Al Qaeda diverting terrorists from Iran to Afghanistan?
Posted by: McQ
Consider this:
Senior leaders of al-Qaida may be diverting fighters from the war in Iraq to the Afghan frontier area, the top American commander in Iraq told The Associated Press on Saturday.
If true, that one sentence blows away many of myths that have fueled the left's criticism of the war in Iraq.
A) Iraq was a diversion from Afghanistan. In fact, it appears it wasn't at all. In fact, when you look at how Afghanistan is going and how Iraq is going, it may have moved the fight to a more favorable area (and under more favorable tactical conditions - like unity of command) for the US. If they have the power now to divert terrorist fighters to Afghanistan, it can be assumed they had the power to divert terrorist fighters from Afghanistan to Iraq as well.
B) AQI was a separate entity from AQ. Obviously if the report above is true, then the AQ effort in Iraq was indeed part of the overall AQ strategy and it was pulling the strings. That's pretty much been established previously, but this would simply reinforce that point. Thus you can then conclude that AQI was not only a part of AQ but created by AQ.
C) We've created more terrorists. If AQ had the choice of sending them either to Iraq or Afghanistan as that sentence indicates, then what were available in Iraq would also have been available for Afghanistan.
Afghanistan, for years, was a less successful effort than Iraq mainy because AQ didn't have full control (the Taliban was a part of that effort in conjunction with AQ) and AQ was enjoying more success in Iraq. So it reinforced its success.
Now with that success turned into a defeat, and after the Taliban reorganizing and doing better in Afghanistan, it is that war where AQ now sees at least a glimmer of hope for its forces. So the argument can now be made that the number of terrorists would have been the same given the existence of the war in Afghanistan and they were diverted to a more promising war, at the time, in Iraq.
"There are unsubstantiated rumors and reflections that perhaps some foreign fighters originally intended for Iraq may have gone to the FATA," he said, referring to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, where extremists have a secure staging ground for movements into neighboring Afghanistan.
"We do think that there is some assessment ongoing as to the continued viability of al-Qaida's fight in Iraq," he said. "They're not going to abandon Iraq, they're not going to write it off. None of that. But what they certainly may do is start to provide some of those resources that would have come to Iraq to Pakistan, possibly Afghanistan."
[...]
"That could be under review," Petraeus said. "We do think they are considering what should be the main effort."
[...]
"We do know the foreign fighter flow into Iraq has been reduced very substantially," he said.
D) Iraq isn't the main front in the war on terror. Since this speaks to decisions by AQ as to where they will make their main effort and indications are now being seen that says it will be Afghanistan, it is now hard to argue that Iraq wasn't an very important front in the war against AQ. They saw it as the main front, while critics dismissed it as a diversion.
E) Combat troops in Iraq should be withdrawn on a published timeline (16 months per Obama). The fact that intel indicates a drastic drawdown of the AQ effort in Iraq, but not its abandonment, as well as the intel that tells us that AQ can and will shift assets to the front showing the most promise, again argues against announced withdrawal timelines and the complete withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq.
