U.S. Ponders Iraq Fight After Zarqawi

Cryptic messages posted on Internet sites reporting that militant leader Abu Musab Zarqawi had been wounded raise questions about the future of a factionalized Iraqi insurgency driven in part by the power of his personality and mercurial strategy against U.S.-led forces.

Sometimes pictured as thin and willowy and other times as pudgy and bearded, Zarqawi is the face of the insurgent movement. If website postings are correct in suggesting that Zarqawi has suffered a bullet wound to a lung, the rebels could lose their fiercest voice in attempting to defeat Washington’s designs for a new Iraq.

U.S. military officials say that Zarqawi’s passing would not break the insurgency but could trigger a leadership struggle between Al Qaeda-backed foreign fighters on one side and Iraqi Sunni Muslims and others loyal to Saddam Hussein on the other. These groups reportedly are suspicious of each other, and uncertainty about a new leader could deepen dissension while U.S. and Iraqi forces increase their raids on militant strongholds in Baghdad and western Iraq.

“It is difficult to find leaders like Zarqawi,” said Mohammed Askari, an Iraqi military analyst. The absence of such a marquee name could hurt the insurgency’s recruiting and fundraising abilities, he added.

“Zarqawi is daring, elusive. He has an ability for maneuvering, evading risks and has this talent for sending effective messages to the public.... Who will come after him?”

The loss of the Jordanian militant as the principal leader of a sometimes splintered, mainly Iraqi network would not mean that the movement “will crumble and cease to exist,” Brig. Gen. Carter Ham said this week at a Pentagon briefing. “The organization has proven to be somewhat resilient.”

Names of possible successors who follow the thinking of Al Qaeda and other militant organizations include Khalid Shami, a Syrian; Abdel Rahmaan, an Iraqi; and Abu Hifs Qurani, believed to be either a Saudi or a Yemeni.

The Qurani clan is known for producing fighters for Islamic holy war in Afghanistan and across the Middle East. One Al Qaeda-linked website this week indicated that Qurani had been named temporary leader in Zarqawi’s absence. The same site later cast doubt on that information. Neither report could be independently verified.

It is unclear whether Qurani or the others possess Zarqawi’s apparent ability to galvanize the factions of a movement that includes an international cadre of suicide bombers, former Iraqi military officers, radical imams and criminals. It is also unclear whether they have Zarqawi’s flair for dramatic statements to a worldwide audience, like his videotaped appearances beheading kidnapped Westerners such as American contractor Nicholas Berg.

If Zarqawi is “injured or killed, it will definitely weaken the insurgency,” said a spokesman for the Iraqi government commandos known as the Wolf Brigade. He argued that the rise in car bombings was a sign of desperation among the guerrillas and the “fading away of the base for people like Zarqawi.”

Zarqawi’s blending of terrorist tactics with hatred of the U.S. has helped make Iraq a landscape of persistent brutality.

It is believed that last year, he led insurgents in battling U.S. forces around Fallouja. In recent months, U.S. military officials say, he has concentrated on organizing car bombings and stoking sectarian animosities between Shiite and Sunni Muslims to ignite a civil war. More than 600 Iraqis, mostly civilians, have died since April 28, when the new Iraqi government was formed.

The son of a traditional healer and a tribal chief in Jordan, Zarqawi has gained mythical status among radical Islamists as a defiant warrior against infidels. He is seen as a lone figure, a man with a Kalashnikov rifle and a sword whose screeds occasionally blare over the radio, condemning Iraqis who cooperate with Washington and calling for new recruits.

If Osama bin Laden is the intellectual force behind Al Qaeda, Zarqawi is its muscle. He formally merged his fighters with the group in 2004, after resolving ideological differences.

There are no reliable numbers on the size of the insurgency or how many foreign fighters have crossed Iraq’s borders. Zarqawi’s reputation for elusiveness was heightened in February, when he narrowly escaped capture at a U.S. checkpoint near Ramadi. U.S. troops, however, say they confiscated his laptop computer from the truck he had been traveling in. Since then, about 20 of his lieutenants, including car bomb specialist Ghassan Mohammed Amin, have been arrested or killed.

Zarqawi’s image among Iraqis has suffered since last week, when he proclaimed that killing civilians with car bombs was justified in the war against Washington. U.S. officials say that recent raids by American and Iraqi troops along the Syrian border and in the capital have killed more than 135 guerrillas and put further pressure on the insurgency’s resources. The sweeps seized antitank weapons, rocket-propelled grenades and more than $6 million.

“Although Zarqawi’s network has been diminished, his followers can still muster forces for attacks,” Col. Don Alston, a spokesman for the U.S.-led forces, said this month. The Iraqi government is concerned that Zarqawi’s death might turn him into a martyr and provide a rallying cry for extremists to join the insurgency.

Some intelligence officials worry that reports of Zarqawi’s injuries may be a disinformation campaign. The posting on an Al Qaeda website caught the attention of terrorism experts because the site was known to have carried messages from operatives, and the Zarqawi item was attributed to a known spokesman for his network in Iraq.

“Parts of it look consistent” with an authentic posting, an intelligence official said. “But how do you authenticate a Web statement?”

The official added that Zarqawi’s group could be seeking to portray their leader as the “Harry Houdini” of Iraq, outwitting his American pursuers as he hides in towns scattered throughout the western desert. Another posting Friday on a site used by Zarqawi’s followers added to the confusion. It said he was in “good health and running the jihad himself.”

Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said Thursday that he believed Zarqawi had been wounded. An accurate medical picture, however, has been hard to come by. Months before U.S.-led forces toppled Hussein in April 2003, Western intelligence reports suggested that Zarqawi -- then a small-time militant based in Jordan -- had had a leg amputated. Other sources said the limb had been injured during fighting in Afghanistan but was intact.

In recent weeks, there have been intelligence and media reports that Zarqawi was sneaking into hospitals for treatment and escaping before security forces arrived. There are also unconfirmed reports that Zarqawi has fled the country and is being cared for by several doctors. The U.S. has offered $25 million for information leading to his capture.

It is difficult to pin down when Zarqawi entered Iraq. Some Western intelligence reports say his leg was treated in Baghdad while Hussein was in power. Kurdish and American intelligence officials say that shortly before the invasion, Zarqawi traveled through northern Iraq and assisted Ansar al Islam, a group of radical Sunni Kurds that was fortified with Al Qaeda fighters after the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan in 2001.

Zarqawi’s relationship with Ansar over the last two years suggests an ability to inspire those who were once suspicious.

Following the invasion of Iraq, Ansar regrouped to form Ansar al Sunna, responsible for suicide bombings and other attacks throughout the country, including December’s explosion at a Mosul military base that killed 22 people, including 14 American soldiers.

Many members of Ansar al Sunna did not want to give their allegiance to Zarqawi, whom they viewed as a foreigner trying to manipulate the insurgency to further Al Qaeda’s ambitions. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Abdurahman Ali Khurshid, an Ansar operative arrested by Kurds, said the strain between the group and Zarqawi intensified when an Ansar leader, Omar Baziyani, defected to Zarqawi’s side.

But a posting on Ansar’s website this week suggested that Zarqawi won them over.

“God chose him to be the needle in his enemy’s eyes,” the message read. “He is the one who satisfied the Muslims by his operations against the Christian forces and their followers.... Ansar al Sunna is asking God to heal [Zarqawi] in order that he continue his jihad and holy operations.”

Times staff writers Greg Miller and Mark Mazzetti in Washington and special correspondent Asmaa Waguih in Baghdad contributed to this report.