Intelligence says group too small to do what he claims or is blamed for

Al-Zarqawi may not be behind Iraq attacks. According to an Arab intelligence assessment, al-Zarqawi is not capable of carrying out the level of attacks in Iraq that he has claimed and that American officials have blamed on him.

Al-Zarqawi’s own militant group has fewer than 100 members inside Iraq, although al-Zarqawi has close ties to a Kurdish Islamist group with at least several hundred members, according to two reports produced by an Arab intelligence service. The Kurdish group, Ansar al-Islam, has provided dozens of recruits for suicide bombings since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the reports say. And while U.S. forces relentlessly pound the insurgent strongholds of Fallujah and Samarra, claiming to hit al-Zarqawi safe houses, the elusive militant could be hiding in the northern city of Mosul.

The Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi, 37, has used the media effectively to inflate his role in the Iraqi insurgency. In recent months, he and his supporters have claimed responsibility for scores of suicide bombings, attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces, kidnappings and beheadings of foreigners, and coordinated uprisings in several Iraqi cities.

The reports say al-Zarqawi is likely responsible for the beheadings of American contractor Nicholas Berg and several other foreigners. But the sheer level of other attacks that he has claimed is not consistent with the number of supporters he has inside Iraq and his ability to move around the country, according to the analysis. The reports say former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime are responsible — either directly or by paying others to carry them out — for many of the attacks, especially sophisticated roadside bombings and ambushes of U.S. troops.

The assessment contradicts many of the Bush administration’s statements about al-Zarqawi and his terrorist network. Before invading Iraq in March 2003, the administration argued that al-Zarqawi was a top lieutenant of Osama bin Laden. U.S. officials said al-Zarqawi had taken refuge in Baghdad and was a major link between Saddam’s regime and bin Laden’s al-Qaida network. But that assertion has never been proven, and there are doubts about al-Zarqawi’s relationships with both bin Laden and Saddam’s government, as some Bush administration officials have acknowledged in recent months. In July, U.S. officials raised the reward for information leading to al-Zarqawi’s arrest or killing to $25 million — equal to the bounty on bin Laden’s head.

A senior Arab intelligence official shared the contents of the report with Newsday last week on the condition neither he nor his country would be identified. The intelligence service has a track record of infiltrating militant groups, and it kept a close watch on Saddam’s regime for decades.

U.S. officials have erred in focusing so much attention since February on al-Zarqawi as the main force behind the insurgency, according to the reports, which were produced for the Arab country’s political leadership. The analysis has not been shared with U.S. officials.

"The Americans are inclined to focus on one individual as the mastermind of all the troubles," says one of the reports. "In reality, the situation in Iraq is more complex. There are many small groups that sometimes work together, but at other times they have different agendas … There are former Saddam loyalists, home-grown Islamic extremists, foreign extremists and Kurdish elements."

Among the other findings in the intelligence reports:

Mosul has become a haven for Islamic militants, and especially for members of Ansar al-Islam. The city is a center for training and dispatching suicide bombers to other parts of Iraq, and a coordination hub between ex-regime loyalists and Islamic militants. Ansar moved many of its operations to Mosul after it was driven out of a remote, mountainous part of northern Iraq by U.S. bombardment during the war. The Baathist regime had strong support in Mosul, and Saddam’s two sons were killed in a gun battle with U.S. troops after taking refuge there.

Al-Zarqawi has spent considerable time in Mosul, and he might be hiding there rather than in Fallujah, where U.S. forces have launched numerous air strikes since June on what they describe as al-Zarqawi safe houses. Al-Zarqawi is drawn to Mosul because of the concentration of Ansar members there, and because the city of 2 million people is easier to hide in than Fallujah.

Al-Zarqawi’s ties to al-Qaida are unclear, and he is more likely an independent operator than a lieutenant of bin Laden’s. (That has been the view of Arab and European intelligence officials for several years.) Al-Zarqawi is also likely to see his own group, Tawhid and Jihad (Arabic for "Unity and Holy War"), as being in competition for recruits with al-Qaida.

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Foreign militants need strong Iraqi allies to operate inside the tribal, tightly knit communities of Anbar province, which includes the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. There have been growing tensions in recent months between some foreign militants and their Iraqi hosts. "The U.S. military has not been able to exploit those tensions because it does not understand the tribal relationships in Iraqi society," says one of the reports.

Al-Zarqawi and his supporters have learned to use the media better than many other segments of the Iraqi insurgency. By sending out a steady stream of audio and videotapes claiming responsibility for suicide bombings, mortar attacks and beheadings, al-Zarqawi appears to have a larger network of supporters than he really does. But one report notes, "There are indications that the public attention is helping al-Zarqawi win more recruits."

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The Arab intelligence official said the reports are not intended to minimize the danger posed by al-Zarqawi and other foreign militants operating in Iraq. "This man, al-Zarqawi, is a very brutal and dangerous terrorist," the official said. "But we do not believe that he is the architect of everything in Iraq. There are many other players on the ground."

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The assessments are based on informants who send reports back from Iraq, the intelligence service’s own monitoring of developments inside the country and interrogations of so-called "Arab volunteers" who had entered Iraq ahead of the U.S. invasion to fight alongside Saddam’s regime.

After returning to their homelands, many of those volunteers are being watched by domestic security services because of their Islamist sympathies.

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The reports underscore the U.S. need for Arab intelligence cooperation. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the security services of several U.S. allies in the Arab world — most notably Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia — have increased their cooperation with U.S. agencies. Even non-American allies, especially Syria, stepped up their information-sharing with the United States, partly for fear of being targeted in the Bush administration’s "war on terrorism."

Al-Zarqawi first came to prominence in a February 2003 speech by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the U.N. Security Council. Powell claimed that al-Zarqawi had arrived in Baghdad in May 2002 to have a leg amputated and establish a base of operations there, and described him as "an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants."

Since Powell’s speech, some U.S. officials backed away from the story of al-Zarqawi’s Baghdad hospital visit, saying the militant still has both his legs.

By mid-June of this year, the administration also shifted its view of al-Zarqawi’s relationship to al-Qaida. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld conceded that al-Zarqawi might be more of a rival than an associate of bin Laden’s. Al-Zarqawi "may very well not have sworn allegiance" to bin Laden, Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing. "Maybe he disagrees with him on something, maybe because he wants to be ‘The Man’ himself and maybe for a reason that’s not known to me."

Rumsfeld added, "someone could legitimately say he’s not al-Qaida."

Despite Rumsfeld’s comments, the administration has not backed away from describing al-Zarqawi as a main force behind the Iraqi insurgency. To some analysts, the U.S. focus on al-Zarqawi is part of a political strategy to portray the insurgency as something that is not homegrown and instead driven by Islamic militants and foreigners.

"A year ago, hardly anyone had heard of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Today, he is a superman who is responsible for bringing chaos to Iraq," said Diaa Rashwan, a leading expert on Islamic militants at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, Egypt. "The Americans overestimated him for political reasons. It is easier to put all the blame on one man than to deal with an insurgency that includes Iraqi nationalists, former Baathists and Islamists."

Rashwan noted that al-Zarqawi does not have a track record of religious declarations and other ideological statements that would help him attract followers and rise within the world of militant Islam. By contrast, bin Laden has been issuing fatwas, or religious decrees, attacking the United States and Arab regimes since the mid-1990s.

"People who gravitate toward militant movements are attracted to the ideology, and al-Zarqawi has very little to offer," Rashwan said. "He does not have a jihadist manifesto."