He was still alive and moaning from an injury to his head when American
helicopters and Humvees arrived at the scene. It had taken seven Iraqi men
to drag him from the rubble minutes after the American air strike on the
farmhouse where he was staying in the village of Hibhib.
They did not know then that the man they were trying to save was Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the country's most wanted
terrorist.
Ali Abbas, 25, a labourer, had just got home on Wednesday when, shortly after
6pm, the first of two huge blasts shook his house. He was only 300 yards
from where the F-16 aircraft dropped two 500lb laser-guided bombs.
“It was so close I thought my uncle’s house next door had been attacked,” he
said.
In the calm that followed, Abbas rushed out to help. He found his uncle
unharmed, but as they looked across the fence they saw that the neighbouring
house on the edge of a date palm grove was a smouldering wreck.
“We ran to it and started to look around for anything, but it had all been
reduced to rubble,” he said. “We saw the bodies of two women that had been
flung away from the blast. Both were dead. Another body was totally
destroyed and in pieces, and then we heard a moan coming from another part
of the house.”
They raced to where the sound was coming from. “We found the body of a big
man, middle-aged. There was life in him still. It took seven of us to move
him from within the rubble and carry him out about 100 metres. He had a
black dishdasha [robe]. His hair was longish and his beard soft black. He
just moaned over and over again. He had an injury to the back of his head.”
As they dragged the wounded man from the ruins of the house, an ambulance and
Iraqi forces turned up, taking the total number of people at the scene to
about 14. The men had barely finished placing him in the ambulance when
seven US helicopters landed by the house and four Humvees rumbled through
the dust.
“They were shouting and screaming and in a very tense and agitated mood,” said
Abbas. “They lined us up in a ditch and told us to turn our faces. We
thought they were going to execute us. I started reciting koranic verses to
myself.” The soldiers then took the wounded man from the back of the
ambulance, placing his stretcher on the ground.
“The Americans tore his dishdasha and they kept on asking him through an
interpreter, ‘What is your name, what is your name?’,” said Abbas. “They
were tearing his dishdasha, not to wrap his head with it as they did later
but because they were afraid he might be wearing a suicide belt. They kept
shouting, ‘Keep your distance, he may be wearing a suicide belt’.”
He was not. “Under the dishdasha he was wearing only knee-length white
undershorts,” said Abbas.
Once the soldiers had established the man was not a threat, they started to
kick him in the chest, said Abbas and an Iraqi policeman also there. “They
kept kicking him, shouting, ‘What’s your name?’, but the man only moaned and
said nothing,” said Abbas.
As the small crowd of Iraqis looked on, the wounded man grew paler and blood
oozed from his mouth and nose. It took about a quarter of an hour for him to
die from the time when he was removed from the ambulance, Abbas estimated.
Abbas and other witnesses say the Americans then brought out black bodybags
before taking the remains of all the dead away in a helicopter. Troops from
the Humvees then rounded up the locals.
Abbas said: “A commander spoke to us all together and told us, ‘We know you
have nothing to do with this and that you came to the scene to help your
neighbours, but these people were terrorists’.
“When [further one-to-one questioning] was over they took us a distance from
the house. They placed five detonations around the house and asked us to
open our mouths and close our ears. They then blew up what remained of the
rubble house.”
The next day Abbas saw pictures of the dead Zarqawi on television, his face
swollen, cheeks bruised, eyes closed, with a neatly trimmed beard and
moustache. There were streaks of blood beneath his skull. He was sure it was
the same man.
The US military’s account differs from the Iraqis in only one important
detail. According to a US spokesman, army medics tried to save Zarqawi’s
life.
“He attempted to roll off the stretcher, I am told, and get away, realising it
was the US military,” Major-General William Caldwell, a spokesman for the
coalition forces in Iraq, said. “Everybody re-secured him back onto the
stretcher, but he died almost immediately.”
THE precise details of the death of the 39-year-old Jordanian leader of
Al-Qaeda in Iraq will pass into legend, with each faction telling its own
version of events. But while DNA testing of his identity continues, nobody
doubts that at 6.15pm on Wednesday the Americans got the killer they had
sought for so long.
It was quite a hit. As one former Iraqi solider put it last week, it was as if
“the ghost of death has disappeared”.
