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Length: 6:40
HEIDI COLLINS: If al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq before the
war, it is now. CNN's Michael Ware looks at the
status of the terror group in Iraq. It's a story you
will see only on CNN.
(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 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 MCFARLAND, 1ST BRIGADE, 1ST ARMORED
DIVISION: 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. air strike. 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 Sean McFarland
confront the al Qaeda-led insurgency every day.
MCFARLAND: 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 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)
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Length: 2:27
COLLINS: Michael Ware
joining us now live from Baghdad.
And Michael, it seems like these more moderates that
we're talking about here are having to make a choice
between either going with the desires of the U.S.
military or the desires of the insurgency. Which is
it? How do they make that decision?
WARE: Well, there's a number of factors. I mean, what
we're talking about here, particularly -- I mean,
apart from the broader Sunni community, which is in
the exact same position, and they're also drifting
towards the hard line -- we're talking about members
of Saddam's former military and his intelligence
apparatus. The Baathists, the professional soldiers.
Now, the U.S. has been in secret negotiations or
discussions with these people for 18 months now,
Ambassador Khalizad is now talking openly about it.
So these guys say we tested you out, we reached out
to you and you have failed us and you've failed
yourself. We're left with no choice. You let these
pro-Iranians take over, you're going to leave us
defenseless. Our only friend will be al Qaeda. We're
now seeing that shift. They say we tried, you failed,
you've left us no choice -- Heidi.
COLLINS: And you talk about the decentralized
structure of all of that and the endless money. Where
does the U.S. military go next? I mean, do you think
that they're confident with knowing exactly where all
that funding for this insurgency is really coming
from?
WARE: Well, they admit that they only have broad
ideas about the channels which bring the money in.
It's generally known that they're tipping into
traditional al Qaeda donors in oil-rich Gulf states.
However, we're also seeing President Bush, in his
recent speeches, put Iraq as the centerpiece of his
global war on terror, which is odd, because so does
Osama bin Laden.
And both of them, President Bush and bin Laden, point
to Al Anbar province as the main front in that fight.
And President Bush warned about al Qaeda's plans to
take over the government there. Well, we already see
evidence of that. They've so heavily infiltrated the
Ramadi provincial government that they've
capitalized, dominated the oil industry. And they
control all oil distribution to the capital in that
province. They are benefiting, according to the U.S.,
between $400,000 to $600,000 every month from that,
and that goes to fund operations against Americans --
Heidi.
COLLINS: Well, it goes without saying it's getting
more and more complicated every day. Michael Ware,
live from Baghdad this morning. Michael,
thanks.