearly 200.

    6
.
Nelson Hernandez and Saad Sarhan, ‘Insurgents kill 140 as Iraq clashes escalate’,
Washington Post
, January 6, 2010. ‘Iraq suicide bomb blasts kill 120’, BBC News Online, January 5, 2006.

    7
.
Sam Knight and agencies, ‘Bombing of Shia shrine sparks wave of retaliation’,
The Times
, February 22, 2006. Jonathan Finer and Bassam Sebti, ‘Sectarian violence kills over 100 in Iraq, Shiite–Sunni anger flares following bombing of shrine’,
Washington Post
, February 24, 2006. Robert F. Worth, ‘Blast at Shiite shrine sets off sectarian fury in Iraq’,
New York Times
, February 23, 2006.

    8
.
‘Interview with Lewis’, p. 16.

    9
.
Quite where sectarian violence started and criminal violence stopped was often difficult to say. Some sectarian gangs sold the remains of dead victims to bereaved relatives – a macabre form of posthumous ransom.

  10
.
The policy had been outlined in the ‘National Strategy for Victory in Iraq’ of November 2005.

  11
.
Cockburn,
The Occupation
, 167. In 2005, they totalled 846 dead and 5,944 wounded respectively. The Brookings Institution (Michael E. O’Hanlon and Ian Livingston),
The Iraq Index: Tracking Variables of Reconstruction and Security in Post-Saddam Iraq
, June 30, 2010, pp. 12, 14.

  12
.
David Kilcullen,
The Accidental Guerrilla, Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One
, Hurst, 2009, p. 124.

  13
.
The number varied by a few thousand. Sharon Otterman, ‘Saudi Arabia: withdrawal of US forces’, Council of Foreign Relations, Washington, May 2, 2003.

  14
.
Paul von Zielbauer, ‘US inquiry hampered by Iraq violence, investigators say’,
New York Times
, June 13, 2007, Tim McGirk, ‘Collateral damage or civilian massacre in Haditha?’,
Time
, March 19, 2006.

  15
.
Thomas E. Ricks, ‘In Haditha killings, details came slowly’,
Washington Post
, June 4, 2006.

  16
.
West,
The Strongest Tribe
, p. 156.

  17
.
Ricks,
The Gamble
, pp. 7–8.

  18
.
Urban,
Task Force Black
, pp. 94–9.

  19
.
Ibid., p. 106.

  20
.
The coalition gaining the majority of the Sunni overall vote was the Accord Front, with 16 per cent of the vote and 44 seats. A more radical grouping, the Iraqi Dialogue Front, took 4 per cent and 11 seats. See Toby Dodge, ‘The Causes of US Failure in Iraq’,
Survival: Global Politics and Strategy
, vol. 49, no. 1 (spring 2007), pp. 85–106.

  21
.
Email exchange with author, December 2005.

  22
.
Department of State, Public Notice 4936, ‘Foreign Terrorists and Terrorist Organizations; Designation: Organization in the Land of the Two Rivers’,
Federal Register
, December 17, 2004, vol. 69, no. 242.

  23
.
There is also a clear reference to the
tanzim
of the Palestinian al-Aqsa Intifada with their younger more aggressive stance against a senior leadership seen as sedentary and out of touch. The name also, incidentally, shows al-Zarqawi’s distance from pure Salafists, who, though they would have agreed with his views that Shia are heretics, would have been against the organization of the faithful into a party or a movement.

  24
.
See Kepel,
Jihad
, pp. 236–53. More radical elements in Bosnia provoked ridicule by trying to argue that Father Christmas was unIslamic.

  25
.
Burke,
Al-Qaeda
, pp. 12, 206.

  26
.
See ibid., pp. 116–35, 213–33.

  27
.
Ian Fisher and Edward Wong, ‘Iraq’s rebellion develops signs of internal rift’,
New York Times
, July 10, 2004. Author interviews with Iraqi militants, Baghdad, September 2004.

  28
.
Dhiya Rassan, ‘Patchwork of insurgent groups runs Fallujah’, Institute of War and Peace Reporting, September 17, 2004.

  29
.
Karl Vick, ‘Insurgent alliance fraying in Fallujah’,
Washington Post
, October 13, 2004.

  30
.
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, ‘Seeking salvation in city of insurgents’,
Guardian
, November 11, 2004. See Chapter 7.

  31
.
Hannah Allam, ‘Fallujah’s real boss: Omar the electrician’, Knight Ridder
Newspapers
, November 22, 2004.

  32
.
Abdul-Ahad, ‘Seeking salvation in city of insurgents’.

  33
.
John Ward Anderson, ‘Seven al-Zarqawi insurgents killed in retaliation for Khaldiya slaying’,
Washington Post
, March 18, 2005.

