The 'Al Qaeda' memo, Zarqawi, and civil war in Iraq
US may have found first hard evidence of the group's move to spark a 'sectarian war' in Iraq.
The US may have found the "
first hard link" between a threatened civil war in Iraq and the world's most infamous terrorist group, Al Qaeda, reports
The Sydney Morning Herald.
The newest evidence of this link comes in the form of a
17-page memo that US forces confiscated from an Al Qaeda suspect arrested in Iraq in mid-January. A reporter from
The New York Times, the first major newspaper to report the story, first viewed an Arabic copy of the memo and a military translation Sunday.
US officials told the
Times that they believe Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian who has long been suspected by the United States of having ties to Al Qaeda, wrote the undated document to senior leaders of the terrorist organization
asking for help to wage a "sectarian war" in Iraq in the next months.
The memo, which admits the extremists' failure to enlist support inside Iraq, suggests an attack on Iraqi Shiites could rescue the movement to oust the US military presence by provoking a violent chain of events amounting to a civil war of sorts between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite muslims. According to the
Times, the document also says that a war against the Shiites must start soon – at "zero hour" – before the US hands over sovereignty to the Iraqis, which is scheduled for June 30.
The
Times reports that Zarqawi is presumed to have played some role in at least
three major car-bomb attacks in Iraq in the last six months. According to the
Times, "intelligence information, including some gathered in recent weeks, has provided 'mounting evidence' to suggest that Mr. Zarqawi was involved in the bombings, including the attacks in August on a Shiite mosque in Najaf and the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, and the attack in November on an Italian police headquarters."
The Christian Science Monitor reported Jan. 23 that Zarqawi is a "
key link" in the terror chain. The article cites investigators as saying that he has "emerged as a central suspect in one Al Qaeda-related plot after another ... from allegedly smuggling suicide bombers into Iraq to orchestrating the recent car bomb blasts in Turkey and planning chemical attacks in Europe." The
Monitor also notes that the US government put a $5 million price on his head last October.
Columnist Michael Ledeen, writing in the
National Review Online, points out that Zarqawi "
lives and works in Tehran." Mr. Ledeen says that Zarqawi is a key piece of what is mounting evidence that proves what Ledeen has "long asserted – and what the CIA and others have long denied – namely that there is a working relationship between Hezbollah and Al Qaeda, and that this is all made possible by the Iranian regime."
When asked about the memo in a
Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) briefing Monday, deputy director of operations Gen. Mark Kimmitt emphasized the US military's assertion that the thrust of the plans to sabotage coalition security efforts comes from outside the country.
First of all, it is clearly a plan on the part of outsiders to come in this country and spark civil war, create sectarian violence, try to expose fissures in this society. And first of all, the Iraqi people have demonstrated time after time that they are unwilling to participate in any of these activities by and large. They are looking forward to a free, united and sovereign Iraq.
Mr. Kimmit then issued a thinly veiled threat to any would-be attackers. "The coalition has substantial capability, along with the Iraqi security forces, to use this intelligence and any other follow-up intelligence to kill or capture those that would try to ... create anything but a safe and secure environment here in Iraq," he said.
In that same briefing, Dan Senor, senior advisor to the CPA, suggested that the memo reveals increasing desperation on the part of the terrorists. He said that "they understand that failure to defeat us in Iraq will be a major setback for their overall terror war." Mr. Senor also said that the terrorists "recognize that as we politically empower the Iraqi people, the terrorists will be isolated and it will be harder and harder for them to operate."
The day after the briefing,
Reuters reports that a
car bomb killed more than 50 people at a police station south of Baghdad. The
BBC reports that this bombing in Iskandariya is the
latest attack on Iraq's civilian security forces. "Police officers are often caught between the heavily-armed and well-protected coalition soldiers and insurgents intent on using violence against anyone they see as helping the occupation force," reports the
BBC.
Also...
•
Now they tell us (
New York Review of Books)
•
US officials knew in May Iraq possessed no WMD (
The Guardian)
•
Bush aides testify in leak probe (
Washington Post)
•
Pakistani leader suspected moves by atomic expert (
The New York Times)
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