Face of the Enemy

On the battlefield, Zarqawi had relatively few fighters. U.S. intelligence has generally credited him with command over only a small fraction of the active insurgents. But what he lacked in numbers, he made up with a sense of spectacle. By late 2004, he had turned suicide bombing into a kind of fatal tourist trade for foreign Muslims who came to Iraq for a quick trip to Paradise. The videotaped beheadings of foreign hostages spread Zarqawi’s infamy far and wide on the Internet. By targeting Shia shrines for horrific bombings, he consciously set out to instigate the sectarian slaughter between Sunnis and Shias that now has gruesome momentum of its own.

Yet the Jordanian’s infamy did not sit well with many Iraqis fighting what they saw as a fundamentally nationalist battle against foreign occupation. Their war is also deadly—they are responsible for the countless attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops using IEDs (improvised explosive devices). They identify themselves as Sunnis, and their fight does have religious overtones. But they are not nihilists. Their objective, unlike Zarqawi’s, is not endless war and martyrdom leading to a utopian “caliphate” based on historical fantasies.

By the fall of 2004, a lot of Iraqi nationalists were uncomfortable with Zarqawi and wanted to distance themselves from him, or get rid of him. By last year, in some Sunni areas, local tribal leaders made war on Zarqawi’s fighters. But his violence was useful when it targeted U.S. forces, and if he managed to gain some grudging respect, he also became an object of fear, even within the insurgency. Zarqawi was the whip of the rebellion, intimidating tribal sheiks, making sure they did not compromise with the Americans. With Zarqawi gone, it's not clear that anyone else in his organization will be able to play that role.

Conceivably, the effect will be to weaken the insurgency as a whole. But it’s also possible that the homegrown Iraqi rebels, now free of Zarqawi’s evil image, may actually grow in political power and military strength. Following the classic pattern established by many other guerrilla groups in history, they may work through "peaceful" front organizations that actually take part in the Parliament, while also continuing to attack in the field. “Fight and talk" is often a successful strategy for guerrillas looking to assure their people's rights. Zarqawi made talking almost impossible.

With the Jordanian terrorist now out of the way, the Bush administration may be forced to recognize that there are other faces in the opposition, potentially equally dangerous to Washington’s grand designs but politically smarter and less easy to caricature. They, too, will have to be taken into account.

© 2006