  34
.
In a particularly macabre example of the facility with which practices have been communicated from one protagonist in the 9/11 Wars to another, the foreign militants’ techniques were borrowed from Shia death squads operating at the time.

  35
.
In 2003, the author interviewed a former torturer from Saddam Hussein’s Mukhabarat intelligence service who recounted how he had held babies over boiling water to get their parents to talk.

  36
.
Pelham,
A New Muslim Order
, pp. 197–8. Sunni Arab parties won fifty-five seats in the new parliament (see note 20), up from seventeen in the previous one. In part the division within the insurgent ranks was between ‘Salafi jihadi’ strands and Islamist strands. There was also a tribal dynamic at play.

  37
.
West,
The Strongest Tribe
, p. 132.

  38
.
Tim McGirk, ‘A rebel crack-up?’,
Time
, January 22, 2006.

  39
.
The letter from al-Zawahiri to al-Zarqawi is dated July 9, 2005. The contents were released by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence on October 11, 2005.

  40
.
See, for example, Abu Bakr Naji,
Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which the Ummah Will Pass
, originally published on the internet, 2004, translated into English by William McCants, published by Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, Harvard University, 2006.

  41
.
The letter, written by bin Laden’s representative to Algeria, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, was dated December 12, 2005. See
http://ctc.usama.edu/harmony/pdf/CTC-AtiyahLetter.pdf
.

  42
.
‘Jordan hotel blasts kill dozens’, BBC News Online, November 10, 2005. Conal Urquhart, ‘Failed bomb attacker confesses live on air’,
Guardian
, November 14, 2005.

  43
.
‘Al-Khalayleh tribe disowns al-Zarqawi’,
Jerusalem Post
, November 20, 2005.

  44
.
Nir Rosen, ‘Thinking Like a Jihadist: Iraq’s Jordanian Connection’,
World Policy Journal
, Spring 2006, p. 14.

  45
.
Murad Batal al-Shishani, ‘The Amman Bombings: A Blow to the Jihadists?’,
Terrorism Focus
, vol. 2, no. 22, November 29, 2005.

  46
.
It had been 57 per cent in 2003. Pew Research Center,
Declining Support for bin Laden and Suicide Bombing
, September 10, 2009. See also Daniel Benjamin, Center for Strategic and International Studies, testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, June 13, 2006.

  47
.
See Rosen, ‘Thinking Like a Jihadist: Iraq’s Jordanian Connection’.

  48
.
Jason Burke, Peter Beaumont and Mohammed al-Ubeidy, ‘How Jordanians hunted down their hated son’,
Observer
, June 11, 2006.

  49
.
On the interrogations see Bowden, ‘The ploy’. Author interviews with senior Iraqi security officials, London, September 2009.

  50
.
Interviews with Jordanian intelligence officers, London, June 2006.

  51
.
Pew Research Center,
Global Public Opinion in the Bush Years (2001–2008)
, December 18, 2008.

  52
.
Pew Research Center,
Where Terrorism Finds Support in the Muslim World
, May 2006.

  53
.
Pew Research Center,
Global Public Opinion in the Bush Years
.

  54
.
The blast in Sharm-el-Sheikh killed ninety people, mostly Egyptians. ‘Toll climbs in Egyptian attacks’, BBC News Online, July 23, 2005.

  55
.
Pew Research Center,
Global Attitudes Toward Islamic Extremism and Terrorism
, August 29, 2007. Data from Pew’s Key Indicators Database, accessed January 2, 2011.

  56
.
Jason Burke, ‘The Arab backlash the militants didn’t expect’,
Observer
, June 20, 2004. International Crisis Group,
Can Saudi Arabia Reform Itself?
, July 14, 2004. Poll subject quote from the
Daily Star
, Beirut, Lebanon, June 24, 2004.

  57
.
Esposito and Mogahed,
Who Speaks for Islam?
, p. 73 and passim. Such views appeared to be held regardless of gender or piety, an important nuance missed by many Western commentators. Equally, perceptions of Islam and Muslims among non-Muslims in Europe and America were much more negative after nearly five years of conflict than they had been even in the weeks after September 11. The proportion was higher among 18–24-year-olds and among second-generation immigrants. A Pew poll of Muslim world opinion in 2006 found that majorities in Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan said that they do not believe groups of Arabs carried out the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The percentage of Turks expressing disbelief that Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks has increased from 43 per cent in a 2002 Gallup survey to 59 per cent by 2005. In the UK, 56 per cent of British Muslims said they do not believe Arabs carried out the terror attacks against the US. Only 17 per cent thought they had done.

  58
.
The idea of assembling bombs inside planes had been raised before. This was clearly a serious threat as it circumvented most conventional security procedures. The investigation of the Walthamstow plot led to the banning of fluids in baggage within planes’ cabins. Jason Burke, ‘Terrorist bid to build bombs in mid-flight’,
Observer
, February 8, 2004.