'New superpower'

"Al-Zarqawi is probably a pretty significant figure but he is being made into this Usama bin Ladin-type symbol, which seems to be a natural thing for the Americans to do. It seems they like to focus on personalities," Rogers said.

Abd al-Bari Atwan agrees.
"Al-Zarqawi has become the new superpower, the perfect bogeyman. The Americans are just building him up to mask their failure in Iraq and their inability to maintain law and order.

"He is a foreigner, so it is the perfect way for them to discredit the resistance and say these attacks are not coming from the Iraqi people."

A $5 million bounty on al-Zarqawi's head was doubled after American authorities intercepted a letter that they claimed confirmed he was working with al-Qaida to drive the US out of Iraq.

'Fixation'

In it the author accused Iraqi Shias of collaborating with foreign invaders and called for a sectarian conflict in Iraq as a means of undermining the US presence there.

The author also claimed to have already undertaken 25 successful attacks against the enemy.

Arab affairs commentator Abd al-Bari Atwan does not believe the letter was genuine.

"There is no real proof that he [al-Zarqawi] is alive. If he is supposedly moving around freely in Iraq why haven't Iraqis spoken about him? He can't be that difficult to recognise with his wooden leg"

"I personally think that letter was the product of the intelligence services. Don't forget it was [new Iraqi interim prime minister] Iyad Allawi who distributed the letter to the press.

"Al-Zarqawi would have had to have been really stupid to send a letter like that which promoted civil war in Iraq."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/9EF53F67-7A94-49EE-AFDF-7C8A323BDD2E.htm