Ray Robison's thesis that jihad is fracturing gains more support in a report from the Washington Post:
Sunni residents of a west Baghdad neighborhood used assault rifles and a roadside bomb to battle the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq this week, leaving at least 28 people dead and six injured, residents said Thursday.
The mayor of the Amiriyah neighborhood, Mohammed Abdul Khaliq, said in a telephone interview that residents were rising up to try to expel al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has alienated other Sunnis with its indiscriminate violence and attacks on members of its own sect.
"I think this is going to be the end of the al-Qaeda presence here," Abdul Khaliq said of the fighting Wednesday and Thursday, which began over accusations that al-Qaeda in Iraq had executed Sunnis without reason.
The Baghdad battle is evidence of a deepening split between some Sunni insurgent groups and al-Qaeda in Iraq, which claims allegiance to Osama bin Laden. Although similar rebellions occurred in Diyala province earlier this year, the fighting this week appears to be the first time the conflict has reached the streets of Baghdad.
Exploiting these divisions is tricky, but there is at least some hope that the Special Forces are up to the task, even if the higher reaches of State and the CIA are not.
The Marxists had a phrase for this sort of weakness: "internal contradictions." One doesn't need to be a Hegelian to understand that True Believers inevitably turn against each other, and regard the heresy of small differences as even more infuriating than the clash with those of entirely different belief systems.
Hat tip: Ed Lasky
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