Iraq

[Soldier4Christ]

Iraq: US Troop Deaths Lowest in 13 Months…

Iraqi deaths are also the lowest this year.  Regardless, the liberals will still be screaming that we’re losing….

    BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) – The U.S. monthly death toll in Iraq has dropped to its lowest level in more than a year, although the figure is “still too high,” the military said Sunday.

    September’s preliminary death toll is at least 62, according to military reports, the lowest number since August 2006 when 65 American troops were killed in the war.

    Military spokesman Rear Adm. Mark Fox said the lower toll resulted from a “combination of a number of factors” put in place by this year’s increase in U.S. forces in Iraq.

    As for Iraqi civilian deaths, authorities have reported that 296 bodies were found dumped in Baghdad this month — the lowest monthly total this year. In August, there were 428 bodies found.

[Soldier4Christ]

After reports of declining casulaties, we now get reports from military that our enemy is crippled! I know the liberals don’t want to hear it, but victory is starting to look like an achievable objective!

    The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.

    But as the White House and its military commanders plan the next phase of the war, other officials have cautioned against taking what they see as a premature step that could create strategic and political difficulties for the United States. Such a declaration could fuel criticism that the Iraq conflict has become a civil war in which U.S. combat forces should not be involved. At the same time, the intelligence community, and some in the military itself, worry about underestimating an enemy that has shown great resilience in the past.

    “I think it would be premature at this point,” a senior intelligence official said of a victory declaration over AQI, as the group is known. Despite recent U.S. gains, he said, AQI retains “the ability for surprise and for catastrophic attacks.” Earlier periods of optimism, such as immediately following the June 2006 death of AQI founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a U.S. air raid, not only proved unfounded but were followed by expanded operations by the militant organization.

    There is widespread agreement that AQI has suffered major blows over the past three months. Among the indicators cited is a sharp drop in suicide bombings, the group’s signature attack, from more than 60 in January to around 30 a month since July. Captures and interrogations of AQI leaders over the summer had what a senior military intelligence official called a “cascade effect,” leading to other killings and captures. The flow of foreign fighters through Syria into Iraq has also diminished, although officials are unsure of the reason and are concerned that the broader al-Qaeda network may be diverting new recruits to Afghanistan and elsewhere.

    The deployment of more U.S. and Iraqi forces into AQI strongholds in Anbar province and the Baghdad area, as well as the recruitment of Sunni tribal fighters to combat AQI operatives in those locations, has helped to deprive the militants of a secure base of operations, U.S. military officials said. “They are less and less coordinated, more and more fragmented,” Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, said recently. Describing frayed support structures and supply lines, Odierno estimated that the group’s capabilities have been “degraded” by 60 to 70 percent since the beginning of the year.

[nChrist]

SO, Pelosi and nuts trot out their genocide bill on Turkey for something that happened 100 years ago!! They would rather see anything than our victory. For them, the consequences don't matter just as long as defeat is the outcome. Anyone looking at this and other actions make it clear that liberals couldn't handle a victory in Iraq. There are other stupid things happening that all indicate political agendas are much more important than the safety of the American people. Don't the politicians know that we're smart enough to see through all of their baloney?

[Soldier4Christ]

Don't the politicians know that we're smart enough to see through all of their baloney?

Unfortunately there are many that are buying into their baloney. They are the ones wearing lead in place of the lenses in their once rose colored glasses.

[Soldier4Christ]

Cemetery workers feel pinch as violence falls 
Thousands suffer pay cut as burials in Iraq's largest graveyard down by 1/3

At what's believed to be the world's largest cemetery, where Shiite Muslims aspire to be buried and millions already have been, business isn't good.
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A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months, and that's cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds.

Few people have a better sense of the death rate in Iraq .

"I always think of the increasing and decreasing of the dead," said Sameer Shaaban, 23, one of more than 100 workers who specialize in ceremonially washing the corpses. "People want more and more money, and I am one of them, but most of the workers in this field don't talk frankly, because they wish for more coffins, to earn more and more."

Dhurgham Majed al Malik, 48, whose family has arranged burial services for generations, said that this spring, private cars and taxis with caskets lashed to their roofs arrived at a rate of 6,500 a month. Now it's 4,000 or less, he said.

Malik said that the daily tide of cars bearing coffins has been a barometer of Iraq's violence for years. The number of burials rose and fell several times during Saddam Hussein's persecution of Shiites, and it soared again during the eight years of the Iran - Iraq war in the 1980s.

