DANBURY — Abubaker Saad, a professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at Western Connecticut State University, said Wednesday’s death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi signals a dangerous time in Iraq because a new al-Qaida leader will certainly emerge.
Al-Zarqawi, the 39-year-old leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, was killed Wednesday, along with six others, including his deputy and spiritual adviser, Abdul Rahman, in a U.S. air strike in the Iraqi city of Baqouba.
“They are going to want to assert themselves quickly,” said Saad. “This is a relief for Iraq and Jordan, but I anticipate the new leader will want to do something dramatic right away.
“This is as much a psychological war as a physical war,” Saad said. “The new leader doesn’t want to give the U.S. a psychological victory.”
On Thursday morning, Danbury residents John Hanna and Elie Karam were listening to Lebanese news broadcasts about al-Zarqawi’s death.
“I’m very glad they got rid of him. He was a big troublemaker and a terrorist,” said Karam, who owns the Arabic Bakery in Danbury. Karam said al-Zarqawi’s death is a hopeful sign for Iraq. “If you cut off the head of the snake, the tail doesn’t bite.”
Saad, who chairs WestConn’s history department, said he first heard rumors of al-Zarqawi’s killing late Wednesday on Arabic radio. A native of Libya and a former national diplomat, Saad fled Libya after a falling-out with Col. Moammar Gaddafi in the late 1970s. He became a U.S. citizen in 1990.
Saad said he expects the person who replaces al-Zarqawi, to plan a quick terrorist attack.
That may be bad news for the 133,000 troops from the U.S. now stationed in Iraq. But the threat to coalition troops also appears to be changing, according to a quarterly review Congress ordered from the Department of Defense.
The February 2006 Report to Congress from the Secretary of Defense said al-Qaida relies more and more on suicide bombing and less on the improvised explosive devices and small arms attacks the group used over the last three years.
“Al-Qaida and its affiliates continue to employ suicide attacks, increasingly focusing on civilians and Iraqi Security Forces,” the report said. “In fact, over three-quarters of all attacks result in no casualties or serious damage.”
The report did warn that between 20 and 25 attacks a day occur in Baghdad. It said those are sometimes lone gunmen and sometimes a carefully coordinated attack by several people.
Al-Zarqawi was born in Jordan, where he is believed to have carried out a Nov. 9, 2005, triple suicide bombing against hotels in Amman that killed 60 people, as well as other attacks in Jordan and even a rocket attack from Lebanon into northern Israel.
Although he helped attract Arab militants to Iraq to fight what he called a war for Islam against the American “crusaders” and Shiite “infidels,” most recently he sought to spread Sunni-Shiite strife across the Middle East.
In an audiotape posted on the Internet last week, he lectured his fellow Sunnis to stand up against Shiites and railed against Shiites for four hours, calling them enemies of Islam.
American forces believe he personally beheaded at least two American hostages, Nicholas Berg in April 2004 and Eugene Armstrong in September 2004.
