The Caliphate, Again
By Douglas Farah
The Times of London notes the increasing importance the al Qaeda-affiliated groups on Iraq are placing on establishing a militant Islamist state in the Sunni regions of Iraq.
My colleague Evan Kohlmann has a translation of a leader of al Qaeda's Islamic State of Iraq, where an important theme is, again, the conquest of specific territory in order to establish the beginnings of God's kingdom on earth.
These two fragments are but a small sampling of the growing, overt emphasis that the _jihadists_ place on establishing the physical caliphate on earth. It is not, in their minds, a fantasy, but a real and concrete objective to be achieved in conjunction with the divinely-blessed move toward spreading _jihad_ across the globe.
This emphasis on the caliphate is something that has the U.S. military deeply concerned, and, at the same time, has the _jihadi_ forces highly motivated. (Some interesting comments, possibly for public consumption, were that the movements in Iraq did not need outside money at this time, and that there are sufficient combatants for the current operational level).
"The US conviction that the Islamic State could seize power is based on its use of classic Al-Qaeda tactics and its adoption last October of a draft constitution," the Times says. My full blog is here.
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