Al Qaeda’s Problem
It seems that Al Qaeda - and terrorist organizations like it - have a minor problem: they have great difficulty recruiting terrorists, and especially suicide bombers. The reasons? Al Qaeda has a hard time killing Americans: instead, foreign Al Qaeda fighters who enter Iraq, hoping to attack Americans are forced to attacks Iraqis. Muslims. As if that’s not enough, many of them don’t succeed in their plans. O, and Al Qaeda has become increasingly unpopular (Sunni Iraqis have turned against the Sunni terrorist organization).
Most suicide bombers for Al Qaeda aren’t Iraqis; they’re foreigners. They have to get into the country if they want to blow themselves up.
Some of the volunteers get no farther than Syria, where they find that you can’t always get across the border, or that the contacts on the other side are not up to the task of delivering the foreigners to operational al Qaeda units in the interior. U.S. and Iraqi forces have been hammering the smugglers for several years, which leaves a lot of the al Qaeda volunteers stranded. Some of these guys have become so lost and despondent that they surrender to the Iraqi police. In any event, the majority of the foreign al Qaeda volunteers are used as cannon fodder. These fellows usually don’t have any military experience, so they get minimal training with an AK-47, and often are useless in a firefight. Even against Iraqi police and soldiers, the foreign volunteers are only effective if in the company of a lot of experienced locals. For most of the last four years, the al Qaeda volunteers would go to Iraq and “die a glorious death.” Now the trip tends to end in despair and humiliation. The word is getting around, and the recruiters don’t like it.
Has Al Qaeda lost the battle for Iraq? It’s probably a matter of time. But even when Al Qaeda in Iraq has been destroyed, there are still other terrorists to deal with. And ethnic tensions.
