The BBC is reporting that Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, the putative leader of Anbar Awakening, "was killed in a bomb attack near his home in Iraq's western Anbar province." Perhaps needless to say, this is a setback for ye olde surge.

Marc Lynch comments:

Even if Abu Risha was a poor choice to "lead" the strategy, he was in fact elevated to that symbolic position by American propaganda and practice (that meeting with the President, for instance). His murder demonstrates that even America's closest friends are not untouchable - not even on the day of a Presidential address expected to rely heavily on progress in Anbar. The political fallout of the murder inside of Iraq may well exceed Abu Risha's actual role in Sunni politics.

Reacting to the news, Gen. Petraeus told the Washington Post, "I think that the tribes will pull together and go after whoever did this," adding that Abu Risha had been "an important unity figure" in Anbar's Sunni Arab community.

That may be true to some extent, but it's important to remember that there are still major splits among the Anbar tribes. Even Saddam had a tough time keeping everyone in line, and he used a "divide and rule" strategy incorporating money, guns, and special privileges to promote cooperative tribes over uncooperative ones. At a gross level, the U.S. military has been mimicking Saddam's approach, hoping the balance of power tilts in favor of the good guys. Still, major parts of the Dulaim tribal confederation—the largest such grouping in Anbar—oppose working with the coalition and/or actively support al Qaeda in Iraq. As Lynch puts it,

The major nationalist insurgency groups had recently issued a series of statements denouncing people who would illegitimately seize the fruits of their victorious jihad - of whom [Abu Risha] was the prime example. All those photographs which swamped the Arab media showing him shaking hands with President Bush made him even more a marked man than before.

Much has been made of Shiite infighting in Karbala, Basra, and other parts of the south of Iraq, but what's happening in Anbar is similar in many ways. And as we've seen today, the enemy gets a vote.

When Osama bin Laden returned to the Internet with a new video this week, White House officials were quick to dismiss him as "... a man on the run in a cave who is virtually impotent other than his ability to get these messages out." Diminished as bin Laden himself may be, the global network he leads continues to operate, and a new generation of leaders has risen up to fill the place of those who have been captured or killed. With the sixth anniversary of 9/11 approaching, this week's FP List looks at some of the main al Qaeda figures who remain at large.

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A mammoth Pentagon-commissioned study (pdf, 390 pp.) of Sunni tribes in al-Anbar province was released this week, and it offers strong clues as to the origins of the so-called "Anbar awakening". (FP contributor Pat Lang authored the section called "How to Work With Tribesmen.") Completed in June 2006 and focusing on three key tribes in particular, the report was the subject of this Washington Post article by Walter Pincus:

That report -- put together by a distinguished group of retired military counterinsurgency specialists and academics, each with Iraq experience -- was circulated in the Army's Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., at the time led by then-Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, now the top U.S. commander in Iraq. The study proposed changing how the United States interacts with Sunni tribal leaders, eventually contributing to winning their support in fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq forces.

As Pincus notes, the report stresses the temporary nature of any alliance between the United States and tribal leaders. It also makes clear that the dispute between al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and tribal leaders was already evident when thousands of Sunnis from Anbar voted in the December 2005 parliamentary elections against the wishes of then-AQI leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Zarqawi's retaliations against those who participated in the political process became his undoing. A pivotal mistake was when his people killed Sheikh Nasser al-Mukhlif, a widely respected tribal leader in al-Ramadi, on January 16, 2006. Also that month, tribal leaders secretly formed an anti-AQI militia called the "al-Anbar Revolutionaries." To the extent that we can pinpoint a definitive beginning of the so-called "Anbar awakening," January 2006 is it, and it had a lot to do with the 2005 elections. Maybe they were a turning point after all.

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With the rise of China and India upending the world's consumption patterns, protecting increasingly tight oil supplies is proving to be no small undertaking. By some estimates, a major supply disruption could send oil prices spiraling above $100 a barrel.

In our September/October issue, FP took a closer look at moves by Russian oil giants Gazprom and Rosneft to establish their own private armies, equipped with machine guns and anti-riot gear, to guard their goods.

