Word: al-zarqawi
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...Samarra explosion was surely designed to set sectarian hostilities aflame. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the bombing of al-Askari, but suspicion fell on al-Qaeda in Iraq. Its leader there, Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, subscribes to an extremist Sunni view that regards Shi'ism as an apostasy and all shrines as idolatrous abominations. Al-Zarqawi, whose group comprises mainly foreign jihadis, has encouraged his followers to attack Iraqi Shi'ite targets...
...higher than they were last year. But there are curious patterns to the violence, which may have something to do with the absence of carnage in Karbala. Last summer al-Zarqawi apparently received a letter-later released by the U.S. government-from the al-Qaeda leadership ordering him to stop bombing Islamic innocents. Recently al-Zarqawi's terrorists seem to have found a new preoccupation: assassinating Sunni leaders who are planning to participate in the new Iraqi government. They killed prominent Sunnis in Kirkuk and Fallujah last week. Those may be signs of desperation, signs that al-Zarqawi fears that...
Since then, the fissures between the nationalists and al-Zarqawi have widened. U.S. political and military officers persuaded some Sunni tribal chiefs to send their youths into the security forces to ensure that Sunnis-not Shi'ite outsiders-would command their cities' police. But in recent meetings with various insurgent groups, says a nationalist field commander near Ramadi, al-Zarqawi's lieutenants made it clear that any Iraqi who joined the security forces was considered the enemy, thus drawing a battle line between the jihadis and their former comrades. In Latifiya, outside Baghdad, al-Zarqawi's fighters pressed Sunnis...
...Al-Zarqawi's men, though, have shown few signs of backing down. In Latifiya last week, al-Qaeda fighters captured and murdered five members of the nationalist Islamic Army in Iraq and assassinated a Sunni colonel. After the backlash in Ramadi, al-Zarqawi's men supposedly retreated into the rocky western deserts but have continued to target local leaders. A senior security officer says jihadist fighters followed a Ramadi chieftain from the powerful Dulaimi tribe into Baghdad on Wednesday; handcuffed him, a nephew and a senior security officer for the western provinces; and executed each of them with a bullet...
...MOUSAB AL-ZARQAWI Jordanian Al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq; has a $25 million bounty on his head...