Then in the 1990s, the daily average fell to 150 or less, Malik said. With the current war, the burials again reached 300 daily.

In the early days of the war, some bodies brought for burial had been victims of Saddam, found by their families in unmarked mass graves. Later, there were surges; September 2005 marked a high point after a stampede during a Shiite Muslim festival killed hundreds on a Baghdad bridge. More than 1,300 were buried in a single day, Malik said.

The cemetery workers aren't immune to violence. In 2004, militia fighters loyal to the anti-American militant cleric Muqtada al Sadr and coalition forces fought in the cemetery, and burial operations had to stop.

Afterward, many cemetery workers were killed or injured by bombs left behind. Their work remained hazardous until U.S. and Iraqi military teams cleared the explosives, Malik said.

Najaf, a city of about 600,000 people, is built around the gold-covered Imam Ali Mosque, a shrine to one of the most revered figures in Shiite Islam who grew up in the home of the prophet Muhammad and later became his son-in-law.

The city, with the shrine and graveyard, is considered the third-most important holy site for Shiite Muslims, after Mecca and Medina. It attracts millions of pilgrims each year— and tens of thousands of funeral parties.

The Wadi al Salam cemetery— its name translates as "Valley of Peace"— dates to the 7th century. Its mud-brown jumble of crypts and rectangular and domed brick and marble tombs stretches to the horizon. It's six miles long, two miles wide and grows by acres every day.

Imam Ali himself is said to have pronounced it the entrance to paradise. And so the Shiites come with their dead.

The burials aren't expensive, usually $200 or less, but many people draw their income from them.

When a family arrives— after going through the indignity of having the coffin searched repeatedly for explosives— the body is taken to be washed at one of five family-owned businesses. Female bodies are washed by teams of women. Men wash the male bodies.

The bodies are then carefully wrapped in white cotton shrouds, made in factories in Najaf that also export them. Then the bodies can be taken to the tomb of Imam Ali for a ceremony that includes circling the imam's tomb.

After prayers, the coffin is borne to the gravesite. There, professional preachers are paid to recite verses from the Quran. The family and the gravedigger remove the body from the coffin and ease it into the grave, placing the head in a niche dug at the end of the grave that faces Mecca .

After the burial, there is another prayer, then workers build a tomb over the grave.

The sights and smells of working with the bodies, particularly those torn by war, are hardly pleasant, but it becomes a mundane job like any other, said Jawad Abuseba, 40.

His family has dug graves for more than 300 years, he said. His hands are thick with calluses after 22 years of digging with a shovel, basket and pickaxe. With their nails torn and their skin gray, his hands look as though they're dead, too.

"There is nothing beautiful in this career, but I cannot do any another job," Abuseba said.

Shiites feel so strongly about being buried here that when it's too dangerous to travel, families have buried their loved ones elsewhere temporarily, then disinterred them for reburial here.

Even with less violence, many of those buried here are victims of the war, and the tragedy of each loss offers a counterpoint to workers' worries about money.

On a recent day, after the ritual washing, four male relatives carried a coffin containing the scorched and torn body of Mohammed Hazim , 33. Three women trailed, weeping.

Hazim, a member of the radical Mahdi Army militia, had been killed in a U.S. attack in Diyala province, his brother, Ali, said.

"Death to infidel America and the agent Iraqi government," the family chanted again and again.

At the shrine, security guards stopped the procession to check the coffin for explosives before allowing the men to take it inside. Later, at the grave, the men cried and the three women fell to their knees shrieking and flinging fistfuls of sand into their hair, a gesture of extreme grief.

"We Iraqis are full with sadness and tragedies now," Ali Hazim said. "I swear by the name of Allah that each house bears some weight of sadness and of tragedy, and this is the reality of Iraqis now."

For the laborers in the Valley of Peace, it was just another workday, one they faced with a matter-of-fact attitude unnerving to those who deal with death less frequently.

"Certainly, when the number of dead increases I feel happy, like all workers in the graveyard," said Basim Hameed , 30, a body washer. "This happiness comes from the increase in the amount of money we have."

Death is something everyone must face, he noted. "My job demands death, and this is our fate, all of us."

[MusicMedic5150]

Thats funny I dont remember hearing about this on CNN or any other liberal outlet so it must not be true....

[Soldier4Christ]

That's because they are working on getting it to go back up. After all they can't have unemployed cemetery workers nor can they be wrong about anything.   

