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Recent Appearances...

Africa North

Brüderbund forms 'exile government'

2013-12-11

[Egypt Independent] Mohammed al-Gawady, a leading figure of the National Alliance in Support of Legitimacy (NASL), announced the formation of an exile government headed by Hisham Geneina, chairman of the Central Auditing Organization.

Gawady posted on Twitter that the government would be formed for only two months and that it would include Wael Qandil, Nevin Malek, Osama Rushdi, Asaad Sheikha, Bassem Khafagy, Hatem Azam and Mahmoud Hussein.

He added that the Defense Ministry would be headed by Nadia Zachary, the former minister of scientific research, the Interior Ministry would be headed by Hazem Salah Abu Ismail and Hisham Qandil would be the minister of irrigation.

Gawady also said the government would include a number of imprisoned Moslem Brüderbund members, such as Essam al-Erian, Mohammed al-Beltagy, Abul Ela Mady, Essam Sultan and Bassem Oda.

He concluded by saying that the exile government is a step to reinstating President Mohammed Morsy, the 2012 Constitution, the People's Assembly and the Shura Council, all of which were elected.

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Terror Networks

Ayman al-Zawahiri: Jihads Judas (plus a tribute to Joe Mendiola)

2007-02-27

Also, a few links Mr. Mendiola would approve of, especially the Nyquist one, since it seems he reads that (great if very depressing) fringe pundit :

A Russian Agent At The Right Hand Of Bin Laden?
Al Qaedas Al-Zawahiri Received Terrorist Training in Russia Newspaper
Is Al Qaeda a Kremlin Proxy?

By Patrick Poole

In a videotaped message released last week, Al-Qaedas number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, ridiculed President George W. Bush, who he claimed was addicted to drinking, lying and gambling, an obvious reference to Bushs long-admitted moral failings dated a long-time ago. But since Zawahiri is interested in dragging up the distant past to mock his nemesis, lets take time to revisit a couple of episodes from his own past that shed a less-than-flattering light on the principles of Osama bin Ladens right-hand man and the public face of Al-Qaeda in recent years.

In Lawrence Wrights recent book, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Knopf, 2006), and in his lengthy September 2002 New Yorker profile of Zawahiri, The Man Behind Bin Laden, Wright recounts two incidents from Zawahiris biography that the Egyptian terror leader has been reluctant to advertise: his own qualifications as Jihads Judas.

In one instance following the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat,

Zawahiri fingered one of his closest friends sought by authorities and actively participated in setting up a trap to capture his fellow jihadi.

Zawahiri fingered one of his closest friends sought by authorities and actively participated in setting up a trap to capture his fellow jihadi; and in the other instance, Zawahiri was directly involved in the car bomb assassination of Al-Qaeda founder Abdullah Azzam over a disagreement in the future direction of the Afghanistan mujahedeen and to advance his personal position.
This has been common knowledge in intel water cooler circles since a few hours after Azzam was murdered. I believe this is the first time I've ever seen an open source reference to it.
On October 8, 1981, President Sadat was reviewing a military parade in Cairo, when a military vehicle carrying a group of assassins associates of Zawahiri veered towards the viewing stands where Sadat was seated. The assassins began throwing hand grenades into the stands and firing volleys of automatic rifle fire into the President, killing him immediately. Zawahiri claimed that he wasnt aware of the plot until a few hours before it occurred, but immediately following the assassination, he was helping his closest friend and fellow member of Zawahiris jihad cell, Essam al-Qamari, coordinate a follow-up attack at Sadats funeral in an attempt to decapitate the government and install their own Islamic government. However, one of the conspirators was arrested before the plot could fully develop.

Zawahiri was brought in for questioning by Interior Ministry officials and his communications monitored. According to multiple sources, it was at this point that Zawahiri divulged the whereabouts of his friend, Qamari.

In the aftermath of the Sadat assassination, Zawahiri inexplicably was not immediately taken into custody, nor did he flee or go underground; Qamari, however, was the most wanted man in Egypt. Eventually, Zawahiri was brought in for questioning by Interior Ministry officials and his communications monitored. According to multiple sources, it was at this point that Zawahiri divulged the whereabouts of his friend, Qamari. This is confirmed by a former friend of Zawahiris and one of his cellmates, Montasser al-Zayyat, in his tell-all book on Zawahiri, The Road to Al-Qaeda: The Story of Bin Ladens Right-Hand Man.