By immersing himself in an orgy of the most extreme and indiscriminate
violence after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein three years ago, Zarqawi had
become the face of barbarism in Iraq. More than that, his sickening
beheadings of western hostages, snuff videos and regular slaughter of
ordinary Iraqis had made his name synonymous with evil throughout the world.
It was Zarqawi’s most fervent ambition to unleash civil war in Iraq; to create
a bloody anarchy that would destabilise neighbouring states and allow
Al-Qaeda’s brand of fundamentalist Islam to spread throughout the region.
For Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador in Iraq, “Zarqawi was the
godfather of sectarian killing in Iraq. He led a civil war within Islam and
a global war of civilisations.”
In the end it was Iraq that turned on him. In recent weeks he had been
squeezed out of one safe haunt after another as ordinary Iraqis grew sick of
his killing.
In the area around Hibhib there had been a spike in violence in the days
before Zarqawi’s killing. Nine severed heads were discovered in fruit boxes
and 21 Shi’ites, many of them young students, had been pulled off a bus and
shot.
Rejection by the Iraqi population was a situation that Zarqawi had foreseen.
His aim was to destabilise the place before it happened.
In a letter to Osama Bin Laden, intercepted in late 2004, he noted that the
influence of Al-Qaeda in Iraq could wane once a democratic government was
installed in Baghdad. “If we fight them, that will be difficult because
there will be a schism between us and the people of the region,” he
predicted.
Yet it was Bin Laden, not Zarqawi, who took the lesson to heart. The
millionaire Saudi ideologue had reportedly taken an immediate dislike to the
swaggering Jordanian street bully when he met him in Afghanistan in the
1990s.
Later Bin Laden came to regard the upstart — who was energetically recruiting
Islamic zealots to his banner in Europe as well as the Arab world — as a
challenge to his authority and feared that his fomenting civil war in Iraq
would damage Al-Qaeda’s authority in the Muslim world.
It was these factors, combined with ruthless tracking by American and British
special forces, that proved to be Zarqawi’s undoing.
FOR more than two years a “combined joint special operations task”, recently
renamed Task Force 77, had been hunting down Zarqawi and his Al-Qaeda in
Iraq network. It included American troops from Delta Force, a US special
operations intelligence unit known as the Activity, US Rangers and, on the
British side, an SAS “sabre” squadron and about 60 paratroopers from the
Special Forces Support Group.
The search for Zarqawi had started badly. Corporal Ian Plank, 31, a member of
the British Special Boat Service, was killed in 2003 when a joint SAS and
SBS operation against a house in west Baghdad, where the terrorist was thought
to be hiding, went wrong.
“The intel guys underestimated the threat and they stepped into a hornets’
nest,” said a British special operations source.
In February last year there was another near-miss. The taskforce had learnt
that Zarqawi would be travelling on a particular stretch of road from
Falluja to Ramadi.
An ambush was set up, but the target was late and the special forces troops
were packing up when Zarqawi drove by. His vehicle then sped through a
second roadblock, but soldiers were forbidden to shoot at it because they
were unsure of his identity.
With troops in hot pursuit, his driver swerved off the main road and Zarqawi
jumped out and ran for his life. He would have been caught, say military
insiders, had the video camera on a Predator remote control aircraft not
swung out of focus and lost him.
Another close shave came last October when a special forces “A-team” raided an
Al-Qaeda safe house in Mosul, northern Iraq, surprising Zarqawi and three of
his lieutenants. The team was commanded by Tony Yost, a US special forces
master sergeant who gunned down the three subordinates but was killed in the
firefight. Zarqawi managed to blow up the house and escape via a tunnel. He
was badly wounded and there was even speculation that he had died.
Apparently rattled by these and other near-misses, Zarqawi decided to go
public earlier this year, posing on video, Rambo-style, with an American
automatic assault rifle in the desert. The pictures were broadcast around
the world and, say intelligence analysts, would have enraged Bin Laden who
had not found an opportunity to show his face on video since October 2004.
Shortly after the broadcast, Task Force 77 received a vital tip. It was told —
apparently via Jordianian intelligence — that Al-Qaeda had dispatched Sheikh
Abdel Rahman, a new “spiritual adviser” to liaise with Zarqawi in Iraq.
