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By WES ALLISON, Times Staff WriterThe U.S. believes the al-Qaida operative is active in Iraq, stirring civil war to discredit American forces.
He's a one-legged 30-something, a mastermind who allegedly spread terror into a dozen countries, a veteran of two wars in Afghanistan who has been wanted by the United States since an American diplomat was gunned down in Jordan almost two years ago.
Now Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has emerged as the leading target for U.S. forces fighting the insurgency in Iraq. He is blamed for a spate of deadly bombings against Shiite Muslims aimed at fomenting civil war.
Zarqawi, who once led an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan, has been a convenient villain for U.S. interests for at least a year. Secretary of State Colin Powell cited his residency in Iraq as proof that President Saddam Hussein was harboring al-Qaida terrorists tied to Osama bin Laden.
This week, U.S. officials said Zarqawi was likely behind Wednesday's series of suicide bomb attacks on Shiite Muslim worshipers in Baghdad and Karbala, which killed 185 people and wounded nearly 600. It was the Shiites' holiest day of the year.
He also is suspected of organizing last month's bombings of two Kurdish party offices in northern Iraq, which killed 109.
"He may have become sort of a new prince in the al-Qaida movement," said John Parachini, a policy analyst on terrorism and weapons proliferation at the Rand Corp. "If indeed bin Laden were to go down tomorrow, he would be one of the top people we would be concerned about - as he is today, but his stature would only be raised.
"There's no question . . . he's a threat not only in Iraq, but he's a threat across the region, and to a certain degree there's evidence that he has been an organizer of some (terror) cells in Europe."
Last month, the CIA doubled the reward for information leading to his capture, to $10-million.
Zarqawi, 37, is a native of Jordan. When he was about 20, in the 1980s, he joined the Islamic mujahedeen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. He returned home, and in 1992 was jailed for seven years for militant activities.
He left Jordan in August 1999 for Pakistan, and since has become connected to a variety of terrorist groups loosely tied to al-Qaida, the government says.
If indeed he's responsible for recent bombings in Iraq, they would add another paragraph to Zarqawi's lengthy resume of violence, according to analysts and government documents:
In October 2002, Jordanian officials charge, Zarqawi planned and funded the assassination of American diplomat Lawrence Foley in Amman, who was shot to death outside his home.
In November 2003, Zarqawi planned two sets of suicide bombings in Istanbul, Turkish officials say.
From 1999 to 2003, Zarqawi sent al-Qaida operatives to conduct bombing operations in Israel and chemical attacks - later foiled - in Great Britain, Germany and other European nations. A Pakistani on trial for plotting to attack Jewish sites in Berlin recently testified he was working for Zarqawi, the Associated Press reported.
In 2000, he was convicted in Jordan in absentia for planning al-Qaida attacks against the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman and other Western targets.
In Iraq, in addition to this week's bombings, the Associated Press reported that U.S. officials say evidence is mounting Zarqawi helped plan the deadly attacks at a Shiite mosque in Najaf, the United Nations offices in Baghdad and an Italian paramilitary police post in Nasiriyah.
Much of what's known publicly about Zarqawi's activities came from Powell's speech to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003, as he tried to make a case for war with Iraq. In that speech, Powell citied Zarqawi as proof Hussein was harboring al-Qaida terrorists.
Zarqawi was wounded in the leg while fighting U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan in early 2002, Powell said, and he escaped to Iran. By May 2002 he was at a Baghdad hospital, where his wounded leg was amputated. He was fitted with a prosthesis and is thought to have returned to Iran by the time U.S.-led forces attacked Iraq.
But Thursday, the Associated Press reported that a leaflet being circulated this week in Fallujah, a Sunni stronghold west of Baghdad that has been a hotbed of anti-U.S. insurgency, says that the artificial leg made it impossible for Zarqawi to escape U.S. bombing in the mountains of northern Iraq and that he was killed.
American officials deny he is dead. And in his hometown of Zarq, Jordan, an associate of his family told the Associated Press that Zarqawi had been in contact with his mother until four months ago. Their communication ended after police questioned his mother.
In a telephone call Thursday to the family home, the AP reported, a woman answered and said, "He's not in contact with us. We don't know anything about him. Don't call again." She then hung up.
Last month, U.S. troops in Iraq intercepted a letter purportedly written by Zarqawi that sought al-Qaida's help in fomenting civil war there by attacking Shiite Muslims. Shiites make up about 60 percent of the Iraqi population, but they were persecuted under Saddam Hussein and the ruling class consisted primarily of minority Sunni Muslims.
The two sects have been fighting for centuries, and Zarqawi's letter blames Shiites for working with American forces. It calls them "the most evil of mankind . . . the lurking snake, the crafty and malicious scorpion, the spying enemy, the penetrating venom."
The letter can be viewed at www.cpa-iraq.org/transcripts/20040212_zarqawi_full.html.)
While Sunnis and Shiites are wrestling for control of the country, experts say Zarqawi's motive is more base: Civil war in Iraq would mean failure for U.S. policy in Iraq. And ongoing attacks undermine support for the U.S.-led mission, because they make the Americans appear unable to keep Iraqis safe.
This week, Shiite paramilitary units began patrolling some neighborhoods, a disturbing development for U.S. officials trying to foster peace.
"Whether he is in daily cahoots with al-Qaida and bin Laden is not clear. What is important is that he is trying to sow dissension between the Shias and Sunnis in Iraq," Steve Yetiv, associate professor of political science at Old Dominion University, wrote in an e-mail interview. He has written three books on oil and terrorism.
"That could spill over into the broader gulf where Iran and Bahrain are predominantly (Shiite), but the oil-rich monarchies (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait) are Sunnis. It could also catch U.S. troops in the middle of major factional warfare."
Some experts in Middle East affairs and terrorism say the U.S. commanders' focus on Zarqawi, while important, doesn't address the deep fissures between Shiites and Sunnis that enables him and other foreign militants to operate in Iraq.
"Zarqawi is only one piece of the puzzle," said Mary Jane Deeb, a Middle East expert at American University. "We don't know with whom he is working in Iraq. He is an outsider, and Iraqi society is a very, very complex society . . . He could not be working in Iraq if he did not have allies with one group or another.
"You cannot simply be a Jordanian marching around and giving orders and blowing people up."