Blown Away
A long hunt. A killer's quick death. But it may not change much in Iraq
Still, Zarqawi's death gives a psychological boost to the beleaguered Bush administration. President Bush, whose poll numbers on his performance in Iraq had just dropped to their lowest point yet, cautiously hailed Zarqawi's death as "an opportunity for Iraq's new government to turn the tide in the struggle." Bush got another boost the same day when Iraq's prime minister finally announced that he had filled the three outstanding security posts in his administration. After several weeks of agonizing delays, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki named ministers for defense, interior, and national security.
Today, in the wake of Zarqawi's death, U.S. troops in Baghdad are braced for retaliatory attacks. "If I were a follower of Zarqawi," says a senior U.S. military official in Baghdad, "I would try to do anything to prove [the organization] is not decapitated."
It will most likely take several weeks to assess just how significant Zarqawi's removal really is. In the wake of the fatal airstrike, U.S. forces carried out an additional 56 raids on suspected Zarqawi associates, collecting what a military spokesman called a "treasure-trove" of intelligence. Some of the operations targeted the militant cells that had been under surveillance for weeks or even months during the Zarqawi hunt. But U.S. officials say that Zarqawi designed al Qaeda in Iraq as a decentralized operation capable of surviving his death. Zarqawi's emirs, or regional commanders, run most day-to-day operations. "It's possible there might not even be very much disruption to al Qaeda in Iraq's activities for some time because things might be in the works," says a U.S. counterterrorism official. "Iraq's jihad will go on even without him at the helm." In the past, Zarqawi's group has shown an impressive resilience, easily replacing the many key lieutenants captured or killed by U.S. and Iraqi security forces.
While Zarqawi relied largely on foreign fighters in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion, more recently, he had recruited Iraqis as his lieutenants. For one thing, many of the foreign fighters lacked training, while Zarqawi was increasingly able to enlist former Iraqi intelligence and military officers, as well as other Iraqi Islamic militants. In fact, U.S. News has learned that the State Department's Intelligence and Research Bureau concluded two years ago that Zarqawi's removal would have minimal impact. "His network through the most heavily Sunni Arab areas was so diverse, so decentralized, and so deeply rooted that we concluded in the summer of 2004 that if he were taken out, it would only be of limited value," says Wayne White, who was the chief Iraq analyst in the State Department's intelligence unit. "You can imagine what he has been able to do in the two years since." (Where Zarqawi might be missed, some analysts say, is as a fundraiser for the insurgency. "He was," says a U.S. intelligence official, "a magnet for money.")
"Full-blown war." Perhaps more important, Zarqawi accounted for only a small percentage of the violence in Iraq. Sen. Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was told by U.S. military officials in Iraq that foreign fighters make up no more than 10 percent of the overall insurgency. Privately, U.S. officials estimate that Zarqawi's group numbers between 800 and 1,200 fighters, compared with somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 insurgents. Even these estimates, however, are sketchy. "The more people know about Iraq, they more skeptical they are about such numbers," says a U.S. intelligence official. The best information on insurgents comes from captured fighters. But many are found with multiple forged foreign passports. Says one U.S. official: "You don't even know who you are dealing with."
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