Armed with this information, Task Force 77 was able to start tracking Rahman
as he used a Thuraya satellite phone. This, in turn, enabled them to start
building a better picture of Zarqawi’s movements.
“It was a painstaking effort, very focused over about three weeks,” Caldwell
said. “There was a lot of information coming in that allowed us to build
that puzzle.”
Early last week intelligence pinpointed the isolated safe house surrounded by
date palm groves in Hibhib, about 40 miles north of Baghdad. It had been
sold only a fortnight ago to a Sunni family for about 70m Iraqi dinars.
A Predator drone tracked Rahman as he drove from Baghdad to Hibhib on
Wednesday afternoon, while a reconnaissance team from Task Force 77,
including a small number of British SAS soldiers, moved stealthily into the
village and installed themselves 100 yards from the house. Quietly, they
signalled to American commanders that they had found their target.
The decision was made to call in an airstrike, while troops from the 101st
Airborne began sealing off the village in case anything went wrong.
“They came to the conclusion that they could not really go in on the ground
without running the risk of letting [Zarqawi] escape,” said Donald Rumsfeld,
the American defence secretary. “So they used air power and attacked the
dwelling.”
Two F-16s, flying on routine missions nearby, were called in for the task, but
one was refuelling in mid-air and could not make it in time.
The commandos of Task Force 77 “painted” the target by using a laser marker
and the two 500lb bombs, dropped in quick succession, flattened the house.
Five people, apparently including Rahman and three women, were killed on
impact. It was only Zarqawi who was not killed outright.
NEWS of the Jordanian’s death was quickly relayed to the White House but it
was not until early on Thursday that fingerprints confirmed his identity. A
jubilant Rumsfeld then hailed Zarqawi’s death as a “stunning shock to the
Al-Qaeda system”.
Is it? Having boasted prematurely of “mission accomplished” when Saddam was
toppled three years ago, President George W Bush sounded a contrasting note
of caution over Zarqawi’s death last week. The American people should expect
“tough days ahead” in Iraq, he warned.
Privately British officials also sought to play down the news. “It will
probably have less impact than everybody wishes,” said one senior military
source.
“The presence of foreign fighters in Iraq is not the issue any more. Sunnis
are fighting Sunnis, Shi’ites are fighting Shi’ites and they’re all fighting
each other.” In short, Zarqawi’s work was already done.
There is also the question of Bin Laden himself. For all the elation, the
death of Zarqawi has been an uncomfortable reminder that the world’s number
one terrorist remains at large.
He is believed to be hiding out in the mountains of northwest Pakistan, close
to the Afghan border, hidden from unmanned drones by the inhospitable
terrain and cloud cover. There have been no recent Zarqawi-style near-misses
and he is not likely to be found anytime soon.
One by one, the Al-Qaeda network is being rolled up. Since the attacks of
September 11, 2001, more than a dozen key figures have been killed or
captured, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11
hijackings. Hundreds of lesser suspects have also been hunted down
disrupting Al Qaeda cells across a wide area.
“Al-Qaeda is an organisation like the mafia,” said Peter Galbraith, a former
US ambassador and senior fellow of the Center for Arms Control and
Non-Proliferation, speaking from Irbil in northern Iraq.
“No doubt in Iraq it has produced more suicide bombers and terrorists than
have been eliminated, but Al-Qaeda has been diminished as the most effective
and imaginative terrorist organisation.”
Yet the durability of the global Al-Qaeda hydra was demonstrated only last
week when Islamic groups in Somalia, suspected of harbouring Al-Qaeda
terrorists, defeated warlords who had been financed and supported by the
United States. The Islamist groups seized control of the capital, providing
a new haven for Al-Qaeda supporters.
In Iraq itself new leaders are already emerging to take Zarqawi’s place, even
if they are unlikely to have his notorious impact.
Caldwell, the US military spokesman in Baghdad, predicted that Zarqawi’s role
was likely to be filled by an Al-Qaeda operative known as Abu Ayyub Masri
who met Zarqawi at a training camp in Afghanistan in 2001 or 2002.
Masri is Egyptian-born, however, and sources close to the insurgents say
Zarqawi’s place will go to an Iraqi commander.
