KNOWING YOUR ALLIES (AND YOUR ENEMIES):

Rising name on America's most-wanted list: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may be rapidly becoming Public Enemy No. 2 in the war on terror. (Faye Bowers and Peter Grier, 6/15/04, CS Monitor)

It is not clear how Zarqawi, with a $10 million US bounty on his head, became US 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 Mr. 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 US. 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.

But Zarqawi seems to have changed directions in that regard as well, possibly in deference to bin Laden's wishes. Since the August 2003 bombing of the mosque in Karbala in which some 83 people were killed, including the leading Shiite Muslim leader Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, Zarqawi hasn't targeted Shiites.

Zarqawi would seem to understand the situation much better than bin Laden.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 14, 2004 6:45 PM