There’s an old saying in Iraq (and I assume elsewhere in Arab lands), “Me against my brother. My brother and I against our cousin. The three of us against the world.”

Al Qaeda in Iraq has been trying to foment sectarian violence in Iraq to pit the numerical minority Sunnia Muslims against the majority Shias (Shiites). This effort has not been wholly unsuccessful, but now Sunnia Iraqis have taken up arms against al Qaeda in actual defense of Shia Iraqis.

As Bill Roggio reports that Sunni Baathist hardliners have been shooting at al Qaeda for some time now, even though both al Qaeda and Baathist terrorists shoot at Americans and Iraqi national forces. The Iraqi insurgents are, well, Iraqi, while most of al Qaeda in Iraq is really al Qaeda from outside Iraq. The al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq are mostly Syrians, Saudis and Egyptians. The al Qaeda chief there, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is Jordanian.

AL Qaeda and the Baathists never accepted each other as true allies against the allied coalition or free Iraqi government. As I wrote in September 2003, before Saddam was captured

Bin Laden’s goal in Iraq is not to save Saddam, it is to kill Americans so that they will leave. If al Qaeda can fight the Americans there while gaining an ever-stronger presence in Iraq, they believe they will be in a position to establish a pure Islamic state in Iraq when the Americans leave. Whether Saddam is presently alive or dead does not matter to al Qaeda. They are not fighting for him to retake the reins of government there, but so that they can do so.

The Baathists and Saddamite dead-enders have realized this from the beginning. So, reports Bill Roggio, Sunni Iraqis fought al Qaeda to prevent the Islamists from expelling Shia Iraqis from western Ramadi and elsewhere in the Sunni triangle.

“We have had enough of his nonsense,” said Sheik Ahmad Khanjar, leader of the Albu Ali clan, referring to Zarqawi. “We don’t accept that a non-Iraqi should try to enforce his control over Iraqis, regardless of their sect—whether Sunnis, Shiites, Arabs or Kurds.’‘

“Me against my brother. My brother and I against our cousin. The three of us against the world.”