WASHINGTON (June 14, 1:08 pm ADT) - The shadowy Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may be rapidly becoming Public Enemy No. 2 in the war on terror - an Islamist extremist almost as wanted as Osama bin Laden himself.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0615/p03s01-wome.html

He's behind many recent bombings in Iraq, and possibly the wave of kidnapping and shootings directed at Westerners in Saudi Arabia, say intelligence officials and terror experts. The tradecraft in some of the Saudi attacks is reminiscent of techniques he has been known to use.

Al Qaeda may be not so much a guerrilla army as a loose organization of like-minded individuals, but if it can be said to have a chief operational officer, that person may now be Zarqawi.

"Zarqawi's become the de facto operational chief of the al Qaeda network," says Rohan Gunaratna, author of "Inside al Qaeda" and an expert at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore. "Osama is thinking at the strategic level, and Zarqawi is operating at the tactical level."

The Jordanian-born Zarqawi has honed an ability to quickly change his targets and methods of attacks through years of moving about the Middle East. U.S. intelligence knows less about him than it does about some other major Islamist terrorist figures. For instance, in the past the intelligence officials believed he had lost a leg as a result of an American bombing raid on an Afghan training camp. But now they say they have decided he still has all his limbs. He may have tattoos, however, on some part of his body.

"Zarqawi has been at it for over a decade, closer to 12 years, but he only came up on our radar after the Jordanians fingered him for planning the millennium attacks against Americans and Israelis in Jordan in December 1999," says a senior U.S. intelligence official.

It is not clear how Zarqawi, with a $10 million US bounty on his head, became U.S. Enemy No. 2, and a possible replacement to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and a former bin Laden right-hand man who was captured in Pakistan in March 2003.

In fact, Zarqawi and bin Laden have at times been at cross-purposes. For example, in the midst of the Iraqi insurgency, Zarqawi wrote a letter to bin Laden that was intercepted and later released by the U.S. In it, Zarqawi implores bin Laden to help provoke a civil war between the Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq.

But that, experts say, does not fit with bin Laden's plans. Bin Laden, they say, wants Shiites and Sunnis to unite in his bigger aims against the United States, then settle any differences they have between them afterward.

Moreover, in the statement that accompanied the tape of the beheading of U.S. businessman Nicholas Berg, Zarqawi proclaimed that the assassination was one of many warnings to Americans to get out of Iraq. And he stated that it was also a warning to the Americans and Pakistanis to stay away from Wana. Wana is a central town in Wiziristan, the basically ungoverned territory between Afghanistan and Pakistan where it is believed bin Laden and many of his top acolytes are hiding.

It also makes sense, intelligence officials say, for Zarqawi to draw closer to bin Laden for recruitment purposes. They say the tape of Berg - and many photos of the American abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib - is a very effective recruitment tool for Zarqawi and Al Qaeda.

"Zarqawi is mainly working with the Sunni population in Iraq," says the U.S. intelligence official. "And they make up 40 percent of the population. Most of them are angry, afraid, so he has a big pool to draw from. He also draws on his original organization in Jordan. And there are probably Arabs coming in from Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Lebanon to fight. His organization is flush with manpower."

Another thing intelligence officials and experts picked out from the Berg tape is that the method used to kill him - a quick beheading - was used extensively and perfected in Chechnya, where Zarqawi is known to have ties. "Zarqawi has cells deeply embedded in Chechnya, especially, but also in the Balkans and throughout Europe," says a European intelligence official. "I believe the cells have been there for at least 10 years."