strategic defeat and are on their way out of the country, a top U.S.
military official contended yesterday.
The group's failure to disrupt national elections and a constitutional
referendum last year "was a tactical admission by Zarqawi that their
strategy had failed," said Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, who commands the XVIII
Airborne Corps.
"They no longer view Iraq as fertile ground to establish a caliphate
and as a place to conduct international terrorism," he said in an address
at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Gen. Vines' statement came as news broke that coalition and Iraqi
forces had killed an associate of Osama bin Laden's during an early
morning raid near Abu Ghraib about two weeks ago.
Rafid Ibrahim Fattah aka Abu Umar al Kurdi served as a liaison between
terrorist networks and was linked to Taliban members in Afghanistan,
Pakistani-based extremists and other senior al Qaeda leaders, the military
said yesterday.
In the past six months, al Kurdi had worked as a terrorist cell leader
in Baqouba. Prior to that, he had traveled extensively Pakistan, Iran and
Iraq and formed a relationship with al Qaeda senior leaders in 1999 while
in Afghanistan.
He also had ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, formed while he was in
Iran and Pakistan, and joined the jihad in Afghanistan in 1989, the
military said. He was killed March 27.
Gen. Vines said the foreign terrorists had made a strategic mistake
when they tried to intimidate and deny Iraqis a way to vote.
"I believe Zarqawi discredited himself with the Iraqi people because of his willingness to slaughter Iraqi people," he said.
Huthayafa Azzam, whose father was seen as a political mentor of bin
Laden, told reporters in Jordan in early April that Zarqawi had been
replaced as head of the terrorist fight in Iraq in an effort to put an
Iraqi at the head of the organization.
Azzam said Zarqawi had "made many political mistakes," including excessive violence and the bombing last November of a Jordanian hotel, and
as a result was being "confined to military action."
Gen. Vines, who from January 2005 to January 2006 led all coalition
forces in Iraq, did not comment on those reports. But he did caution that
although the foreign extremists were leaving Iraq "looking for more
fertile ground," they could come back.
"The question now is what kind of government is going to be formed and is it going to be credible," he said, acknowledging that Iran had
significant influence over Iraq's religious Shi'ite population.
"Iran wants us out, but not too soon -- after a Shi'ite government friendly to Iran is established," Gen. Vines said. "Iran's view is that
the current government is not strong enough, and if we pulled out now,
there would be a low-level civil war."
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