Al Qaeda has apparently implemented a new strategy, going after Shia Arabs, and only Shia Arabs, without endangering Sunni Arabs. The new head of al Qaeda operations in Iraq is an Iraqi Sunni Arab, and his tactic is to concentrate on attacks against Shia mosques, preferably during prayer services. This way, you kill a lot of Shia, and only Shia. The only Sunni Arabs you will find inside a Shia Mosque are suicide bombers, and the occasional soldier or policeman looking for illegal weapons, or Shia terrorists. During three days of suicide bomb attacks last week, over 250 Shia Arabs were killed or wounded. The only Sunni Arab casualties were less than a dozen suicide bombers.
The Shias were getting mad enough at the Sunnis when the Sunnis were suffering at the hands of jihadis, too. How much more angry will the Shias be when the Sunnis fail to join sufficiently in a campaign to kill foreign jihadis killing in the name of Iraq's Sunnis when the Iraqi Sunnis are not suffering at all?
Things will get very ugly indeed for Iraq's Sunnis if they continue to be stupid and try to play both sides of the game instead of fully allying with the Shias and Kurds to drive out the jihadi invaders and their local Sunni allies.
