Al-Zarqawi Sold Out by al-Qaeda?
So claims the first wife of the late Qaeda al-Jihad “Emir of the Land of the Two Rivers.”
“My husband has been sold to the Americans,” she told an Italian reporter in Geneva. “He had become too powerful, too troublesome.” She asserted: “I think a secret pact was struck whose immediate goal was his death. . . . In return, the American troops promised to ease, at least momentarily, their hunt for bin Laden.”
The idea that Osama would sell out his man in Iraq is not beyond the realm of possibility. We know that Qaeda al-Jihad’s number-two-man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had been critical of some of al-Zarqawi’s tactics: video taped slaughter/beheadings and attacks on Shi’a civilians and mosques. In 1989 unknown assassins placed a bomb in the car of Abdullah Azzam in Peshawar, Pakistan, killing Osama bin Laden’s jihadist mentor and his two sons. Some specialists on the jihadist movement have suggested that al-Zawahiri may have had a hand in the assassination, since there is little doubt that he seems to have profited most from Azzam’s death.
If al-Zarqawi’s widow has it right, and that remains a big if, what might explain such a move? I find it hard to believe that the Bush administration would call off the hunt for Osama in exchange for al-Zarqawi. After all, such an explanation assumes that we are hot on Osama’s trail, which I doubt. But what other factors might explain a decision by Qaeda al-Jihad to finger al-Zarqawi? There are two plausible scenarios. The first is that bin Laden and al-Zawahiri concluded that al-Zarqawi’s approach in Iraq was undermining the jihadist cause. The second is that al-Zarqawi had gained too much notoriety vis-à-vis his senior Qaeda al-Jihad leaders.
There is evidence to support the idea that al-Zawahiri was dissatisfied with some aspects of al-Zarqawi’s leadership. But if that dissatisfaction had led the senior Qaeda al-Jihad leaders to “dime” on al-Zarqawi, that would suggest a subsequent change in tactics in Iraq. No such change has occurred.
A more plausible scenario is that al-Zarqawi had become too visible. His rise in “popularity” within the jihadist movement, alluded to by his wife, has to be understood within the context of a potential reestablishment of the Khalifate, the goal of all the jihadists.
If there is to be a Khalifate, there has to be a Khalifa. While leading jihadists can model themselves as “emirs”—princes—no one can declare himself Khalifa. The “righteous” Khalifas of the seventh century A.D. were selected from among the Islamic leadership by the acclamation of their peers. Anyone who presumed to become the new Khalifa would have to achieve some heroic and near-miraculous victory in the service of the Ummah, preferably while staking out the domain of the new Khalifate in some core region of the Arab world. While bin Laden and al-Zawahiri were hiding out in caves somewhere along the Afghan-Pakistan border, al-Zarqawi was actually engaging the “Crusaders” and their Shi’a and Kurdish allies on the ground in the “Land of the Two Rivers.” It is conceivable that if a few years down the road the jihadists were successful in Iraq, i.e., they forced the United States to withdraw in defeat and established themselves in power in Baghdad, who might the mujahadeen in Iraq proclaim as “Khalifa”: Al-Zarqawi, the man who fought the successful battle on the ground in Iraq, or bin Laden, who waged his jihad from a cave via audio tapes?
If this scenario did, as al-Zarqawi's wife asserts, play out, what substantiating evidence might we see? I would suggest a media blitz by Osama and Dr. Ayman to put themselves back into the spotlight. And that is exactly what has occurred.
Despite all the Islamist and jihadist hoopla about the "righteous khalifas," the fact remains that not many of them died peacefully in bed, or in battle.
[Thanks to Chris Cartellone]
“My husband has been sold to the Americans,” she told an Italian reporter in Geneva. “He had become too powerful, too troublesome.” She asserted: “I think a secret pact was struck whose immediate goal was his death. . . . In return, the American troops promised to ease, at least momentarily, their hunt for bin Laden.”
The idea that Osama would sell out his man in Iraq is not beyond the realm of possibility. We know that Qaeda al-Jihad’s number-two-man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had been critical of some of al-Zarqawi’s tactics: video taped slaughter/beheadings and attacks on Shi’a civilians and mosques. In 1989 unknown assassins placed a bomb in the car of Abdullah Azzam in Peshawar, Pakistan, killing Osama bin Laden’s jihadist mentor and his two sons. Some specialists on the jihadist movement have suggested that al-Zawahiri may have had a hand in the assassination, since there is little doubt that he seems to have profited most from Azzam’s death.
If al-Zarqawi’s widow has it right, and that remains a big if, what might explain such a move? I find it hard to believe that the Bush administration would call off the hunt for Osama in exchange for al-Zarqawi. After all, such an explanation assumes that we are hot on Osama’s trail, which I doubt. But what other factors might explain a decision by Qaeda al-Jihad to finger al-Zarqawi? There are two plausible scenarios. The first is that bin Laden and al-Zawahiri concluded that al-Zarqawi’s approach in Iraq was undermining the jihadist cause. The second is that al-Zarqawi had gained too much notoriety vis-à-vis his senior Qaeda al-Jihad leaders.
There is evidence to support the idea that al-Zawahiri was dissatisfied with some aspects of al-Zarqawi’s leadership. But if that dissatisfaction had led the senior Qaeda al-Jihad leaders to “dime” on al-Zarqawi, that would suggest a subsequent change in tactics in Iraq. No such change has occurred.
A more plausible scenario is that al-Zarqawi had become too visible. His rise in “popularity” within the jihadist movement, alluded to by his wife, has to be understood within the context of a potential reestablishment of the Khalifate, the goal of all the jihadists.
If there is to be a Khalifate, there has to be a Khalifa. While leading jihadists can model themselves as “emirs”—princes—no one can declare himself Khalifa. The “righteous” Khalifas of the seventh century A.D. were selected from among the Islamic leadership by the acclamation of their peers. Anyone who presumed to become the new Khalifa would have to achieve some heroic and near-miraculous victory in the service of the Ummah, preferably while staking out the domain of the new Khalifate in some core region of the Arab world. While bin Laden and al-Zawahiri were hiding out in caves somewhere along the Afghan-Pakistan border, al-Zarqawi was actually engaging the “Crusaders” and their Shi’a and Kurdish allies on the ground in the “Land of the Two Rivers.” It is conceivable that if a few years down the road the jihadists were successful in Iraq, i.e., they forced the United States to withdraw in defeat and established themselves in power in Baghdad, who might the mujahadeen in Iraq proclaim as “Khalifa”: Al-Zarqawi, the man who fought the successful battle on the ground in Iraq, or bin Laden, who waged his jihad from a cave via audio tapes?
If this scenario did, as al-Zarqawi's wife asserts, play out, what substantiating evidence might we see? I would suggest a media blitz by Osama and Dr. Ayman to put themselves back into the spotlight. And that is exactly what has occurred.
Despite all the Islamist and jihadist hoopla about the "righteous khalifas," the fact remains that not many of them died peacefully in bed, or in battle.
[Thanks to Chris Cartellone]
