The attack, which was followed by a fierce firefight, came after Sheik Wathiq al-Obeidi called on residents in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Azamiyah to rise up against foreign fighters, a reference to al-Qaida in Iraq, which recently has seen a surge in opposition from fellow Sunnis.
A Sunni insurgent umbrella group threatened the cleric on Tuesday, calling him a traitor and accusing him of working with the Anbar Salvation Council, an alliance of Sunni tribal leaders who are fighting al-Qaida in Iraq in the province of the same name west of Baghdad.
"The so-called Wathiq and his followers ... are a legitimate target for
mujahedeen (holy warriors)," the statement said.
These Sunni Arabs began to migrate to neutrality and pro-government activiites when the jihadis failed to protect them from Shia death squads and US/Iraqi military operations. Two million Sunni Arab refugees abroad are the most fundamental sign of that loss.
These attacks are jihadi efforts to prove that allying with America will not protect them, prodding them to go back to the jihadis. So we must provide better security for the Sunni Arabs than the jihadis could.
Of course, we've also made it more difficult for the Sunni Arabs who defected to undefect. By taking biometric information on the former insurgents, we decrease the chances they will defect back to enemy status by increasing our ability to identify and kill them if they decide to fight us again.
It is a complicated fight in Iraq. And not just for us.