After he was arrested on October 15, 1981, Zawahiri informed the authorities of Qamari's whereabouts. He had taken a refuge in a small mosque where he used to pray and meet Zawahiri and other members of the group. It was this painful memory which was at the root of Zawahiri's suffering, and which prompted him to leave Egypt for Saudi Arabia. He stayed there until he left for Afghanistan in 1987.

Zawahiri was present at the time of Qamaris arrest to finger his associate. Zawahiri later testified against Qamari and thirteen other associates during their trials.

According to Wrights account of Zawahiris betrayal of Qamari (found on pp. 52-53 in The Looming Tower), Zawahiri was present at the time of Qamaris arrest to finger his associate. Zawahiri later testified against Qamari and thirteen other associates during their trials. But as one analyst explains, in an attempt to cover-up the shame of his betrayal of Qamari, Zawahiri has engaged in a creative re-interpretation of the events surrounding Qamaris capture (after Qamari was conveniently dead) in a series of articles he had published in December 2001 in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat in response to Zayyats book:

one reason for Al-Zawahiri's desire for a quick exit from Egypt had to do with the information he had given to the police which led to the arrest of his close friend, Issam Al-Qamari. The police investigation minutes, quoted by Al-Zayyat, suggest that Al-Zawahiri arranged to meet his friend at a location surrounded by security personnel so that Al-Qamari could be arrested without bloodshed. By contrast, in his memoirs
Al-Zawahari draws a fantastic picture of great heroism shown by Al-Qamari and a small group of his comrades who were hiding in a workshop. When the police tried to break into the hiding place Al-Qamari, according to Al-Zawahiri, lobbed hand grenades and opened fire from automatic weapons causing a lot of fatalities and confusion among the police. Al-Qamari was chased by the police in the narrow lanes of the poor Cairo neighborhood lobbing hand grenades at his pursuers. The battle went on for hours until Al-Qamari's ammunition was exhausted. Al-Zawahiri's story sounds like a sheer fantasy.
Al-Zawahari draws a fantastic picture of great heroism shown by Al-Qamari and a small group of his comrades who were hiding in a workshop. When the police tried to break into the hiding place Al-Qamari, according to Al-Zawahiri, lobbed hand grenades and opened fire from automatic weapons causing a lot of fatalities and confusion among the police. Al-Qamari was chased by the police in the narrow lanes of the poor Cairo neighborhood lobbing hand grenades at his pursuers. The battle went on for hours until Al-Qamari's ammunition was exhausted. Al-Zawahiri's story sounds like a sheer fantasy. (Dr. Nimrod Raphaeli, Radical Islamist Profiles (3): Ayman Muhammad Rabi Al-Zawahiri: The Making of an Arch Terrorist, MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis Series - No. 127 [March 11, 2003])

While Zawahiris betrayal of Essam al-Qamari might be excused on the grounds that his cooperation in capturing Qamari was obtained through the threat of torture, the assassination of one of the top mujahedeen leaders in Afghanistan, Abdullah Azzam, a mentor to both Bin Laden and Zawahiri and the founder of Al-Qaeda, over disagreements in the direction of jihad after the defeat of the Soviets, clearly shows that Zawahiri is hardly the man of principle and courage portrayed in his videos, but a power-hungry opportunist that will turn to murdering fellow jihadis to improve his position in the global jihad.
That's a pretty common description of the leading lights of jihad, especially including Hekmatyar and virtually all the Pak mullahs who played supporting roles.
Azzams assassination occurred as a power struggle broke out among two Egyptian groups in Afghanistan: Zawahiris Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Saudi-funded Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiyya. Raphaeli describes the heart of the conflict between the two organizations:

Al-Murabitoon (a magazine published by Al-Jamaa) accused Al-Zawahiri of depositing in his Swiss bank account money he had collected to support the Mujahedeen. He was also accused of selling arms provided by bin Laden and using the proceeds to buy gold nuggets. In the face of these accusations, some relief agencies decided to cut off their aid to Al-Zawahiri, and the need for funds forced him to seek assistance from Iran. This move further alienated the Gulf countries, particularly, Saudi Arabia which henceforth channeled all its aid to Al-Jamaa. By the time the Soviet Union started pulling out of Afghanistan in 1992 the conflict between the two groups reached the stage of mutual accusation of Takfir, or apostasy, and individual acts of assassination. Al-Zawahiri emerged the winner from this conflict, largely because of bin Laden's support and because of the murder of Abdallah Azzam, the spiritual leader of bin Laden.

