When Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would saw the head off a bound, terrified and screaming hostage, at the end of his display of almost humanless barbarity he would hold up the head and gleefully show the world.
Now it’s the Bush administration, American intelligence agencies and American military who are figuratively holding up his head in light of the terrorist and insurgent leader’s death by bombing.
If it isn’t The Number One Terrorist Guy…it’s getting closer:
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the mastermind behind hundreds of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings in Iraq, was killed early Wednesday by an airstrike –north of Baghdad, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday.
Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born high-school dropout whose leadership of the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq made him the most wanted man in Iraq, was killed along with several other people near the city of Baqubah, the officials said.
Zarqawi had exploded on the scene in the aftermath of 911 as the head of Al Qaeda’s terrorist operations.
So it’s fitting that he met his end exploding on the scene. Literally:
U.S. warplanes dropped two 500-pound bombs on a house in which Zarqawi was meeting with other insurgent leaders. A U.S. military spokesman said coalition forces pinpointed Zarqawi’s location after weeks of tracking the movements of his spiritual adviser, Sheik Abdul Rahman, who also was killed in the blast.
Following the attack, coalition forces raided 17 locations in and around Baghdad, seizing a “treasure trove” of information about terror operations in the country, U.S. Army Major Gen. William B. Caldwell IV told reporters at a military briefing here. Some of the raids focused on targets the United States had been using to monitor Zarqawi’s location, Caldwell said.
The stated aim of Zarqawi, 39, in addition to ousting foreign forces from Iraq, was to foment bloody sectarian strife between his fellow Sunni Muslims and members of Iraq’s Shiite majority, a prospect that has become a grim reality during the past several months.
Bush administration, intelligence and military officials are crowing and, according to Reuters, rightfully so, since Zarqawi’s death was an example of how the war on terror is supposed to be fought — coupling painstaking intelligence work with military force:
Painstaking intelligence gathering and sources inside Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s network enabled U.S. forces to pinpoint his location and kill the al Qaeda leader in Iraq, the U.S. military said on Thursday.
A U.S. Air Force F-16C Fighting Falcon fighter aircraft dropped two 500-pound (227 kg) bombs on a house in a date-palm grove in a village north of Baghdad, killing the most-wanted man in Iraq, said Lt. Gen. Gary North, the top air commander in the region.
Maj. Gen. William Caldwell told a news conference it took detailed planning before the attack, and a breakthrough came while U.S. forces were trailing Zarqawi’s spiritual adviser, Sheikh Abdul-Rahman.
“This gentleman was key to our success in finding Zarqawi. He was a top lieutenant of his and was identified several weeks ago by military sources and sources inside Zarqawi’s network,” Caldwell said.
“Through painstaking intelligence efforts we were able to start tracking him, monitoring his movements. … Last night, he went to meet (Zarqawi) again at 6:15 p.m. (1415 GMT) when the decision was made to go ahead and strike that target,” he added.
North, briefing Pentagon reporters by telephone from Qatar, said two F-16s were involved in the mission, but only one dropped bombs — a laser-guided GBU-12 and satellite-guided GBU-38 Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM.
And the impact? AP notes that the White House is being cautious:
The death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may provide a much-needed morale boost to Iraq’s new government. But it is unlikely to end the country’s brutal insurgency.
Instead, the death of the most visible and feared terror leader in Iraq simply may give the United States and its Iraqi allies another brief chance to build some momentum toward stability and away from violence.
If the effort stumbles, then al-Zarqawi’s death may in the end have no more impact on the insurgency than the capture of Saddam Hussein.
The White House seemed mindful of that Thursday, refraining from calling the killing a breakthrough but also moving quickly to try to capitalize on a clear victory after weeks of mounting death tolls.
President Bush warned “we can expect sectarian violence to continue,” but he also announced that top U.S. officials would meet at Camp David to map out America’s next steps. Of the militants, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the death would only “slow them down.”
There is no question that al-Zarqawi’s killing was a huge symbolic gain. Because of that, it could provide the Bush administration and the new Iraqi government with an opportunity to seize the initiative from suicide bombers, sectarian killers and other extremists.
Dan Morrison asks whether taking out Mr. Z will make a difference:
Zarqawi’s group, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, was responsible for but a fraction of those deaths. His killings were aimed at destabilising Iraq for a cause few Iraqis subscribe to —creating a Saudi-like theocracy across the Middle East.
Then there is the fact that Zarqawi was disliked and even hated by many in the insurgency. His mass-casualty bombings of Shia mosques and shrines horrified many Iraqis. His beheadings of Western interlopers embarrassed many others. And his murders of Sunni Arabs, like the bombing of a wedding party in Jordan that killed 70 people last year, created more anger than admiration, even in his own network.
To the international jihadist movement, Zarqawi was “a star, with a Zorro-like mythology, like Che Guevara,� said Abdel Monem Said, director of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.
“This is a propaganda blow for Al-Qaeda.� But on the ground, the vast majority of insurgents are Iraqis, not foreign terrorists like Zarqawi and his band. The Iraqi fighters are motivated by nationalism, cash, and American abuses.
For them Zarqawi’s death will be irrelevant, or it might give the insurgency more legitimacy, now that its most radical figure is dead. Once they absorb the psychological blow of his death, Zarqawi’s followers and other militants outside Iraq could regroup and continue with their killings.
Meanwhile, world leaders are praising Zarqawi’s death.
So the key question becomes: Where will this likely have major or little impact?
THE U.S. MILITARY: It is a great morale boost. It removes one of Al Qaeda’s masterminds from the scene. BUT reports over the past few years noted that if one Al Qaeda leader falls there will be others to take his place. Even so: if it disrupts terrorist and insurgent operations it will mean it is a victory, of sorts.
INTELLIGENCE FORCES: It is a sorely needed success after much publicity since 911 over purported close, allegedly bungled calls in catching Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden. In the immediate aftermath of 911 some said U.S. intelligence was almost useless. This at the very least shows that it is on the right track in terms of goals, intelligence assets and plan implementation.
POLITICAL:Expect to see President George W. Bush start to go up in the polls. This has been a good week for Bush and the Republicans. First, the GOP holds onto the seat vacated by jailed Randy “Duke” Cunningham, despite Democratic hopes that corruption scandals and overall anti-Bush sentiment would sway the day. And now one of the highest-profile Al Qaeda operatives in the world is removed from the scene.
THE WAR: As others have noted, it would not be surprising for insurgents — and Al Qaeda — to want to show real soon that his death has no impact on their operations by staging some high-profile operations that get lots of publicity.
FUTURE INTELLIGENCE AND WAR OPERATIONS: What were U.S./Iraqi forces able to seize from the scene? Was it info that can help the war effort and the war against Al Qaeda?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.