I repeat:
You have no idea what you're talking about.
You don't need "popular support" to run an insurgency. You just need fear. Break loose of those four pathetic bookmarks in your browser and do some real research. Find interviews in Anbar, or Somalia, or the Sudan and elsewhere, and learn how murder and terror can hold a population in check.
A dozen killers can keep a village tied down quite effectively if there is nobody equipped to oppose them.
Surveys in Iraq show hostility toward al Qaeda at well over 90 percent.
You did manage to be right about the fish.