Sheik Sattar Killed in Iraq

UPDATE: Al Qaida has taken responsibility for killing Sheik Sattar.   This assassination will hasten the end of Al Qaida in Iraq.  Any Sunni tribe that was on the fence before will assuredly join the awakening movement now.

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Most American have never heard of Sheik Sattar but there is few people more important in Iraq than Sheik Sattar who founded the Anbar Awakening movement. He has been the target of assassination attempts before and today the assassins were successful:

Abu Risha and two of his bodyguards were killed by a roadside bomb planted near the tribal leader’s home in Ramadi, Anbar’s provincial capital, said Col. Tareq Youssef, supervisor of Anbar police …

“It is a major blow to the council, but we are determined to strike back and continue our work,” said Sheik Jubeir Rashid, a senior member of Abu Risha’s group. “Such an attack was expected, but it will not deter us.” He said the bombing took place at 3:30 p.m. as Abu Risha was returning home.

A Ramadi police officer said Abu Risha had received a group of poor people at his home earlier in the day, as a gesture of charity marking the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The officer, speaking on condition of anonymity out of security concerns, said authorities believed the bomb was planted by one of the visitors.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said that after the first blast that killed Abu Risha, a car bomb exploded nearby. “The car bomb had been rigged just in case the roadside bomb missed his convoy,” Khalaf said. There were no casualties from the car bomb, he added. [Robert Reid, AP]

This is a huge blow and the jury is still out on who ordered the killing. Depending on whether it was Al Qaida or a Shia militia who killed Sattar, will go a long ways to determining if reconciliation between Iraq’s Sunnis and Shias will ever be possible. No one has taken responsibility yet for the killing but the only people that would want Sattar dead more than Al Qaida is Iran. I would not put it past the Iranians sanctioning one of their Mahdi Army surrogates to kill Sheik Sattar. If proven a Shia militia did this, this could turn into the Sunni equivalent of what the Samarra Mosque Bombing was to the Shiites last year. In such a scenario the only winners will be the Iranians.

You can read more over at the The Long War Journal, Captain’s Journal, and On Point.