terrorists killing each other, for a change

From the New York Times:

Marines patrolling this desert region near the Syrian border have for months been seeing a strange new trend in the already complex Iraqi insurgency. Insurgents, they say, have been fighting each other in towns along the Euphrates from Husayba, on the border, to Qaim, farther west. The observations offer a new clue in the hidden world of the insurgency and suggest that there may have been, as American commanders suggest, a split between Islamic militants and local rebels.
A United Nations official who served in Iraq last year and who consulted widely with militant groups said in a telephone interview that there has been a split for some time.
"There is a rift," said the official, who requested anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the talks he had held. "I'm certain that the nationalist Iraqi part of the insurgency is very much fed up with the Jihadists grabbing the headlines and carrying out the sort of violence that they don't want against innocent civilians."
The nationalist insurgent groups, "are giving a lot of signals implying that there should be a settlement with the Americans," while the Jihadists have a purely ideological agenda, he added.
The insurgency is largely hidden, making such trends difficult to discern. But marines in this western outpost have noticed a change. For Matthew Orth, a Marine sniper, the difference came this spring, when his unit was conducting an operation in Husayba. Mortar shells flew over the unit, hitting a different target.
"The thought was, "They're coming for us. But then we saw they were fighting each other," he recalled during a break in Monday's operation. "We were kind of wondering what happened. We were getting mortared twice a day, and then all of a sudden it stopped."

Disagreement between Iraqi rebels and insurgent jihadists started not long after the US took Baghdad, but the differences were relatively minor. It was solved in large part, perhaps, by the two groups not working together. However, the jihadist's new tactic of executing random, innocent civilians has infuriated the Iraqi rebels. In short, the insurgent's targeting of civilians is causing their own downfall, for an abundance of reasons. Amir Taheri, by far my favorite analyst, has a wonderful article on the debate of tattarrus - the justification of killing innocents, including Muslims. As you probably know, Zarqawi has come out in favor of killing just about anyone, but more sane people have concluded that reckless murder is morally wrong in many ways. The later seems to be winning the debate by virtue of not having its greatest supporters blow themselves up, and because the average civilian tends to not like the threat of being murdered by lunatics.

So, a hattip to the minds who helped create this in-fighting amongst the terrorists, or at least to those who work to preserve Iraq until the terrorists kill each other or themselves out.
I wonder if the terrorists may qualify for the first group-wide Darwin Award.