Word: zarqawi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Fatah al-Islam is headed by Shaker al-Absi, a veteran Palestinian guerrilla fighter who originally trained in the Syrian Air Force. He is believed to have fought American forces in Iraq and was linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq who was killed a year ago. Al-Absi was sentenced to death in absentia by a Jordanian court in 2004 for the murder of American diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman. His fighters reportedly number 200 to 500 and are drawn from several Arab countries...
...replaced in time." It didn't take that long: four days after the strike, the Taliban's leader, Mullah Omar, announced that Dadullah would be succeeded by his brother. Dadullah was uniquely abhorrent, a one-legged mastermind of suicide bombings and beheadings who had earned the nickname Afghanistan's Zarqawi. But his death won't likely damage the Taliban any more than Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi's liquidation - or, in recent months, his lieutenants' - has slowed al-Qaeda's savagery in Iraq. Insurgencies are adaptable beasts: remove one vital organ and another will regenerate...
...Still, nobody's expecting that taking Dadullah out of the picture is going to end the sting of the Taliban - any more than the killing of Musab al-Zarqawi did in the case of the Iraq insurgency. A Taliban spokesman on Monday hailed Dadullah as a martyr, announcing that his brother had been appointed to take his place. "This is not going to slow down the Taliban jihad," spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said by telephone reading a statement attributed to the movement's fugitive leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar. That remains to be proved in the field, but the Iraq experience...
...that it matters. If al-Baghdadi does exist, and whether or not he is alive, he is a titular leader with no real power. His "promotion" last year was a PR exercise, designed to give al-Qaeda an Iraqi face - under the Jordanian al-Zarqawi, the group was dominated by foreign fighters. The publicity stunt failed, however. Although al-Qaeda nominally proclaims fealty to al-Baghdadi as the ruler of the "Islamic State," it is no secret that the group's real leader is al-Masri, an Egyptian...
...Baghdadi and al-Masri have both been killed this week, that would certainly be a big blow to al-Qaeda. But it would not be a coup de grace. Al-Qaeda has shrugged off the death of even more important figures, including al-Zarqawi. At best, there will be a short pause while the group recalibrates itself under a new leader...