Al Qaeda's cleric in Anbar

NY Times:

Sunni Arab sheiks from volatile Anbar Province denounced a powerful Sunni cleric on Saturday, calling him “a thug” for supporting the terrorist group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and urging the Iraqi government to issue an arrest warrant against him.

The sheiks, the founders of a group called the Anbar Salvation Council that they formed in September to resist foreign militants in Iraq, were reacting to statements that the cleric, Harith al-Dhari, had made in interviews last week in which he criticized Sunni tribal leaders who had recently decided to take a stand against Al Qaeda.

Anbar, a vast western desert province centered around the provincial capital of Ramadi, is the heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency, with various militant groups working to topple the Shiite-led government and end the American presence in Iraq. But as the fundamentalist members of Al Qaeda have tried imposing Taliban-like rule on areas of Anbar, some Iraqi tribes have turned against the group, leading to a further fracturing of what at least initially seemed to be a united resistance to the American invasion.

Mr. Dhari leads the Muslim Scholars Association, a conservative group of clerics that is outspoken in its criticism of the American occupation and the Iraqi government. In the interviews last week, he accused the Anbar council of trying to cozy up to the Iraqi government in return for money. “We, on behalf of the Anbar tribes council, say to Harith al-Dhari: If there is a thug, it is you; if there is a killer and a kidnapper, it is you,” said Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, leader of the Rishawi tribe.

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On Thursday, Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani announced on TV that he had issued an arrest warrant against Mr. Dhari. The next day, after some Sunni leaders expressed anger at this move, a spokesman for the office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said that no warrant had been issued and that officials had just been investigating Mr. Dhari. Clerics allied with Mr. Dhari called for Sunni political parties to withdraw from the government.

Sheik Rishawi said Saturday that “Dhari doesn’t represent the people of Anbar, and we ask the Muslim Scholars Association to get rid of him.”

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It is hard to recall an insurgency that has done such a bang up job of alienating their natural allies. Al Qaeda and its clerics have lost the hearts and minds battle in Iraq and now rely solely on terrifying people into compliance with their wishes. It seems to be working on some Democrats in the US.