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Length: 6:42
ANDERSON COOPER: Tonight in Iraq, a new message from
al Qaeda, in English, and growing terror on the
ground.
... And that's what they call a technical problem.
We begin the hour with the state of al Qaeda in Iraq.
Just a day after U.S. commanders said a draw-down of
American forces will not be happening this year or
any time soon, you're about to see one of the reasons
why. Iraq may have bigger problems now -- a civil war
or something close to it. It's a matter of semantics,
perhaps, but the al Qaeda problem has not gone away.
In fact, in plain English, the problem is growing
right before our eyes. Reporting from Baghdad, CNN's
Michael Ware.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Until
now, most communications from Al Qaeda in Iraq have
been carefully crafted videos like this one, showing
the shooting down of a U.S. Apache helicopter. What's
unprecedented about this video is we hear about from
al Qaeda in English.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just to let you know that our
lives are nothing beside our religion. We will bomb
everything.
WARE: Insurgent groups and the U.S. military now say
al Qaeda has become the darkest core of Iraq's
insurgency.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just to let you know that we love
to die as you love to live.
WARE: An organization so secretive that despite
seized documents, intelligence, and interrogations,
the U.S. military still struggles to know how it
works.
COL. SEAN MACFARLAND, U.S. ARMY: We don't have a 100
percent understanding of that. And the enemy tries
very hard to keep us from understanding.
WARE: There have been successes: cells disrupted,
leaders captured, and most stunning of all, the
founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
executed in a U.S. airstrike. But reality on the
ground suggests the U.S. military is far from
crippling the deadly network.
Abu Khaled al-Iraqi is a top commander from the
powerful alliance of local Islamic insurgent groups.
In his first television interview, he tells CNN
Zarqawi's death brought change, but not what the U.S.
had in mind. Instead, younger, even more radical al
Qaeda leaders.
ABU KHALED AL-IRAQI (through translator): Al-Zarqawi
is one person, and al Qaeda is thousands of people.
WARE: Local Sunni insurgent groups more moderate than
al Qaeda, and Iraqi nationalists mostly from Saddam's
former military agree. Al Qaeda is becoming stronger.
Listen to this nationalist insurgent commander. He
says al Qaeda's decentralized structure, seemingly
endless money and growing support in and out of Iraq
is overpowering local guerrilla groups.
ABU MOHAMMED (through translator): Al Qaeda's
leadership is different. But as an idea, it has
expanded. Because most other groups, pressured
between U.S. forces and al Qaeda have had leaders
killed or captured, and al Qaeda took over their
fighters.
WARE: That's an assessment shared by many in the U.S.
military. American commanders like Shawn McFarland
confront the al Qaeda-led insurgency every day.
SHAWN MCFARLAND, AMERICAN COMMANDER: What we're
trying to do here is counteract the strong presence
of al Qaeda that's intermixed with some lingering
Baathist influence.
WARE: Four months ago, Abu Khaled's insurgent group
was distancing itself from al Qaeda. Now, he says,
there's no difference at all.
ABU KHALED (through translator): Al Qaeda works
within the resistance and is part of the resistance.
WARE: The Sunni groups say fear of civil war with
Shiites in control of the Iraqi government and
unchecked Iranian interference is driving them to al
Qaeda.
ABU MOHAMMED (through translator): America came to
Iraq saying it would free us from tyranny and
dictatorship, but that hasn't happened because the
U.S. increased the power of the Shia religious
organizations, gave them the government, and we
regard this as giving power to Iran.
WARE: If so, it is Zarqawi's most enduring legacy,
his plan all along to spark sectarian conflict and
draw Sunni insurgents to al Qaeda's cause. The
insurgents say al Qaeda's hard line is gaining
traction where there was little before.
ABU MOHAMMED (through translator): When the
nationalist forces become weak, that leaves al Qaeda
as a strong force in the area.
WARE: Yet the U.S. military is still hoping
disillusioned moderate Sunnis reject al Qaeda.
MCFARLAND: Al Qaeda is herding them back toward us.
So, to an extent the Sunnis may be trapped between
the devil and deep blue sea.
WARE: But Sunni insurgents know one day the United
States will leave Iraq and they believe al Qaeda will
not.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Well, Michael, you know,
Bush talked about al Qaeda's plans to infiltrate the
government of al-Anbar Province. Is there evidence of
that at this point?
WARE (on camera): Absolutely, Anderson. I mean, as we
know, Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman
al-Zawahiri have said it's in al- Anbar Province that
is the toe hold from which we will build the
caliphate, the religious state that will spread
across the world.
What Marines intelligence discovered in Ramadi, the
provincial capital, is that al Qaeda had infiltrated
or penetrated, for example, the oil ministry so
extensively that it dominated the distribution of
oil, coming down from refineries, passing through a
government distribution center, down to the gas
stations. And were making between $400,000 and
$600,000 every month that they are using to fund
operations against U.S. forces -- Anderson.
COOPER: How much -- I mean, at this point, I know we
don't know and they have been searching and
interrogating people, but I mean, how much is al
Qaeda in control of this thing, in terms of numbers
on the ground? Is this still very much a Sunni-based
nationalistic insurgency or is it foreign fighters,
is it al Qaeda in Iraq guys?
WARE: Well, we've seen this ebb and flow, the balance
between the foreign elements and the extreme Iraqi
element that it's created. Remember, there was no al
Qaeda here under Saddam. There was some fertile
ground, but no one had plowed it. Well, al Qaeda has
done that. Now there's hundreds, if not thousands of
al Qaeda members from Iraq who were not before the
invasion.
But what we see is that al Qaeda has a small foreign
core and then it has its Iraqi body around it. What
we're now seeing is that group growing more and more
and taking over much more of the local fight than we
saw before. So, a group that was once only 5 percent
of the insurgency is now larger, and its influence
way beyond that -- Anderson.
COOPER: Troubling. Michael Ware, thanks.