Word: zarqawi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Although al-Baghdadi was named al-Qaeda's leader shortly after the death last year of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, little is known about him. There are no verifiable pictures of al-Baghdadi, and the name is made up. Many Iraqis wonder if there's a real identity behind that alias, which may explain Caldwell's phrasing, "If that person even exists...
...government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki choked off supplies of food and fuel to the predominantly Sunni province. Tribal violence, which has long been a source of unrest, intensified as resources dwindled. Sunni insurgents who had gathered in the area under the banner of Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, killed by U.S. forces near Baqubah last June, launched a campaign to exterminate Shi'ites, who retaliated in kind. As in Baghdad, kidnappings and gruesome murders have become everyday fare...
...YEARS AFTER SADDAM'S FALL, such ties were strong enough to keep widespread sectarian violence at bay. There were provocations: Sunni jihadi groups, such as Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda, began a bombing campaign against Shi'ite targets. But many Shi'ite extremists, rather than lashing out at Sunnis, sometimes joined them in the insurgency against the Americans and their allies. When Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army rose against the U.S. in the summer of 2004, it was supported by the Sunni insurgency. That fall some of al-Sadr's fighters joined Sunnis in the battle...
Then came Samarra. The operation carried the Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi's fingerprints, but Iraqi Sunnis were the ones who would endure the bloody fallout. For many Shi'ites, this was an atrocity too far. They turned to militias such as the Mahdi Army to avenge the desecration of the site, and those militias ran amuck, slaughtering Sunnis and attacking many of their mosques. After the first, furious convulsion of violence, the militias began a more systematic campaign of kidnap and execution. The bodies of their victims, bearing signs of bestial torture, were often tossed into sewers or garbage dumps...
After reading the "Farewell" section [Dec. 25, 2006--Jan. 1, 2007], I would like to suggest that next time around you include the loss of infamous notables, like Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic and al-Qaeda's Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, in a separate section titled "Good Riddance...