Baghdad, Iraq – With a pair of 500-pound bombs, U.S. forces killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most-wanted insurgent in Iraq, boosting the flagging confidence of U.S. officials and the new Iraqi government as they moved into the fourth chaotic year of warfare.
The killing of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and five others gathered with him in an isolated safe house – including a woman and a child – took place north of Baghdad on Wednesday night and was announced Thursday morning, ending a long hunt for the 39-year-old terrorist leader.
Al-Zarqawi had become an almost mythic, if widely hated, figure among U.S. troops – and still more so among Iraqi Shiites, who were his main victims.
The Jordanian-born militant carried a $25 million U.S. bounty for his role in directing many of the conflict’s most brutal attacks, including scores of suicide bombings, kidnappings and beheadings.
Still, most Iraqis and U.S. officials appeared too chastened by the war’s shocks to hail his killing as a decisive turning point.
“Zarqawi is dead,” President Bush said at an early-morning announcement, “but the difficult and necessary mission in Iraq continues. We can expect the terrorists and insurgents to carry on without him.”
Less than 18 hours after al-Zarqawi’s death, Iraq’s new parliament broke a long deadlock and approved nominees for three key Cabinet posts – the ministers of defense, interior and national security.
The appointments filled a void that had become increasingly worrisome for U.S. officials, who saw rival politicians’ squabbling over the posts as a troubling sign of weakness for a government that desperately needs to show it can curb sectarian killings, placate an angry Sunni Arab minority and bring to heel rogue militias.
With al-Zarqawi out of the way and the new government in place, some Sunni Arab leaders may be emboldened to resume a dialogue they started last fall – exchanges sunk by al-Zarqawi’s terrorist organization.
Indeed, one of al-Zarqawi’s key aims, and main legacy, had been inflaming sectarian passions that the new government has to cool.
In a bid to convince skeptics inclined to doubt that al-Zarqawi had finally been hunted down, after narrowly eluding U.S. troops at least twice in the past 18 months, Casey told reporters that al-Zarqawi’s body had been identified “by fingerprint verification, facial recognition and known scars.”
But the most decisive confirmation of the death came from al-Qaeda itself, in a series of death notices posted on Islamic websites that have been forums for al-Zarqawi in the past.
The messages hailed his death, describing him as a martyr and mujahid, or Islamic warrior, and saying that his death was a matter of joy for al-Zarqawi himself, for his followers and for all Muslims.
At a joint news conference in Baghdad announcing the killing, Casey struck a cautious note about the impact al-Zarqawi’s death is likely to have on the war, as did U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
The parliamentary session that approved the new ministers had been scheduled Monday, more than 48 hours before Casey gave the final go-ahead for U.S. Air Force F-16s to drop the two bombs that obliterated the isolated safe house near Baqubah where al-Zarqawi was hiding.
Iraqi and U.S. officials said it was coincidence that al-Maliki had timed his move to win parliamentary approval for the new ministers after the bombing strike that eliminated the man who was public enemy No. 1 among most Iraqis.
But chance or not, the congruence of the two events appeared to help the prime minister win speedy approval for his nominees from rival political blocs that seemed set on a filibuster only a few days ago.
On the streets of Iraq’s major cities, reaction varied from quiet expressions of relief and hope to deep skepticism but with little of the frenetic celebration that met Saddam Hussein’s capture, which sent crowds surging into the streets and prompted hours of gunfire into the air in Baghdad and other cities.
On Thursday, the most visible signs of celebration came in Shiite neighborhoods that were the victims of al-Zarqawi’s effort to provoke civil war between his fellow Sunnis and the Shiites – an effort that led to al-Qaeda-linked terrorists relentlessly targeting Shiite mosques, markets, weddings and funerals with suicide bombings and other attacks.
Today in Baghdad and Baqubah, a four-hour midday ban on all vehicle traffic was ordered in an apparent effort to prevent reprisal attacks by suicide car bombers.