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For al-Qaida in Iraq, brutality unabated

BY MOHAMAD BAZZI | Newsday Middle East Correspondent

June 21, 2006

Army Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead, but his brutal tactics live on.

The apparent torture and possible beheading of two U.S. soldiers captured by insurgents after an attack on a checkpoint last week is the latest example of how al-Zarqawi's followers are carrying on his strategies in Iraq.

"Al-Zarqawi brought the level of brutality to unprecedented levels," said Diaa Rashwan, an expert on Islamic militants at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. "Every indication is that his supporters will continue on that same path."

Since al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. air strike on June 7, members of his militant group - al-Qaida in Iraq - have vowed to avenge his death with "spectacular" attacks that will "shake the enemy."

Al-Zarqawi had defined that enemy broadly. He was notorious for beheading foreign and Iraqi captives, and he pioneered the use of car bombings against Iraqi civilians, especially the country's Shia Muslim majority.

Four days after his death, al-Qaida in Iraq released a videotape showing the beheading of three Shias it claimed were members of Iraq's security forces. On Friday, the group dispatched a suicide bomber to a Shia mosque in Baghdad, killing 13 people. Al-Zarqawi championed attacks on Shia leaders and institutions as a way to instigate a civil war.

"The danger of sectarian warfare is still alive after al-Zarqawi's death," said Nabil Salim, an Iraqi political analyst. "It's a strategy that his followers are going to pursue."

After the bodies of the two U.S. soldiers were recovered yesterday, a senior Iraqi Defense Ministry official said they had been tortured and killed in a "barbaric way." In a statement posted on a militant Web site, the Mujahideen Shura Council - an alliance of seven insurgent groups that includes al-Qaida in Iraq - said the soldiers had been "slaughtered," a reference that likely meant they were beheaded. The statement said al-Zarqawi's successor, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, had carried out the killings himself.

Al-Zarqawi was believed to have personally beheaded two American captives in Iraq: Nicholas Berg in April 2004 and Eugene Armstrong in September 2004. Videotapes of those killings were distributed on the Internet and to Arab television networks, helping al-Zarqawi gain worldwide attention.

But many Muslims condemned the beheadings and relentless attacks on Iraqi civilians. Even Ayman al-Zawhiri, the deputy leader of al-Qaida, criticized the tactics and warned al-Zarqawi in a letter last year that they were alienating the Muslim world.

If it is confirmed that al-Zarqawi's successor beheaded the two soldiers, it would signal that al-Muhajer won't change the group's brutal strategies.

"With al-Zarqawi's killing, it was possible that al-Qaida leaders would make sure that his successor changes these methods," Rashwan said. "But that doesn't seem to be happening."

There is little precedent in Islamic holy texts and tradition for carrying out decapitations, scholars say. Islam's holy book, the Quran, provides clear prohibitions against killing civilians and bans mistreatment of prisoners.

While the Quran and other sources of Islamic law prohibit killing civilians, al-Qaida's ideologues have argued that it is permitted as a form of "reciprocal attacks." That reasoning was outlined in a document posted in April 2002 on an al-Qaida Web site, which attempted to provide a religious justification for the Sept. 11 attacks.

To support killing civilians, the group used one phrase in the Quran: "And one who attacks you, attack him in like manner as he attacked you." The document argued that if an enemy uses tactics prohibited in Islam, such as targeting civilians, those tactics become legal for Muslims.

Most religious authorities reject that reasoning and note that the Quranic prohibitions against killing innocents are much broader than the isolated phrases often used by militants to justify their actions.

"The militants have very weak justifications for their attacks on civilians and beheadings," Rashwan said. "Most Muslims know these tactics are prohibited."