Find, Fix, Finish (21 page)
Authors: Aki Peritz,Eric Rosenbach
That same month the US Treasury listed his activities and locations at length to justify freezing his assets, but included no information at all after late 2002, when he traveled into Iraq to “initiate plans to smuggle additional small arms, explosives, and rockets . . . into Jordan for his terrorist cell.”
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By late October Washington announced a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture.
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But as 2003 came to an end, the Sunni insurgency—Zarqawi was but one player, albeit the most bloodthirsty one—took root, and further bloodshed was in store for the US and Iraq.
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By late October Washington announced a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture.
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But as 2003 came to an end, the Sunni insurgency—Zarqawi was but one player, albeit the most bloodthirsty one—took root, and further bloodshed was in store for the US and Iraq.
The American IC and the military focused on Zarqawi more intensively in 2004 as his stature and effectiveness increased, but were ultimately kept at bay by his resourcefulness and support within the Sunni population. Throughout 2004 Zarqawi carried out a string of brutal attacks, from police assassinations, to car bombings, to coordinated attacks on civilian targets and US forces. In response, the US in February doubled its bounty on Zarqawi to $10 million, and in July increased it again to $25 million, the same amount it offered for information leading to the death or capture of bin Laden.
Zarqawi released his first audio statement in early January, attacking US forces and various Muslim clerics, and also challenging Sunni men to join his jihad: “Oh people, the wheels of war have begun to move; the caller has already declared
Jihad
and the gates of heaven are open [to the martyrs]. If you are unwilling to be one of the knights of war, make way for the women so they can run the war, and you take the cooking utensils and makeup [brushes] in their stead. If you are not women in turbans and beards, go to the horses and seize their harnesses and their reins.”
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Jihad
and the gates of heaven are open [to the martyrs]. If you are unwilling to be one of the knights of war, make way for the women so they can run the war, and you take the cooking utensils and makeup [brushes] in their stead. If you are not women in turbans and beards, go to the horses and seize their harnesses and their reins.”
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Increasingly, violence became the norm in Iraq, as hostile Sunni and Shia organizations quickly adapted to fighting the occupation. In March, four American contractors were slaughtered by local residents of the overwhelmingly Sunni city of Fallujah, and their charred bodies were hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River. Television crews would capture the scene and replay the images for worldwide audiences. The attack coincided with the deaths of five US soldiers from an improvised explosive device (IED), the weapon of choice for hit-and-run attacks by an evolving foe, on a dusty road near Habbaniyah, outside Fallujah.
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The reaction in Washington was fierce. In response to the slayings, President Bush would demand, “I want heads to roll.”
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Secretary Rumsfeld added “we have to pound these guys”
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and authorized the siege and invasion of the “City of Mosques.” Prior to deployment, commander of the Multi-National Force Iraq (MNF-I) General Ricardo Sanchez would authorize the US Marines to strike Fallujah with vengeance: “I don’t mean any fucking knock-before-search, touchy-feely stuff.”
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Secretary Rumsfeld added “we have to pound these guys”
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and authorized the siege and invasion of the “City of Mosques.” Prior to deployment, commander of the Multi-National Force Iraq (MNF-I) General Ricardo Sanchez would authorize the US Marines to strike Fallujah with vengeance: “I don’t mean any fucking knock-before-search, touchy-feely stuff.”
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The subsequent Operation Vigilant Resolve (April) and Operation Phantom Fury (November–December) in Fallujah resulted in some of the most lethal urban combat that American forces had encountered since the 1993 engagements in Somalia. US, British, and Iraqi forces engaged in house-to-house fighting with Sunni militants holed up throughout the city. The two battles (the April engagements ended inconclusively) would level a large percentage of the city; over a hundred American servicemen and thousands of Iraqis lost their lives.
