Part II: Knockdown: the Fire Fighters

Citizen tip-offs, on-the-beat detective work, rapid exploitation of captured operatives, documents and intercepted signals facilitated by native Iraqi speakers, a Jordanian-run penetration of the Zarqawi tribe and the terrorist network.

If there is one really hopeful sign in the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, it is in the involvement of normal Iraqis and the security services and militaries of Iraq and Jordan…

…and American and British "head hunters"…headquartered at a "black ops" special operation camp inside Balad Air Force Base, north of Baghdad. Known up until now as "Task Force 145," seven or eight of them have been killed so far in the hunt…That should tell us how difficult the fight has been and also the sacrifices others are making to fight a ruthless and anarchic foe."
--Washington Post blogger, William Arkin, in entries entitled, "Zarqawi's Death and Task Foce 145," and "The Non-American Angle of the Hunt for Zarqawi," June 8 and 9, 2006.

…the communication
of the dead is tongued with fire
Beyond the language of the living.
--"The Dry Salvages," T.S. Eliot (1941)

Al-Zarqawi was a wily and elusive foe for any who tried to track him down. Knowing how much the U.S. relied on high technology in its pursuit, he refrained from using cellphones, relying instead on handheld satellite phones, manufactured by a company called Thuraya, which were more difficult to track.

But in the end, it wasn't technology that betrayed al-Zarqawi. It was one of his own, a mid-level operative captured near the Iraqi border by Jordanian intelligence officers. An Iraqi government customs clearance officer, Ziad Khalaf al-Kerbouly, working in Rutbah, along the road from Amman to Baghdad, had used his position to help Zarqawi smuggle cash and materiel for the insurgency.

Al-Kerbouly told of a "spiritual advisor," Sheik Abd al-Rahman, who would be meeting with al-Zarqawi. Al-Rahman served as al-Zarqawi's liason to Muslim clerics across Iraq, gathering recruits, funding and popular support for the insurgency, and supported his attacks against Iraq's majority Shi'ite population.
(Source: "How U.S. Forces Found Iraq's Most-Wanted Man," Jonathan Finer, Washington Post, June 9, 2006.)

In addition to the human source, the U.S. and coalition allies tracked the "spiritual advisor" with the help of remotely piloted drone aircraft and "electronic signals intelligence," communications intercepts that allowed someone to track the location of such things as satellite phones.

When it was time to move, they called in the most highly-specialized military forces on the planet.

The "Delta" team charged with the hunt for high valued targets is currently called Task Force 145, though little is known about its composition or operations. Reliable reports have said that the TF is divided into four teams, three U.S. and one from the U.K. The teams have been occasionally augmented by Army rangers and paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division, and have been supported by special operations helicopter and combat units, as well as by fixed wing aircraft units operating in support of quick reaction targeting…

…Highly placed military sources have been saying for months that the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) hunter-killer teams charged with going after the al Qaeda leader in Iraq have been successful. Many of Zarqawi's top lieutenants have been done in over the past few months, and the Defense Department now counts some 220 al Qaeda network soldiers in Iraq as having been killed or captured.
--"Zarqawi's Death and Task Force 145," William Arkin, Washington Post, June 8, 2006.

When the awaited meeting between Zarqawi and al-Rahman took place in an abandoned house outside the tiny village of Habbib, surrounded by groves of palm trees, commandoes from the antiterrorist unit moved into the area and surrounded the grove.

According to a resident of the village, a 40-year old taxi driver named Mohammed Ismael, "American soldiers began swarming into the town, seemingly coming out of nowhere, with some soldiers sliding down ropes dropped from Black Hawk helicopters…The entire village was seized," he said.

After engaging in a brief firefight with the insurgents located in the house, the commandoes called in an airstrike. Two Air Force F-16C fighter jets dropped two five-hundred pound bombs on the target, demolishing the house and killing five of the six people inside.

"The entire village was shaking beneath our feet," Mr. Ismael said.

Incredibly, witnesses claim that al-Zarqawi was found still clinging to life, his body intact. After being placed on a stretcher, he appeared to be trying to get up, but quickly succumbed to his wounds.

The hunter-killers cleaned up his face and photographed it for identification purposes.

"We had wiped off a lot of the blood and other debris because there was no need to portray it in any kind of dehumanizing his body," said Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, spokesman for the American military in Baghdad.
--"How Surveillance and Betrayal Led to a Hunt's End," Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and Richard A. Oppel, Jr., New York Times, June 9, 2006.

Swiftly following the raid, intelligence gathered from computers and other documents in the house immediately led to, so far, some 17 targets in and around Baghdad that will lead to more raids in the days following--most of which have probably already taken place.

"On a scale of 1 to 10, the intelligence gathered was about an 8," said a senior intelligence official. "The next 36 to 48 hours will be very crucial in prosecuting other targets. Our goal now is to target as many Qaeda members as possible and keep them off-balance."
--"Al Qaeda Leader in Iraq Killed by U.S. Bombs," John F. Burns, New York Times, June 9, 2006.