Dominating one wall of the huge room, faced by ranks of soldiers with telephones and monitors, is a screen showing a large map of a substantial chunk of Iraq, direct feeds from predator pilotless surveillance drones, live TV pictures and three slogans: "What has happened? What is happening? What is to be done?"
The screen covers a portion of Iraq populated by nearly four million people. One man is at the top of the "What is to be done?" list.
Fadel al-Khalailah, better known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is Washington's public enemy number one, almost supplanting Osama bin Laden as the main focus of the global counter-terrorist hunt. The US believes that the 38-year-old Jordanian is the mastermind behind much of the recent violence in Iraq. Kill or capture him, the logic goes, and the insurgency falls apart. The reward for his capture is now US$10 million.
Unlike many senior militants, al-Zarqawi is from a poor background. Of Bedouin stock, he once ran a video shop and his family still live in a rundown house not far from Amman, the Jordanian capital. In the late 1980s, he joined the thousands of young Arabs helping the Afghans to fight the Soviet forces, then returned home determined to continue the battle "against unbelief" there.
On his release in 1999, al-Zarqawi went to Europe, where he organized a fundraising and terror network stretching from Germany to the UK, then moved on to the one place where militants could plot in relative security -- Taliban-run Afghanistan. Inevitably he came into contact with bin Laden. Washington has consistently claimed that he is "linked" to the al-Qaeda chief, but the relationship is more complex.
German police intelligence reports say that al-Zarqawi's al-Tauhid group was set up, not as a branch of al-Qaeda, but in competition. In fact, al-Zarqawi tried to get help from bin Laden to enhance his own career. He received logistical support from the Saudi-born militant leader, but never swore loyalty to him.
His chance came in the autumn of 2001. al-Zarqawi fought the Americans, then escaped through Iran. He seems to have arrived in northern Iraq -- outside the control of Saddam Hussein -- in late 2002.
"He has become Iraq's bin Laden," said Charles Pena of Washington's Cao Institute. "His role is more inspirational than operational. Killing him won't end radical violence in Iraq any more than killing bin Laden will end it globally."
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited