April 27, 2007	Friday	Rabi-us-Sani 09, 1428

WASHINGTON: Last week a series of coordinated suicide bombings killed more than 170 people. The victims were not soldiers or government officials but civilians — innocent men, women and children indiscriminately murdered on their way home from work and school.

If such an atrocity had been perpetrated in the United States, Europe or Israel, our response would surely have been anger at the fanatics responsible and resolve not to surrender to their barbarism.

Unfortunately, because this slaughter took place in Baghdad, the carnage was seized upon as the latest talking point by advocates of withdrawal here in Washington. Rather than condemning the attacks and the terrorists who committed them, critics trumpeted them as proof that Gen. David Petraeus’s security strategy has failed and that the war is “lost.”

This reaction is dangerously wrong. It reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of both the reality in Iraq and the nature of the enemy we are fighting there.

What is needed in Iraq policy is not overheated rhetoric but a sober assessment of the progress we have made and the challenges we still face.

This progress is real, but it is still preliminary.

The suicide bombings we see now in Iraq are an attempt to reverse these gains: a deliberate, calculated counteroffensive led foremost by Al Qaeda, the same network of extremists that perpetrated catastrophic attacks in Kenya, Indonesia, Turkey and, yes, New York and Washington.

Indeed, to the extent that last week’s bloodshed clarified anything, it is that the battle of Baghdad is increasingly a battle against Al Qaeda. Whether we like it or not, Al Qaeda views the Iraqi capital as a central front of its war against us.

Al Qaeda’s strategy for victory in Iraq is clear. It is trying to kill as many innocent people as possible in the hope of reigniting Shia sectarian violence and terrorising the Sunnis into submission.

In other words, just as Petraeus and his troops are working to empower and unite Iraqi moderates by establishing basic security, Al Qaeda is trying to divide and conquer with spectacular acts of butchery.—Dawn/The Washington Post News Service