‘The jihad now is against the Shias, not the Americans’ | Iraq | Guardian Unlimited
Abu Aisha, a mid-level Sunni commander, had come to understand that the threat from the Shia was perhaps greater than his need to fight the occupying Americans. Abu Aisha fought in Baghdad’s western Sunni suburbs, he was a former NCO in the Iraqi army and followed an extreme form of Islam known as Salafism.

Jamming

Deep lines criss-crossed his narrow forehead and his eyes half closed when he tried to answer a question He seemed to evaluate every answer before he spoke. He claimed involvement in dozens of attacks on US and Iraqi troops, mostly IEDs (bombs) but also ambushes and execution of alleged Shia spies. “We have stopped using remote controls to detonate IEDs,” he volunteered halfway through our conversation. “Only wires work now because the Americans are jamming the signals.”

On his mobile phone he proudly showed me grainy images of dead bodies lying in the street, their hands tied behind their backs . He claimed they were Shia agents and that he had killed them. “There is a new jihad now,” he said, echoing Abu Omar’s warning. “The jihad now is against the Shia, not the Americans.”

In Ramadi there was still jihad against the Americans because there were no Shia to fight, but in Baghdad his group only attacked the Americans if they were with Shia army forces or were coming to arrest someone.

“We have been deceived by the jihadi Arabs,” he admitted, in reference to al-Qaida and foreign fighters. “They had an international agenda and we implemented it. But now all the leadership of the jihad in Iraq are Iraqis.”

Abu Aisha went on to describe how the Sunnis were reorganising. After Sunni families had been expelled from mixed areas throughout Baghdad, his area in the western suburbs was prepared to defend itself against any militia attack.

“Ameriya, Jihad, Ghazaliyah,” he listed, “all these areas are becoming part of the new Islamic state of Iraq, each with an emir in charge.” Increasingly the Iraqi insurgency is moving away from its cellular structure and becoming organised according to neighbourhood. Local defence committees have intertwined into the insurgent movement.

“Each group is in charge of a specific street,” Abu Aisha said. “We have defence lines, trenches and booby traps. When the Americans arrive we let them go through, but if they show up with Iraqi troops, then it’s a fight.”