Word: zarqawi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...final months of his life, al-Zarqawi sought a different kind of legitimacy. In exclusive interviews with TIME, fighters from his inner circle said that al-Zarqawi wanted to be seen, like bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, as a religious authority as well as a military commander. He may also have been trying to project a more moderate image, mindful of the revulsion induced by his barbarism toward fellow Muslims. One jihadist contact says al-Zarqawi had a growing sense that he couldn't trust those around him. He took to mimicking the habits of the Prophet Muhammad recorded...
...dinner party had gathered last Wednesday evening in a farmhouse in the fertile, fruit-growing countryside just outside Baqubah, 30 miles north of Baghdad. One of the attendees was Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. With him were at least three women and three men, including Sheik Abdul-Rahman, al-Zarqawi's so-called spiritual adviser and confidant. Also in the house was one of al-Zarqawi's most trusted couriers, an aide tasked with relaying messages from the commander to militants in the field. What al-Zarqawi could not have known was that...
...almost as soon as they took up position, the commandos feared they were about to lose him. A special-operations source tells TIME that the surveillance team was worried that there wasn't enough time to assemble a ground assault force to raid the house and capture al-Zarqawi; the commandos at the site lacked sufficient manpower and weaponry to attack on their own. As dusk neared, the team fretted al-Zarqawi might slip away if they waited too long. A knowledgeable Pentagon official says the Delta team "saw one group come into the house and one group exit...
...wasn't taking chances. During the three-year hunt for him, al-Zarqawi was a maddeningly elusive target--a master of disguise who could pass as a woman in a burqa one day, an Iraqi policeman the next. He traveled in groups of women and children to lower suspicion and frequently moved with ease through checkpoints in Iraq. Although military commanders believe they came close to capturing al-Zarqawi on at least half a dozen occasions in the past two years, few had reason to anticipate an imminent breakthrough. But military and intelligence officials in Washington, Baghdad and Amman tell...
...bravado, al-Zarqawi knew he could be caught at any time. In January 2004, U.S. intelligence officers intercepted a 17-page letter addressed to Osama bin Laden in which al-Zarqawi expressed concern for his longevity. "[Iraq] has no mountains in which we can take refuge and no forests in whose thickets we can hide," he wrote. "Our backs are exposed and our movements compromised. Eyes are everywhere...