And now Saudi Arabia, a politically fragile country perched atop some 25 percent of the world's oil reserves, has stepped up its own efforts to protect oil plants and pipelines—the kingdom's economic lifeline—from potential attacks. After spending an estimated $5 billion and setting up a 35,000-strong security force, the Financial Times reports, Saudi Arabia will have more people guarding its petroleum than protecting the country's skies (Air Force: 18,000) or seas (Navy: 15,500) combined. Compared to a chaotic Nigeria and a stubborn Russia, Saudi Arabia has been a very reliable oil supplier. And the Saudis are keen on staying that way.

The kingdom's fears are not unfounded: This past February's foiled al Qaeda plot to blow up the Abqaiq oil center, which handles two-thirds of the country's oil supply, exposed potential security gaps. Plus, Osama bin Laden has been calling for attacks on the Arabian peninsula's oil installations since 2004. And the Saudis are no doubt expecting blowback from seasoned jihadis returning from Iraq.

Any substantial disruption to Saudi oil production would send shock waves through the global economy, and particularly the gas-guzzling United States. Accordingly, U.S. defense giant Lockheed Martin is actively training 5,000 Saudi personnel to use such nifty technology as laser security and satellite imaging. And how does Saudi Arabia plan on ensuring that a force this large will be impervious to radical infiltration? The FT says that recruits are being "heavily vetted" and sought from outside the country's existing security forces. That's going to involve a heckuva lot of background checks.

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Quick moves, right? But some Islamist fundamentalists also apparently see the British soccer star and the American singer as beloved cultural symbols whose deaths would bring the West to its knees. It's a tactic Joseph Stalin apparently tried to pull more against another powerful American symbol more than 50 years ago.

As legend has it, Stalin threatened to assassinate the Duke in an effort to silence the ardent anti-communist and deal a crushing blow to the American cultural machine against the backdrop of the Cold War. This being the new millennium, though, Beckham and Timberlake were threatened not by the Soviets but by Islamist radicals with Internet access and a grievance against Western cultural imperialism. The threat came in the form of a video posted on YouTube. According to several Web sites following the story, it was a British al Qaeda-linked group tied to exiled cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed that posted the video.

Watching the video, though, it doesn't exactly seem like the most sophisticated of plots. There's a shot of Eminem in a newspaper with the headline, "This Is the Way to Hellfire." There's a photo of 2-Pac underneath the words, "Servant of Shaytaan." And a smiling Beckham is juxtaposed with the question, “What Made u Among the Losers?” In the end, it looks more like a low-budge PSA than a serious wake-up call to Western civilization.

Worse yet for the would-be killers, this over-the-top exchange from Fox News suggests they made have made another monumental miscalculation: "Isn't this an instance where you might be rooting for the terrorists?"

Asked about closing the controversial U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said on CNN's Larry King Live:

I think you need to have someplace to hold those individuals who have been captured during the global war on terror. I'm thinking of people like Khalid Sheik Mohammed. This is a man we captured in Pakistan. He's the mastermind of 9/11 [...] There are hundreds of people like that, and if you closed Guantanamo, you'd have to find someplace else to put these folks."

How about ... the U.S. prison system?

The truth is, treating guys like KSM as soldiers in a war only gives the terrorists what they want—coequal status with the world's greatest military power. Better, as Tom Malinowski argues convincingly here, to diminish them as the criminals and losers they really are.

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The Times of London reports that Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling will be protected by former British special forces soldiers for an upcoming appearance on U.S. television:

Rowling is to be interviewed on Monday by Meredith Viera, from the American NBC television channel. Despite Viera being virtually unknown here, the channel has decided that her meeting with Rowling will make a dangerously tempting terrorist target.

Let's put ourselves in the shoes of al Qaeda here. I suppose the logic of a terrorist attack on Rowling would be to get the maximum publicity possible for the jihadist cause. What better way to get your message out there than to assassinate one of the world's most beloved authors on American TV?

On the other hand, consider the galvanizing effect this would have on the war on terror. And imagine the international outrage if al Qaeda were to have killed Rowling before she finished Deathly Hallows. Thousands of irate Potter-heads would be storming the mountains of Waziristan in no time.

It turns out—if we believe the words of Beijing authorities—that the cardboard steamed buns story was a hoax. The AP reports:

A freelance reporter for a Beijing television station has been detained for faking a hidden camera report about street vendors who used chemical-soaked cardboard to fill meat buns, local media said. [...]

