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Experts: Zarqawi Death Unlikely to Stop Insurgency

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Posted on Jun 9, 2006

The death of the Al Qaeda leader is likely to downgrade sectarianism in the medium term, an expert on terrorism tells the Washington Post. “But,” he added, “the dynamic of sectarian violence is probably past the point of no return.”


Washington Post:

BAGHDAD, June 8—Analysts and military spokesmen said Thursday that the death of insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed Wednesday when two 500-pound bombs obliterated his hideout north of Baghdad, will not extinguish the sectarian conflict that he helped foment and that is now claiming many more lives in Iraq than his campaign of beheadings and bombings.

The slaying of the Jordanian-born guerrilla leader eliminated the biggest advocate of the extreme violence against civilians that has made the Iraq war so grisly. Zarqawi and his radical Sunni Arab group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, carried out suicide attacks that could kill 100 or more passersby in a flash of light and videotaped the last gasps of foreign hostages being decapitated.

But other crucial questions, analysts say, are thrown completely up into the air: whether other foreign fighters will show themselves equally eager to slaughter civilians, whether the Sunni insurgency will split into fragments or broaden its base and, above all, whether the Shiite-Sunni killing that Zarqawi’s attacks helped unleash can be reined in.

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By Mace Price, June 9, 2006 at 10:38 pm Link to this comment
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No shit? I thought it was all over.

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By native child, June 9, 2006 at 8:37 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

It’s the old cut off the head & the body will die.  Doesn’t always work, though,  with popular uprisings agains foreign occupation.  And it never works when the natives are willing to die for their cause.  Never, that is, this side of genocide.  Will the powers that be go that far?  That’s our history.  Once upon a time there were hundreds of indigenous nations in our land and about ten million natives   The question isn’t whether or not our government is capable of committing genocide, it’s will we the people let them get away with it.

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By faith, June 9, 2006 at 4:17 pm Link to this comment
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Mr. Bush’s great hoopla (press announcement and coverage) concerning the demise of a particularly virulent Al Queda leader is not a benefit.  Zarqawi’s death should have remained a quiet issue.  It is just terrible that it not only made the news, but, identified the U.S. military as the cause for Zarqawi’s death.  Worse, it is unfathomable that Bush and the Press identified the person who assisted in locating Zarqawi.  Now, the informant, his family, his friends will be on every insurgent’s hit list.  Who would dare help America. We are quickly gaining a reputation for “outing” informants, as well as our own CIA operatives.  This is astonishing in its lack of logic and common sense. It exposes the tragic inability of this government to comport itself judiciously, with concerns toward protecting those who would help this nation fight insurgents, and provide needed intelligence.  I guess Bush and co. are true isolationists.  At the rate they are going diplomacy will lose all meaning in matters dealing with american ideologies.

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