Print

Mail

wiki links

Al-Zarqawi makes video appearance

In a rare video posted on the Internet on Tuesday, al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi renewed his allegiance to Osama bin Laden and said any government formed in Iraq would be merely a "stooge."

He mocked the US military in Iraq for what he called suicides, drug-taking and mutinies and warned worse attacks were to come.

The video, released just days after the formation of Iraq's new government and just two days after a high-profile audiotape from bin Laden appeared on Arab TV, seemed a deliberate attempt by al-Zarqawi to once again claim the spotlight, after months during which he took a lower profile.

The video also came just one day after a triple bombing at a resort in Egypt that killed at least 24 people, including 21 Egyptians and three foreigners.

Al-Zarqawi did not mention either the bin Laden tape or the Egypt attack in his message, which he said had been taped on Friday.

The video -- believed to be the first to ever show al-Zarqawi's face -- showed the bearded, black-clothed terror leader, thought to be age 40, in a flat desert landscape, dotted with scrub brush as if after a spring rain, that looked startlingly like Iraq's western Anbar province.

The footage showed him and about two dozen insurgents, masked and dressed in black uniforms, undergoing combat training.

In another scene, al-Zarqawi was filmed inside, sitting with his lieutenants and Anbar's insurgent commander, according to a caption in the video. The men, sitting on traditional Arab cushions and mats, could be seen discussing strategy over a large map spread on the ground.

Iraqi citizens and politicians condemned al-Zarqawi yesterday as a foreigner determined to destroy their country, but they also seemed to take his new video promising more attacks as a serious threat.

"I think this time al-Zarqawi is very serious. He was speaking at a time of serious terrorist attacks, not only in Iraq but in other Arab countries such as Afghanistan and Egypt," said Jamal Salman, 40, a minority Sunni Arab who lives in eastern Baghdad.

Salman, who works for Iraq's Oil Ministry, also said US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's unexpected visit to Iraq yesterday to support the country's new government may indicate that he, too, knows "how serious everyone takes Zarqawi's threats."

Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born Sunni, addressed Sunnis in Iraq and across the Arab world, warning that their community was in danger of being caught between "the Crusaders and the evil Rejectionists," the terms used by radical Sunnis for the Americans and Iraq's majority Shiites.

Al-Zarqawi has claimed responsibility for some of the bloodiest suicide bombings in Iraq since the 2003 fall of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and for the beheadings and killings of at least 10 foreign hostages, including three Americans and a Briton.

Arab television network aired portions of the tape at the same time that Iraq's government-owned TV showed an interview with the new Prime Minister-designate Jawad al-Maliki, who called for Iraq's sharply divided Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds to unite in a front against terrorism.

"If we can reach unity between all the components of the people, the canals of terrorism will dry up," al-Maliki said.

The video, which al-Zarqawi said was filmed on Friday, threw the militant leader back into the public spotlight, after months of taking a lower profile amid criticism of bombings against civilians. It was his first message since January.

Yesterday morning, Iraqis awoke to discover in TV and radio reports that Rumsfeld had just arrived unannounced in Baghdad for a series of meetings with top US commanders and the newly selected Iraqi leaders.

Rumsfeld said he wanted to talk with Iraq's emerging government about the future of military bases and the division of security responsibilities between US and Iraqi troops.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also arrived unannounced on the same day. Rice told the accompanying press the overlapping visits were aimed at avoiding any contradiction between US military and civilian policy in Iraq.

"As we move in this new period, we really are looking to transfer responsibility ... we just want to make sure that there is no seam between what we are doing politically and what we are doing militarily," she said.

In an interview, Sheik Khalid al-Attiyah, parliament's newly appointed first deputy speaker, said the al-Zarqawi video shows he remains determined "to inflame a civil war" in Iraq.

But al-Attaiyah said it also indicates the insurgent leader, an outsider to many Iraqis, fears the country's new government will unify Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

The deputy speaker acknowledged that many Iraqis "witness deadly explosions every day," but said they see the political process as the only way out of sectarian violence.
This story has been viewed 1207 times.