Baghdad – A new video by al-Qaeda’s deputy leader Thursday left no doubt about what the terrorist network claims is at stake in Iraq – describing it as a centerpiece of its anti-American fight and insisting the Iraqi insurgency is under its direct leadership.
But the proclamations by Ayman al-Zawahri carried another unintended message, experts said: reflecting the current troubles confronting the Sunni extremists in Iraq.
In the unusually long video – just over an hour and a half – al-Zawahri depicted the Islamic State of Iraq as a vanguard for fighting the U.S. military and eventually establishing a “cali phate” of Islamic rule across the region.
“The Islamic State of Iraq is set up in Iraq; the mujahedeen (holy warriors) celebrate it in the streets of Iraq; the people demonstrate in support of it,” al-Zawahri said. “Pledges of allegiance to it are declared in the mosques of Baghdad.”
The Islamic State of Iraq, the insurgent umbrella group that is claimed by al-Qaeda, has faced ideological criticism from some militants, and rival armed groups have even joined U.S. battles against it.
“Some of the developments suggest that it (the Islamic State) is more fragile than it was before,” said Bruce Hoffman, a Washington-based terrorism expert at the Rand Corp. think tank.
U.S. forces have focused on al-Qaeda-linked fighters in their security clampdowns in Baghdad and so-called “belts” around the city in recent weeks.
That has brought an increase in American casualties, but insurgent and militia attacks appear to have fallen.
A car bomb Thursday killed 17 people and wounded 28 when it blasted a photographers’ shop in a Shiite part of Baghdad, where a bride and groom were inside getting their wedding photos taken as their relatives and friends waited outside, said an official at the nearest police station. The bride and groom had minor injuries, said an official at the hospital where the victims were taken.
In his video, al-Zawahri did not mention last week’s failed car-bombing attempts in Britain. That suggested the video, posted Thursday on an Islamic-militant website, was made before the alerts in London and the airport attack in Glasgow, Scotland.
In other attacks Thursday, two American soldiers were killed and two were wounded by a roadside bombing in south Baghdad, the U.S. military said.
