DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been diverting fighting strength from Iraq to terror arenas in Jordan, Syria, Sinai and the Gaza Strip.
November 9, 2005, 11:45 PM (GMT+02:00)
The suicide attacks on three US-owned five-star hotels popular with Westerners in Amman Wednesday night, Nov. 9, points to (five) disturbing manifestations:
1. The constant US offensives on al Qaeda sanctuaries in Iraq have not been able to restrict the movements of its activists in Iraq and across its borders.
2. The fact that Zarqawi is able to redirect elements of his Iraqi strength to other points in the Middle East means he is not short of manpower.
3. The ablest Western intelligence agencies are employed in the Middle East to combat al Qaeda, as well as the Jordanian and Israeli services. Yet none have achieved any penetrations capable of forecasting al Qaeda’s next moves.
4. There is no evidence to bear out President George W. Bush’s assertion that al Qaeda’s operational capabilities have been damaged. Since its July 7 transport offensive in London, the group has been on the offensive around the world, in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
5. Israel’s evacuation of the Gaza Strip has opened the door to al Qaeda and brought the international jihadists right up to its borders.
BACKGROUND
From "Zarqawi Moves His Headquarters to Baghdad" DEBKA-Net-Weekly 227, November 9, 2005, 5:12 PM (GMT+02:00) ...
According to intelligence data reaching the American command, the Jordanian terrorist chief, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, commander of al Qaeda Iraq, has left the Sunni-dominated Anbar province bordering on Syria after two years. In mid-October he is described as driving into Baghdad in mid-October in a convoy of six Iraqi military vehicles stolen from US-Iraqi bases in the north.
...DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources add: the convoy rolled in to the northeastern, Sunni district known as the Seven Wells, to be greeted by the local commander Emir Abu Yashak and his men. Yashak was given the job of setting up a secret command center and several safe houses for the new arrivals to work out of, as well as escape routes and facilities should the Americans uncover the new hideouts.
...A week later, the al Qaeda chief, fully aware that the Americans had pinned him down geographically, went into action. Monday, October 24, three truck bombs driven by suicide bombers exploded at two hotels housing foreign journalists and contractors in central Baghdad. At least 20 Iraqi security guards and passers-by were killed. Al Qaeda then returned to its offensive to frighten Arab and Muslim missions into exiting the Iraqi capital, by abducting and executing two Moroccan embassy employees. A Sudanese working at his country’s Baghdad embassy was killed Wednesday, Nov. 9. A day earlier, al Qaeda gunmen targeted a another two members of the Saddam Hussein trial defense team, killing one, wounding another, after murdering the first lawyer last month. A large question mark now hovers over the resumption of the crimes against humanities trial awaiting the deposed dictator and seven senior associations on Nov. 28. The surviving defense counsel want the trial moved abroad.
Zarqawi’ plan of action for his new base was summarized by DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s al Qaeda experts:
1. Multi-weapon, multi-casualty, coordinated attacks on Americans and other foreigners working in Baghdad that are hideous enough to shut down and put to flight diplomatic missions and foreign companies, international aid organizations, journalists and the foreign technical teams employed in constructing and operating Iraq’s new infrastructure.
2. Along with large-scale coordinated attacks, al Qaeda will step up the hostage-taking and executions of foreigners.
3. The offensive will aim at crippling Iraq’s government, security and parliamentary
administration by pinpoint assassinations of cabinet ministers, lawmakers, civil servants, members of the judiciary, army officers and rank-and-file police and soldiers - plus anyone seen by Zarqawi as a collaborator with the Americans.
4. American locations will be targeted - from US headquarters in the fortified Green Zone seat of Iraqi government, to American army command centers and bases and mobile patrols. The attacks will come from within the city, not its outer fringes.
But Zarqawi’s overriding goal, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s counter-terror sources. It is to cast the Iraq capital into such a state of turmoil and dislocation as to make it impossible to hold parliamentary elections as scheduled on December 15. This would bring to a halt moments before its consummation the entire democratic cycle on which Iraq has been moving forward this past year.
.... At the center of the action instead of behind the scenes, he is also more vulnerable to capture or being killed.
But the terrorist chief may not have had too many options, given three new circumstances.
One, the mounting international pressure on Bashar Assad’s regime may remove Syria as his and al Qaeda’s rear base and escape hatch under a revamped regime or even a new ruler. In Anbar near the Syrian border, he would have laid himself open to a collaborative Syrian-American turned against him.
Two, new American military tactics took heavy toll of his forces and forced them into retreat. They have no answer for the updated American military tactic of rolling large forces with massive firepower from one location to the next, after thoroughly purging each one. This tactic is workable in the desert reaches and outlying villages of Anbar, but not in a city with millions of inhabitants like Baghdad. This American tactic may have put Zarqawi and his terrorist legions to flight; but it is not applicable after they are embedded in Baghdad.
Three, this successful US tactic not only uprooted terrorist bases but inflicted heavy losses running to hundreds of fighting men. In Baghdad, Zarqawi believes he commands a fresh pool of fighting men to refill his depleted ranks, namely, the 90,000 Palestinians who are being dispossessed by the Shiite government of Ibrahim Jaafari.
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