Does al-Zarqawi exist?

2005-10-11 14:46

Baghdad - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's faction has claimed responsibility for attacks that have left hundreds of Iraqis dead, and the United States has called him the most dangerous terrorist in Iraq.

Still, even as al-Zarqawi threatens more chaos - in recordings and internet messages - many Iraqis believe the Jordanian militant does not even exist and is merely a phantom created by the Americans to sow unrest in the country.

Similar disbelief greeted Britain's explanation that its soldiers, arrested in southern Iraq disguised as Arabs, were on an undercover hunt for terrorists. Instead, some Iraqis argue the soldiers were out to kill Shi'ite Muslims and blame the murders on Sunnis in hopes of sparking civil war.

Such conspiracy theories are common among Arabs and may seem laughable to outsiders. But in Iraq, where rulers from British colonists to Saddam Hussein regularly played one ethnic group against the other, imagined plots can seem reasonable - a fact that may have dire consequences for US efforts to build a stable Iraqi government.

Opposition to constitution

Indeed, ethnic and religious groups typically at odds are now standing united against the US-backed push for Iraqis to adopt a new constitution in a referendum om Friday and elect a permanent government in December. These steps, they say, are really intended to tighten the grip of America and Britain - the old master in Iraq - on the counry's oil wealth.

"Zarqawi is ... a myth that America has created to put a face to the terrorism it wants to stoke in this country to justify its continued presence," Sheik Amer al-Husseini, a top aide to radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

"If there was no more terrorism in Iraq, there would be no reason for the United States to remain ... making it harder for them to ... force this constitution on Iraqis," said al-Husseini.

Such arguments only add to confusion among many Iraqis who already are faced with different views from religious leaders. The radical al-Sadr has hinted he opposes the new constitution, while Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Iranian-born cleric who holds the greatest sway over Iraqi Shi'ites, has urged its passage.

US officials had hoped that such rifts, more common between the Shi'ites and Sunnis, would have been overcome with the June 2004 handover of sovereignty and the January elections that brought the current government to power.

But each time, the same hardline Shi'ite and Sunni groups who had ridiculed the war to topple Saddam as a US effort to seize control over Iraqi oil, remained unconvinced.

As a result, little has changed in Iraq, once the seat of proud Islamic empires upon which Iraqis now look back in wonder as they survey a landscape pockmarked by bombs and sown with civilian corpses.

- AP