Zawahiri ticks off Zarqawi for Shi’ite killings

In it, Zawahiri told Zarqawi that the American occupation of Iraq had provided Islamic militants with a historic opportunity to win popular support. “Our planning must strive to … bring the mujahed movement to the masses and not conduct the struggle far from them,” Zawahiri said in the letter, dated July 9.

The letter alluded to difficulties facing Al Qaeda’s leaders, including what Zawahiri calls “the real danger” posed by the Pakistani military in its searches for militants near the Afghan border.

But the official said the letter also appeared to reflect an attempt by Zawahiri “to keep Zarqawi onside”, most notably by warning him against staging additional attacks on Iraqi Shi’ites. Such strikes, warned Zawahiri, amounted to “action that the masses do not understand or approve”.

Zawahiri also compared the fierce war of resistance that Iraqis and foreign fighters have waged in Iraq since March 2003 with the speedy fall of Afghanistan’s Taliban government after the American-led invasion there in 2001.

“We don’t want to repeat the mistake of the Taliban, who restricted participation in governance to students and the people of Kandahar alone,” Zawahiri wrote.

“The result was that the Afghan people disengaged themselves from them. Even devout ones took the stance of the spectator and, when the invasion came, the emirate collapsed in days, because the people were either passive or hostile.” —NYT