Zarqawi's map leads to destruction of al Qaeda in Iraq

Fox News:

A key turning point in the U.S.-led war against the Iraqi insurgency came even before last winter's troop surge, FOX News has learned.

A map drawn by Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — who was killed last year by U.S. forces — turned up last December in an Al Qaeda safe house and essentially gave U.S. war planners insight into the terrorist group's methods for moving explosives, fighters and money into Baghdad.

"The map essentially laid out how Al Qaeda controlled Baghdad. And they did it through four belts that surrounded the city, and these belts controlled access to the city for reinforcements and weapons and money," said Maj. Gen. Bob Scales, a FOX News contributor who recently visited Iraq.

"And [U.S.-led forces] simply made the decision to reduce these belts one at a time, and essentially what that did was it choked off Al Qaeda's access to the city. And once that was done, Al Qaeda had no alternative but to leave the city, to leave the belts and to retreat into the city of Baquba," Scales said.

The map showed four rings around Baghdad, nearly identical to rings former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein once created to protect the city.

U.S. military planners used those maps to choke off Al Qaeda, moving ring by ring, hunting and destroying Al Qaeda in Baghdad, flushing them out of their urban strongholds and picking them off as easy targets in the desert.

The troop surge was announced Jan. 10 and began soon after that. Gens. David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno took a risky but calculated move to send U.S. troops out of main base camps and set up small patrol stations that were jointly manned with Iraqi forces, essentially living among Iraqis in Baghdad. It made it easier for intelligence to surface but made U.S. troops easier targets.

U.S. forces seized on an opportunity as Al Qaeda gathered in the northern city of Baquba. The surge allowed troops to encircle Baghdad, and the insurgents fled into the desert, making them even more vulnerable to U.S. forces.

"What this offensive did is it essentially cut the head off the snake," Scales said.

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This is the Fox pdf copy of the Zarqawi map. The map was just one part of a strategic change in the approach to defeating al Qaeda in Iraq. Moving the troops out to protect the people led to a flood of intelligence that supplemented things like the map. Putting Iraqi troops and concerned citizens on the street also made it difficult for the enemy to operate without being discovered. His remnants have fled to northern Iraq where they are still being sought and destroyed. MNFI reports that in recent action around Mosul, several al Qaeda operatives were killed or captured including some of the remaining leaders.