Word: zarqawi
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...Antiterrorism experts say the Saudi-born terrorist is no longer in active contact with field commanders, and his ability to plan and direct specific operations is hampered by his isolation. In Iraq, scene of al-Qaeda's deadliest strikes since 9/11, the group's leader, Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, is fighting battles with some Iraqi insurgent groups who want him dead almost as badly as the U.S. military does (see box). Meanwhile, an intensified U.S. push to hunt down al-Qaeda leaders has scored a series of apparent successes; just last week Pakistani intelligence officials claimed that...
...Ceramics Works before blowing up his explosive vest, loaded with ball bearings for maximum devastation. The blast killed two U.S. service members and more than 70 Iraqi police recruits--but it also turned out to be a deadly miscalculation by the jihadis and their leader, Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi. Most of the victims were local Sunnis, and they were joining the police force under the protection of tribal chieftains who, with the U.S. military's approval, are trying to impose order over their violent swath of Iraq. After the Jan. 5 blast, according to insurgents, tribal chiefs in Ramadi notified...
What's behind the rift? Even though some Iraqi insurgent groups have cooperated with jihadist fighters to battle U.S. troops, insurgent leaders say they have grown sick of al-Qaeda's killing innocent Iraqi Shi'ites, whom al-Zarqawi considers infidels. Cracks in al-Qaeda's alliance with the Iraqi groups became more pronounced after the Dec. 15 election. Al-Zarqawi saw the poll as a detour from his goal of turning Iraq into a base from which al-Qaeda could spread terrorism throughout the Middle East and Europe. Many Sunni resistance groups have a narrower focus: ridding Iraq...
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...
...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 through...