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Analysis: Hope and Vengeance in Iraq

Council on Foreign Relations

Updated: June 13, 2006
Prepared by: CFR.org Staff

The pace of violence in Iraq following the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi last week remains largely unchanged. Yet his death led his terrorist group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, to announce a successor, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, a previously unknown figure whose appearance on the radar of U.S. intelligence is outlined in this Backgrounder by CFR.org's Eben Kaplan. On Tuesday, as President Bush made a surprise visit to Baghdad (NYT), al-Mahajer vowed to avenge Zarqawi's death (Reuters). Not to be outdone, Iraq's new prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, put 40,000 troops on the streets of Baghdad and announced broad new curfew and security restrictions. (WashTimes)

While car bombs, mortar attacks, and civilian deaths continue (ISN), Zarqawi's death infused new vigor into Bush's supporters. With a U.S. congressional election looming, says the BBC's Adam Brookes, "if the Bush administration can capitalize on this moment, it may, just perhaps, be able to dispel some of the gloom that has taken hold in the U.S. surrounding the war." Already, House Republicans say they plan to vote Thursday on a resolution declaring the Iraq war "central to the war on terror" in an effort to force Democrats into the open on the question of the war (CSMonitor).

Still, even if public support for the Iraq war recovers, as Republicans sense it will, few experts see Zarqawi's death as a turning point militarily. Former CFR Fellow Mary Anne Weaver tells Bernard Gwertzman that Zarqawi was only responsible for "about 10 percent of Iraq's internal violence." His death, she says, while significant, "is not decisive." While some, including the Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby, see such statements as infuriatingly defeatist, on balance they reflect expert opinion.

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.