Zawahiri: he was like a brother to me, really.

Ayman al-Zawahiri released another tape yesterday, which kind of got lost in the furor over Zarqawi's death. Zawahiri was extremely complimentary towards Zarqawi, lauding him as a champion of the jihad and praising him highly.   Quite an ostentatious show, by Zawahiri's standards. 

Now, the alleged rivalry between Zarqawi and Zawahiri has been a staple of Islamism commentary for a while now (my latest comment on it here).  I've even been hearing a fair amount of whispering that bin Laden or Zawahiri might have been behind Zarqawi's death, that they might have set him up.  Offing Zarqawi would have removed a polarizing figure whose anti-Shi'ism, brutality, and attacks on Muslim innocents (in Iraq, Jordan, and beyond) complicated bin Laden's grand strategy of reaching out to mainstream Muslims.  It would also remove a rival to Zawahiri as an eventual successor to bin Laden.   

I don't buy that theory - I think that local Iraqi developments, such as those suggested by Hazem al-Amin (see previous post), are more likely to be directly related.   But the fact that Zawahiri went so out of his way to lavish praise on Zarqawi on a tape released the day Zarqawi was killed... well, that does look kind of suspicious, doesn't it?   "Who, me? I loved the guy.  He was like a brother to me."   More gist for the conspiracy mill....

Comments

[Craig]

A day or two before Zarqawi was killed, 50 bus/truck/cab drivers were picked up by "policemen" in western baghdad. Some were later released alive, with torture marks. Aunt Najma said a long time ago in one of her blog posts that if you want to know what's rteally going on in Iraq with the insurgency, you just ask cab driver. They are the smugglers of people and products.

Zarqawi got killed shortly thereafter. Sometimes... just sometimes... it's possible that things are exactly what they appear to be, you know?

19 heads found in lettuce boxes in Baquaba last week. Shia students murdered on a bus in Baquba last week, while the Sunni students were allowed to go free. Smugglers rounded up and tortured. Zarqawi dead in Baquba, this week.

You know, there were 5 men in total.Zarqawi and 4 others who died in that bombing. There were 5 men in every video I've seen that is claimed to be Zarqawi. Maybe that's all Zarqawi ever had. One terror cell. At least, at the center of his operation. One terror cell that he ran personally.

[J Thomas]

Wouldn't they have had somebody to run the camera?

[Craig]

One of the two women? Or a web cam, maybe? Or maybe they go low tech and put the camera on a table? I'm going with a web cam, though! How better to get these videos out on the internet?

[Tom Scudder]

Maybe it was the kids who ran the camera.

[Craig]

What a nice thought :O