Most wanted terrorist 'kicked out as leader' for bloody tactics

ABU MUSAB AL-ZARQAWI, the most feared commander in the Iraqi insurgency, may have been forced to surrender his leadership by rival groups, angered by his bloody tactics and the interference of foreign fighters in the Iraqi conflict.
According to Huthayfah Azzam, the son of Abdullah Azzam, al-Zarqawi�s former mentor, the notorious commander of al-Qaeda in Iraq was stripped of his political duties at a meeting two weeks ago.

�The Iraqi resistance high command asked al-Zarqawi to give up his political role and replaced him with an Iraqi because of several mistakes,� said Mr Azzam in an interview with al-Arabiya, the Arabic news channel. �Al-Zarqawi�s role has been limited to military action,� he said.

The fugitive al-Qaeda leader, who has a $25 million American bounty on his head, is credited with masterminding some of the bloodiest episodes in the Iraqi war, including suicide bombings against the United Nations, Shia Muslims and US forces and the videotaped execution of Western and other hostages.

But his tactics have alienated many Iraqis, even those sympathetic to the insurgency. Mr Azzam, whose father is known as the �prince of the Mujahidin�, said that he was accused of �creating an independent group� in Iraq, �making political mistakes� and hijacking the Iraqi insurgency for his own cause.

The claims could not be confirmed, but they did add to mounting evidence that al-Zarqawi has been increasingly isolated over the past months because of his ruthless tactics.

In January al-Zarqawi�s al-Qaeda group announced that it was joining five other insurgent organisations to form a body called the �Mujahidin Shura Council�. Since then al-Qaeda in Iraq, once the most vocal terrorist group in the world, has stopped issuing its own statements. Now the council appears to have demoted al-Zarqawi and replaced him with a relative unknown, Abdullah bin Rashid al-Baghdadi.

As for al-Zarqawi, a former petty criminal turned jihad warlord, he has not been heard of in public for three months.

The first hint that he had become too extreme even for al-Qaeda came in a letter written by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden�s No 2, which was sent to al-Zarqawi last summer and warned the 39-year-old Jordanian to change his tactics.

�Al-Zarqawi is finished,� said Bayan Jabor, the Iraqi Interior Minister, last week.

�He has only a few supporters left in (the western city of) Ramadi.