If you haven’t heard by now, President Bush issued a statement today that a US air strike north of Baghdad is confirmed to have killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and several of his associates:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the coalition’s most wanted man in Iraq, was killed in an airstrike near Baquba, jubilant U.S. and Iraqi authorities announced Thursday.

Al-Zarqawi’s death gives Iraq a chance to “turn the tide” in the fight against the nation’s insurgency, President Bush said at the White House.

“The ideology of terror has lost one of its most visible and aggressive leaders,” Bush said. “Zarqawi’s death is a severe blow to al Qaeda.”

“Special Operations forces, acting on tips and intelligence from Iraqis, confirmed Zarqawi’s location and delivered justice to the most wanted terrorist in Iraq,” Bush said.

Obviously good news for an administration desperate for something positive to report from Iraq. The question remains, however: Has anything really changed? My initial reaction is that, as with the capture of Saddam Hussein, the various elections and the formation of the new “unity” government in Iraq, not really.

Zarquawi, by all accounts, was hardly the leader behind all factions involved in the insurgency. His group of foreign jihadists was principally involved in various bombing attacks against civilian and US military targets as well as the beheadings of a number of hostages claimed to have been kidnapped by his group. A list of the attacks his group has claimed can be found in this Associated Press report posted online by the Globe and Mail. A cursory glance at the list indicates that while quite ruthless, the number and extent of his actions are dwarfed by the total number of insurgent attacks in Iraq over the years.

(cont.)
The Bush administration has consistently played up Zarqawi’s role in the Iraqi insurgency, as can be seen in this summary of previous reports set forth in today’s online edition of the Washington Post. Despite official US claims that he was a preeminent figure in the insurgency, many skeptics have long viewed his role as modest, at best. See, for example, this April 2004 report from the Daily Telegraph which described al-Zarqawis role as follows:

Several sources said the importance of Zarqawi, blamed for many of the most spectacular acts of violence in Iraq, has been exaggerated by flawed intelligence and the Bush administration’s desire to find “a villain” for the post-invasion mayhem.

US military intelligence agents in Iraq have revealed a series of botched and often tawdry dealings with unreliable sources who, in the words of one source, “told us what we wanted to hear”. […]

“Back home this stuff was gratefully received and formed the basis of policy decisions. We needed a villain, someone identifiable for the public to latch on to, and we got one.” […]

Pentagon estimates have put the number of foreign fighters in the region of 5,000. However, one agent said: “The overwhelming sense from the information we are now getting is that the number of foreign fighters does not exceed several hundred and is perhaps as low as 200. From the information we have gathered we have to conclude that Zarqawi is more myth than man. He isn’t in the calibre of what many politicians want to believe he is.

Yet even “myths” have their value. There is no doubt this is a propaganda victory for the White House, and I suspect this will increase Bush’s approval rating in the next round of polls. But, in the long run, I fear that this high profile assassination of al-Zarqawi, the Iraqi bogeyman created in large part by the Bush administration’s own efforts to define him as the symbolic leader of what is, in reality, a fractured and multipolar insurgency, will mean very little to future stability in Iraq.

It’s nice they were able to obtain information from some Iraqi sources (and who those sources were and what motivations they had one can only wonder about at this time) regarding Zarqawi’s whereabouts, and that he has been “removed from the game” as it were. Tangible benefits to our troops on the ground, and to the lives of ordinary Iraqis, however are likely to be modest, at best. Shia militias and death squads still roam freely, and every day the bodies of murdered Sunnis are reported. The Iraqi government still exists primarily within the bubble of the American protected “Green Zone” in Baghdad, and has yet to show it can enforce its own edicts throughout the rest of the country in the absence of US military assistance.

Last week, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki imposed a state of emergency [in Basra] — but to little effect. Violence since then has included a weekend car bombing that left 28 dead and more than 60 injured.

Zarqawi’s death will have more value for President Bush and his supporters, than it will for anyone else. That’s my view of this “event” as of this morning anyway. A major propaganda victory on the home front, but, as with Saddam’s capture, not much else. But who knows, this time I might be proven wrong. I’d certainly like to be.