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In a statement posted on a militant site last Saturday, local al-Qaida leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced a new campaign dubbed "Breaking the Walls." He said it sought to undermine the nation's weakened Shiite-led government by realigning with Sunni tribes, and returning to areas it was driven from before the American military withdrew from Iraq last December. Al-Qaida's local wing in Iraq is known as the Islamic State of Iraq, and has for years had a hot-and-cold relationship with the global terror network's leadership. Both shared the goal of targeting the U.S. military in Iraq and, to an extent, undermining the Shiite government that replaced Saddam Hussein's regime. But al-Qaida leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri distanced themselves from the Iraqi militants in 2007 for also killing Iraqi civilians instead of focusing on Western targets. Generally, al-Qaida in Iraq does not launch attacks or otherwise operate beyond Iraq's borders. But in early 2012, al-Zawahri urged Iraqi insurgents to support the Sunni-based uprising in neighboring Syria against President Bashar Assad, an Alawite. The sect is a branch of Shiite Islam.
[Associated
Press;
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