Tracking elusive successor to al-Zarqawi

BY MOHAMAD BAZZI | Newsday Middle East Correspondent

June 16, 2006

BEIRUT, Lebanon - American military commanders say they have identified the elusive militant who claimed to succeed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

But like many things in the murky world of radical Islam, there is still debate about the heir's identity. In a statement posted Monday on a militant Web site, al-Qaida in Iraq said it had selected a leader to replace al-Zarqawi: a man known by the alias Abu Hamza al-Muhajer.

U.S. officials said yesterday al-Muhajer is the same Egyptian-born militant they had identified last week as al-Zarqawi's likely successor. U.S. commanders used a different pseudonym: Abu Ayyub al-Masri.

"We think they are one and the same at this point," Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman, told reporters in Baghdad.

An Arab security official told Newsday that al-Muhajer is an Iraqi militant, possibly from the northern city of Samarra. The official cautioned that al-Zarqawi's group is in turmoil after its leader was killed in a U.S. air raid last week, and that there might be a leadership struggle or an internal purge. The group's new leader also might have decided to remain secret.

Al-Muhajer, which means "the immigrant" in Arabic, is a common alias among Islamic militants and the official noted there could be several people using the name. "There are many possibilities here, and it's best not to jump to a conclusion that al-Masri and al-Muhajer are the same man," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

While the Pentagon announced that 2,500 U.S. troops had been killed since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, U.S. officials claimed new successes in the battle against insurgents. Caldwell said that, since al-Zarqawi's death, U.S. and Iraqi forces have carried out 452 raids throughout Iraq, killed 104 guerrillas, arrested 759 people and uncovered 28 caches of arms.

Iraqi officials said they discovered a document in al-Zarqawi's hideout that outlined a plan to foment a war between the United States and Iran. But the Arabic document used different expressions than those usually found in al-Qaida statements posted on the Internet.

U.S. commanders insist that a foreigner would replace al-Zarqawi, who was Jordanian. But Arab analysts argue his successor would likely be an Iraqi, to mend a rift between the foreign militants who form the backbone of al-Zarqawi's group and Iraqi Sunnis who make up other segments of the insurgency.

For the first time yesterday, U.S. officials acknowledged that al-Zarqawi's network could splinter and Iraqi militants could emerge as its leaders. Caldwell mentioned two potential competitors to al-Masri: Abu Abdul-Rahman al-Iraqi, an alias for a man believed to be a former Iraqi general who was as often cited as al-Zarqawi's deputy and likely successor; and Abdullah al-Baghdadi, head of the Mujaheddin Shura Council, an alliance of seven insurgent groups that includes al-Qaida in Iraq.

Caldwell described al-Masri as an explosives expert who trained in the late 1990s at al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan. He has been a militant since 1982, when he joined Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which at the time was led by Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri. Caldwell said al-Masri, who has a $50,000 bounty on his head, helped smuggle foreign fighters from Syria to Baghdad and later became the chief of al-Qaida operations in southern Iraq.

The seized al-Qaida document argued that the insurgency has been weakened for several reasons: massive arrests and seizures of weapons in recent months, squeezing of militants' financial networks and divisions among different segments of the rebellion.

"Now we have the upper hand," Mouwafak al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser, told reporters. He said the document was part of a "huge treasure" of intelligence finds that would mark "the beginning of the end of al-Qaida in Iraq."

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