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Length: 4:49
ANDERSON COOPER: More
perspective now from two people with years of
experience on the ground: in Brisbane, Australia,
Michael Ware of "TIME" magazine, and, in London, CNN
chief international correspondent, Christiane
Amanpour. Good to see both of you. Michael, how much
of a blow is Zarqawi's death to the movement, to the
insurgency and the terrorist movement in Iraq?
MICHAEL WARE, BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF, "TIME": Well,
Anderson, this is certainly going to force an
evolution, both within his al-Qaeda organization and
within the broader insurgency itself. The test is
going to be whether the generation of al-Qaeda
fighters that he brought to Iraq and that he found
among the Iraqis will continue on the path that he
set. It's going to be very key to see whether the
long-term pressure to put an Iraqi face on al-Qaeda
bears fruit. That could see some changes. Also,
within the broader insurgency, I would expect that
the Baathists will be the first to maximize this
opportunity and try and reassert their authority
within the insurgency. They have been struggling with
him from the beginning. And I think it's friction
like that, that he caused, that's led to his
betrayal. But to gauge the future, watch the suicide
bombings. Other groups do them, but Zarqawi's
al-Qaeda really drove them. Let's see whether they
maintain their frequency, but more particularly,
let's see what they start targeting from here on in.
That will be telling -- Anderson.
COOPER: Christiane, U.S. officials have said that
tips and intelligence from Iraqi senior leaders
within Zarqawi's own network helped in the operation.
If that is, in fact, true, how significant would it
be?
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL
CORRESPONDENT: Well, very significant, because the
aim of any counterinsurgency fight is to get to the
people around them, to deny the insurgents their core
support: the environment around them, the people
around them, the civilian population around them. So,
that would be significant. And, as Michael says,
watch the suicide bombings. Look, you just mentioned
that 1,400 Iraqis were killed in Baghdad alone last
month. Now, the Baghdad morgue says that is double
the number that was killed in Baghdad a year ago, in
May a year ago. So, the killing has been getting so
much worse. But not just is it a fight against the
insurgency, to try to whittle away at that, but it's
also an attempt by the new Iraqi government, which
has now named its new key security ministers, to
actually try to convince people to vest in the
political process, that their contract should be with
politics and the government, and not individual
militias or violence. And, as you know, the security
services there are infiltrated by militias. And
militias are essentially the people who are providing
the security to the Shiites, who fear the Sunni
insurgents, but also are conducting a lot of revenge
attacks, death squads, kidnapping squads, and all
those kinds of things that are going on. So, it's a
really complicated scene of violence there.
COOPER: Yes. And, Michael, I mean, Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi made it a mission to target Shias within
Iraq, fellow Muslims who he considered, frankly,
infidels, because they weren't part of the Sunni
branch and his particular sect of the Sunni branch.
Does that aspect of the insurgency continue? I mean,
do the bombings of Shia mosques continue?
WARE: Well, this will be one of the great insights. I
suspect that the sectarian strife will continue. I
don't think there's much doubt about that. I mean,
Zarqawi was pivotal in inciting that and inflaming
it. He kept pushing it and pushing it. But I suspect
it's now found its own momentum. I mean, there's so
much politics hiding behind the sectarian strife now,
as the Sunni and Shia vie for power, politically and
on the streets, and within the security forces. But
what we will see now is whether the targeting of
mosques, of innocent Shias praying within these
mosques, are targeted themselves. This is something
that's caused great unrest and debate within
al-Qaeda's own organization in Iraq, within the
broader insurgency and within al-Qaeda globally. I
mean, this is one of the lightning rods that Zarqawi
created. So, this will be telling.
COOPER: Michael, we will have more from you and from
Christiane in a moment. Stick around. U.S. military
leaders and analysts are already weighing in on who
may replace Zarqawi as the leader of al-Qaeda in
Iraq. Here’s the Raw Data: the top pick from Pentagon
officials is an Egyptian-born man named Abu al-Masri,
who is to believed to be an expert at building
roadside bombs, the number-one killer of U.S. forces
in Iraq, the IEDs, of course.
Some people are talking about another guy, Sheik
Abdul al-Rahman, the spiritual adviser who was
thought to be killed in today's bombing. But a letter
was signed on an al Qaeda Web site with his name,
condemning the attack. So, is he alive? We don't know
at this point. That -- for some, at least -- cast
doubt on his actual death.
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Length: 7:54
ANDERSON COOPER: Our
special edition of 360, Taking Out a Terrorist, The
Death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi continues. The U.S.
military and the White House celebrating tonight
certainly the most-wanted man in Iraq taken out by a
pair of 500-pound bombs after months of zeroing in on
his whereabouts, weeks of intense tracking we are
told. For some more perspective we turn now to
Michael Ware, "Time Magazine's" Baghdad bureau chief,
and the newest member of the CNN family. We're please
that Michael has joined us as a correspondent. And
standing by -- he is standing by in Brisbane,
Australia. And in Zurich, Switzerland we're joined by
CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen, who knew more
about the insurgency than just about anyone. Michael,
what does it tell us -- I mean, if it's true that
insiders gave up Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to U.S. forces,
what does that tell us about what is going on inside
this insurgency? Why would insurgents give up one of
their own?
MICHAEL WARE: Well, Anderson, this has been going on
for quite some time. Certainly at least since the
middle of 2004 during the insurgents, you know,
relative glory days of holding Fallujah, it's been a
very uncomfortable fit for many within the insurgency
to have Zarqawi in such a leading role and carrying
out such vicious attacks. There's been a lot of
debate about the worth of his methods. There's also
power plays that need to be considered. I mean this
is, to some degree we've seen turf wars. So the fact
that there's friction is absolutely nothing new and
it's the very thing that U.S. military intelligence
has been seeking to capitalize on from the beginning.
