Is Al-Qaida in Iraq on the Rebound?
By Evan Kohlmann
Yesterday, after nearly two months of total silence, Al-Qaida's "Islamic State of Iraq" stepped forward to claim credit for last Sunday's devastating suicide bombing attack targeting a line of recruits outside a police academy in Baghdad. According to a statement from the ISI--an English translation of which has been provided by the NEFA Foundation--"Our brother said ‘Allahu Akhbar’ and detonated his belt amongst them, leaving more than thirty apostate volunteers killed and no less than sixty others injured—several of which were seriously wounded." This incident in Baghdad and a spate of other recent renewed attacks across the country have given rise to concerns that Al-Qaida may be on the rebound in Iraq. This is a particular worry as U.S. troops begin to withdraw from Iraq, handing responsibility over ever larger parts of the country into the hands of local security forces.
Despite these disturbing signs, it should also be emphasized that this is only the first communique from Al-Qaida in Iraq since January 19. Thus far, over the first three months of 2009, the "ISI" has issued a total of merely five text communiques, one audio recording from Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, and a single rather boring and uneventful propaganda video. That is an astonishing and precipitous decline for an organization that, at its height in 2005 and 2006, would often release more than a dozen statements and accompanying video in a single day. While it is certainly still premature to declare Al-Qaida in Iraq as "dead" or "finished", the latest suicide bombing attacks in Baghdad certainly seem to be more acts of desperation than reflective of a sudden resurgence in Al-Qaida popularity or influence.
