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U.S.: Al-Zarqawi ordered Iraq attacks

BY MOHAMAD BAZZI | MIDDLE EAST CORRESPONDENT

8:49 PM EDT, May 18, 2005

BEIRUT, Lebanon - U.S. officials Thursday blamed the recent wave of massive attacks by insurgents in Iraq on Islamic militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, saying his lieutenants met in Syria to plot the escalation.

The American assessment contradicts the view of some Iraqi security officials, who have told Newsday that the insurgency is now being driven more by former Baathists and members of Saddam Hussein's security services, and less so by foreign militants such as al-Zarqawi.

A senior U.S. military official, who briefed reporters in Baghdad on the condition of anonymity, said al-Zarqawi might have attended a meeting in Syria about a month ago at which militants plotted an intensive campaign of car bombings to undermine the new Iraq government.

Al-Zarqawi allegedly "was not happy with how the insurgency was going," said the official. "Some intelligence reports from captives showed that al-Zarqawi directed people to start using more vehicle-borne devices, and use them in everyday operations."

The wave of attacks began around April 28, when a new government was named after nearly three months of political squabbling. The attacks have killed about 500 people, and injured hundreds, in one of the worst periods of violence since the U.S. invasion two years ago. So far this month, insurgents have carried out about 70 attacks a day -- shootings, roadside explosions, ambushes and car bombings -- throughout Iraq. In February and March, there were 30 to 40 attacks a day, according to the U.S. military.

The U.S. official said his account of the meeting in Syria was based on interrogations of detainees and "Iraqi military sources." The Bush administration has frequently accused Syria of allowing militants to infiltrate into Iraq, a charge denied by the Syrian regime.

But some Iraqi security officials say former Baathists are playing a more central role than the U.S. military has acknowledged. And while Iraqi and U.S. forces have made important arrests in al-Zarqawi's network in recent months, that has done little to dampen the insurgency. The Iraqi officials say this highlights their assessment that al-Zarqawi is taking credit for more attacks than his network is actually carrying out.

"It was a mistake to portray al-Zarqawi as the overall leader of the insurgency," one Iraqi official, who has overseen the interrogations of dozens of insurgents, told Newsday last week. "There are many small, militant groups that agree with him ideologically, but they don't necessarily take orders from him."

The Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi has claimed responsibility -- or has been blamed by U.S. and Iraqi officials -- for a majority of the bloodiest suicide bombings, kidnappings and beheadings of foreigners in the past year. U.S. officials say al-Zarqawi is masterminding a terror network in Iraq at the behest of Osama bin Laden.

In July, U.S. officials raised the reward for information leading to al-Zarqawi's arrest or killing to $25 million, equal to the bounty on bin Laden's head. To some Iraqis, the U.S. focus on al-Zarqawi is part of a political strategy to portray the insurgency as driven by foreign militants and not homegrown.

In the latest violence attributed to al-Zarqawi's supporters, four gunmen Thursday killed Brig. Gen. Ibrahim Khamas, a senior Interior Ministry official, as he drove through Baghdad. A statement posted on a militant Web site said Khamas was killed because he was "one of the heads of apostasy, and one of America's tails in Iraq."