Word: al-zarqawi
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...terrorists and foreign jihadis who take their cues from Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian acolyte of Osama bin Laden. The new government is blunt in its approach. "Be ruthless. Either they kill you or you kill them," National Security Adviser Muwaffak al-Rubaie tells TIME. "With them, there can be no mercy." Al-Rubaie thinks al-Zarqawi made a "fatal mistake" with the wave of bombings two weeks ago that killed more than 100 Iraqis in a single day: "That alienated everyone." It could help al-Shahwani quickly recruit informants and obtain the kind of intelligence that can flush...
...humvees, five Bradleys and a couple of minivans pull up in front of a two-story building in the Ghazalia district of western Baghdad. Bravo Company of the 91st Engineering Battalion is making a house call. The address is a suspected hideout of foreign fighters allied with Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, thought to be the mastermind of the recent wave of insurgent violence. Bravo has been joined by some special-forces soldiers, and together they come barreling out of their vehicles, clamber over a metal gate and charge into the house...
Insurgents also say al-Zarqawi may have intended last week's onslaught to be even more catastrophic. As militants attacked in cities like Fallujah and Baqubah, a cell of an Iraqi resistance group working with al-Zarqawi roamed Baghdad, insurgent sources told TIME. Working in small teams in separate cars, the insurgents cased targets and waited for their commanders, including al-Zarqawi himself, to issue strike orders. When the cell didn't receive the call, it withdrew and waited for another opportunity to attack...
...Despite al-Zarqawi's efforts to attract Iraqi insurgent groups into his network, his inner circle of lieutenants and bodyguards is said to consist entirely of foreign fighters. No one can pinpoint how many are operating in Iraq, partly because they remain shadowy even to those who work with them. "The foreigners trust no one, not even their own clothes," says an Iraqi resistance fighter. He adds that al-Zarqawi has become an inspirational figure, like Osama bin Laden, for militants who espouse his methods and religious fervor. "Most are not members of his group in a formal sense," says...
...such group, whose leaders met with TIME, is the Kata'ib al-Jihad al-Islamiyah, or Battalions of Islamic Holy War. Founded by frontline officers from Saddam's intelligence services and the Republican Guard who once shunned terrorist attacks that killed innocent Iraqis, the group represents a significant Iraqi wing of al-Zarqawi's network. The group's leaders say they now accept mass-casualty attacks as legitimate; they claim that innocents killed in such strikes go straight to paradise. A fund-raising video made by the group and given to TIME shows its members citing exhortations by bin Laden...