Eliminating Zarqawi and crushing his organization were top priorities both times, but as US forces hunted for him in the city,
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he was nowhere to be found—although some later accounts say that US forces narrowly missed killing him. In 2005 a failed Saudi suicide bomber claimed that Iraqi security forces probably caught Zarqawi during the second assault on Fallujah in November 2004, but released him because they didn’t know who he was.
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US officials called the report “plausible” but refused to confirm it.
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he was nowhere to be found—although some later accounts say that US forces narrowly missed killing him. In 2005 a failed Saudi suicide bomber claimed that Iraqi security forces probably caught Zarqawi during the second assault on Fallujah in November 2004, but released him because they didn’t know who he was.
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US officials called the report “plausible” but refused to confirm it.
These early near misses indicated the US was on Zarqawi’s tail, but also hinted at the early problems in synchronizing effective training of US and Iraqi forces. Using conventional military forces to hunt for a dozen hardened terrorists is like swinging a sledgehammer to smash a bee. Furthermore, there was probably not an effective system of coordinating information with US intelligence on high-value targets. Finally, this type of hunt relies on open communication and singular goals. The police force in Fallujah was almost certainly Sunni. While it is entirely possible that the police didn’t recognize him, it is at least equally possible that someone did recognize him and either felt loyalty to him or did not want to incur his wrath.
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The members of the Fallujah police force had a right to be scared, as Zarqawi was perfecting his media strategy. In mid-2004, Zarqawi and his accomplices shocked the world by kidnapping foreign nationals, beheading them with a machete, then placing their execution videos online. Zarqawi released his first tape in May 2004, showing the murder of Philadelphia native Nicholas Berg. The films were released monthly through 2004 and into 2005 and 2006. As foreign nationals became more difficult to procure, Iraqi police and military personnel became the subjects in his gruesome canon.
Zarqawi finally cemented his relationship with al-Qaeda, pledging
bayat
to bin Laden in October 2004. By late December, bin Laden formally accepted his allegiance in a statement picked up by the Al Jazeera satellite channel. Bin Laden’s statement from December 27 read, “We in al-Qaeda welcome your union with us . . . and so that it be known, the brother mujahid Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is the emir of the al-Qaeda organization in the land of the Tigris and the Euphrates and the brothers of the group in the country should swear to him an oath of obedience.”
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Zarqawi had received the blessings from on high, and his group, now renamed al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), instantly became the most lethal and financially profitable organization in the al-Qaeda franchise.
“TO DRINK FROM THE VARIOUS GOBLETS OF DEATH”: 2005bayat
to bin Laden in October 2004. By late December, bin Laden formally accepted his allegiance in a statement picked up by the Al Jazeera satellite channel. Bin Laden’s statement from December 27 read, “We in al-Qaeda welcome your union with us . . . and so that it be known, the brother mujahid Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is the emir of the al-Qaeda organization in the land of the Tigris and the Euphrates and the brothers of the group in the country should swear to him an oath of obedience.”
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Zarqawi had received the blessings from on high, and his group, now renamed al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), instantly became the most lethal and financially profitable organization in the al-Qaeda franchise.
In 2005 the US military struggled to define its mission in the quickly unraveling political landscape. Captain Piers Platt, who served in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 as a platoon leader with the US Army’s 4th US Cavalry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, recalled, “We never seemed to be doing anything besides treading water and waiting for our turn in theater to be up. All we did was protect US assets in theater. I know there was reconstruction work going on, and other units were working with Iraqis, but I got the strong sense we were doing as much harm as good. Combine that lack of strategy with a total lack of WMD and a couple poor commanders, and it made for a very frustrating year.”
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Despite this overall strategic drift, as the year progressed, the US began to generate new opportunities to capture or kill Zarqawi through the use of smaller elite groups—rather than the broad and ineffective approach of committing large military forces to lay siege to a major urban area. During the deep night of February 20, 2005, a source within Zarqawi’s network alerted an elite military unit to the AQI chief’s whereabouts, including a time frame for when he would travel down a stretch of highway near the Tigris River.
