Al-Qaida losing relevance in Iraq war outcome

ANALYSIS

updated 3:04 p.m. ET July 17, 2008

COMBAT OUTPOST COPPER, Iraq - It's quiet around here in farm country, south of Baghdad, where al-Qaida once held sway. Just months ago U.S. foot patrols through the wheat fields nearby would regularly draw fire — if the soldiers managed first to elude al-Qaida-planted roadside bombs.

"The difference is night and day," says Capt. George Morris, 26. He and his soldiers in Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division walked the area this week to visit a handful of farm families five miles east of the town of Latifiyah, not far from the Tigris River.

And it's not just here. Throughout the country, al-Qaida in Iraq, an insurgent organization thought to be affiliated with the global terrorist network but composed mainly of Iraqis, has lost so much clout it is close to becoming irrelevant to the outcome of the war. The group has not been eliminated, however, leaving open the possibility of resurgence if the Iraqi government fails to follow up the military gains with civilian services like the irrigation that's badly needed here.

When President Bush announced in January 2007 that he was sending more than 21,000 extra U.S. combat troops to Iraq — mostly to the Baghdad area — as part of a new approach to fighting the insurgency, commanders said their No. 1 focus was degrading al-Qaida's ability to foment sectarian violence.

Expectation of further troop reductions
In the Latifiyah area, it's not hard to see that goal appears to have been achieved — an accomplishment that adds to the expectation that Bush will be able to further reduce U.S. troop levels this fall.

Iraqi Army Capt. Jassim Hussein al-Shamari, whose men were part of Morris' foot patrol, has one explanation for al-Qaida's fall.

"The people themselves will turn over the terrorists" if they show themselves, said al-Shamari. He was speaking through an interpreter to Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, a deputy commander of U.S. forces in the swath of once-violent territory stretching south of Baghdad from the Iranian border to Anbar province.

Buchanan sees it much the same way.

"The people are fed up with what they experienced under (al-Qaida's) presence," Buchanan said, adding that the key to keeping the terrorist group down is having the government in Baghdad step in and provide more essential services, like the irrigation that farmers in the Latifiyah area find in short supply.

And there is a troubling disconnect between the central government and local leaders.

"The link to the government of Iraq is almost nonexistent here," Morris said.

So it remains an open question: Once U.S. combat forces depart, whenever that may be, will al-Qaida find an avenue for resurgence? It is generally accepted among U.S. officers and intelligence specialists that despite its decline, al-Qaida will remain in Iraq at some level long after the Americans are gone. The group had no meaningful foothold in the country before U.S. forces invaded in March 2003.

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