Beijing Television explained that an investigation revealed that in mid-June, Zi brought meat, flour, cardboard and other ingredients to a downtown Beijing neighborhood and had four migrant workers make the buns for him while he filmed the process. It said Zi ''gave them the idea'' of mincing softened cardboard and adding it to the buns.

Let's assume this is true. Does it let the migrant workers off the hook? Or does it provide further evidence that Chinese food-safety standards are hopelessly lax?

I ask because this incident reminds me of—bear with me here—the FBI's efforts to nab al Qaeda operatives in the United States. Undercover FBI agents have run several sting operations wherein they target people whom informants have identified as having extremist tendencies and recruit them into fake al Qaeda cells. The FBI then catches them expressing sympathy for Osama Bin Laden, buying weapons, or sending money to terrorists abroad, and then arrests them. Critics of these operations say they amount to entrapment. These people aren't really joining al Qaeda at all, the critics say, and are being prosecuted for mere "thought crimes." Supporters of the sting approach counter that at the end of the day, guys like Tarik Shah and the Lackawanna Six are making clear their intention to commit terrorist acts, so we might as well get them off the streets while we can.

If you agree with that logic, do you also think the bun-makers are guilty of knowingly stuffing buns with cardboard, and should be punished? Email Passport with your thoughts.

AFP

A leader of the Islamic State of Iraq (who the U.S. military had claimed was dead) is now threatening Iran with terrorist attacks. Omar al-Baghdadi, the apparently non-dead leader of this al Qaeda affiliate, said the following in a recent audio recording:

We are giving the Persians, and especially the rulers of Iran, a two-month period to end all kinds of support for the Iraqi Shia government and to stop direct and indirect intervention ... otherwise a severe war is waiting for you."

And he also issued a threat aimed at his fellow Sunnis:

We advise and warn every Sunni businessman inside Iran or in Arab countries especially in the Gulf not to take partnership with any Shia Iranian businessman, this is part of the two-month period."

This certainly complicates things, doesn't it? I suspect that al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the Islamic State of Iraq, which have been trying to patch up a frayed relationship of late, are focusing on a pair of enemies both groups can agree upon: Iran and the Shiites.

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As Blake pointed out earlier today, the most surprising bit of last night's Republican debate was Gov. Mitt Romney's declaration that the United States should "double Guantanamo" and should routinely make use of what he calls "enhanced interrogation techniques."

After the debate last night, Romney expanded on that thought in an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News. It is worth watching the video in order to understand Romney's precise thinking here. It appears to be this: The nature of the enemy determines the morality with which you fight.

[W]e're dealing with terrorist nations," Romney told Hannity. "They're not following any procedures of this nature."

So neither should we, was Romney's point. Hannity then asked Romney how far he would go in torturing suspected terrorists.

I don't think any president of the United States is wise to say here's how far I'll go," Romney responded. "I think you always keep that to yourself."

We'll take that as an "I don't know." And, apparently, Romney won't be engaging in a public debate about where that line should be, either:

We're not going to project the kind of line that represents torture or not torture."

One has to wonder whether Romney understands the fundamental nature of the war the United States is fighting. It is a war of ideas. You don't win that kind of war by sinking to the terrorists' level, or by forfeiting the principles that separate enlightened, modern society from the dark, desperate world of radical Islamists.

I also worry that Romney's remarks are further evidence of how profoudly lost the Republican party is today. On the stage last night was a leading candidate for the party's nomination, droning on endlessly about his deep and profound "respect for life" —and advocating torture in the same breath. The only thing more disappointing was the room full of party faithful who seemed to miss the irony.

When she was 14 years old, Irshad Manji, a Canadian Muslim, asked her madrasa teacher, "Where is the evidence of the 'Jewish conspiracy' against Islam?"

Her teacher responded by kicking her out of the madrasa.

Since then, Manji has been using her own brain to study Islam and launch a campaign to reform her religion. Manji, who moved to Canada as a child when Idi Amin expelled the East Indian community from Uganda, has written the book The Trouble With Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith. Her latest endeavor is the documentary Faith Without Fear, which debuts tonight in the United States on PBS as part of the channel's series America at a Crossroads.

