ABU MUSAB AL-ZARQAWI, the most feared commander in the Iraqi insurgency, may have been forced to surrender his leadership by rival groups, angered by his bloody tactics and the interference of foreign fighters in the Iraqi conflict.

According to Huthayfah Azzam, the son of Abdullah Azzam, al-Zarqawi’s former mentor, the notorious commander of al-Qaeda in Iraq was stripped of his political duties at a meeting two weeks ago.

“The Iraqi resistance high command asked al-Zarqawi to give up his political role and replaced him with an Iraqi because of several mistakes,” said Mr Azzam in an interview with al-Arabiya, the Arabic news channel. “Al-Zarqawi’s role has been limited to military action,” he said.

The fugitive al-Qaeda leader, who has a $25 million American bounty on his head, is credited with masterminding some of the bloodiest episodes in the Iraqi war, including suicide bombings against the United Nations, Shia Muslims and US forces and the videotaped execution of Western and other hostages.

But his tactics have alienated many Iraqis, even those sympathetic to the insurgency. Mr Azzam, whose father is known as the “prince of the Mujahidin”, said that he was accused of “creating an independent group” in Iraq, “making political mistakes” and hijacking the Iraqi insurgency for his own cause.

The claims could not be confirmed, but they did add to mounting evidence that al-Zarqawi has been increasingly isolated over the past months because of his ruthless tactics.

In January al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda group announced that it was joining five other insurgent organisations to form a body called the “Mujahidin Shura Council”. Since then al-Qaeda in Iraq, once the most vocal terrorist group in the world, has stopped issuing its own statements. Now the council appears to have demoted al-Zarqawi and replaced him with a relative unknown, Abdullah bin Rashid al-Baghdadi.

As for al-Zarqawi, a former petty criminal turned jihad warlord, he has not been heard of in public for three months.

The first hint that he had become too extreme even for al-Qaeda came in a letter written by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s No 2, which was sent to al-Zarqawi last summer and warned the 39-year-old Jordanian to change his tactics.

In the letter, which was intercepted by the Americans and made public, al-Zawahiri tells his young protégé that executing victims and posting the images on the internet had earned him the title “Sheikh of the Slaughterers”.

“Among the things which the feelings of the Muslim populace who support you will never find acceptable are the scenes of slaughtering hostages,” the letter said.

Then, in November, al-Zar qawi caused revulsion across the region when he orchestrated triple suicide bomb attacks against hotels in Amman, killing 60 people, including guests attending a Palestinian wedding. Members of his own family, including his brother and cousins, publicly disowned him along with members of influential Arab tribes.

Al-Zarqawi then faced a humiliating climbdown in December when he was forced to drop his opposition to general elections in a clear ideological split with the mainstream Sunni Arab population in Iraq, which participated in the polls.Certainly today al-Zarqawi is no longer regarded by the authorities in Baghdad as the main threat to the country’s stability.

“Al-Zarqawi is finished,” said Bayan Jabor, the Iraqi Interior Minister, last week.

“He has only a few supporters left in (the western city of) Ramadi.”

But Western military intelligence sources cautioned that it was far too soon to be writing off such an important figure in the shadowy world of the Iraqi insurgency. Last year, rumours circulated that al-Zarqawi had been badly injured and was dying after a clash with US troops. He later resurfaced still very much in control of his dedicated group of fighters.

While he may have lost some support among Iraqis he remains a very experienced commander, a hero among many Islamic militants in the Arab world and a formidable opponent, who at one point controlled large swaths of central and western Iraq.

THE MAKING OF A MUSLIM MILITANT

The bounty on him is now $25 million

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