| Fred, you called this how many months ago? |
Two and a half years into the US-led war on terrorism, the Al Qaeda network headed by Osama bin Laden has a new operations chief, some US and foreign intelligence officials now believe, and he is quickly becoming as deadly as the architects of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the 38-year-old Palestinian blamed for hundreds of deaths in terrorist attacks in Iraq, appears to have adopted the remnants of the sleeper cell network in Europe that helped spawn the Sept. 11 hijackers and now serves as the primary organizer of a diffuse, but growing collection of Al Qaeda veterans and new recruits on at least three continents, according to a recent US spy agency report, interviews with intelligence officials, and terrorism specialists. After months of investigation, a picture is emerging that connects Zarqawi, whom US officials believe is still in Iraq, to the deadly train bombings in Madrid in March, a foiled plot to blow up Jordanian government offices in Amman last month, and the recent capture of several suspected terror cells in Italy, among other plots, the officials said.
| Zarqawi's been fingered as part of al-Qaeda, head of al-Tawhid — which apparently has a European and a Levant wing and is part of Ansar al-Islam. He's been associated, though more tenuously, with the various North African Salafist groups — Morocco, Algeria, and Libya, and with the Khattab's/al-Walid's Chechen Killer Korps. He also seems to float from Iraq to Syria to Turkey to Iran. No one else seems to be doing the same thing. That makes him the current Kingfish... |
Some intelligence officials stop short of comparing Zarqawi's role to bin Laden's past field commanders -- his relationship to the Saudi fugitive and other Al Qaeda chieftains, they say, is not as clear-cut -- but acknowledge he has picked up where they left off.
| When Ansar al-Islam was just getting off the ground its controller was Abu Zubaydah. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, perhaps because he's Pakistani, seems to have concentrated on Pakland and Southeast Asia. Zarqawi's Jordanian-Paleo, and has more of an interest in the Mideast and Europe. |
And as more dots in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East increasingly lead back to Zarqawi, he appears to have filled the vacuum as the top Al Qaeda field organizer.
| That's what I said. The intel guys probably noticed this at least a month before we did, and probably aren't weasel-wording it. Qaeda's reorganized into nation-based cells with a coordinating central body... |
His capture could be even more important than bin Laden himself if American and allied intelligence services are to keep pace with what they believe has become a highly adaptable global movement of Islamic extremists following the Sept. 11 attacks.
| It would be, but only on a temporary basis. There's another bright boy waiting to fill his shoes when he's hidden away on Diego Garcia or Kwajalein... |
''Zarqawi's terrorism is not confined to the Middle East," according to a recent US intelligence report labeled ''for officials' use only" obtained by the Globe.
| "For official use only" is the lowest "classification" level. It's a government document, not for distribution outside the government, but it doesn't contain classified information, even though it may be based on it. |
''Zarqawi and his network have plotted terrorist actions against several countries, including France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Russia. Since last year, members of his network have been apprehended in France, Britain, Spain, and Italy." But his links to other Al Qaeda followers and sympathizers, ability to recruit new foot soldiers, and personal ties with some leading suspects in a series of ongoing terrorist investigations demonstrate how he has picked up the standard left by top Al Qaeda figures such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, both of whom are in US custody.
| What is even more ominous, at least IMO, is that Zarqawi is supposed to work for Saif al-Adel. That means even whenever we snag his sorry ass the main driver of the current al-Qaeda is still out there - and in Iran. My guess is that al-Adel is the strategist and Zarqawi the tactician at this point; their writing as well as alleged locations would appear to support this conclusion. |
| I'd agree with that assessment. The al-Qaeda core is the custodian of the money chain and the theoretical base. That's why al-Adel, Zawahiri, and bin Laden remain the primary targets of the WoT. Capturing the OPSO only wins us a battle. It lets us take apart a bigger piece of the organization, but it's not decisive. |
Zarqawi is believed to communicate through intermediaries and couriers along a chain of support from neighboring countries including Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. The Zarqawi network, now called the Al Tawhid Group, ''has been operating beyond Iraq for some time," said a US official, citing recent intelligence reports.
| Coulda gotten that from Rantburg, starting in November 2001. |
''I would not characterize him as a formal, micromanaging chief as some of the others," the official added, ''but I would certainly characterize him as an operations chief in his own right. He has served as a magnet of foreign fighters and operatives that have come into Iraq to incite sectarian violence, and there are a number of plots he has been responsible for over the last several months far beyond Iraq."
| From his point of view, it doesn't even matter if an individual operation succeeds, only that it takes place. A certain percentage will succeed. He's fighting a war of attrition of public opinion... |
''People are underestimating him," said Evan Kohlmann, a government terrorism consultant and author of the forthcoming book, ''Al Qaeda's Jihad in Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network." Kohlmann added that Zarqawi ''has inherited the 9/11 network."
| Actually he's taken the leftovers, harvested the buds that were planted immediately before 9-11 and in the aftermath, and he's building on that basis. |
Zarqawi has had a long history as a terrorist foot soldier and organizer. Born in the Palestinian refugee camp of Zarqa northeast of Amman in 1966, Zarqawi has moved freely among Islamic militant groups in Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. In 1986, he traveled to Karachi for training during the Soviet invasion of neighboring Afghanistan. He then returned to Jordan in 1990 to help establish a local terror group, Jaysh Muhammed, according to the US intelligence report. After serving a prison term in Jordan in the mid-1990s for conspiring to overthrow the government, he is believed to have given orders to a terrorist group based there that was planning attacks timed to the millennium New Year's celebrations in Jordan, Israel, and the United States, the report said. Those plots were foiled, but he traveled back to Pakistan in 2000, according to the French intelligence service, the DGSE, where he soon turned up in bin Laden's entourage in Afghanistan. Until the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, Zarqawi ran two training camps, one near Kabul and another --specializing in chemical weapons training -- in Herat before he fled the US onslaught for neighboring Iran, according to the intelligence report.
| Hmm, the Kabul camp hasn't come up before now. It is also makes it even less plausible that he was some kind of rival to bin Laden if he was working that close to the Afghan capital. |
| He was a bright boy middle manager on the fast track to an executive slot. I hope they're tracking all the guys who ran the training camps. They're the al-Qaeda cadres, much moreso than the cannon fodder who went through the camps and could belong to any of the nation-based organizations or who could be free-lancers... |
Since then, he has used those contacts to recruit suicide bombers to come to Iraq. He also has used his contacts to cast a net to other Al Qaeda sympathizers in Europe, North Africa, and elsewhere, officials said. Zarqawi's influence is increasingly being felt far beyond Iraq. The suspected mastermind of the Madrid bombings in March that killed 200 people, a Syrian named Abu Musab al-Suri, as well as other North Africans from Morocco and Algeria who have been tied to blasts, are believed to have links to Zarqawi, according to intelligence officials. |