RAMADI, 24 September 2007 — Iraqi tribal leader Ahmed Abu Risha speaks very softly, but his voice resonates determination — the revolt his brother started against Al-Qaeda in Anbar province will not falter despite his death.
A bombing claimed by Al-Qaeda killed Sheikh Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha in his car on Sept. 13 in Ramadi. Ahmed quickly took over an alliance of Sunni Arab tribal leaders his brother had headed to avoid a leadership crisis.
“The effect his assassination left is only emotional, that we have lost him,” the quietly-spoken Sheikh told Reuters over the weekend in his first face-to-face interview with the Western media since assuming control of the Anbar Salvation Council.
“His assassination has increased our will to fight Al-Qaeda,” added Ahmed Abu Risha, 42, speaking at the family compound in Ramadi. Just a short walk way, in a deserted field, lies the burned wreckage of Abu Risha’s car.
Ahmed Abu Risha, previously the spokesman of the council, was a staunch supporter of his younger brother’s desire to drive Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of Anbar, once the country’s most dangerous region and the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency.
Ahmed, who has now lost five members of his family in the battle with Al-Qaeda, appeared undeterred by threats from the group.
He said Al-Qaeda had tried to kill his brother 11 times before but had failed. This time, they recruited one of his brother’s security guards who helped facilitate the bomb attack on his car.
Meanwhile, witnesses to the fatal shooting in a Baghdad neighborhood involving private Blackwater USA guards are adamant that they opened fire without provocation, a policeman probing the killings said yesterday.
Police and the Interior Ministry are compiling a dossier of eyewitness accounts, which includes a video taken a few minutes after the shooting on Sunday last week in which 10 people were killed, the police officer said.