[Soldier4Christ]

Violence in Iraq drops sharply: Ministry

Violence in Iraq has dropped by 70 percent since the end of June, when U.S. forces completed their build-up of 30,000 extra troops to stabilize the war-torn country, the Interior Ministry said on Monday.

The ministry released the new figures as bomb blasts in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul killed five people and six gunmen died in clashes with police in the holy Shi'ite city of Kerbala south of the Iraqi capital.

Washington began dispatching reinforcements to Iraq in February to try to buy Iraq's feuding political leaders time to reach a political accommodation to end violence between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs that has killed tens of thousands and forced millions from their homes.

While the leaders have failed to agree on key laws aimed at reconciling the country's warring sects, the troop buildup has succeeded in quelling violence.

Under the plan, U.S. troops left their large bases and set up combat outposts in neighborhoods while launching a series of summer offensives against Sunni Islamist al Qaeda, other Sunni Arab militants and Shi'ite militias in the Baghdad beltway.

Interior Ministry spokesman Major-General Abdul-Karim Khalaf told reporters that there had been a 70 percent decrease in violence countrywide in the three months from July to September over the previous quarter.

GRADUAL IMPROVEMENT

In Baghdad, considered the epicenter of the violence because of its mix of Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs, car bombs had decreased by 67 percent and roadside bombs by 40 percent, he said. There had also been a 28 percent decline in the number of bodies found dumped in the capital's streets.

In Anbar, a former insurgent hotbed where Sunni Arab tribes have joined U.S. forces against al Qaeda, there has been an 82 percent drop in violent deaths.

"These figures show a gradual improvement in controlling the security situation," Khalaf said.

However, in the northern province of Nineveh, where many al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab militants fled to escape the crackdown in Baghdad and surrounding region, there had been a 129 percent rise in car bombings and a corresponding 114 percent increase in the number of people killed in violence.

While the figures confirm U.S. data showing a positive trend in combating al Qaeda bombers, there is growing instability in southern Iraq, where rival Shi'ite factions are fighting for political dominance.

Police said six gunmen were killed in police raids in Kerbala, 110 km (70 miles) southwest of Baghdad.

Some 50 people were killed in Kerbala in August in fierce clashes between fighters loyal to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and local police, who are seen as aligned to the rival Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council's armed wing, the Badr Organization.

After the clashes, Sadr said he was imposing a six-month freeze on the activities of the Mehdi Army, increasingly seen as beyond his control, so that he could reorganize it.

In Baghdad, three roadside bombs killed four people, including three policemen, while in Mosul one policeman was killed when a blast hit a police patrol.

[Soldier4Christ]

The figures given above are considered moderate by some. One freelance news agent (Michael Yon) that has decided to give his reports away to MSM for free in order to get the news out on what is happening in Iraq has given a 95% reduction in violence. Michael Yon has reported the news from Iraq and is frustrated with the MSM refusing to take and publish his reports when those reports reflect  positive news on the status of the war in Iraq. He said he wants the truth to get out so he is offering his reports completely free.

It is noted that al-Queda is on the run. The areas in which al-Queda has been chased out the violence has dropped significantly if not completely. The areas they have fled to the violence has increased indicating that Iraqi's are not the source of violence as reported by most MSM. Many of the al-Queda are now leaving Iraq fleeing to safer territory.

[nChrist]

Brother,

This sounds exactly like the liberal mainstream news media. They couldn't stand to see a victory.

Realistically, al-Queda should be hunted down wherever they go in the world. They are like roaches, and every last one of them should be imprisoned or exterminated. If not, they will simply regroup and come get us again. They have been our sworn enemies since the 80s, and they meant what they said.

ImANutJob in Iran also means what he says. The larger global plans of radical Islam aren't a joke, rather a driving force that must be fulfilled. However, there are some folks blocking their way that must be eliminated first. If you guessed that this part of the world is on their list, you would be right. They already have the world divided up for their Caliphate, and that isn't a joke either.

[Soldier4Christ]

They already have the world divided up for their Caliphate, and that isn't a joke either.

No that isn't a joke and something to take note of is that it is divided into ten significant areas. The Caliphate was a big word just a few years ago but it has been ignored by many since then. This doesn't mean that this idea has been dropped but rather that this is being worked on in a more secretive manner. The islamists are still intent on forming the caliphate and are being successful in doing so in many areas.