Western intelligence authorities believes that the assassination of Azzam was carried out by Zawahiris close Egyptian associate, Mohammad Atef, under Zawahiris orders.

Most analysts agree that Zawahiri was the chief beneficiary of Azzams assassination, and it solidified his position alongside Bin Laden among the jihadis that remained in Afghanistan. Western intelligence authorities believes that the assassination of Azzam was carried out by Zawahiris close Egyptian associate, Mohammad Atef, under Zawahiris orders. But as Wright explains in his New Yorker article, the murder of Azzam and his sons was driven by nothing more than ideological and strategic differences between the Azzam and Bin Laden/Zawahiri factions within Al-Qaeda:

Bin Laden's final break with Abdullah Azzam came in a dispute over the scope of jihad. Bin Laden envisioned an all-Arab legion, which eventually could be used to wage jihad in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Sheikh Abdullah strongly opposed making war against fellow-Muslims. Zawahiri undermined Azzam's position by spreading rumors that he was a spy. "Zawahiri said he believed that Abdullah Azzam was working for the Americans," Osama Rushdi told me. "Sheikh Abdullah was killed that same night." On November 24, 1989, Azzam and two of his sons were blown up by a car bomb as they were driving to a mosque in Peshawar. Although no one has claimed credit for the killings, many have been blamed, including Zawahiri himself, and even bin Laden. At Azzam's funeral, Zawahiri delivered a eulogy.

Azzams plan to take the jihad from Afghanistan to Israel would die with him. Instead, Zawahiris plan of launching attacks against the Muslim regimes in the Middle East prevailed, and the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War a few years later would provide the justification for Al-Qaeda leadership to focus on taking out the only remaining Cold War superpower, the US. But it would take the murder of one of the brightest stars of jihad, Azzam, to put their plan into action a murderous program repeated by Bin Laden and Zawahiri just days before 9/11 with the preemptive assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud, hero of the anti-Soviet resistance and leader of the Afghan Northern Alliance.

Of course, it is easy for Zawahiri to mock President Bush and cite his past faults as he is hiding in a cave on the other side of the planet. But as we know, that takes no more courage than writing an op-ed for the New York Times or Washington Post. But as indicated by the two separate incidents of betrayal of his own, Ayman Al-Zawahiri has no moral high ground to lecture President Bush for his past personal failures or the American people for our foreign policy. Perhaps Zawahiri should learn that people looking establish sharia throughout the world, especially Jihads Judas himself, should not be so quick to throw stones.

Link

Terror Networks

Ayman keeps al-Qaeda in his grip

2006-04-16

In January 2003, one of the two most wanted men in the world couldn't contain his frustration. From a hiding place probably somewhere in South Asia, he tapped out two lengthy e-mails to a fellow Egyptian who'd been criticizing him in public.

"I beg you, don't stop the Muslim souls who trust your opinions from joining the jihad against the Americans," wrote Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy leader of al-Qaeda. He fired off the message even though it risked exposing him.

"Let's put it this way: Tensions had been building up between us for a long time," explained the e-mail's recipient, Montasser el-Zayat, a Cairo lawyer who shared a prison cell with Zawahiri in the 1980s and provided this account. "He always thinks he is right, even if he is alone."

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Zawahiri has broadcast his views to the world relentlessly. Despite a $25 million price on his head, he has published memoirs, given interviews and recorded a dozen speeches that find their way to the Internet and television. Video of a speech was posted Thursday on a Web site.

Zawahiri's visibility, eclipsing Osama bin Laden's, reminds al-Qaeda's enemies that the network is capable of more attacks. But a closer look at his speeches and writings, and interviews with several longtime associates in radical Islamic circles, suggest another motive: fear of losing his ideological grip over a revolutionary movement he has nurtured for 40 years.

