Zarqawi's role in Iraq said to be overstated
By Thanassis Cambanis The Boston Globe Tuesday, November 2, 2004
AMMAN, Jordan American officials have inflated the role of the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the violence in Iraq in their eagerness to blame foreign terrorists for the insurgency, according to Jordanian analysts and Western diplomats.
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Zarqawi's group, among the most violent in Iraq, has claimed responsibility for a trail of brutal acts, culminating in videotaped beheadings by Zarqawi's own hand of two American contractors in September. He has also claimed responsibility for two separate massacres of Iraqi national guardsmen in October, including the execution of 49 soldiers east of Baghdad and 11 more south of the capital. But these analysts, as well as some Western diplomats, say Zarqawi's group is just one of many jihadist factions that attract fighters from Iraq and across the Arab world - and that Zarqawi's capability and ties to Osama bin Laden have been exaggerated.
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They say American counterterrorism officials are ignoring a wide array of fundamentalist groups at work in Iraq and surrounding countries in their effort to portray all terrorist activity in Iraq as the handiwork of a single mastermind.
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"The bottom line is that America needs to create a serious public enemy who is not Iraqi so they can claim Iraqis aren't responsible for the resistance," said Labib Kamhawi, a Jordanian political analyst who regularly meets with Iraqi government leaders as well as opposition militants.
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A Western diplomat familiar with evidence against Zarqawi said the U.S. government often painted terrorist activity in Iraq and Jordan with a broad brush, attributing the activities of a disparate array of terror groups and individual operatives to the "Zarqawi network."
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"There are probably organizations that are not affiliated with Zarqawi," said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "There's some sense that maybe the United States has exaggerated his importance."
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U.S. officials repeatedly referred to Zarqawi as an Al Qaeda associate starting last December, although this summer they backed away from that claim, with several U.S. officials describing Zarqawi as an independent operator. However, Zarqawi issued a taped declaration of loyalty to bin Laden last week. That suggested formal ties between his fighters and Al Qaeda are still developing.
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These assessments come at a time when U.S. and Iraqi officials are grappling to determine the role of foreign fundamentalists in the violence in Iraq. Iraqi fighters themselves say that foreign jihadists operate freely in their midst, often supplying funds and weapons expertise that Iraqis have trouble procuring on their own.
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But it is difficult to separate fact from rhetoric. U.S. authorities have arrested a few hundred foreign fighters in Iraq, including men from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Syria. The overwhelming majority of fighters arrested in Iraq, however, including many thwarted suicide bombers, are Iraqis.
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The comparatively small proportion of foreign fighters arrested in Iraq, and the accounts of Iraqis in Falluja who contend that most of the fighters in that city are Iraqi, are at odds with the U.S. military's official portrayal of Zarqawi as the backbone of the militia that has controlled Falluja for a year and a half.
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Witnesses in Falluja say that about half of the roughly 400 foreign Arabs in the city answer to Zarqawi.
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Last week, a fighter, a Jordanian named Hamad Saleh from the town of Al Mafraq, told an Iraqi reporter in Falluja that he had abandoned his work as a truck driver to join the Iraqi resistance four months ago. But he said he loathed Zarqawi and his organization, Tawhid and Jihad. Their fundamentalism and "un-Islamic" tactics, including suicide bombings and beheading hostages, Saleh said, had tainted the reputation of fighters who had come to Iraq to join the conventional battle against U.S. forces.
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"You should distinguish between Tawhid and Jihad, which ruined the reputation of the resistance, and those of us Arab fighters who answered Iraq's call for help," Saleh said. "We have nothing to do with Al Qaeda or Zarqawi."
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Speaking in a mosque after praying, Saleh said he and hundreds of other young men fought under the command of Iraqi mujahedeen commanders, and looked forward to America's expected assault on Falluja. "Expect a fierce battle which history will record, speaking of young men who broke and defeated the greatest army in the world," Saleh said.
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The Western diplomats and Arab observers who described U.S. claims about the Zarqawi network as overstated still underscored that he was a dangerous man. In October 2002, a U.S. diplomat, Laurence Foley, was murdered in Amman. Zarqawi has been indicted as the mastermind of that crime.
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