[Soldier4Christ]

Thousands return to safer Iraqi capital

In a dramatic turnaround, more than 3,000 Iraqi families driven out of their Baghdad neighborhoods have returned to their homes in the past three months as sectarian violence has dropped, the government said Saturday.

Saad al-Azawi, his wife and four children are among them. They fled to Syria six months ago, leaving behind what had become one of the capital's more dangerous districts - west Baghdad's largely Sunni Khadra region.

The family had been living inside a vicious and bloody turf battle between al-Qaida in Iraq and Mahdi Army militiamen. But Azawi said things began changing, becoming more peaceful, in August when radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his Mahdi Army fighters to stand down nationwide.

About the same time, the Khadra neighborhood Awakening Council rose up against brutal al-Qaida control - the imposition of its austere interpretation of Islam, along with the murder and torture of those who would not comply.

The uprising originated in Iraq's west and flowed into the capital. Earlier this year, the Sunni tribes and clans in the vast Anbar province began their own revolt and have successfully rid the largely desert region of al-Qaida control.

At one point the terrorist group virtually controlled Anbar, often with the complicity of the vast Sunni majority who welcomed the outsiders in their fight against American forces.

But, U.S. officials say, al-Qaida overplayed its hand with Iraq's Sunnis, who practice a moderate version of Islam. American forces were quick to capitalize on the upheaval, welcoming former Sunni enemies as colleagues in securing what was once the most dangerous region of the country.

And as 30,000 additional U.S. forces arrived for the crackdown in Baghdad and central Iraq, the American commander, Gen. David Petraeus, began stationing many of them in neighborhood outposts. The mission was not only to take back control but to foster neighborhood groups like the one in Khadra to shake off al-Qaida's grip.

The 40-year-old al-Azawi, who has gone back to work managing a car service, said relatives and friends persuaded him to bring his family home.

"Six months ago, I wouldn't dare be outside, not even to stand near the garden gate by the street. Killings had become routine. I stopped going to work, I was so afraid," he said, chatting with friends on a street in the neighborhood.

When he and his family joined the flood of Iraqi refugees to Syria the streets were empty by early afternoon, when all shops were tightly shuttered. Now the stores stay open until 10 p.m. and the U.S. military working with the neighborhood council is handing out $2,000 grants to shop owners who had closed their business. The money goes to those who agree to reopen or first-time businessmen.

Al-Azawi said he's trying to get one of the grants to open a poultry and egg shop that his brother would run.

"In Khadra, about 15 families have returned from Syria. I've called friends and family still there and told them it's safe to come home," he said.

Sattar Nawrous, a spokesman for the Ministry of Displacement and Migration, said the al-Azawi family was among 3,100 that have returned to their homes in Baghdad in the past 90 days.

"In the past three months, the ministry did not register any forced displacement in the whole of Iraq," said Nawrous, who is a Kurd.

The claim could not be independently verified, but, if true, it would represent a dramatic end to the sectarian cleansing that has shredded the fabric of Baghdad's once mixed society.

The head of the ministry is Abdul-Samad Rahman, a Shiite appointed to his job by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is accused of promoting the Shiite cause to the detriment of Sunnis. Under Saddam Hussein, the Sunni minority ruled and heavily oppressed many in the Shiite majority.

Part of the inflow can be attributed to stiffening of visa and residency procedures for Iraqis by the Syrian government.

Mahmoud al-Zubaidi, who runs the Iraqi Airways office in Damascus, the Syrian capital, the flow of Iraqis has almost reversed.

What were once full flights arriving from Baghdad now touch down virtually empty, he told Al-Sabah, the government funded Iraqi daily newspaper. Now the flights are leaving Damascus with more passengers but the volume of travel is off considerably.

On average, 56 Iraqis - civilians and security forces - have died each day so far in this very bloody year. Last month, however, the toll fell to just under 30 Iraqis killed daily in sectarian violence.

More than four months after U.S. forces completed a 30,000-strong force buildup, the death toll for both Iraqis and Americans has fallen dramatically for two months running.

[Soldier4Christ]

“Al Qaeda is Defeated”

“Al Qaeda in Iraq is defeated,” according to Sheik Omar Jabouri, spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party and a member of the widespread and influential Jabouri Tribe. Speaking through an interpreter at a 31 October meeting at the Iraqi Islamic Party headquarters in downtown Baghdad, Sheik Omar said that al Qaeda had been “defeated mentally, and therefore is defeated physically,” referring to how clear it has become that the terrorist group’s tactics have backfired. Operatives who could once disappear back into the crowd after committing an increasingly atrocious attack no longer find safe haven among the Iraqis who live in the southern part of Baghdad. They are being hunted down and killed. Or, if they are lucky, captured by Americans.

