CAIRO, Egypt Apr 25, 2006 (AP)— In a rare video posted Tuesday on the Internet, al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi accused the West and the United States of waging a "crusader" war against Islam but said Muslim holy warriors were standing firm. He also said the recent formation of a new government in Baghdad was an attempt to help the United States get out of what he called the dilemma it now faces in Iraq. "When the enemy entered into Iraq, their aim was to control Iraq and the area," al-Zarqawi said in the video. "But here we have been fighting them for the last three years."
In the past, al-Zarqawi has made statements only through audiotapes posted on the Web, although photos of him obtained by the U.S. government have been widely circulated. It was not possible to confirm the authenticity of the video, but it was posted on a Web site that al-Zarqawi's group and other groups have often used to post Internet messages. Intelligence analysts in Washington were examining the video, and two U.S. officials declined to comment immediately.
In the video, al-Zarqawi, who wears a beard and mustache, sat dressed in black, with an ammunition vest. An automatic rifle was propped against the wall to his right. He wore a black scarf wrapped on his head and around his neck, while the black flag of his group, al-Qaida in Iraq, was superimposed on the screen. In another scene, he was shown sitting on the floor with four other men, all wearing black masks. In a third scene, al-Zarqawi could be seen in a desert, holding a heavy automatic rifle as if ready to fire.
The video came just two days after a highly publicized call to arms by al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden on an audiotape played on Arab television that encouraged Muslims to support his group in its war with the West. It also came a day after a triple bombing at a resort in Egypt that killed at least 24 people, including 21 Egyptians and three foreigners. In addition, it has been just days since Iraq named a new prime minister and made progress toward forming a new government. In that sense, the video could be an attempt by the terrorist leader to raise his visibility at a time when U.S. officials are hailing the Iraqi political process as a setback to the insurgents.
Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, has claimed responsibility for some of the most high-profile suicide bombings in Iraq, and also for a score of other attacks including hotel bombings in November in Jordan. But in recent months, al-Zarqawi had sharply lowered his profile, halting his group's Internet claims and joining a clearinghouse group of other radical groups. Some other radical leaders had said he had been shunted aside and told to lower his profile.
In January, al-Zarqawi's group said in a Web statement that it had joined five other Iraqi insurgent groups to form the Mujahedeen Shura Council, or Consultative Council of Holy Warriors. Since then, al-Zarqawi's group had stopped issuing its own statements, a sharp contrast to its previous frequent postings, and al-Zarqawi had not issued a Web audiotape since January.
In the video posted Tuesday, the logo of the Shura Council appeared on the screen as al-Zarqawi spoke, even as the black flag of his specific group, al-Qaida in Iraq, appeared in the corner.
Among other attacks he has been blamed for, U.S. officials believe al-Zarqawi personally beheaded American businessman Nicholas Berg, whose savage killing was shown on a videotape distributed by al-Qaida in Iraq in May 2004. It was the first of a series of videotaped decapitations of Westerners in Iraq, which ended after widespread complaints from Muslims who were sympathetic to the insurgency but objected to the video beheadings.
Some experts have long cautioned, however, that al-Zarqawi's role may have been exaggerated and that some of the attacks claimed by his group or that U.S. and Iraqi officials blamed on him may have been carried out by others. Iraq's insurgency has always been made up of several disparate groups, and some of them, including Ansar al-Sunnah Army and the Islamic Army of Iraq, have been nearly as violent as al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq. The Jordanian-born militant, however, seized most of the attention because of his relentless Internet propaganda efforts, the brutality of his attacks including the hostage beheading videos put on the Web and a series of suicide car bombings that targeted mostly Shiites. |