The success of the Sept. 11 hijackings temporarily united al-Qaeda's feuding factions under the leadership of bin Laden and Zawahiri. But now long-standing ideological and tactical disputes have resurfaced, according to analysts and former Zawahiri associates.

The schisms are reflected in Zawahiri's many speeches, in which he has attempted to assert influence over a host of seemingly unrelated issues: the war in Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, elections in Egypt, oil production in Saudi Arabia and obscure questions of Muslim theology.

He is risking his credibility among Islamic radicals by speaking out on so many subjects, according to Osama Rushdi, an Egyptian who spent three years in a Cairo prison with Zawahiri in the 1980s and now lives in exile in Britain.

"He's trying to stay in control and give the impression that he's behind everything in the Middle East and everywhere else, fighting against the Americans in Iraq and against Britain in Europe," Rushdi said in an interview. "He is trying to take responsibility as a leader for what is going on in Iraq. But he knows, and everyone knows, that that is not true, that he has nothing to do with anything in Iraq."

Al-Qaeda was founded as a decentralized coalition of Islamic extremists. That structure has complicated efforts by intelligence services to penetrate the network. But the lack of clear chains of command also can make it difficult for leaders to maintain control.

Terrorism analysts said that with the Sept. 11 attacks, al-Qaeda unleashed events that are now largely outside of its control. With Zawahiri and bin Laden in hiding, most likely in Pakistan, new leaders such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq have emerged as potential rivals who follow their own script. Others have launched attacks in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, sometimes in the name of al-Qaeda but usually as independent operators with their own agendas.

"What they've started has taken on a momentum of its own," said Maha Azzam, an associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. "Obviously, this is a global movement. And it has global support, and it can't be controlled centrally as much as perhaps they'd like it to be. It's almost as if Zawahiri doesn't want to be left behind. They don't want the events on the ground to supersede them."

On March 4, President Bush was wrapping up a visit to Pakistan, where two months earlier a CIA drone had staged a missile strike in a failed attempt to kill Zawahiri. Shortly before the president's departure, Zawahiri provided another taunting reminder of his elusiveness. In a videotape aired by the al-Jazeera satellite television network, the 54-year-old Egyptian surgeon once again blasted the U.S. military and political presence in the Middle East.

But the bulk of his lecture was aimed at another radical Islamic movement: Hamas, which swept to victory in the Jan. 25 elections in the Palestinian territories. Zawahiri congratulated Hamas on its political success, but he also offered a stern warning: Avoid the temptation to work with "secular" Palestinian legislators, and never compromise on efforts to establish strict Islamic law, or sharia.

"Power is not an end in itself. Real power is application of sharia on earth," he said. "Entering the same parliament as the lay people, recognizing their legitimacy and the accords they have signed is contrary to Islam."

The lecture echoed comments made by Zawahiri on Jan. 6, when he ripped the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood for taking part in last year's elections in his native Egypt, where the al-Qaeda figure got his start in radical Islamic politics as a teenager and medical student.

The Brotherhood, he said, was "duped, provoked and used" by the United States. Zawahiri and other radicals have argued that taking part in Western-style elections is incompatible with Islam -- democracy, he has said, is an assault on God's right to rule.

With groundbreaking elections taking place in Iraq, Egypt, the Palestinian territories and even Saudi Arabia, Zawahiri and his ideological allies fear that popular sentiment in the Middle East could be turning against their goal of establishing a united caliphate to rule over the world's entire Muslim population, many al-Qaeda experts contend.

Kamal Habib is a former leader of the radical Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the network that Zawahiri joined as a young doctor. After serving a decade in prison for attempting to overthrow the Egyptian government, Habib has embraced nonviolence and is considered an authority on militant Islam.

In an interview in Cairo, he noted that Zawahiri's video messages have recently delved into the subjects of freedom and democracy. "The Arab world has witnessed change over the last year or two that is almost equivalent to the amount of change that occurred over the previous two decades," Habib said in an interview in Cairo. "He can't remain isolated from these changes. He has to respond to them."

Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical militant Islamic groups that Zawahiri has criticized generally have been reluctant to respond in public. But Hany el-Sibaai, another Egyptian exile in Britain who has known Zawahiri for years, predicts a change if the United States leaves Iraq.

