New Bin Laden Tape Warns Sunnis Against Working With Us

Osama bin Laden has directed the fury of al-Qaida against a new target: Sunni Arab leaders in Iraq who have turned against insurgents backed by the terror group and are working with US forces to end violence in key areas of the country.

In his fifth recorded message this year, Bin Laden released an audiotape on Saturday which warned Sunni Arabs who had joined local US-led security initiatives that they had "betrayed the nation and brought disgrace and shame to their people. They will suffer in life and the afterlife."

The al-Qaida chief's concentration on Sunni tribal leaders who dared to break ranks with the insurgency underlined the changing picture inside Iraq in recent weeks. The transformation is most defined in Anbar province in the west of the country where coalitions of Iraqis, supported with US money and expertise and now numbering up to 70,000 fighters, have sharply reduced violence in the area.

The coalitions, known as "Awakening Councils" or "Concerned Local Citizens" groups, have been replicated in other regions, notably Baghdad. Bin Laden specifically referred to the Anbar coalition, denouncing its former leader Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha who was blown up in September.

In a mirror image of Bin Laden's message, the top US military commander, General David Petraeus, gave an upbeat assessment of the security situation just hours earlier in which he claimed that violence had declined by 60% since June. He said the transfer of allegiance to the US and Iraqi government side by Sunni tribal chiefs was a cause of fear for al-Qaida which had begun to target those leaders. Al-Qaida, he said, "attach enormous importance to these Concerned Local Citizens groups, these tribes that have turned against them, and to the general sense that Sunni Arab communities have rejected them more and more around Iraq. They are trying to counter this and they have done so by attacking them."

Petraeus said the favorable security position would allow some US forces to return to the States during the coming year as responsibilities are gradually handed over to the Iraqi army. But he added that the improvements were fragile and could be reversed, pointing to the fact that violence remains high in the north of Iraq particularly in Nineveh province.

One factor behind the insurgency's relative decline, Petraeus said, was that neighboring countries had stemmed the flow of foreign fighters and funds that were responsible for suicide bombing.