Exploding Zarqawi

Sydney Morning Herald:

IN THE late afternoon sky over Iraq, two F-16 pilots were "in the orbit", as the US Air Force calls it, cruising through a routine patrol about to become anything but.

Their radios crackled. A "high-value target" - military-speak for a terrorist big shot - was in an isolated safe house in a date palm grove below. Here are the co-ordinates, they heard. Prepare to engage. As the pilots swung towards Baquba, the most wanted man in Iraq probably did not even notice the fighter jets, kept kilometres away, or realise he had been betrayed by an ally and trailed by US special forces.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - the face of the Iraqi insurgency, beheader of hostages and bomber of civilians, a man whose taste for violence made him stand out even in a violent land - never saw it coming.

The first 227-kilogram, guided bomb hit the safe house at 6.15pm on Wednesday, Baghdad time. The pilots doubled back and decided not to take any chances. They dropped a second satellite-guided bomb "to ensure the target set was serviced appropriately", an air force general said.

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Iraq's Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who announced on Thursday morning that Zarqawi had been "eliminated", credited tips from residents in Baquba, north-east of Baghdad. And Iraq's Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, suggested Zarqawi had slipped up trying to gain publicity, saying officials "pinpointed" his location in a video released in late April.

And in a crucial breakthrough last month, Jordanian intelligence officers captured a mid-level Zarqawi operative near the Iraqi border.

The operative, Ziad Khalaf al-Kerbouly, used his position as an Iraqi customs clearance officer in Rutbah, along the main road from Amman to Baghdad, to help Zarqawi smuggle cash and materiel for the insurgency.

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Kerbouly told Jordanian interrogators the identity and contacts for Zarqawi's spiritual adviser, who served as his liaison to Muslim clerics across Iraq, gathering recruits, funding and support for the insurgency.

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Task Force 77 located Abdul-Rahman and kept him under surveillance, partly by remote-controlled planes. When US forces knew the adviser would meet Zarqawi on Wednesday night, they decided to strike.

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Abdul-Rahman was probably as important as Zarqawi. He seems to be the glue that pulled the various parts together for Zarqawi to use. It is possibly his adress book that the US has been exploiting in almost 60 raids since Zarqawi exploded. BTW, there is no mention of whether Zarqawi was wearing an explosive vest as he had bragged in the past.