"After America withdraws its troops, I think the debate will break into the open, said Sibaai, who leads the al-Maqreze Center for Historical Studies in London. "It will be, 'Why did you do this? Why did you go that way?' "

Some of the sharpest tactical differences within al-Qaeda have come to a head in Iraq.

According to intelligence officials in the Middle East and Europe, a growing rivalry has developed between Zawahiri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who leads the al-Qaeda faction in Iraq. Although Zawahiri has been reduced to launching rhetorical attacks from hideouts, Zarqawi has gained notoriety and respect among jihadists as an aggressive commander who continues to defy the U.S. military.

Zarqawi pledged loyalty to al-Qaeda two years ago, but analysts and officials suspect that their alliance is a marriage of convenience. Before the invasion of Iraq, Zarqawi kept his distance from the group, operating his own training camps. He has also held different strategic objectives: the overthrow of the monarchy in his native Jordan and war against Israel, neither of which have been priorities for al-Qaeda.

"There's nothing in common between these two guys," said Diaa Rashwan, a researcher at the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. "They were two different people from different places with a different history. I have my doubts about whether the two guys are really with the same organization."

In October, U.S. intelligence officials released a letter they said was written by Zawahiri to his "gracious brother" Zarqawi. Some independent analysts have questioned its authenticity and have charged the U.S. government with inflating al-Qaeda's role in Iraq for political reasons. Several former Zawahiri associates interviewed for this article said they believe the letter is genuine and accurately reflects some of al-Qaeda's internal conflicts.

In the letter dated July 9, 2005, Zawahiri warned Zarqawi that gory tactics that had made him famous in Iraq -- the videotaped beheadings of hostages and bombings of Shiite holy sites -- risked alienating ordinary Muslims. Although the Egyptian said he agreed such acts were religiously justified, sustaining public support was more important. His advice: Kill hostages by gunshot instead, and concentrate attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces.

"You shouldn't be deceived by the praise of some of the zealous young men and their description of you as the sheikh of the slaughterers," wrote Zawahiri, who like Zarqawi is a Sunni Muslim. "We are in a battle, and more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media. And this media battle is a race for the hearts and minds of our people."

If subsequent events are any indication, Zarqawi's response to the advice has been mixed. The number of decapitations has declined, and there is evidence that Zarqawi has taken a lower profile to give Iraqi insurgents a more visible leadership role.

At the same time, attacks on Shiite mosques have increased. In November, his organization asserted responsibility for coordinated suicide bombings that killed 60 people at two hotels in Amman, Jordan, half of them members of a wedding party.

Public reaction was as Zawahiri predicted: More than 100,000 Jordanians took to the streets, the largest mass protests in the Muslim world against an al-Qaeda-sponsored terrorist attack.

About the same time, Zawahiri produced another videotape, although it did not surface publicly until this week, posted on a radical Islamic Web site.

Perhaps mindful of reports of internal dissension, Zawahiri defended the Jordanian insurgent as "my beloved brother" and urged Muslims to rally behind him. "I have lived with him up close and seen nothing but good from him," Zawahiri said. "The Islamic nation must support the heroic holy warriors in Iraq, who are fighting on the very front line for the dignity of Islam."

Zawahiri's sensitivity to public opinion can be traced to his days as chief of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Its target since the 1960s was what it calls "the near enemy," the Egyptian government, which they consider corrupt and un-Islamic.

In 1993, group members trying to assassinate an Egyptian official accidentally killed an 11-year-old girl. An angry public response, combined with a renewed government crackdown on radicals, severely weakened the network.

This and other setbacks helped drive Zawahiri into exile in Afghanistan. "His organization inside Egypt was almost completely eliminated," said Kamal Habib, the former Islamic Jihad leader, who abandoned the group after he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

In 1998, Zawahiri sought to rescue Islamic Jihad by creating a formal alliance with bin Laden's nascent al-Qaeda network called the International Islamic Front Against Crusaders and Jews. The new target would be "the far enemy," the United States and other Western powers seen as protectors of secular Arab governments.

The decision sparked a rebellion in the ranks of Islamic Jihad. Zawahiri had failed to consult with other senior members of the group before ordering a drastic shift in its core mission.

