Al-Qaeda in Iraq faces an \u201cextraordinary crisis\u201d\u009d. Last year’s mass defection of ordinary Sunnis from al-Qaeda to the US military \u201ccreated panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight\u201d\u009d. The terrorist group’s security structure suffered \u201ctotal collapse\u201d\u009d.<\/p>\n
These are the words not of al-Qaeda’s enemies but of one of its own leaders in Anbar province \u201d\u201d once the group’s stronghold. They were set down last summer in a 39-page letter seized during a US raid on an al-Qaeda base near Samarra in November.<\/p>\n
The US military released extracts from that letter yesterday along with a second seized in another November raid that is almost as startling.<\/p>\n
That second document is a bitter 16-page testament written last October by a local al-Qaeda leader near Balad, north of Baghdad. \u201cI am Abu-Tariq, emir of the al-Layin and al-Mashahdah sector,\u201d\u009d the author begins. He goes on to describe how his force of 600 shrank to fewer than 20.<\/p>\n