Word: zarqawi
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...transform Iraq into what Afghanistan was in the 1980s: a training ground for young jihadists who will form the next wave of recruits for al-Qaeda and like-minded groups. Nearly all the new jihadist groups claim to be receiving inspiration, if not commands, from Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the suspected alQaeda operative who the U.S. believes has masterminded the insurgency's embrace of terrorism. Al-Zarqawi's group kidnapped three Turkish workers last Saturday and threatened to behead them within 72 hours unless Turkish companies withdrew from Iraq. And now the conditions are ripening for the insurgents to turn...
Insurgents also say al-Zarqawi may have intended last week's onslaught to be even more catastrophic. As militants attacked in cities like Fallujah and Baqubah, a cell of an Iraqi resistance group working with al-Zarqawi roamed Baghdad, insurgent sources told TIME. Working in small teams in separate cars, the insurgents cased targets and waited for their commanders, including al-Zarqawi himself, to issue strike orders. When the cell didn't receive the call, it withdrew and waited for another opportunity to attack...
...tape contains many chilling scenes. When the chairman of the U.S. appointed Iraqi Governing Council, Izzedine Salam, then the country's highest Iraqi official, was assassinated last month in a car bomb Zarqawi quickly claimed credit. Now he shows the act, in graphic footage shot from a parked car: A convoy of white SUVs disappears down a Baghdad street, followed a moment later by a ball of flame and explosion so intense the windscreen through which the cameraman films cracks before your eyes...
...When a suicide car bomber intercepted a convoy of security personnel for General Electric in the heart of Baghdad on June 14 Zarqawi's information unit was there, ready and waiting. The three-vehicle convoy enters the screen and is followed down a crowded little street. As the lens zooms in the vehicles erupt in a blistering ball of flame. Three bystanders are seen turning their backs from the blast, attempting to cover their heads. In contrast to other videos of insurgent attacks, the cameraman does not flee. Instead he holds his position and zooms in on the burning suicide...
...This is also a statement of Zarqawi's rise in the jihad community. Prior the Iraq war he was a marginal figure in the larger al-Qaeda cluster of militant groups. The invasion and subsequent invasion of Iraq gave him and other insurgents a stage upon which to make their mark as mujahideen heroes, akin to the veterans of the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. In this video, what is believed to be Zarqawi's voice is heard only once, part of an audio tape he released last month threatening the new U.S.-backed Baghdad government...