Meanwhile, Back at the Base

Last week, news sources outside the US were abuzz with this report:

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 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 Qaida 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 Azzam in an interview with al-Arabiya, the Arabic news channel.

“Al Zarqawi’s role has been limited to military action,” he said.

Some senior intelligence officers believe Zarqawi's role may have been overemphasized by the propaganda campaign, which has included leaflets, radio and television broadcasts, Internet postings and at least one leak to an American journalist.

There has been a running argument among specialists in Iraq about how much significance to assign to Zarqawi, who spent seven years in prison in Jordan for attempting to overthrow the government there. After his release he spent time in Pakistan and Afghanistan before moving his base of operations to Iraq. He has been sentenced to death in absentia for planning the 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley in Jordan. U.S. authorities have said he is responsible for dozens of deaths in Iraq and have placed a $25 million bounty on his head.

Recently there have been unconfirmed reports of a possible rift between Zarqawi and the parent al-Qaeda organization that may have resulted in his being demoted or cut loose. Last week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that it was unclear what was happening between Zarqawi and al-Qaeda. "It may be that he's not being fired at all, but that he is being focused on the military side of the al-Qaeda effort and he's being asked to leave more of a political side possibly to others, because of some disagreements within al-Qaeda," he said.

Officials said one indication that the campaign worked is that over the past several months, there have been reports that Iraqi tribal insurgents have attacked Zarqawi loyalists, especially in the culturally conservative province of Anbar. "What we're finding is indeed the people of al-Anbar -- Fallujah and Ramadi, specifically -- have decided to turn against terrorists and foreign fighters," Maj. Gen Rick Lynch, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said in February.

Today the New York Times reports an attempt to rally the faithful:

Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant has released an Internet video calling on Iraqi insurgents to remain strong in the fight against Americans and praising the leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who directs Al Qaeda's operations in Iraq.

An introductory title on the video indicates that the lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, recorded the message last November, months after he is believed to have written a 6,000-word letter asking Mr. Zarqawi to refrain from slaughtering Shiites.

In recent months, perhaps in response to the letter, Mr. Zarqawi has not personally taken responsibility for any major attacks in Iraq.

"The Nation of Islam, I ask you to support your brothers, the mujahedeen in Iraq, and our brother, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, about whom I didn't see anything but good things the whole period I knew him," Mr. Zawahiri said in the video, as translated by the SITE Institute, an organization that tracks terrorists' messages. "I know him to be true, and how he is defending Islam with all his powers."

Zarqawi, Al Qaeda Are Heading Out, U.S. General Says

Al Qaeda in Iraq and its presumed leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi, have conceded 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.

That story also includes this:

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.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, April 13 — A senior figure in Al Qaeda who was accused of taking part in the bombings of the United States Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 was killed late Wednesday night in a Pakistani airstrike on a compound in the region along the Afghanistan border, two senior security officials said Thursday.

The death could not be independently confirmed, and no body was found.

Pakistan's information minister, Sheik Rashid Ahmed, identified the man as Abdul Rahman, one of his aliases. He is known primarily to the F.B.I. as Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwa, and he is sometimes known as Abdul Rahman al-Muhajir. He is on an F.B.I. list of "most wanted terrorists" with a $5 million reward on his head. According to the F.B.I. Web site, he was 41 and an Egyptian.

According to the Pakistani security officials, he was killed in the village of Anghar, about three and a half miles north of Miramshah, the capital of North Waziristan, the officials said, requesting anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the news media.

"He has been confirmed dead," one official said. "The confirmation is based on multiple intelligence sources."

Two American intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the rules of their agencies, said they had not yet confirmed the Pakistanis' report that Mr. Atwa has been killed. But they said his death would be significant.