NEW FATWA IN IRAQ: MARRY THE WIDOWS OF “MARTYRS”
BAQUBA, Iraq — A snippet of news from a shadowy corner of Iraq: Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia recently issued a fatwa telling its fighters to marry the widows of those who have fallen.
Losses Who will stand in for fighters who died staging attacks like this one in 2004?
This may seem odd or insignificant, but it is one of the rare grains of news to emerge publicly about the inner workings of the Iraqi offshoot of Al Qaeda. So terrorism experts and others have been picking it over, hoping for clues to the strength of this group, which remains a critical part of the Iraqi insurgency.
Still, trying to make sense of the directive, which has been passed down only by word of mouth so far, is a bit like reading a cloud. What you see depends mostly on who is looking at it. Not surprisingly, the terrorism analysts have an entirely different viewpoint from that of the jihadist newlyweds, who are trying to do what they see as their duty. But even among outsiders, the fatwa has different interpretations: a sign of weakness or cleverness; an act of rationality or utter cynicism about mixing affection and politics.
The first point of view is held by Malcolm Nance, a former American intelligence officer in Iraq and the author of “The Terrorists of Iraq: Inside the Strategy and Tactics of the Iraq Insurgency.†For him, the edict represents “an incredible admission of total mission failure,†considering how central suicide bombings have been to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s tactics.
“Asking current or future fighters to marry the widows means either that they are seeking to re-establish marital ties in an effort to regain some traction in the tribes, or that they have completely moved away from the ideological foundation that fighters are to come to Iraq and immediately die in suicide bombing attacks,†Mr. Nance said.
“It’s fascinating either way. If it’s the former, then they must believe there is a glimmer of hope that blood ties with these Iraqi women will gain them an edge of protection in a country that wants to be rid of them. If it’s the latter, it’s akin to a call for their fighters to settle down and gain an earthly reward by having a wife and children and to start a new generation of jihadists.â€
Mr. Nance said the fatwa was “so absolutely desperate†that it could have come from only the highest levels of the organization.
Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism expert at the New America Foundation, a public policy institute, isn’t quite so sanguine. He said the group has been weakened in recent months — dozens of its members and most important leaders have been killed or captured. But that doesn’t mean it is finished. The fatwa, he says, may simply be a practical way of directing dwindling assets to perhaps thousands of impoverished widows and orphans.
“It is important to think of the Islamic State of Iraq in terms of its organizational responsibilities,†he said. “Although we tend to focus on their ability to generate violence, accounting and other documents from the group suggest that they spend much of their time and energy providing money and other support to the families of ‘martyrs.’ The exhortation to marry widows is likely an attempt to provide for the families of ‘martyrs’ at a time when the organization as a whole has limited resources.
“That is not to say that the group is dead or will die,†he continued.
In Diyala Province east of Baghdad, the fatwa has produced about 70 marriages in a little more than three weeks, according to members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and their relatives and associates. They spoke to an Iraqi reporter conducting interviews for The New York Times.
While Diyala is one of the group’s last remaining strongholds, the mere fact that so many people would rush headlong into marriages to strangers seemed to reflect how far the American military and the Iraqi government remain from their goal of eliminating the organization.
Some members say they are taking third or fourth wives, but many new husbands are from among the group’s most dedicated fighters — confirmed bachelors previously wedded only to the work of killing invaders and their Iraqi allies.
“I had been single and had given myself to an honorable cause,†said Ebe Hafsah al-Obeidi (a nom de guerre), who married one widow. “The most important thing for us in a wife is for her to be patient and to be a believer who will help her husband serve Islam and strengthen his will to fight the occupiers and the traitors.â€
Another fighter, Abu Muhammad al-Zaidi, said there might be as many as 315 such widows in Baquba, Diyala’s capital. Mr. Zaidi (also a nom de guerre) said he had three wives, including a Qaeda widow he married before the fatwa. He plans on marrying another soon, he said.
“There is nothing more honorable than getting married to the widow of a martyr from Al Qaeda, who spent most of his life fighting the disbelievers and the occupation,†he said.
Um Obada, a recently married widow who was using a nickname, said her first husband was killed in 2006 while attacking an American-Iraqi military patrol. She said she had struggled financially since then, and agreed to marry a week ago after meeting her new husband once.
“I found in him a character trait that serves Islam, and getting married again is not forbidden, so I accepted without knowing him previously,†she said. “He has good morals, he is patient and he is a mujahedeen, and that’s what any mujahedeen woman wants.â€
Some of the jihadists’ foes in Iraq, however, take a more jaundiced view of the fatwa. Husam al-Majmi is the leader of an Awakening Council, one of the groups of former insurgents now allied with the Americans and Iraq’s government. Several of his relatives are members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and he is well aware that the Qaedists often have social and tribal ties that overlap with those of Awakening Council members. He believes that the fatwa is principally a way to maintain the bond among jihadists, and hence their ability to keep secrets. “By doing this, they will be able to transfer their information and intelligence to each other and make sure it’s safeguarded,†he said. And he sees such cohesiveness and presumed blind loyalty to their cause as a danger to his own group.
What would happen if one of his own fighters was tempted, perhaps by tribal ties, to marry an Al Qaeda widow? He would recommend against it, he said, on the chance that she was more interested in becoming a martyr than in being a wife. “We would be afraid the women will explode on us,†he said, chuckling.
The scenario seemed absurd, of course. But in today’s Iraq, it passed for both dark humor and a real possibility.
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