Zarqawi’s demotion

Remember the letter in which Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s sidekick, chided chief insurgent in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for killing too many civilians? Apparently, that was only a warning: word is that Zarqawi was stripped from his political duties two weeks ago, apparently due to the dispute over civilian killings. The news can be interpreted as a positive signal. In her recent profile of Zarqawi in FP, Loretta Napoleoni underlined how:

Zarqawi was eager to drive a wedge between the Sunnis and the Shiites. Otherwise, he feared that the Iraqi insurgency might develop into a national resistance, with both sects finding common cause. These fears were confirmed in the spring of 2004, when al Sadr’s revolt attracted admiration among Sunni insurgents. Pictures of the preacher were plastered on the walls of neighborhoods where Sunnis lived. In his correspondence with bin Laden, Zarqawi relentlessly stressed the need to prevent Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis from uniting around a genuine nationalism. If this were to happen, he concluded, the jihadists would be cut out because they were foreigners and the insurgency would become a national undertaking.

Zarqawi’s demotion, if confirmed, could indicate that al-Qaeda is farther from its goal of dividing Sunnis and Shiites than we might think.