Sunni Sheikh's Assassination a Blow to Bush

In what was at least a symbolic blow to George W. Bush, a prominent Iraqi tribal sheikh and self-styled leader of the "Sunni Awakening" movement against al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was assassinated just hours before the U.S. president was to make his latest appeal for public support for his Iraq strategy.

The death in an apparent bombing outside his home of Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, whose rallying of local tribes against AQI has been cited by top U.S. officials as a turning point in Washington's efforts to pacify Sunni-dominated al Anbar province, also came just 10 days after his high-profile meeting with Bush at a U.S. military base in Anbar.

The White House praised Abu Risha, who claimed to be 36 years old, in a statement released shortly after news of his murder reached here. "His efforts, and those of his fellow tribal sheikhs, to take the fight to al Qaeda and bring peace and security to Anbar and other regions of Iraq exemplify the courage and determination of the Iraqi people," it said.

"This is a sheikh who was one of the first to come forward to want to work with the United States to repel al Qaeda from al Anbar province," said Bush's new spokeswoman, Dana Perino, while her Pentagon counterpart, Geoff Morrell, described Abu Risha as "a brave warrior" and expressed "our hope and belief that the has spawned a movement that will outlive him."

U.S. officials blamed the assassination on AQI. "It shows al Qaeda in Iraq remains a very dangerous and barbaric enemy," said Gen. David Petraeus, Washington's top commander in Iraq who, in testimony before Congress and numerous interviews here this week, stressed that the Sunni Awakening was the most positive development in Iraq in the past year.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Petraeus also called Abu Risha "a very important, unifying figure and a really inspirational leader… [who helped] forge alliances and… keep different tribes up and down the Euphrates River valley together."

But independent experts noted that the sheikh had made many enemies among the Sunni leadership in Anbar.

"Although al Qaeda in Iraq is the leading suspect in this assassination," said Wayne White, a former senior State Department intelligence analyst on the Middle East, "Iraq's diverse Sunni Arab community is rife with various tribal and other conflicts, rivalries and score-settling dating back many decades."

Marc Lynch, an expert on Arab media and the Sunni politics at George Washington University here, called Petraeus's remarks "a leap to judgment emblematic of all which is wrong with America's current views of the Sunnis of Iraq."

"In reality, there are a plethora of likely suspects, reflecting the reality of an intensely factionalised and divided community which little resembles the picture offered by the administration's defenders," Lynch, whose blog, www.abuaardvark.org is widely read here, wrote in The American Prospect Online.

"Leaders of other tribes deeply resented Abu Risha's prominence. Leaders of the major insurgency factions had for weeks been warning against allowing people such as Abu Risha to illegitimately reap the fruits of their jihad against the occupation," he noted.

Abu Risha, whose father and two three brothers were reportedly killed by AQI, first came to prominence late last year as a leader of the "Anbar Salvation Council", a group that was founded by various sheikhs last September to fight AQI's efforts to impose an "Islamic State of Iraq" in the province.

"Al Qaeda made many enemies with its grandiose rhetoric, attacks on local political figures, attempts to enforce Islamic morality, and decisions to muscle in on tribal smuggling routes," according to Lynch, who has long stressed the tension within the Sunni insurgency between Sunni factions associated with AQI and its Islamist ideology and those that were more nationalist in orientation.