Mick Hartley

But (moving on from the previous post), according to Amir Taheri, some Sunnis are backing away from the jihadists:

Most Iraqi politicians now expect the constitution to be approved; fears have faded that Sunni Arabs might manage to vote it down. The optimism rises from several developments.

First, as more and more Sunni Arabs read the proposed text, now widely distributed, they realize it is not as bad as some of their self-styled leaders claimed. The latest suicide-killer attacks have also come as a wake-up call to Sunnis not to let terrorists provoke a sectarian war.

A passionate plea for national unity came Sept. 16 from Sheik Mahmoud al-Sumaidaei, the spiritual leader of Sunni Arabs. Speaking at the Um al-Qura Mosque in Baghdad, al-Sumaidaei called for a national conference to find a common strategy against terror. “We don’t need others to come across the border and kill us in the name of defending us,” he said, a reference to Arab terrorists who have joined the insurgency under the banner of al Qaeda. “We reject the killing of any Iraqi.”

Almost at the same time, a suicide-bomber, who turned out to be a Saudi, killed 12 worshippers at a mosque in Tuz Khormato, north of Baghdad. All those killed were Turcomans, proving al-Sumdaidaei’s contention that the terrorists had embarked on a campaign of indiscriminate massacre.

The parading of captured Arab terrorists on TV has brought home another truth: The “insurgency” is mainly a foreign invasion by forces that wish to impose on Iraq a Taliban-style government. “The insurgency has nothing to do with Iraqis,” says Adnan al-Dulaimi, a prominent Sunni Arab tribal chief and political leader. “[The terrorists] chased out of Afghanistan want to set up shop in Iraq.”