The Rise Of an Evil Protégé

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When U.S. forces attacked in October 2001, al-Zarqawi rallied with al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders in Kandahar, the last bastion of the militants. No match for the laser-guided bombs of U.S. warplanes, al-Zarqawi and a select band of fighters fled westward into Iran and eventually northern Iraq, where he had ties with the radical Islamic group Ansar al-Islam. U.S. intelligence sources say they believe that a few months after the U.S.'s March 2003 invasion of Iraq, bin Laden dispatched a trusted aide, Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, to see about organizing an al-Qaeda cell there. A former major in Saddam Hussein's army, al-Iraqi seemed the perfect choice. But al-Zarqawi was reportedly enraged that bin Laden had sent someone else as terrorist ringmaster and apparently refused to cooperate with al-Iraqi. U.S. intelligence officials can't confirm that account, but they do say bin Laden's choice later returned to Afghanistan. Today, say the officials, al-Iraqi acts as al-Qaeda's most lethal commander in Afghanistan, employing tactics and bombmaking skills honed in Iraq and shared over the Internet and by returning fighters.

By the time of the al-Iraqi mission, the organizational structure of al-Qaeda had been revamped. In the wake of 9/11--according to a classified report detailing elements of the U.S. interrogation of former bin Laden aide Abu Faraj al-Libbi, the contents of which were confirmed to TIME by a senior French counterterrorism official--al-Qaeda leaders delegated day-to-day authority over the group's global network to a "management committee" of five operatives, including al-Libbi. From that point on, only attacks on the U.S. homeland required approval from bin Laden and al-Zawahiri. The high command's decision to devolve authority empowered operatives like al-Zarqawi. In February 2004, U.S. authorities in Baghdad intercepted a letter believed to be from al-Zarqawi to al-Zawahiri in which the Jordanian laid out his plan to provoke Iraq's Shi'ites into a civil war with the Sunnis, one that would draw in Salafi Sunni extremists from across the Islamic world. Arab intelligence sources tell TIME that al-Zarqawi's incendiary aim may have had bin Laden's backing. The sources say that in a letter found in the possession of Hassan Ghul, a Pakistani operative arrested in Iraq in January 2004, bin Laden urged al-Zarqawi to "use the Shi'ite card"--to launch attacks on Shi'ite targets in Iraq--as a way of pressuring Iran to free a number of top al-Qaeda leaders, including bin Laden's son Saad, who fled to Iran from Afghanistan in December 2001.