Colonel Ricky Gibbs, the American brigade commander with responsibility for the Rashid District in south Baghdad today told me, “So goes South Baghdad goes Baghdad.” General Petraeus had told me similar things about the importance of South Baghdad. In fact, Rashid is quickly developing into what might be one of the final serious battlegrounds of the war.

During the meeting, another member of the Iraqi Islamic Party said that al Qaeda has changed its strategy now that fomenting civil war between Sunni and Shia has backfired. Al Qaeda has shifted targets, now trying to generate friction between tribes. This time, however, the tribes are onto the game early, and they are not playing.

Sheik Omar, who has gained the respect of American combat leaders for his intelligence and organizational skills, said the tough line against al Qaeda is also enforced at the tribal level. According to Sheik Omar, the Jabouri tribe, too, is actively committed to destroying al Qaeda. So much so, that Jabouri tribal leaders have decided they would “kill their own sons” if any aided al Qaeda. To underscore the point, he went on to say that about 70 Jabouri “sons” had been killed by the Jabouri tribe so far.

In addition to brigade commander Colonel Ricky Gibbs, four of his battalion commanders were also present: Lieutenant Colonels James Crider, Patrick Frank, Stephen Michael and Myron Reineke. Sheik Omar expressed deep gratitude for their assistance.

Omar’s influence extends beyond tribal and party levels, to include important channels within the Iraqi government and the US military in Baghdad, as evidenced by the agenda of the hours-long meeting. But for the talk about al Qaeda, the focus was mostly on other topics, such as returning displaced persons to their homes, efficiently delivering basic services and jumpstarting the economy. In fact, more and more meetings in Iraq are turning to day-to-day business, and less time is required on military and security topics like targeting and addressing intelligence-type matters, which until recently monopolized most meetings across Iraq.

    Michael Yon does not receive funding or financial support from Fox News, or from any network, movie, book or television deals at this time. He is entirely reader supported. He relies on his readers to help him replace his equipment and cover his expenses so that he may remain in Iraq and bring you the stories of our soldiers. If you value his work, please consider supporting his mission.

[Soldier4Christ]

Media watchdog says as Iraq successes rise, networks' coverage falls

A conservative media watchdog has conducted a study which documents that as conditions in Iraq have improved over the course of the last three months, coverage of the war on the big three networks has decreased.



The Media Research Center (MRC) says for more than three years, the major networks offered extensive coverage of the failures in Iraq and placed a skeptical spin on General David Petraeus' September 10 surge progress report. But Tim Graham, who serves as director of media analysis at the MRC, says the networks' zeal for reporting on Iraq has declined as the violence and casualties have declined in the war-torn country in recent months.

"We had a 178 network stories in September, which fell to 68 in November -- which simply means, yes, things are doing well," says Graham. He says at ABC, NBC, and CBS, apparently "good news is no news."

"The news media sort of had a relish for the bad news," he continues. "It really enjoyed reporting bad stories and sort of trying to destroy the whole idea that the war in Iraq was ever a good thing -- and when it starts to look like maybe it wasn't such a bad idea, then it suddenly just drops out."

Graham thinks if this trend continues, it will certainly affect the networks coverage during the upcoming presidential election year. "I expect the Iraq issue will pretty much drop out of the race, especially in the Democratic side," he predicts. "But I think perhaps the overconfidence the Democrats have had this year will evaporate a little -- and so they will go back to worrying about their real weakness on national security."

Graham suggests it would be a refreshing change of pace if the American news media would celebrate the successes of the American military -- just by reporting them.

[Soldier4Christ]

Al-Qaeda leaders admit: 'We are in crisis. There is panic and fear'

Al-Qaeda in Iraq faces an “extraordinary crisis”. Last year's mass defection of ordinary Sunnis from al-Qaeda to the US military “created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight”. The terrorist group's security structure suffered “total collapse”.

These are the words not of al-Qaeda's enemies but of one of its own leaders in Anbar province — once the group's stronghold. They were set down last summer in a 39-page letter seized during a US raid on an al-Qaeda base near Samarra in November.

The US military released extracts from that letter yesterday along with a second seized in another November raid that is almost as startling.