"Many people said, 'Why would I want to fight the White House and Tony Blair?' " said Yasser al-Sirri, another Egyptian exile in London who has known Zawahiri for more than a decade. "But it was his only choice then, to be allied with bin Laden. He hadn't been successful in Egypt because he had made mistakes and surrounded himself with the wrong people. They were always fighting and arguing among themselves."

The internal feuding continued even as the new al-Qaeda under Zawahiri and bin Laden gained prominence for sponsoring the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa and the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen two years later. E-mails recovered from an al-Qaeda computer in Kabul after the invasion of Afghanistan show a steady stream of bitter message traffic between Zawahiri and his followers during this period, with running arguments over money, ideology and authority.

The Sept. 11 plot's success brought the squabbling to a temporary halt. But Zawahiri seems to have realized that the feuding would eventually resume and challenge his ideological authority, said el-Zayat, the lawyer who reported receiving in 2003 the admonishing e-mails from the al-Qaeda theoretician. Intelligence analysts said they believe the e-mails are genuine but that it is impossible to confirm with certainty that Zawahiri was the author.

"I'm sure he has the vision to bring the network back together, but I don't think he will be able to do that," Zayat said. "He hasn't changed. It's as if I'm listening to him in a prison cell in 1981. Except for some white hair, he is the same."

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Africa: North

Egyptian Islamist Compares Zark to GAI

2005-07-31

Cheese Louise. That's a first. I find myself agreeing with an Islamist...

Egyptian fundamentalist leader Osama Rushdi has called the murder of the two Algerian diplomats in Iraq, and before them the Egyptian Charge d'Affaires Ihab al-Sharif, a disgraceful and reckless act, which demonstrates the extensive confusion of 'Al Qaeda in Iraq'. The group headed by Abu-Musaab al-Zarqawi, who is wanted by the United States in Iraq, claimed responsibility for the murders.

Islamist Rushdi, the former spokesman of the outlawed Egyptian organization, 'Gamaa Islamiya' (Islamic Group), said "Al-Qaeda's Sharia courts that are trying people, deciding that they are infidels, and sentencing them to death are absurd and remind me of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in Algeria that also held such trials. I saw some of them on videotape in 1995 and their proceedings were disgraceful for humanity and Islam, and were closer to the Catholic inquisitions of the middle Ages than too anything else."

In a telephone conversation with Asharq al-Awsat, Rushdi said, "I watched the videotape of one of these trials of a young Algerian doctor. Those who knew him told me that he was polite, full of knowledge, and a representative of Islamic activity. He was tried before this "sharia" court because he was from another group called Al-Jazaarah, which is a group of Algerian intellectuals who are followers of Malik Bin-Nabi and carry out Islamic activities in Algerian universities and the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). One of the charges that his ignorant judges made against him was that he was a non-believer even though we have never understood that the sentence for an atheist is death apart from in these sick people's understanding. The odd thing is that whenever this young man sneezed and thanked God, the so-called sharia judge would say, "God bless you!" He then sentenced him to be butchered like a lamb."

He added that the GIA's sharia courts have previously sanctioned the killings of Shaykh Mohamed Said, 'FIS' spokesman Shaykh Abderrazak Radjem, as well as a large group of Muslim youths and propagators who opposed their extremism. He described Al Qaeda's sharia courts as "absurd", that judge people to be dissidents and then sentence them to death in such a reckless way. He said, "What do the Algerian and Egyptian regimes have to do with this group in Iraq and what connection do they have with its resistance to their occupiers? Does one who possesses two rifles truly believe he can fight the whole world?" He explained that these daily violent acts demonstrate how far removed the perpetrators are from sharia law and are harming the honest Iraqi resistance that require the determination and not increasing enmity and hostility from international arena, especially with neighboring countries with whom they are supposed to improve relations.

Rushdi went on to say that all those inciting violence, and drowning Iraq in seas of forbidden blood are not only opening the doors for a civil war between the Sunnis and Shiites, but also amongst the Sunnis themselves. This is because several other resistance factions that do not accept these reckless operations may find themselves in an imposed confrontation to rectify this defect. The countries whose diplomats and interests were attacked have been dragged into the conflict and hostility from such acts may seek to exploit this.

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