Jun 11 2006
Did Al Qaeda Out Zarqawi?
For pure speculation fun, read this interesting take on the impact of Zarqawi’s death on Al Qaeda, and then think about a weakened and crumbling Al Qaeda facing an internal coup d’etat at the hands of the notorius Zarqawi:
The death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi could mark a turning point for al-Qaeda and the global jihadist movement, according to terrorism analysts and intelligence officials.
Until he was killed Wednesday by U.S. forces, the Jordanian-born guerrilla served as Osama bin Laden’s proxy in Iraq, attracting hundreds if not thousands of foreign fighters under the al-Qaeda banner. At the same time, Zarqawi had grown into a strategic headache for al-Qaeda’s founders by demonstrating an independent streak often at odds with their goals.
Despite written pleas from bin Laden’s deputy to change his tactics, Zarqawi alienated allies in the Iraqi insurgency as well as Arab public opinion by killing hundreds of Muslims with suicide bombings. Zarqawi, a Sunni Muslim, repeatedly attacked Shiite shrines and leaders in a bid to fuel an Iraqi civil war, instead of primarily fighting the U.S. military and its partners.
If you are Bin Laden and Zawahiri, and you see the organization and dream you built up over years of hard work being polluted and controlled by this madman Zarqawi, wouldn’t the idea of selling him out the US military be appealing? The US would do your dirty work for you and gain you back control of your dream. Seems like a reasonable plan to me. H/T Ed Morrissey on the article.
I heard on TV that they tracked him by following his spiritual adviser.
Tigerhawk has an excellent read that points to a Sunni Sellout
http://tigerhawk.blogspot.com/2006/06/selling-out-of-abu-musab-al-zarqawi.html
It is disgusting if the Sunni leaders could have stopped this maniac before but didn’t. This is all very complicated.
What ever happened to the Al Qaeda #2 Zawahiri (not Zarqawi).
There was court testimony from an FBI informant that Zawahiri was in the USA recruiting.
That story seemed really interesting.
I find it unlikely that al Qaeda outed him unless they had already set up a parallel network to replace his. The reason is that there would be a risk of multinational forces discovering connections well beyond Iraq. They would risk financial and communications connections being discovered. We might discover how they are communicating with Zawahiri, for example.
I believe it is more likely the Sunni tribal leaders got tired of being shot for not agreeing with Zarqawi. Their people got tired of being intimidated with a brand of islamic intolerance that is alien to their culture. And everyone got tired of bombs blowing up markets and boxes of heads showing up in the middle of the street.
No, I think the Sunnis did him in. In fact, almost a year ago some Sunni tribal leaders said publically that if the Shiites would reach agreement with them on certain issues, they would be able to eliminate Zarqawi in days.
The Sunnis, I believe, played al Qaida in Iraq like a cheap dime store ukulele. Zarqawi and his network were their lever they could use for political concessions and at some point, they got enough concessions that they had to deliver on their end of the bargain and here we are.
Radio talk show host Captain Dale Dye, a miltary analyst as reliable and trustworthy as you’re likely to find anywhere in media, has been in direct contact with Task Force 145, the unit responsible for taking Zarqawi down. On last Sunday’s show he passed along the following
information to his listeners, which I’ve taken the liberty of transcribing.
On how we located Zarqawi:
“The initial tipoff that we got about Zarqawi came from a Jordanian source. (Zarqawi) had been slipping across borders, picking up money, picking up communications… He had, in effect, a real estate agent that was… arranging to rent or use safehouses. And Zarqawi’s M.O. was to only spend a couple of hours in any one safehouse and then move… Now due to the tip that we got from the Jordanians, we turned this real estate agent… And he didn’t necessarily provide us
immediate information about Zarqawi himself. But he did provide us information about a guy named Rachman who was known to be Zarqawi’s spiritual advisor. When Zarqawi has meetings, when Zarqawi does planning sessions, things of that nature, he’s got this guy Rachman with him. So we put the tail on Rachman… and that lead us to this safehouse.”
How long was Zarqawi under surveillance before we moved in?
“They had them under surveillance for a good period of time. Now part of that was to allow the other teams that were moving on developed intelligence to get in place and go. They didn’t want to make a strike immediately which would then compromise other operations that Task Force 145 and other units were involved in. We hit something like 17 other sites and locations… We wanted to get some other teams in place to strike locations that we’d been given by this source that turned… We waited it out because we wanted it to be an absolute lock, and it was.”
Was Zarqawi alive when we found him?
“There was some indication that Zarqawi was barely alive when the Iraqis found him. The American forces were on the scene shortly thereafter… We did clean him up for pictures. He was in pretty bad shape. We did not nor did the Iraqis mutilate the body, nor did we beat on him. In fact, a medic was working on him when he died. We took some pictures, we took some fingerprints. Took pictures of tattoos which I didn’t know until the guys told me that he (Zarqawi)
had them….”
How could Zarqawi have survived the blast, and what condition was his body in?
“Look, I have seen pictures you have not. What you’ve got to see is the rest of his body. It was crushed. He was, in effect, crushed to death. He lived a little while, and by that I mean a very short time after he was pulled out of the rubble. Now the GBUs (guided bomb units) — JDAMs — that we dropped, two five hundred pounders, were rigged with penetrators. That means they got inside the building and caused it to explode outward. To crush. That’s what they were designed to do, That’s precisely what they did. Now was he a mess when we first got to him? You bet he was. He was covered with brick dust, mortar dust, dirt, viscera, everything else. And his body
was mangled. We cleaned him up for a couple of reasons, one of which was publicity. The other of which is we wanted to make sure we knew who we had. So we cleaned him up. If you’d see pictures of the rest of his body, you’d understand how he could not have survived that. Now note that his face is distorted, swollen. That’s blast damage. But he was crushed in the destruction of those houses. That’s essentially what happened. “
Off topic but VERY interesting.
Iran’s intelligence operatives abroad flee their terror masters
Also this one. Looks like some of the killings in Iraq might be of Iranian origin if that source is to be believed.
Iran intelligence behind killing of Iraqi pilots – report