Tape Condemns Sunni Muslim Clerics

November 25, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 24 - An audiotape was posted on the Internet on Wednesday in which a man identified as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist leader, condemned the Sunni Muslim clerical establishment in Iraq for abandoning the Iraqi resistance movement in the face of the American military offensive in Falluja and other Sunni cities.

"You have let us down in the darkest circumstances and handed us over to the enemy," the tape said. "You have stopped supporting the mujahedeen. Hundreds of thousands of the nation's sons are being slaughtered at the hands of the infidels because of your silence."

Although the tape's authenticity could not be confirmed, it was posted on an Islamic Web site known as al-Qala'a, which has been a mailbox for Islamic militant groups. American intelligence officials have named Mr. Zarqawi as the man behind dozens of suicide bombings, kidnappings and beheadings. He carries a $25 million bounty on his head .

For months before the Falluja offensive began three weeks ago, American officials said that Mr. Zarqawi was based in the city. He is believed to have fled before the American attack, leaving houses where some of the killings he is alleged to have ordered took place. American officials have said that some of the bombings and ambushes in a new wave of attacks in other Sunni Muslim strongholds, including Mosul, bear Mr. Zarqawi's hallmark.

Efforts to assess the new military and political landscape in the wake of the Falluja offensive have been fraught by contradictory strands of evidence, with the tape, suggesting that the insurgents suffered a major setback in Falluja, only the latest.

American hopes that Falluja would be a turning point in the war were dimmed, at least initially, by the concurrent upsurge in rebel attacks elsewhere in the Sunni heartland, especially in Mosul. The fear was that the American forces might have crushed one center of resistance only to ignite others.

But the week since the major fighting in Falluja has also been one of a sudden quickening in political activity before the nationwide election set for Jan. 30, in which voters are to choose a 275-member assembly that will pick a provisional government and draft a permanent constitution. Many Iraqis fear that the election could set off new levels of rebel violence, but the political momentum is building. The leader of the Iraqi Electoral Commission, Abdel Hussein al-Hindawi, said Wednesday that more than 200 Iraqi political parties had registered for the polls, a week before the closing date.

Maneuvering is under way to form consolidated lists of candidates who can draw a major share of the votes.

Mr. Zarqawi's tape, if authentic, would offer support to the assertions of American commanders that the Sunni insurgency suffered a strategic defeat in Falluja.

The commanders have said that the offensive killed at least 1,200 insurgents in Falluja, and that more than 1,000 were taken prisoner. Lt. Col. Dan Wilson of the Marines told reporters on Wednesday that the huge arms caches found in the city had far exceeded expectations.

Western reporters embedded with American forces and Iraqi reporters operating independently have been skeptical about some military reports, noting that independent body counts have not come close to the military's figure. The suspicion remains that many insurgents fled, ready to strike at the Americans from bases in centers like Mosul.

But the angry tone of the tape was hard to reconcile with the notion that the rebels had left Falluja with anything but a defeat. Addressing the Muslim "ulema," an Arabic term for Islamic clerics and scholars, the tape drew a grim picture of the consequences of what it described as their failure to step in to help the Falluja rebels against the Americans.

"You made peace with the tyranny and handed over the country and its people to the Jews and Crusaders, by resorting to silence on their crimes and preventing our youth from heading to the battlefields in order to defend our religion," it said.

American troops have responded to a surge in rebel strikes with a crackdown in Mosul. The extent of the rebel challenge was underscored by two assassination attempts there on Wednesday. Khosru Kuran, the deputy governor of Nineveh Province and a Kurd, said that rebels fired on his convoy, killing one of his bodyguards. An Agence France-Presse report said the attack on Maj. Gen. Rashid Flaih was mounted by gunmen in a side street. American troops returned fire, killing all four attackers.

This week, the American forces massed 5,000 troops for a fresh offensive in the so-called triangle of death region stretching south of Baghdad, aiming to drive north to Sunni rebel strongholds closer to Baghdad. American officers, aware of the anger that the attack on Falluja stirred in Sunnis, have been careful to distinguish this new campaign south of the capital from the Falluja offensive.

Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, the American officer in charge of training Iraqi troops, told reporters that while most of the country's 18 provinces were calm, "there's still a good deal of fighting to be done" in the six Sunni provinces where insurgents were most active.

State Department Worker Killed

The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 24 - A United States civilian official was killed today when the vehicle in which he was traveling came under fire outside the Green Zone government compound, a Reuters report quoting an unnamed American official in Washington said. The official was said to have identified the victim as Jim Mollen, a State Department employee who was working as an adviser to the Iraqi education ministry.

No immediate statement on the incident was issued by the American military command. It was not clear whether the attack was the same as one reported earlier in the day by the Iraqi police, who told Reuters in Baghdad that a suicide bomber had detonated his car near an American convoy traveling on an expressway overpass in western Baghdad shortly before noon, on the 10-mile route between the Green Zone and Baghdad's international airport that Iraqi insurgents have turned into one of the deadliest stretches of road in Iraq.

Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from Mosul for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company