National Security Watch: Zarqawi clan a fraction of insurgency
For U.S. forces who have been stepping up their offensive against insurgents in Iraq, the killing of Abu Azzam was truly welcome news. Azzam was rumored to be the right-hand man of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the most wanted terrorist in Iraq, who is blamed for some of the deadliest attacks in the past two years.
U.S. troops, working with Iraqi forces, tracked Azzam to a high-rise apartment building. U.S. officials said that he shot at soldiers and was killed by their return fire in a raid on Sunday.
Azzam, an Iraqi whose real name was Abdullah Najim Abdullah Mohamed Al-Jawari, is believed to have been in charge of many of Zarqawi's operations in Baghdad and a few other cities. U.S. and Iraqi officials said that he was also thought to be the No. 2 al Qaeda operative in Iraq after Zarqawi. His death, officials hope, could reduce Zarqawi's and al Qaeda's ability to launch car bomb attacks in the Iraqi capital for the time being. Combined with several other Zarqawi aides who have been taken out in recent months, including a top al Qaeda official in Mosul who reportedly surrendered this week, U.S. officials are claiming success.
"We continue to decimate the leadership of the al Qaeda in Iraq's terrorist network and continue to disrupt their operations," says Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the chief U.S. military spokesman.
But Zarqawi's organization has shown tremendous resilience in the past and an unsettling ability to replace lieutenants who have been captured or killed. And suicide attacks continue unabated throughout Iraq. Even as the latest success was being announced, nine Iraqis waiting to apply for police jobs were killed by a suicide bomber in the troubled city of Baqoubah. And a U.S. marine was killed by a roadside bomb yesterday in western Iraq.
Part of the problem is that Zarqawi and his associated foreign fighters remain a small part of the overall insurgency.
"Even if he were to die or to be incapacitated, the consensus is that if you look at the insurgency in Iraq, it's not just Zarqawi by any stretch," says one U.S. intelligence official. "Zarqawi's organization does use foreigners for suicide bombers, but the bulk of the organization is Iraqi."
Indeed, U.S. estimates of the size of the insurgency run as high as 12,000 to 20,000 people, almost all of whom are Iraqi. Iraqi officials have suggested it is as high as 40,000 people, with an additional 15,000 Iraqis who support it more passively. The percentage of foreign fighters is hard to determine, but of the 15,000 or so suspected insurgents who have been detained, only several hundred are non-Iraqi.
And officials warn that the Iraqi fighters are in many ways the bigger long-term threat. Even though Zarqawi is believed to be behind the deadliest attacks, the Iraqi insurgents have proved the most effective at intimidating other Iraqis, terrorizing the nascent Iraqi security forces, and sabotaging Iraq's oil and other infrastructure. Even worse, the insurgents are networked so loosely that they have been extremely difficult to target.
"There isn't really a central command directing the entire insurgency," says the intelligence official. "You have different actors who have a common goal–to attack us."