There's also been a lot of pressure from al-Qaeda
head office, for want of a better term, in
Waziristan, to see a more Iraqi face. There's been
pressure from the ground for a more Iraqi face and
Iraqi style. We saw in January that Zarqawi
reinvented -- publicly. at least -- the jihad in Iraq
by creating this relatively fake construct, being the
Mujahadeen Shura Council, an umbrella group of which
his organization was said to be one. So the fact that
the betrayal has come from within almost had to
happen as a matter of calculation one day sooner or
later.
COOPER: Peter Bergen, in a new article in the
"Atlantic Online" I was just reading about Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, someone was quoted as saying that he was
a symbol of the insurgency but he was really never
its leader. That only about 10 percent -- he might
have had the most brutal attacks but only about 10
percent of insurgent attacks were really directly
related to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. So how significant
really is his death?
PETER BERGEN, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Well, the 10
percent were actually the most important attacks
because they were the kind of the major suicide
operations that got the United Nations to withdraw,
that sparked the incipient civil war, that got every
international aid organization pretty much to pull
out. So, even though there was a limited number of
attacks and the foreign fighters only account for,
say, 1500 to 2000 at any given moment in Iraq and
there's a much larger Iraqi insurgency, it's the
foreign fighters that have been doing the suicide
operations. Only 10 percent of the suicide operations
are Iraqi. And those operations have had a
disproportionate affect on in terms of what's
actually happening strategically in Iraq.
COOPER: Michael Ware, we're told a number of other
people were taken out as well at the same time, there
were also about more than a dozen raids around
Baghdad in relation to this. They said they got a
treasure trove of information. Is there someone else
waiting in the wings to take over al-Qaeda in Iraq
for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi?
WARE: Well, there's a number of candidates, both
foreign and Iraqi. So this is going to be the real
litmus test for the al-Qaeda in Iraq organization.
The real question is will it be an Iraqi? I mean
there's been so much pressure for that to happen. And
that could have immediate consequence on the use of
al-Qaeda tactics and their targeting methods. It will
also impact on the degree of coordination between
al-Qaeda and the homegrown Iraqi groups. It's much
simpler for Iraqis to be dealing with other Iraqis.
Perhaps even former military comrades. So there is a
number of people. And don't forget, al-Qaeda has
shown an extraordinary ability to replenish and
regenerate each time it's been disrupted. It has to
be said this will be a significant disruption. Let's
see how they come back.
COOPER: Peter Bergen, the relationship between Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama Bin Laden is just a
fascinating one. I mean there are a lot of reports
that said these two guys actually hated each other
and yet they both sort of needed each other, Bin
Laden gave Zarqawi legitimacy, gave him the al-Qaeda
connection. And Zarqawi gave Osama Bin Laden a sense
of relevancy.
BERGEN: Yeah, I mean they probably met around 1999
when Zarqawi went to Afghanistan. He set up a
training camp, hundreds of miles from al-Qaeda's base
in Kandahar in Harat, in Western Afghanistan. And he
really set up a group that was opposed to the
Jordanian government. He didn't have any truck with
anti-American attacks at that time. As the war
against the Taliban unfolded he fled to Iran, he
moved into Iraq, he began trying to attack American
targets. But then it took him at least two years to
finally formally pledge allegiance to Bin Laden,
rename his group al-Qaeda in Iraq which he did in
2004. And then of course since then they have a back
and forth about al-Qaeda leadership not wanting a
Sunni-Shia civil war in Iraq that would spread
regionally. Bin Laden's never criticized the Shia,
he's never criticized the Iranian government --
COOPER: Bin Laden's mother is Shia, isn't Bin Laden's
mother Shia?
BERGEN: She's believed to be an Alawite from Syria,
which I think is one of the sects in Shia. So, it's
just something that the al-Qaeda leadership did not
want. They also didn't want all of these beheadings
of civilians. Zarqawi did seem to stop that. But Bin
Laden, privately, at the moment, I'm sure he's
publicly going to say that Zarqawi's death is a
wonderful martyrdom, but privately he may be hoping
that somebody, whoever takes al-Qaeda in Iraq over is
a little more -- follows the central direction from
the al-Qaeda leadership in Waziristan.
COOPER: Michael, in this article in the "Atlantic
Monthly", Mary Ann Weaver talks to a lot of people
who are suggesting that the U.S. made Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi into a bigger player than he really was,
for a variety of reasons, political and strategic. Do
you think that's true?
WARE: Well, there certainly has been that put about
for a couple of years now. And whilst there may have
been political or military propaganda advantage into
putting a face on the bogeyman facing the Americans
in Iraq, I don't think it can be disputed that,
despite the relatively small size of his forces and
the relatively small number of attacks of the 5-600
odd a month that take place in Iraq, Zarqawi's
influence went far beyond the proportions of his
organization. He was able to take the public momentum
of the insurgency and within the jihad community
globally, he was able to seize the stage. He drew
attention to himself and made a superstar of himself.
COOPER: And the superstar is dead. Michael Ware,
Peter Bergen, thanks for your perspectives. If
Zarqawi was the prince of al-Qaeda in Iraq or the
superstar as Michael Ware says, well then, this man
is probably the king. Osama Bin Laden's still free,
of course, still taunting the world. An update on the
search for him, that is next. And later why some fear
Zarqawi's death may lead to an even bigger army of
suicide bombers and terrorists. That and more when
this special edition of 360 continues.