Daily Socotra

13 June 2006

Knights of God

The Council of Holy Warriors, a shell organization fronted by Sunni Iraqis to cover foreign participation in the Iraqi insurgency, has announced on its website the selection of the new CEO of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, RIP, has been replaced by a fellow named Abu Hamza al-Muhajir.

No picture or biography accompanied the announcement, but I am sure there will be one soon. The Times reports that al-Muhajir is a cipher, previously unknown, so it is likely a nom de guerre . The choice of words suggests he is another foreigner, like Zarqawi.

It is not surprising that the search for a new CEO had to go beyond the immediate organization.

It is often useful to look outside the compnay when changing management styles. My own company is doing the same thing now.

There were several competitors interested in changing the management team of Al Qaida in Mesopotamia. One of them was Al Qaida itself, a brick-and-mortar terror organization that was dismayed to find itself upstaged by the upstart Jordanian Zarkawi and his breathtaking and indiscriminate brutality.

It also appeared that he was interested in exporting his own franchise terrorists to the west, going global, just like the old parent organization.

French, Italian and German security services have reported finding evidence that the organizational fingerprints of the Jordanian were found on cells they have rounded up in their countries lately.

So there was no love lost with the parent corporation. Then there were the Americans. They have had a special task force looking for Zarkawi for nearly two years. The name of the force is irrelevant; the standard operating procedure is to change it periodically, and you can often tell when someone knew something by what they call it.

For purposes of this morning's tale, let us call them TF-145. They were present around the safe house prior to the air strike. The astonishing precision of the laser-guided bombs permits them to get close, while minimizing the possibility of collateral damage. Locals said the Task Force arrived by helicopter, and conducted a fast-rope insertion.

When the 39-year-old terror mastermind passed away, a result of concussion and blunt trauma, he was still trying to transform his organization from one focused on the Iraqi insurgency into a global operation capable of striking targets in the West.

He had materials with him that documented his business case, and that is what the Task Force intended to scoop up.

The Jordanians may have been there, too. There was something personal between the Hashemite Kingdom and Zarkawi. King Abdullah II stood up a new intelligence unit called the "Knights of God," with two missions. One was to hunt down the renegade jihadist, and another was to challenge the validity of his claim to be conducting an operation consistent with the One Faith. Jordanian officials want their share of the credit, since they say they picked up Zarqawi's trail two months ago, and validate the Task Force's information.

If I was Mr. Muhajir, taking over a new organization, I would be concerned. The Task Force , the Kinghts, the Iraqis and the FBI are having a field day. So are the allied Services of Britain, Germany, France and Italy.

Once they were sure they had killed Zarkawi, and the risk of tipping him off was past, the dam burst on utilizing every lead they had. Over a hundred and fifty insurgents have been rolled up by the Task Force over the past year, and the pent-up mass of intelligence was released for action.

Even as the rubble was being screened for additional leads, seventeen targets in the vicinity of Baghdad were hit. Twenty-five suspects were immediately detained, along with their papers, pocket trash, cell phones and computers. The raids are continuing now, accelerating as additional information is exploited.

It is feeding on what it finds, rolling up links and networks just like the French did in the Battle for Algiers. As of this evening, more than two hundred have been detained, and eleven operations were conducted based on information found with Zarqawi.

The cells out in the West should be nervous about what information was on the address books of the cell phones, and what is on the hard drives of the computers. They should be concerned that the Knights of God are on the case, and are providing information to the Task Force.

There will be an inclination for some of them to act now, since the helicopters will be coming in the night, based on the information they have acquired.

That by no means suggests that the insurgency is over, or that the bombings will not continue. Zarqawi was an out-of-towner, after all, and not a universally popular one at that.

But that also means that the new CEO is going to be scrambling for market-share, and the enterprise he is taking over is going to have some major personnel problems. He may also have to cut back on going global with his enterprise, which is a good thing from my perspective.

I think he will also have to be looking over his shoulder, and listening for the sound of helicopters. That can be such a distraction to doing business.