In yesterday's Daily Beast, Eli Lake reports on one possible result of al-Qa'ida in Iraq's daring jailbreak from Abu Ghraib that I hadn't considered. Specifically, Lake writes that the Sunni tribal leaders who revolted against al-Qa'ida in 2006 now fear they will now face mass retribution from the jihadists they helped U.S. and Iraqi forces capture during the Anbar Awakening and subsequent Surge in 2007.
This is a sobering thought, especially the lesson other potential indigenous forces the US wants to use as proxies against al-Qa'ida affiliates may draw from it: if they side against the jihadists, the United States will eventually abandon them just as they did by withdrawing completely from Iraq in 2011 whereas the terrorists will remain. The "decade of war" may have ended for us (likely only in the short-term, however), but it certainly hasn't for al-Qa'ida, and it is our putative allies who will suffer the terrible costs of our irresolution.
Also, Lake quotes an unnamed intelligence analyst who is much more pessimistic about the ability of the U.S. intelligence community to assist the Iraqis in locating the escaped fugitives than DOD spokesman George Little. "We just lost track of everyone we didn't kill who was in al Qaeda during the surge," one U.S. intelligence analyst said. "We don't have the analysts or the human source networks to track these guys." Lake's source added that most of the Iraq analysts have been reassigned to other areas since the US withdrew from Iraq at the end of 2011.
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