Part III: Scorched Earth: the Victims
It was Mr. Zarqawi, in a letter obtained by American forces in early 2004, who first called on Sunni insurgents to turn their sights on the Shi'ites. A "sectarian war," Mr. Zarqawi wrote, was the only way Sunni insurgents could win in Iraq, by provoking a Shi'ite backlash and a rallying of the millions of Sunnis from outside the country.
Much of what Mr. Zarqawi wished has come true. "The bloodletting in mixed Sunni-Shi'ite cities like Baghdad is now unfolding so quickly that it appears to have a life of its own, with hundreds of burned and bullet-riddled bodies turning up each week in the city morgues. And the Sunni insurgency is so diffuse and so broadly based that it seems unlikely to be stopped by the death of its most visible leader.
--"Hatred He Bred Is Sure to Survive Terrorist's Death," Dexter Filkins, New York Times, June 9, 2006.
Death, violent death, and painful wounds
Upon his neighbors he inflicts and wastes,
By devastation, pillage, and the flames…
--Inferno, Canto XI, Dante Allegheri
In the first five months of this year alone, more than 6,000 bodies have been sent to the Baghdad morgue.
Among all the rivers of blood, Zarqawi's group is also believed to have been responsible for the August 2003 bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad that killed 23 people, a string of bombings on March 2, 2004 that killed more than 140 pilgrims during the Shi'ite festival of Ashura, the Internet-televised beheadings of several American civilians, so-called "martyrdom operations"--suicide bombings--and the destruction of the Al Askariya shrine in February that set off the wave of sectarian killings in Iraq that has not abated.
Using semiautonomous cells across the country, al-Zarkawi is also the instigator for some of the bloodiest battles and some of the most horrendous attacks on U.S. servicemen and women in Iraq since the beginning of the war.
"The bottom line is that the threat today is not so much from well-defined groups you can put in a pretty box or on a flow chart," said Matthew A. Levitt, a former FBI counterterrorism official who works as an analyst for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "That's the nature of things. There are connections and there are overlaps."
--"Al-Zarqawi's Biography," Craig Whitlock, Washington Post, June 8, 2006.
Much of what Mr. Zarqawi wished has come true. "The bloodletting in mixed Sunni-Shi'ite cities like Baghdad is now unfolding so quickly that it appears to have a life of its own, with hundreds of burned and bullet-riddled bodies turning up each week in the city morgues. And the Sunni insurgency is so diffuse and so broadly based that it seems unlikely to be stopped by the death of its most visible leader.
--"Hatred He Bred Is Sure to Survive Terrorist's Death," Dexter Filkins, New York Times, June 9, 2006.
Death, violent death, and painful wounds
Upon his neighbors he inflicts and wastes,
By devastation, pillage, and the flames…
--Inferno, Canto XI, Dante Allegheri
In the first five months of this year alone, more than 6,000 bodies have been sent to the Baghdad morgue.
Among all the rivers of blood, Zarqawi's group is also believed to have been responsible for the August 2003 bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad that killed 23 people, a string of bombings on March 2, 2004 that killed more than 140 pilgrims during the Shi'ite festival of Ashura, the Internet-televised beheadings of several American civilians, so-called "martyrdom operations"--suicide bombings--and the destruction of the Al Askariya shrine in February that set off the wave of sectarian killings in Iraq that has not abated.
Using semiautonomous cells across the country, al-Zarkawi is also the instigator for some of the bloodiest battles and some of the most horrendous attacks on U.S. servicemen and women in Iraq since the beginning of the war.
"The bottom line is that the threat today is not so much from well-defined groups you can put in a pretty box or on a flow chart," said Matthew A. Levitt, a former FBI counterterrorism official who works as an analyst for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "That's the nature of things. There are connections and there are overlaps."
--"Al-Zarqawi's Biography," Craig Whitlock, Washington Post, June 8, 2006.
posted by Deanie Mills at 7:10 AM
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