Meet The New Jihad

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Despite al-Zarqawi's efforts to attract Iraqi insurgent groups into his network, his inner circle of lieutenants and bodyguards is said to consist entirely of foreign fighters. No one can pinpoint how many are operating in Iraq, partly because they remain shadowy even to those who work with them. "The foreigners trust no one, not even their own clothes," says an Iraqi resistance fighter. He adds that al-Zarqawi has become an inspirational figure, like Osama bin Laden, for militants who espouse his methods and religious fervor. "Most are not members of his group in a formal sense," says the insurgent. "But everyone, especially the foreigners in Iraq who share his ideals of jihad, considers himself part of Attawhid wal Jihad."

THE LIEUTENANTS

Among those who have thrown their support behind the jihad is insurgent leader Abu Ali. A ballistic-missile specialist in Saddam's Fedayeen militia, he fought U.S. troops during the invasion and has served as a resistance commander ever since, organizing rocket attacks on the green zone, the headquarters of the U.S. administration in Baghdad. When interviewed by TIME last fall, he spoke of a vain hope that Saddam would return and re-establish a Baathist regime. But at a recent meeting near a rural mosque, he said he is fighting to rid all Muslim lands of infidels and to set up an Islamic state in Iraq. "The jihad in Iraq is more potent than it was in Afghanistan in the 1980s because the insurgents today have better weapons and are developing new ones," he says.

The insurgency's shift toward a religious outlook is in part driven by financial necessity: the capture of Saddam and his henchmen drained the insurgency of its former sources of funding. That forced Iraqi groups to turn to foreign financiers in places like the gulf, and they have demanded that the insurgents adopt a more radical religious identity. "After we rolled up Saddam, we hit them pretty hard, and this is what they turned to," says a senior U.S. military official. "It would appear there are not only some marriages of convenience but also some groups that have crossed over to the jihadi side."

One such group, whose leaders met with TIME, is the Kata'ib al-Jihad al-Islamiyah, or Battalions of Islamic Holy War. Founded by frontline officers from Saddam's intelligence services and the Republican Guard who once shunned terrorist attacks that killed innocent Iraqis, the group represents a significant Iraqi wing of al-Zarqawi's network. The group's leaders say they now accept mass-casualty attacks as legitimate; they claim that innocents killed in such strikes go straight to paradise. A fund-raising video made by the group and given to TIME shows its members citing exhortations by bin Laden and referring to fundamentalist interpretations of the Koran. Kata'ib has incorporated foreign fighters into its cells. One member says the group has formed an entirely foreign unit, dubbed the Green Brigade. The group's commanders say their fighters joined last week's attacks against U.S. Marines in Fallujah and helped lead the uprising in Baqubah.