Seven Sunni groups fronting the insurgency against the United States armed forces in Iraq plan to form a political front to negotiate for the US withdrawal from Iraq.
The Guardian reports that leaders of three of the insurgent groups said the armed resistance would continue till all foreign troops had left Iraqi soil and, in passing, blamed the Al Qaeda for mayhem targeting civilians.
Abu Ahmad, spokesman for Iraqi Hamas, said on behalf of three of the groups -- the 1920 Revolution Brigades, Ansar al-Sunna and Iraqi Hamas -- that the common front would be launched soon, and appealed to Arab and other governments, and the UN, for help in establishing a permanent political presence outside Iraq.
Ahmad said the view inside insurgent circles was that the US will likely begin pulling out inside the next 12 months.
The Guardian points out that such a move signals a paradigm shift in strategy for mainstream Iraqi insurgency, the leadership of which has till date remained in the shadows.
Against the backdrop of recently released US intelligence reports that over 50 per cent of insurgents active in Iraq are coming from Saudi Arabia, The Guardian points out that the last three months, during which President George W Bush's plan for a surge put 28,000 additional troops on the ground, have been unusually bloody for US forces, with 331 deaths and 2,029 wounded.
The leaders of the three groups meanwhile told The Guardian that the proposed front would bring together the main Sunni-based armed organisations except Al Qaeda and the Ba'athists.
They have, the leaders said, agreed on the joint planks of their program, which includes the commitment to free Iraq, the rejection of cooperation with parties involved in political institutions set up under the occupation, and a declaration that decisions and agreements made by the US occupation and Iraqi government are null and void.
The front will be called the Political Office for Iraqi Resistance; it plans to link up with other anti-occupation groups in Iraq to negotiate with the Americans in anticipation of an early US withdrawal.
The Front plans a temporary government to run the country during a transition period, until free elections can be held.
The groups have denied that they are being backed, and funded, by any foreign government; the move to unite, the leaders suggest, comes under under pressure from Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
The three leaders, all Sunnis, told The Guardian they were aware of the problem of sectarian division and consequent violence, and said they would work with major Shia groups during this period. They however ruled out an official link-up with Shia groups, citing the Shia participation in political institutions set up by the Americans.
Abd al-Rahman al-Zubeidy, political spokesman of the ultra-violent Ansar al-Sunna (The Guardian points out that names of the leaders of the groups have been changed), told the newspaper that his group had split over relations with Al Qaeda.
`Resistance isn't just about killing Americans without aims or goals,' The Guardian quotes al-Zubeidy as saying. `Our people have come to hate the Al Qaeda, which gives the impression to the outside world that the resistance in Iraq are terrorists. We are against indiscriminate killing, fighting should be concentrated only on the enemy.'
In the report, Wayne White of Washington's Middle East Institute and a former expert adviser to the Iraq Study Group, said it was unclear what real influence the new grouping would have.
`This does reveal that despite the widening cooperation on the part of some Sunni Arab insurgent groups with US forces against Al Qaeda in recent months, such cooperation could prove very shortlived if the US does not make clear that it has a credible exit strategy,' White is quoted as saying.