That second document is a bitter 16-page testament written last October by a local al-Qaeda leader near Balad, north of Baghdad. “I am Abu-Tariq, emir of the al-Layin and al-Mashahdah sector,” the author begins. He goes on to describe how his force of 600 shrank to fewer than 20.

“We were mistreated, cheated and betrayed by some of our brothers,” he says. “Those people were nothing but hypocrites, liars and traitors and were waiting for the right moment to switch sides with whoever pays them most.”

Assuming the two documents are authentic — and the US military insists that they are — they provide a rare insight into an organisation thrown into turmoil by the rise of the Awakening movement. More than 80,000 Sunnis have joined the tribal groups of “concerned local citizens” [CLCs] that have helped to eject al-Qaeda from swaths of western and northern Iraq, including much of Baghdad.

US intelligence officials cautioned, however, that the documents were snapshots of two small areas and that al-Qaeda was far from a spent force.

They said that while the number of car bombs had fallen over the past year, the organisation had doubled its attacks on CLC members since October. More than 20 people were killed last night when a suicide car bomber attacked a checkpoint near Balad.

Al-Qaeda gunmen stormed a compound of an “Awakening” group in Iraq's northern Nineveh province yesterday, the US military said. Among those killed in the fighting were 10 suspected Al-Qaeda in Iraq fighters.

The Anbar letter conceded that the “crusaders” — Americans — had gained the upper hand by persuading ordinary Sunnis that al-Qaeda was responsible for their suffering and by exploiting their poverty to entice them into the security forces. Al-Qaeda's “Islamic State of Iraq is faced with an extraordinary crisis, especially in al-Anbar”, the unnamed emir admitted.

In an apparent reference to al-Qaeda's brutal tactics, he said of the Americans and their Sunni allies: “We helped them to unite against us . . . The Americans and the apostates launched their campaigns against us and we found ourselves in a circle not being able to move, organise or conduct our operations.”

He said of the loss of Anbar province: “This created weakness and psychological defeat. This also created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight. The morale of the fighters went down . . . There was a total collapse in the security structure of the organisation.” The emir complained that the supply of foreign fighters had dwindled and that they found it increasingly hard to operate inside Iraq because they could not blend in. Foreign suicide bombers determined to kill “not less than 20 or 30 infidels” grew disillusioned because they were kept hanging about and only given small operations. Some gave up and went home.

Finally the emir recommended rewards for killing apostates, using doctors to kill infidels and offering gifts to tribal leaders. He said al-Qaeda's fighters should be sent to more promising areas such as Diyala province or Baghdad — which is exactly what happened.

Rear-Admiral Gregory Smith, the US military spokesman in Baghdad, called Abu-Tariq's testament a “woe-is-me kind of document”. It calls the Sunnis who switched sides a “cancer in the body of al-Jihad movement”, and declares: “We should have no mercy on them.”

The author lists those who have made off with al-Qaeda weapons or money, describes the group's arsenal, including C5 rockets, which are used against helicopters, and records the fate of the battalions under his command.

Most of the first battalion's fighters “betrayed us and joined al-Sahwah [the Awakening]”, he says. The leader of the second ran away and all but two of its 300 fighters joined the Awakening. The activities of the third were “frozen due to their present conditions”. Of the fourth he writes: “Most of its members are scoundrels, sectarians, non-believers”.

He lists 38 people still working for him but beside five names he has written comments like “We have not seen him for twenty days” or “left us a week ago”. He concludes, wistfully: “And that is the number of fighters left in my sector.”

'WE WERE MISTREATED AND CHEATED'

Extracts from letters

Abu-Tariq, al-Qaeda leader

“There were almost 600 fighters in our sector before the tribes changed course 360 degrees . . . Many of our fighters quit and some of them joined the deserters . . . As a result of that the number of fighters dropped down to 20 or less.”

“We were mistreated, cheated and betrayed by some of our brothers who used to be part of the Jihadi movement, therefore we must not have mercy on those traitors until they come back to the right side or get eliminated completely.”

Unnamed emir, Anbar province

“The Islamic State of Iraq [al-Qaeda] is faced with an extraordinary crisis, especially in al-Anbar province. Al-Qaeda’s expulsion from Anbar created weakness and psychological defeat. This also created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight.

“The morale of the fighters went down and they wanted to be transferred to administrative positions rather than be fighters. There was a total collapse in the security structure of the organisation.”