AQI and Sunni Arab politics

Reuters is reporting that Sunni Arab tribal levies are claiming to have killed Al-Quaeda in Iraq leader Abu Masri somewhere in Anbar Province. This may not be as good of news as it will be portrayed in the next two or three days as AQI has been seen as a pain in the ass by the more nationalistic Sunni Arab Iraqi insurgent groups and the unified front against AQI has meant a working relationship with the US Marines. If the major AQI networks can be rolled up, the basis of that working relationship no longer exists.

Mark Lynch at Abu Aardvark goes into more detail at his place:

If it is true, it would be great in terms of getting rid of someone responsible for a lot of the worst outrages in Iraq. Politically, however, the most likely effect will be similar to the Zarqawi hit. Like Zarqawi, Masri has been increasingly divisive in the insurgency - hence all the intra-Sunni arguments I've been writing about for the last few weeks, and all the senior Sunni figures such as the Islamic Army of Iraq and Hareth al-Dhari directly appealing to bin Laden to rein in his misguided lieutenant. If he's gone, it may be exactly what the insurgency factions need to repair their frayed ties and to refocus on fighting the American occupation rather than each other. It might also put an end to whatever self-interest Sunni tribal leaders had in cooperating with the Americans - and throw open my repeatedly posed question as to whether the turn (such as it was) was specifically against al-Qaeda, rather than against the insurgency as a whole.

Furthermore there has been some reasonable speculation that one of the primary drivers of the increased division between the Sunni Arab insurgent groups and tribal forces and AQI has been a fight over control of the traditional smuggling routes. AQI had been trying to exert control or at least taxation on the smuggling lines that certain tribes have historically considered there own preserve and fighting has broken out over that issue.

Hopefully killing this #1 will be different but I doubt it

UPDATE Think Progress is passing along the tidbit that ABC News has information that says that Masri is still alive and nothing is actually going on. Instead this is a disinformation operation of trumpeting a scary "success" to divert attention away from Mission Accomplished Day. Think Progress notes that Masri has been used as a propaganda prop before, most notably last February when he was 'wounded' despite no such incident occurring on the day in question.