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Description
Spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner on July 18 told a press conference US troops had caught the top Iraqi man in al-Qaeda's Iraq network, Khaled al-Mashhadani, also known as "Abu Shahid", on July 4 and that the man previously believed to have held that distinction was a fictional creation. He said Mashhadani, captured in the northern city of Mosul, had given US forces information about an elaborate media operation which he had run, aimed at putting an "Iraqi face" on a network which Americans had frequently said was dominated by foreigners.
Bergner said Mashhadani was close to Abu Ayub al-Masri, an Egyptian head of al-Qaeda in Iraq (whom APS sources say is a nephew of al-Qaeda's No. 2 Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri). Bergner said al-Qaeda's Iraqi network's main link was to Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri. Al-Qaeda's communiques describe Masri as a "war minister" of the "Islamic State of Iraq" (ISI), headed by an activist of Iraqi descent known as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. But Bergner said ISI was a fictional entity - a "virtual organisation in cyberspace" intended to "put an Iraqi face" on the network. He said Mashhadani had confessed that Baghdadi was a "fictional role" whose internet declarations were read by an actor with an Iraqi accent.
Instead, Bergner said, Mashhadani was the "most senior Iraqi in the al-Qaeda in Iraq network". He said Mashhadani had formerly been a member of Jaysh Ansar al-Sunna, another Neo-Salafi group active in Iraq, who subsequently joined al-Qaeda and helped direct their media operations, including setting up the ISI.
The US military had in the past said only 5% of al-Qaeda's membership was non-Iraqi. But they also suggested that the leadership was dominated by foreigners and was following an externally-imposed agenda rather than acting in the interests of Iraq's Sunni Arabs. The identity and whereabouts of the fictional Baghdadi has been the cause of confusion in the past. The Interior Ministry in March said he had been arrested, and then in May said he had been killed. Both reports were quickly denied by the US military.
Martin Navias of King's College in London says there is a physical connection between al-Qaeda central and al-Qaeda in Iraq. He cites a 2005 letter sent by Zawahiri to Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi, the former al-Qaeda in Iraq leader killed in a US air strike near Ba'quba in June 2006. That letter dealt with... |
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