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The military established roadblocks along the road and deployed heavily armed elite forces for an ambush.
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The military established roadblocks along the road and deployed heavily armed elite forces for an ambush.
At one of the checkpoints, US troops detained a white truck deployed ahead as a scout, giving Zarqawi’s driver time to make a U-turn and drive away. One Army Ranger reportedly had Zarqawi in his gun sights, but was denied permission to fire absent positive identification of the vehicle’s occupants.
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Elite military operators gave chase, but the driver drove the truck at great speed onto a secondary road. Zarqawi was able to escape by jumping out as it drove through an underpass, avoiding overhead UAV surveillance.
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The pursuit was also stymied by a technical glitch: the operations staff lost sight of Zarqawi as the UAV’s camera, situated on the bottom of the drone, switched from a tight focus to a wide-angle view.
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In those precious seconds, Zarqawi unknowingly made decisive moves to avoid detection and flee the pursuing forces. The general chaos of a complicated nighttime operation—integrating Army Rangers, Navy SEALs, regular Army units, and overhead surveillance to capture a single individual—allowed AQI’s top man to escape.
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Elite military operators gave chase, but the driver drove the truck at great speed onto a secondary road. Zarqawi was able to escape by jumping out as it drove through an underpass, avoiding overhead UAV surveillance.
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The pursuit was also stymied by a technical glitch: the operations staff lost sight of Zarqawi as the UAV’s camera, situated on the bottom of the drone, switched from a tight focus to a wide-angle view.
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In those precious seconds, Zarqawi unknowingly made decisive moves to avoid detection and flee the pursuing forces. The general chaos of a complicated nighttime operation—integrating Army Rangers, Navy SEALs, regular Army units, and overhead surveillance to capture a single individual—allowed AQI’s top man to escape.
US Army Captain Eric Joyce, stationed in his battalion’s tactical action center named Tal Afar Garage, later recalled that radio communications during the night were a constant stream of garbled messages: “We heard on the radio, ‘Chase White!’ ‘Who got white?’ ‘Who is white?’ ‘Where do you need support?’ ‘What the hell is going on?’—what did it all mean? No one explained to us, for example, that ‘white’ meant ‘white truck.’ Not enough people in the Army knew how to use the radio and people kept jamming the net.”
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Furthermore, “We were essentially trying to deconstruct what [TF] 6–26 (Hunter), Air Support, our own brigade, battalion, and companies on site were trying to say all at once and make coherent orders in real time with no processing at this point.”
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Furthermore, “We were essentially trying to deconstruct what [TF] 6–26 (Hunter), Air Support, our own brigade, battalion, and companies on site were trying to say all at once and make coherent orders in real time with no processing at this point.”
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The intelligence distributed to the regular troops was pretty vague. Soldiers were supposed to look for a male or group of males with dark skin who appeared “Jordanian.”
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Complicating the mission was that US Special Forces “looked like natives—with beards and dirty clothes.”
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Since this was a high-priority mission, the troops had been awake for a long time. As Captain Joyce noted, “You’re dead tired, you’re scared, and you have little information from a tactical standpoint.”
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Moreover, “we knew something went wrong; we spent the rest of the night de-conflicting battle space to conduct appropriate searches, giving time to whoever it was we were chasing . . . [to] blend into the neighborhood.”
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Furthermore, without specific targets, the large number of poorly communicating US forces in a nighttime environment, and the overall jitteriness of the nineteen-and twenty-year-olds manning the checkpoints could have led to all kinds of friendly-fire casualties. The fact that no Americans were hit when gunfire inevitably rang out in the night may have been luck more than anything else.
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Complicating the mission was that US Special Forces “looked like natives—with beards and dirty clothes.”
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Since this was a high-priority mission, the troops had been awake for a long time. As Captain Joyce noted, “You’re dead tired, you’re scared, and you have little information from a tactical standpoint.”
