Lieutenant Kilje Reports For Duty

NY Times:

"BAGHDAD, July 18 — For more than a year, the leader of one the most notorious insurgent groups in Iraq was said to be a mysterious Iraqi called Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.

As the titular head of the Islamic State in Iraq, Mr. Baghdadi issued incendiary pronouncements. Despite claims by an Iraqi Interior Ministry official in May that Mr. Baghdadi had been killed, he appeared to have persevered unscathed.

On Wednesday, the chief United States military spokesman here, Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, provided a new explanation for Mr. Baghdadi’s ability to escape attack: he never existed.

General Bergner told reporters that a senior Iraqi insurgent captured this month said that the elusive Mr. Baghdadi was actually a fictional character whose declarations on audiotape were read by a man named Abu Abdullah al-Naima.

General Bergner said the ruse was devised by Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the Egyptian-born leader of the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Although the group is mostly Iraqi, much of its leadership is foreign, and Mr. Masri was reportedly trying to mask the outsiders’ dominant role.

[snip]

General Bergner said that Mr. Masri’s ploy was to invent Mr. Baghdadi, a figure whose very name was meant to establish an Iraqi pedigree, install him as the head of a front organization called the Islamic State of Iraq, and then arrange for Mr. Masri to swear allegiance to him.

Adding to the deception, he said, the deputy leader in Osama bin Laden’s group Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, publicly supported Mr. Baghdadi in a video and Internet statements."

I would caution, like Bruce Riedel does later in the piece, that the captured insurgent who provided this information could be lying to cover up someone else. That, and Al Qaeda in Iraq's role in Iraq and its connection to the apparently vestigal Al Qaeda central command has always been exaggerated by the Bush administration. Nonetheless it would be very fitting should Mr. Baghdadi turn out to be an Iraqi Kilje.

AQI's success in overshadowing more powerful insurgent groups has been a matter of smoke and mirrors, crafting an innovative media strategy that used the Al Qaeda franchise's brand name to compensate for their military shortcomings and lack of local support. They also owe the President a big favor--his frantic attempts to link Iraq and 9/11 in the public eye led him to trumpet their presence on the battlefield at every opportunity.

For all of Iraq's relevance to 4GW, global guerrillas, and other strains of asymmetric warfare theory, it is very ironic that the most infamous insurgent group in Iraq is actually a throwback to Leninist "vanguard" revolutionary terrorism. Such an insurgent group involves a small group of provocateurs whose attention-grabbing antics, while militarily insignificant, raise the consciousness of the masses and topple the government. However, this model has historically met with failure, necessitating the switch to Maoist "People's War" strategies. The Vietcong succeeded in beating the United States, not the Symbionise Liberation Army. On a comic note, I wonder what hilarity would have ensued if they had (whilst defying the laws of time and space) kidnapped Paris Hilton instead of Patty Hearst.

AQI has been extremely successful in driving the course of events in Iraq, with their flashy atrocities and efficient media operations. However, the real damage is being done by the sectarian militias, bombmakers, and urban guerrillas of other factions.