The most likely successor is a man who has used the pseudonym Abu Abdul Raham
al-Iraqi. He has appeared in past statements from Zarqawi’s group as the
“deputy emir”. His name was on a statement that it issued on Thursday
confirming Zarqawi’s death and vowing to continue on his path of jihad, or
holy war.
“It is highly likely that the new head of Al-Qaeda in the land of two rivers
[Iraq] will be Abu Abdul Rahman al-Iraqi,” a member of one of the groups
within the Mujaheddin Shoura — an umbrella body composed of Al-Qaeda in Iraq
and other militant groups — told The Sunday Times.
“For political reasons and to prevent anyone in the future from saying that
the leader is a non-Iraqi, it is more likely that they will go for an Iraqi
commander this time.
“There is no shortage of leaders to lead Al-Qaeda and the difficulty will not
be to find a replacement. The difficulty will be who to choose from the list
of men that can fill his command.
“The death of Zarqawi will not cease attacks or operations in Iraq. On the
contrary, it will boost the insurgents in different ways. The insurgency or
resistance in Iraq against the occupation is not dependent on one man.”
Despite such bombast, the new Iraqi government was last week in bullish mood.
“We will get the next leader, too, whoever it is,” said Nouri al-Maliki, the
prime minister.
Intelligence sources predict more “targeted assassinations” of key insurgent
figures in Iraq in the coming weeks and months. The tactic will be similar
to that adopted by the Israelis against Hamas leaders, according to Dan
Goure of the Lexington Institute, a think tank with ties to the Pentagon.
Maliki also gave notice last week that the battle for control of Baghdad would
begin soon. “We will meet head-on the armed gangs and terrorists who we
believe constitute the main threat to security,” he vowed.
American and Iraqi forces have been waiting for the appointment of new
ministers of the interior and defence to begin their assault. It is expected
to be launched in July or August at the latest.
Baghdad will be divided up sector by sector, following the example set by the
British Army in Northern Ireland.
“It’s a useful model because you’re trying to suppress a minority — in this
case the Sunnis — while at the same time trying to protect them from a
majority, the Shi’ites,” said one source.
While insurgents will be rooted out, huge sums of money will be poured into
reconstruction by army Sweat (sewage, water, electricity and trash) teams to
improve living conditions and security.
Where they can, the Iraqi forces will take the lead in army and police
operations, but American troops, embedded as mentors in Iraqi units, will be
on hand to gather intelligence and restrain outbreaks of sectarianism.
On the political front, Bush is summoning his chief Iraq policy advisers to
Camp David for a conference to be held tomorrow and Tuesday, which will be
video-linked to key American and Iraqi personnel in Baghdad. Top of the
agenda will be how to capitalise on the momentum offered by Zarqawi’s death
to bring more moderate Sunnis into the fold and detach the Shi’ites from
their radical fringe.
For all the violence, the step-by-step political process that was fostered by
the Americans and which began with Iraq’s first free elections in January
2005 has been tempting Sunni nationalists to join tentatively in the
creation of a democracy.
The Iraqi government will also be encouraged to move swiftly to amend the
constitution to allay Sunni anxieties about being left without oil and
resources in a weak, federal Iraq.
Will it work? “Without Zarqawi there will be less of the really nasty stuff,
such as beheadings and kidnappings,” said a senior British official, “and
that’ll help.”
In the rosiest of White House scenarios, the stage will then be set for
significant coalition troop withdrawals in the autumn. This will be early
enough for Bush to impress the American electorate before the November
congressional elections — and for Tony Blair to start firming up his plans
for an honourable retirement.
The transition this year to an Iraq led by Iraqis for Iraqis was already part
of the coalition’s plan; but the terrifying rise in sectarian violence,
following the bombing of the holy Shi’ite mosque at Samarra in February,
made all talk of withdrawal look like irresponsible cutting and running. The
killing of Zarqawi offers a fresh chance to bolster the Iraqi government and
to give the Americans and the British an honourable exit strategy.
However, as the unravelling of every piece of good news from the capture of
Saddam to the purple elections has shown, it is wise to hope for the best
and prepare for the worst.
Additional reporting: Ali Rifat and Nick Fielding