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Moreover, “we knew something went wrong; we spent the rest of the night de-conflicting battle space to conduct appropriate searches, giving time to whoever it was we were chasing . . . [to] blend into the neighborhood.”
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Furthermore, without specific targets, the large number of poorly communicating US forces in a nighttime environment, and the overall jitteriness of the nineteen-and twenty-year-olds manning the checkpoints could have led to all kinds of friendly-fire casualties. The fact that no Americans were hit when gunfire inevitably rang out in the night may have been luck more than anything else.
While it was regrettable that the head of AQI was neither captured nor killed, the night proved fruitful nonetheless. US forces recovered Zarqawi’s laptop, personal effects, pictures, thousands of euros, and various planning documents.
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The abandoned computer provided a “treasure trove” of intelligence, according to one Pentagon official, including information on Zarqawi’s medical condition and photos of him in the My Photos folder.
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The US also captured his driver, Abu Usama, and his bodyguard,
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yielding valuable intelligence that helped partially crack the network.
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Zarqawi’s brush with capture increased his wariness and scrutiny of intelligence leaks within his organization.
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The abandoned computer provided a “treasure trove” of intelligence, according to one Pentagon official, including information on Zarqawi’s medical condition and photos of him in the My Photos folder.
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The US also captured his driver, Abu Usama, and his bodyguard,
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yielding valuable intelligence that helped partially crack the network.
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Zarqawi’s brush with capture increased his wariness and scrutiny of intelligence leaks within his organization.
The cat-and-mouse game continued throughout 2005. US and Iraqi security forces narrowly missed capturing Zarqawi several times, in one case possibly wounding him.
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According to one source, the increased American pressure on Zarqawi, as well as the killing or capture of several of Zarqawi’s aides, had come about because of an increase in actionable intelligence gathered from both detainee interrogations and secular Iraqi insurgents who were increasingly resentful of the Jordanian’s tactics and zealotry.
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According to one source, the increased American pressure on Zarqawi, as well as the killing or capture of several of Zarqawi’s aides, had come about because of an increase in actionable intelligence gathered from both detainee interrogations and secular Iraqi insurgents who were increasingly resentful of the Jordanian’s tactics and zealotry.
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In 2005 Zarqawi stepped up his attacks against the Shia, calling for a “total war” in his bid to fan the flames of sectarian conflict. In a September audio message, Zarqawi warned the Shia that “the mujahidin have prepared for you and for your soldiers, by Allah’s virtues, a slashing sword and lethal poison. Allah willing, you will be given to drink from the various goblets of death, and the lands of the Sunnis will contain your rotting corpses. Come, if you want, now or later.”
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He called for the Sunnis to rise up, join AQI, and fight their apostate coreligionists: “Awaken from your slumber, and arise from your apathy. You have slept for a long time. The wheels of the war to annihilate the Sunnis have not and will not halt. It will reach the homes of each and every one of you, unless Allah decides otherwise. If you do not join the mujahidin to defend your religion and honor, by Allah, sorrow and regret will be your lot, but only after all is lost.”
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Zarqawi was on a roll. However, he was also becoming a public relations problem for his ostensible superiors in Pakistan because of his brutal exploits—so much so that in mid-2005 Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote him a long letter asking him to reconsider some of his more bloodthirsty tactics. Zawahiri implored Zarqawi to remember that terrorism is essentially a war for the hearts and minds of the populace and his tactics were distasteful even to many hardened militants:
Among the things which the feelings of the Muslim populace who love and support you will never find palatable . . . are the scenes of slaughtering the hostages. You shouldn’t be deceived by the praise of some of the zealous young men and their description of you as the shaykh of the slaughterers, etc. They do not express the general view of the admirer and the supporter of the resistance in Iraq, and of you in particular by the favor and blessing of God. . . . I say to you: that we are in a battle, and
that more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media
. And that we are in a media battle in a race for the hearts and minds of our Umma.[Emphasis added.]
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