| Submit your comments on this article |
| Terror Networks |
| Zarqawi ends low profile, may be linked to Dahab bombings |
| 2006-04-30 |
| Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Al Qaeda mastermind accused of orchestrating dozens of bombings and beheadings in Iraq, sought yesterday in a rare videotaped message to portray himself as a leader of radical Islam's global struggle against the West. While restating his allegiance to Osama bin Laden, Zarqawi appeared to go out of his way to look the part of an influential holy warrior on a par with Al Qaeda's chieftain, sitting cross-legged and bin Laden-like before a circle of his followers, with an AK-47 by his side and wearing what looked like a suicide bomb vest. He urged Iraqis to fight the American ''crusader" and hailed the deadly terror campaign waged by foreign Arabs, North Africans, and other Sunni Muslim militants he has helped recruit for suicide attacks. He also criticized the new Iraqi government led by the Shi'ite Muslim majority as a stooge of the United States. ''Your mujahideen sons were able to confront the most ferocious of crusader campaigns on a Muslim state," he told listeners. ''They have stood in the face of this onslaught for three years." The video, which also showed Zarqawi firing a weapon in a desert landscape, was released several days after a new videotape from bin Laden aired by the Al Jazeera television network urged Muslims to prepare for a ''long war" with the West. It also appeared just a day after an Egyptian resort was bombed by a militant group that some intelligence analysts suspect is connected to Zarqawi's network. The Zarqawi video, which he said was taped on Friday, was aired on a radical Islamic website, a mode of communication that specialists said is more difficult to trace than tapes sent by courier to television outlets, while providing greater control over the timing of the broadcast. ''It appears to be him," said a US counterterrorism official involved in the US government's analysis of the tape. The official said it was the first known video of Zarqawi in at least three years. The Jordanian-born terrorist, now believed to be about 40 years old, has released various audio messages in the past and is suspected of being among the hooded figures in videotaped beheadings of kidnapped Westerners in Iraq. He is believed to have personally beheaded American Nicholas Berg in 2004. The brutal killings sparked controversy within the ranks of Islamic radicals, and Zarqawi's group has refrained from using the tactic in recent months. Zarqawi himself, the focus of a fierce manhunt, has also kept a lower profile. US intelligence officials suggested the timing of the video could be an attempt to stem rumors that Zarqawi had been sidelined by other insurgent leaders for alienating too many Muslims with his brutal tactics. ''It could be an effort on his part to quell rumors that he has been marginalized," said a senior government official involved in reviewing the new tape. The official asked not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the matter. In January, Zarqawi's group said in a Web statement that it had joined five other Iraqi insurgent groups to form the Mujahideen Shura Council. An Iraqi, Abdullah Rashid Al Baghdadi, was reported to have been named leader. ''Clearly this was done for propaganda purposes to portray the unity of Islamic militants in Iraq," said the US counterterrorism official. ''He is trying to put an Iraqi face on the foreign fighter effort and get more jihadists to join them. There is a lot of jihadist bravado." The footage, released just days after a new Iraqi prime minister was named, showed Zarqawi and about a dozen masked individuals undergoing combat training and depicted him sitting around a map with fellow militants and a man identified as the commander of insurgents in Iraq's Al Anbar Province. ''Any government which is formed in Iraq now -- whether by Shi'ites or Zionist Kurds or those who are dubbed Sunnis -- would only be a stooge," Zarqawi said on the video, according to a translation by the Associated Press. ''They are a poisoned dagger in the heart of the Muslim nation." Zarqawi has steadily grown in notoriety since he was first named by Bush administration officials as a member of Al Qaeda who was operating in Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the months before the March 2003 US invasion -- though outside of Hussein's sphere of influence in the Kurdish-held north. Since the fall of Hussein, he has been blamed for organizing dozens of attacks against Iraq's Shi'ite majority and for enlisting hundreds of young militants from across the region to be ''freedom fighters" against the American-led occupation and help foment a civil war. Despite Zarqawi's reign of terror, there remain doubts about his overall influence in the Iraq insurgency, which US intelligence officials still believe is made up primarily of disaffected Iraqi Sunnis and remnants of the former Hussein regime. Some analysts contend that the United States, by singling out Zarqawi, has only exaggerated his stature and has used his Al Qaeda connection to help build public support for the war. Still, Zarqawi has maintained militant links across the Muslim world since before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when he headed an Al Qaeda training camp for bin Laden in Afghanistan, according to US intelligence officials. And his actions in Iraq have only served to expand his following. Indeed, the deadly bombings in the Egyptian town of Dahab on the Sinai Peninsula on Monday appeared to be the work of a newly identified Egyptian terrorist group that may be connected to Zarqawi, according to US intelligence officials and private specialists. The home-grown organization, which calls itself the Egyptian Tawhid wal-Jihad Movement -- meaning unity and holy war -- is believed to be responsible for attacks in nearby Taba and Sharm El-Sheikh in 2004 and 2005 that killed more than 100 people. The name of the Egyptian group was previously used by Zarqawi's organization before he pledged allegiance to bin Laden in December 2004 and renamed his organization, according to Evan Kholmann, a terrorism specialist who tracks Islamic websites and advises US counterterrorism authorities. Meanwhile, the Egyptian group has also taken responsibility for previous attacks via the same website that Zarqawi has used to broadcast messages to his followers. After the bombing in Sharm El-Sheikh last year, Zarqawi's group released a video of the captured Egyptian ambassador to Iraq, Ihab el-Sherif, being interrogated about the location of Jews in the Sinai Peninsula. Sherif responded: ''From Taba to Sharm El-Sheikh." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 This is a great quote. I'm going to save it. ''Any government which is formed in Iraq now -- whether by Shi'ites or Zionist Kurds or those who are dubbed Sunnis -- would only be a stooge," Zarqawi has mastered the art of dividing and conquering his own side. I like this part of the quote too: ''They are a poisoned dagger in the heart of the Muslim nation." So according to Zarqawi, ol' GWB isn't such a dumb cowboy afterall. |
| Posted by: 2b 2006-04-30 12:16 |