In 2003, the New York Times described Manji as Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare. She reads the Koran and abstains from pork and alcohol. She's also a lesbian feminist who admires Israel and supports the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

I'm intrigued by Manji's current Project Ijtihad (pronounced "ij-tee-had"). On her website, Manji says that ijtihad is Islam's long-lost tradition of independent thinking that was stomped out at the end of the 11th century. Manji wants to create a network of reform-minded Muslims who engage in critical thinking and bring about a reformation of Islam that updates it for the 21st century. If Christianity could have its Protestant Reformation, it seems possible for Islam to have one too.

Manji has her critics on both the left and the right. She also has supporters ranging from Arianna Huffington to Glenn Beck. I plan to make my own assessment tonight when I watch Faith Without Fear. I encourage you to watch the documentary too.

Mark Wilson/AFP/Getty Images

Just yesterday, in a speech hammering congressional Democrats over setting a timeline for a withdrawal of U.S. troops, President Bush said:

The consequences of failure would be death and destruction in the Middle East and here in America. To protect our citizens at home, we must defeat the terrorists."

But buried in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll of 1,141 U.S. adults is a finding that spells trouble for a U.S. administration that, from the beginning, has linked success in the Iraq War to victory in the war on terror.

When asked if they thought "the United States must win the war in Iraq in order for the broader war on terrorism to be a success," only 37 percent of those surveyed agreed, while 57 percent said that "the war on terrorism can be a success without the United States winning the war in Iraq." Back in January, 45 percent of respondents viewed the Iraq war as a must-win, whereas only 47 percent thought the United States could win the war on terror without victory in Iraq. 

With the caveat that the poll oversamples African Americans (who tend to oppose the Iraq War), it seems that—three months after President Bush announced he was sending more troops to Iraq—the bottom is dropping out of public support for the war in Iraq. Whatever the results on the ground, the surge has clearly backfired at home.

Today's bombing attack on the Iraqi parliament (video here) is an ominous sign that the Green Zone has been penetrated. TIME's Brian Bennett reports from Baghdad:

An official at the Ministry of the Interior told TIME that the bomber was wearing a suicide vest and was a guard for one of the members of parliament. The blast went off just after 2 p.m. on Thursday at the cafe in the central atrium of the building just outside the main hall where politicians, staff and journalists often meet for a cup of tea or a plate of food from a buffet spread. Early reports say at least two people were killed and a dozen wounded, but the toll is expected to rise.

Many people had already left, but so far that toll has risen to eight dead, two of them MPs, and 23 wounded, according to the New York Times. 

Also today: A truck bomb blew up a 60-year-old bridge across the Tigris. So now the U.S. and Iraqi militaries are going to have to clean house inside the Green Zone, and start figuring out how to defend Baghdad's many bridges from attack. All this against the backdrop of a possible collapse of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's governing coalition. Fun times.

ALI AL-SAADI/AFP

Mark Bowden, who we interviewed for last week's Seven Questions, has a fascinating cover story (sub req'd) in the latest Atlantic Monthly giving the inside story of how the U.S. military caught al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as told by the interrogators of a dedicated unit set up by Special Operations Command in 2005.

The title of Bowden's article, "The Ploy," refers to the gambit used by interrogator "Doc," to get Abu Haydr, a high-ranking al Qaeda affiliate captured in April 2006, to give up information that eventually led to Zarqawi's whereabouts:

We both know what I want,” Doc said. “You have information you could trade. It is your only source of leverage right now. You don’t want to go to Abu Ghraib, and I can help you, but you have to give me something in trade. A guy as smart as you—you are the type of Sunni we can use to shape the future of Iraq.” If Abu Haydr would betray his organization, Doc implied, the Americans would make him a very big man indeed.

By playing on Abu Haydr's vanity and creating the impression that he, too, was secretly eager to help save Iraq from Shiite depredations, Doc got his captive to spill the beans, bit by bit. By June, Abu Haydr was singing like a canary:

He explained that Rahman, a figure well-known to the Task Force, met regularly with Zarqawi. He said that whenever they met, Rahman observed a security ritual that involved changing cars a number of times. Only when he got into a small blue car, Abu Haydr said, would he be taken directly to Zarqawi.

And that was the key piece of information that led to the U.S. air strikes that killed the al Qaeda leader on June 7, 2006. It's clear from the article that the U.S. military is eager to show that it now has clean hands; no torture, quasi torture, or abuse was used to get Zarqawi (just the threat of sending prisoners to Abu Ghraib!). Also clear: Icing Zarqawi didn't ultimately change much in Iraq.