Word: zarqawi
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...patriots enraged by foreign occupation, and that the key to beating the insurgency is to isolate the hard-liners and foreigners from elements closer to the mainstream of Iraqi society. "We're negotiating with what I call the non-criminals, those who never really were the hard core like Zarqawi and his aides and the al-Qaeda-style people," Allawi told the New York Times last week, referring to contacts between his administration and insurgents...
...government can, however, take some comfort from the fact that isolating the foreign element in the insurgency may be emerging as a point of consensus. To the extent that foreign fighters, particularly those linked with Jordanian extremist Musab al-Zarqawi, are seen as responsible for suicide bombings that indiscriminately target Iraqi civilians - and also for the gruesome kidnapping and beheading of foreign civilians - they are a problem not only for the new government, but also for its Arab neighbors and even for the more nationalist element of the insurgency...
...becoming a problem for some of the nationalist leaders of the insurgency itself. Figures associated with the insurgency have begun telling Western reporters that they reject the beheading of hostages and indiscriminate terror attacks against other Iraqis. One group, styling itself the "Salvation Movement," has even threatened to kill Zarqawi and his supporters if they don't leave Iraq, accusing them of defiling Islam and killing innocent Iraqis. "If you don't stop," the group adds, "we will do to you what the coalition forces have failed...
...tension between Zarqawi and nationalist insurgents was made evident some months ago in the letter intercepted ostensibly from the Jordanian to Osama bin Laden, in which he complained that the Iraqis were averse to suicide attacks and that they wanted to go home to their wives after a day's fighting. In other words, Zarqawi complained that the Iraqi insurgents actually imagined a future for themselves. And that being the case, they'd be averse both to suicide attacks and also to tactics such as the indiscriminate killing of Shiites (as advocated by Zarqawi) that would imperil prospects for holding...
...well be, then, as some U.S. officials have suggested, that Zarqawi could be killed in the near future, by some of the very same people in whose name he claims to fight. The irony, of course, could be that those who do the killing might be as hostile to the American presence in Iraq as Zarqawi is. And while everyone from the new government to many former Baathists may share the objective of purging the foreign jihadist element, their differences over Iraq's future - and over the presence of American forces in their midst - remain substantial...