I am no an expert on Islam or the Middle East. I have a bit of a gift for observation and sorting large amounts of information for gems of insight and key importance. I can see trends sets of complex information. They are traits very useful to engineers and scientists. I believe they help me understand what is happening in Iraq as I pore through news articles and opinion pieces.

I have been saying for the bettter part of a year that al-Qaeda overreached when it began massascring Iraqis in ugly bombings and open street examples of torture to underscore their power to rule. Their brutality and cruelty has been a nightmarish scene that includes the use of children as an extra emotional horror to try and strike paralyzing fear into those they want to subjigate. The risk of these kinds of extreme measures is they can also create a violent, mass backlash as the human instinct to survive combines with the human instinct to protect our children. The explosion that comes from a mob of people set on destroying their evil oppressors is quite powerful. And it has blown up on al-Qaeda’s efforts in Iraq.

I saw these events transpiring and predicted this would be the end of the war, as well as the end of al Qaeda’s support in the general Muslim community. It seems, though, that this is not the first time in history this pattern has played out. In fact, the same pattern played out in the 1990’s in Algieria:

Over the past six months, there has been a remarkable twist in the larger war on terrorism that has received only middling public attention. For arguably the first time since the contemporary “war on terrorism” began in 2001, the tension between and among various armed Jihadist factions and their supporters has begun to erupt into ugly public disputes, awkward confrontations – and even murder.

…

To better understand the present situation in Iraq, it is helpful to turn to a rather unusual source: an English-language book written by former Finsbury Park Mosque cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri titled “Khawaarij and Jihad.” Though the book is divided into various sections, it is largely focused on explaining the reasons behind the disastrous collapse of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in Algeria during the mid-1990s, as understood through the Islamic concept of “Khawaarij.” This term literally refers to those who issue extreme religious verdicts declaring other Sunni Muslims to be “infidels” because they have allegedly committed “major sins” against Islam – and who further consider it legitimate and desirable to shed their blood.

Sound familiar? Here is an early post around the time when I first noticed the infighting begin to heat up, and here is a post from the summer noting how the fighting was now spreading across Iraq and al-Qaeda was being routed from many areas. You see the same basic pattern. The Islamo Fascist had performed so many atrocities on the very people they were hiding amongst that those people rose up with one goal in mind – destroy al-Qaeda.

Here is some more history from the previous time Islamo Fascism crashed and burned in the Muslim world.

In the case of the GIA in Algeria, the turn towards becoming Khawaarij began when a new, more junior set of commanders took over the organization in the mid-1990s. These men adopted a new philosophy that was, in short, “you are either with us or against us.”

…

The GIA’s erratic behavior frightened many Algerian Muslims, and civilians living in at-risk areas began “carrying weapons and doing the work for the government… In an act of retaliation, the GIA started to do retaliatory measures on the spies, government supporters, informants, etc. It seems, unfortunately, that they at one point began to include some family members in their retaliation as well as the families of the perpetrators.” With added arrogance, when the GIA’s leadership was privately questioned by other Jihadists about rumors “regarding the killing of children”, “they maintained complete silence.”

Iraq has, sadly, hundreds of stories about al Qaeda atrocities against children. And it showed the same pattern of out of control desperation when it began chemical bomb attacks on Iraqi Muslims.

So, how did things end in Algiers? The author of the article points us here for the answer, but I have yet to read the ending. But it is interesting to see the Islamo Fascists have learned nothing from their defeats. They are the ones who keep doing the same thing over and over again, with the same disasterous results. It seems we are going to see another repeat of failure in Iraq – with Iraqis having stronger ties to the West in the end as a result. I have beleived this was a characteristic of human nature, to reject and destroy cancers like Islam Fascism when they arise. We saw it in WW II and now with Islamo Fascism. We are just getting better at seeing the warning signs and acting before millions have to dies taking out the disease.

Addendum: I want to note this section of the long report pointed to in the referenced article and in the last link posted above:

The popularity of the GIA took further hits as it engaged in a tit-for-tat war of attrition against the Algerian military and anyone allied with it. Recognizing the threat, the Algerian government decided to provide weapons to civilian villagers in order to defend themselves against attacks by GIA militants. This policy had a debilitating impact on GIA recruitment and support in these areas: “[It] put the armed civilians at war with the Islamic groups, particularly the GIA… Step by step, this government trap managed to create a war between the GIA and the general population of Algeria.”54 The GIA managed to further exacerbate tensions with the public by orchestrating elaborate revenge plots on would-be spies, informants, and supporters of the government. The attacks eventually extended out to target family members of the accused. In retrospect, even Abu Hamza al-Masri has characterized this tragic turn of events as
“unfortunate.”

This is the exact same counter-insurgency method being employed vis a vis the Surge in Iraq. So we see strategy is not an unproven one, but actually a proven way to deal with Islamo Fascists.