12 October 2005Douglas Jehl
A senior American intelligence official said Tuesday that a document obtained this summer by American forces in Iraq had provided the United States with "a comprehensive view of Al Qaeda strategy in Iraq and beyond" and a revealing glimpse into "the intentions of the enemy."
A complete version of the 6,000-word document, a letter in Arabic from Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 leader in Al Qaeda, to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the group's top agent in Iraq, was made available Tuesday for the first time.
In it, Mr. Zawahiri told Mr. Zarqawi that the American occupation of Iraq had provided Islamic militants with a historic opportunity to win popular support.
"Our planning must strive to involve the Muslim masses in the battle, and to bring the mujahed movement to the masses and not conduct the struggle far from them," Mr. Zawahiri said in the letter, dated July 9.
Officials at the Defense Department and other government agencies first disclosed the existence of the letter last week, but at the time agreed to release only three sentences. In releasing the full text on Tuesday, in Arabic and English, the office of John D. Negroponte, the new director of national intelligence, took the extraordinary step of posting it on his office's Web site, www.dni.gov.
The letter, written in calm, sophisticated language, included injunctions to Mr. Zarqawi to keep in mind the political as well as the military aims of the anti-American insurgency in Iraq, where Mr. Zarqawi leads the group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. The senior American intelligence official said a comprehensive review had left no doubt that it was sent by Mr. Zawahiri, an Egyptian physician who has served as Al Qaeda's principal strategist.
The letter alluded to difficulties facing Al Qaeda's leaders, including what Mr. Zawahiri calls "the real danger" posed by the Pakistani military in its searches for militants in northwestern Pakistan, near the Afghan border, where Mr. Zawahiri and Al Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden, are believed to be hiding.
But the official said the letter also appeared to reflect an attempt by Mr. Zawahiri "to keep Mr. Zarqawi onside," most notably by warning him against staging additional attacks on Iraqi Shiites.
Mr. Zarqawi warned in a letter to Mr. bin Laden in January 2004 that he believed such a strategy was beneficial to his cause. But Mr. Zawahiri cast his letter as a reply, pointedly warning Mr. Zarqawi that such strikes amounted to "action that the masses do not understand or approve."
In the letter, Mr. Zawahiri 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 the students and the people of Kandahar alone," Mr. 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."
"Therefore," Mr. Zawahiri wrote, "I stress again to you and to all your brothers the need to direct the political action equally with the military action, by the alliance, cooperation and gathering of all leaders of opinion and influence in the Iraqi arena."
The American intelligence official would not say exactly when or how the document had been obtained, or whether it was believed to have been received by Mr. Zarqawi.
In the letter, Mr. Zawahiri wrote that Mr. Zarqawi might "ask an important question: What drives me to broach these matters while we are in the din of war and the challenges of killing and combat?"
Mr. Zawahiri wrote, "The aftermath of the collapse of American power in Vietnam - and how they ran and left their agents - is noteworthy. Because of that, we must be ready starting now, before events overtake us, and before we are surprised by the conspiracies of the Americans and the United Nations, and their plans to fill the void behind them."
