The Death of Al-Zarqawi
by Richard Falk, June 08, 2006

The killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by American air strikes in an isolated safe house north of Baghdad on the evening of June 7th is one of those iconic events whose significance will be debated in the weeks and months ahead. It recalls the capture of Saddam Hussein back on December 13, 2003, and how American officials then viewed the occasion as virtually certain to lead to the rapid disintegration of the Iraqi insurgency.

The truth is that no one really knows whether the foreign components of the insurgency, of which Zarqawi was an undoubted leader, will be able to shrug off his death as one more incident in the ongoing struggle, and resume its role in the violent resistance with unabated fury, or whether Zarqawi was such an essentially irreplaceable leader that the non-Iraqi forces under his control will now fragment or give up the fight.  I think that the evidence suggests that Zarqawi’s death is being exaggerated by both Washington and Baghdad. The claim that this is a turning point in the occupation phase of the war seems groundless. Such a claim should arouse suspicion, considering that it has been repeatedly made during the entire course of more than three years of occupation, and yet the resistance movement not only does not disappear, but expands. It is helpful at this moment to recall that similar claims were made at the time of Saddam’s capture, in response to the turnout for the various Iraqi elections, and at times of such gestures as the transfer of sovereignty from the American occupiers to the Iraq Interim Government a couple of years ago. Despite all of these supposed markers on the road to Iraqi normalcy, the reality on the ground has been more violence, more deaths, and a country that is as far, if not further, from peace and stability than was the case in 2003 at the time President Bush spoke on the flight deck of the American aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln,  beneath the banner “mission accomplished.”

A skeptical reaction to the Zarqawi death is justified by other elements in the immediate situation. The timing and nature of the attack gives rise to further suspicions. It was just days after the full details of the Haditha massacre finally began to be getting attention in American mainstream media. The shocking execution of Iraqi civilians in Haditha had taken place on November 19, 2005, and although reported by al-Jazeera at the time, more or less accurately, the American mainstream media, including the New York Times, falsely presented the original story as an occasion where several Iraqi civilians were killed from crossfire in the course of a routine firefight with insurgent forces. When the true account of Haditha finally was ‘broken’ long after the fact by Time Magazine, it soon became evident that there were many Hadithas waiting to be disclosed, that the story was the tip of an iceberg of bad news that has now been avoided, at least for now. As well, it seemed evident that the American military command knew the exact location of Zarqawi for several weeks, and elected not to capture him. There has always been doubts about the degree to which Zarqawi was a constructed reality useful for American propaganda, an embodiment of the evil character of the occupation. In this regard the execution of Zarqawi, along with the collateral death of several civilians, apparently women and children living in the same house, seemed as much a recognition that he was more useful dead than alive at this stage from the perspective of those shaping American occupation policy.

Putting these speculations to one side, perhaps the most important reason to be skeptical about any sense that this is a decisively favorable development for the occupation, is associated with the nature of the core resistance in Iraq, and Zarqawi’s relationship to it. By now it should be clear to all but the most biased intervenors that the main source of resistance is from the Iraqis themselves. In many ways Zarqawi’s main role in recent months was to do his best to convert the resistance into a civil war pitting Shi’ias against Sunnis. Much of the violence of Zarqawi’s forces was directed at Shi’ite targets, including the February 22 bombing of the sacred Al Askariya Shrine. In some respects, such a diversion from the struggle against a foreign occupation, served to support the American presence by seeming to suggest that it was not the main cause of strife in Iraq. It is quite possible that with Zarqawi no longer in the picture that the internal rivalry among Iraqi factions will moderate, and that the armed struggle of the resistance will be refocused on the occupation. As well, if the foreign fighters are no longer nearly as important in the presentation of the daily reality in Iraq, it will be much harder for Washington to portray the war as against al Qaeda rather than against the people of Iraq. It is known that Zarqawi’s location became known to the American military through an intelligence tip from an insider, perhaps even a rival for leadership, suggesting that either there will now be a succession struggle or that the whole direction of the foreign presence will be redirected at the occupation, and away from the sectarian strife.

Of course, it is not only Zarqawi who has played the sectarian card in Iraq. The United States from the outset pushed hard for Shi’ia /Kurd ascendancy in post-Saddam Iraq. Its initial insistence on debaathification, as well as the demobilization of Iraqi military and security forces, gave a devastating tangibility to this policy. It is true that the current American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, has made some moves to reverse this earlier approach, but it seems too little too late. The problem of imbalance is evident at the level of the new Iraqi cabinet consisting of 22 Shi’ite members (plus 8 Kurds), as compared to 9 Sunni members.

If instead, as vows by some  Zarqawi supporters to continue the struggle would suggest, it turns out that his organization (“Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia”) rebounds from his death, then it will soon become apparent that even the most demonized leaders in this kind of struggle can be replaced without much, if any, loss of capacity.

For these various reasons, it seems more important than ever to acknowledge that the unconditional withdrawal of American forces by a time certain, within a year, is the only promising option in relation to the future of Iraq. No one knows for sure what the effects of such a diplomatic about face by Washington would be, but it gives the various contending groups in Iraq to come together this side of an all out disastrous civil war, and agree upon an incentive that would be fair and balanced, and based not on an imposed foreign solution, but reflecting indigenous Iraqi priorities.  If the intervention and occupation continue, including the American construction of large permanent military bases and its biggest embassy in the world, it is assured that the terrible ordeal of Iraqi society will continue, and likely intensify. As has been repeatedly stated by the most informed observers of the Iraqi scene, the real source of insurgent strength was never the foreign fighters, mainly under Zarqawi’s control, but rather the indigenous militias along with elements from the old regime, Baathists and allies of Saddam Hussein.  It will benefit the region, as well as Iraq, if Zarqawi’s death is not allowed to become another occasion of wishful thinking by those who remain committed to Washington’s policies of invasion and occupation. 

Richard Falk, chair of the board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, is the author of Religion and Humane Global Governance (Palgrave), The Great Terror War (Olive Branch), and most recently, The Declining World Order (Routledge). Since 2002 he has been Distinguished Visiting Professor of Global Studies at UC Santa Barbara.