Douglas Jehl
New York Times
11 November 2005
WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 - Over the last two years, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has risen to prominence on the front lines of the anti-American fight in Iraq. But American intelligence officials say that Mr. Zarqawi, a Jordanian, long ago set his sights more broadly on an Islamic jihad extending to the Mediterranean.
The American officials said Thursday they had no reason to doubt a claim of responsibility for Wednesday's bombings in Jordan issued by Mr. Zarqawi's organization, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. They said the attacks appeared to reflect a strategy aimed at redirecting the kinds of passions that Mr. Zarqawi has harnessed inside Iraq against targets outside the country's border. On Thursday, the group took responsibility for a bombing inside Iraq.
An Iraqi vice president, Adel Abdul Mahdi, issued a similar warning about the Zarqawi group's expanding horizons during a visit to Washington on Thursday, saying that "all countries should be concerned" about the prospect that Islamic militants from Iraq "will start to open another front in other parts of the world."
The prospect that the war in Iraq would inflame anti-American sentiments among Muslims around the world and contribute to the spread of Islamic terrorism beyond Iraq has long been cited by the Central Intelligence Agency as a potential danger. Mr. Zarqawi himself is seen as such a threat that the C.I.A. and other agencies have established operational and analytical units focusing narrowly on his organization.
Mr. Zarqawi, by contrast, has seen a widening insurgency as an opportunity, and American intelligence officials say it is one that he has carefully nurtured. Mr. Zarqawi has long harbored deep hatred for Jordan's Hashemite monarchy, and his organization has maintained roots there. Even before Thursday's bombings, they said, there was evidence that Mr. Zarqawi was turning more attention to Jordan, by steering personnel and matériel there from Iraq.
An American counterterrorism official said that Mr. Zarqawi's longstanding goals include the establishment of a single Islamic state throughout the Levant, the countries that line the Eastern Mediterranean from Turkey to Egypt, and "to strike at countries he considers as oppressing Muslims."
Mr. Zarqawi himself outlined those goals in a 2004 letter to top Al Qaeda leaders that was intercepted by the American military. "We know from God's religion that the true, decisive battle between infidelity and Islam is in this land," Mr. Zarqawi said, referring to what he called Greater Syria.
Having pledged loyalty to Mr. bin Laden in 2004, Mr. Zarqawi has been careful to maintain a deferential tone toward Al Qaeda's leadership. But his active, visible role in Iraq means that Mr. Zarqawi has in many ways eclipsed Mr. bin Laden, who is believed to have been hiding along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border since the American-led overthrow of the Taliban in 2001.
Mr. Zarqawi himself spent time at one of Mr. bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan before the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, as well as in Iraq and Iran. But American intelligence officials believe that he has operated primarily from Iraq ever since. The attacks blamed on his followers there have included the most spectacular of the suicide bombings against American, Iraqi and international targets, including the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad.
Even before Wednesday's attacks, Mr. Zarqawi and his followers have been involved in several successful and unsuccessful attacks in Jordan, American officials said. They included the assassination of Laurence Foley, an American diplomat, in Amman in 2002, and an aborted attack in April 2004 on the Jordanian intelligence headquarters.
Inside Iraq, American intelligence officials say, foreign fighters led by Mr. Zarqawi are probably responsible for no more than 10 percent of the attacks carried out against American forces. By comparison, ordinary, disenchanted Iraqi Sunnis make up perhaps 70 percent of the insurgency, with supporters of Saddam Hussein's former regime and Shiite groups accounting for the balance.
But Mr. Zarqawi and his followers have proven adept at exploiting their attacks, in part through a media campaign that videotapes many of the operations, and by emphasizing spectacular strikes carried out by suicide bombers. They say that Mr. Zarqawi has succeeded in enlisting support from Iraqi militants as well as foreigners, and that he has benefited also from an influx of jihadists who have made their way to Iraq after being recruited abroad, from homes that include Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries, but also, increasingly, from Africa countries, including Sudan, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.
The United States government has posted a $25 million bounty on Mr. Zarqawi. In recent months, an American military campaign in Iraq that has been aimed at bringing Mr. Zarqawi to ground has claimed to have captured many of his top lieutenants. Some American military and intelligence officials have expressed hope in recent months that these operations had relegated Mr. Zarqawi to a role of providing strategic direction, rather than leading actual targeting.
If there has been evidence of disagreement between Mr. Zarqawi and the Qaeda leadership, it has been over the question of whether it is appropriate for the Sunni Arab-led movement to carry out attacks on Iraqi Shiites.
In his 2004 letter, Mr. Zarqawi recommended the tactic as a device to incite Sunni-Shiite tensions that might help to broaden the militants' appeal among Sunnis. A letter that American forces in Iraq attributed to Mr. bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, warned that such a tactic might undermine broader Islamic support for the jihadist movement.
But in that letter, intercepted by the Americans this summer and apparently written in July, Mr. Zawahiri offered a strong endorsement for the strategy of broadening the campaign beyond Iraq. "God has blessed you and your brothers while many of the Muslim mujahedeen have longed for that blessing," Mr. Zawahiri told Mr. Zarqawi, "and that is Jihad in the heart of the Islamic world."
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Douglas Jehl, "Iraq-Based Jihad Appears to Seek Broader Horizons", New York Times, 11 November 2005.