Published June 8th, 2006 by Future Atlas
Iraq: does Zarqawi’s death change anything?
Terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in Iraq yesterday by a US airstrike.
Forecasters were cautious about the significance of the event.
On NPR, former DIA Middle East chief Jeffrey White said Zarqawi’s death could help dampen the extreme wing of the Iraqi insurgency. However, reduced extremism could actually help unify the insurgency, he said, as Zarqawi’s tactics were controversial within the resistance forces.
Zarqawi’s group, Al Qaeda in Iraq, deliberately targeted civilians, which most Iraqis disapproved of.
Juan Cole suggests that Zarqawi was not as important as some might think:
There is no evidence of operational links between his Salafi Jihadis in Iraq and the real al-Qaeda; it was just a sort of branding that suited everyone, including the US. Official US spokesmen have all along over-estimated his importance. … But Zarqawi has in my view has been less important than local Iraqi leaders and groups. I don’t expect the guerrilla war to subside any time soon.
The NYT acknowledged that his program of igniting sectarian conflict was already well underway:
“Zarqawi may be gone, but the conflagration that he set alight continues to burn,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorist expert at the Rand Corporation in Washington. “That is the reality. He has already set in motion powerful forces that won’t necessarily stop just because he is dead.”
Al Qaeda in Iraq is loosely organized, the NYT states, and only a small part of the overall insurgency.
It should also be kept in mind that Zarqawi only rose to prominence as a result of the US invasion of Iraq; while his death is very positive in itself, it only partially undoes the progress jihadists have made in the country in the environment the US effectively created.