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Backgrounder: Iraq's Insurgency After Zarqawi

Council on Foreign Relations

Author: Lionel Beehner, Staff Writer
June 9, 2006

Introduction

The leader of the foreign contingent of Iraq's insurgency is dead, but the insurgency, as U.S. officials point out, lives on. Just as the capture of Saddam Hussein did little to derail Sunni insurgents' efforts, the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, while symbolically important, is unlikely to neuter the Islamist strand of the insurgency, experts say. Three deadly car bombs on the day after Zarqawi's death lent support to their assertion. But what will a post-Zarqawi insurgency look like? The insurgency in Iraq was always an eccentric jumble of players—Sunni Baathists as well as foreign-born Islamist extremists, Iraqi nationalists as well as organized and petty criminals. Their interests coincided at times, but they just as often collided.

What implications does Zarqawi’s death have for the insurgency?

Zarqawi (whose real name is Ahmed Khalayleh) was the symbolic and strategic leader of Iraq's foreign jihadis, whose gruesome kidnappings and killings, often broadcast over the Internet, sowed sectarian fear in Iraq and drove out many foreign humanitarian organizations. Yet he is more than just the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and its estimated 1,500 to 2,000 foreign-born jihadis, who comprise roughly 10 percent of the insurgency. As terrorism expert Peter Bergen told CNN, these jihadis orchestrate the bulk of the suicide bombings, targeted assassinations, and symbolic attacks, including the February 22 decimation of a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra.

How was Zarqawi viewed by radical Muslims?

His targeting of Shiites turned off many Muslims, including Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri (although a new videotape by Zawahiri, made before his death, praised Zarqawi). Bin Laden focused his terror on the "far enemy"—namely the United States—while Zarqawi focused on the "near enemy"—infidels in Iraq and collaborators with the U.S.-led coalition government.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.