Yonatan Zunger’s Blog

The Washington Post on the Iraqi reaction, interviews in a Shiite neighborhood.

Al-Jazeera reporting the event and interviewing his family.

Ha’aretz reports on the Hamas response and his likely successor.

Debka talks more about succession.

Note the conflicting reports: Ha’aretz suggests Abd al-Rahman al-Iraqi and notes he was there when al-Zarqawi died, but Debka says al Qaeda has already named Abdallah bin Rashid al-Baghdadi. Meanwhile the most senior al-Qaeda figure in Iraqi is Wariya Arbili, and al-Qaeda also named Abdulhadi al-Iraqi as head of worldwide ops. Most of these people are largely unknown; note how many Iraqis are on this list, though, suggesting just how central Iraq has become to al-Qaeda in the post-Saddam era.

It’s possible that all of these reports are true: if so, there’s the opening for a really “interesting” succession battle. But that fight may be brief if one of the groups acts fast.

On a separate note, the Swiss government confirmed the breakup of a plot to shoot down an El Al airliner. This, the London cell, and the Toronto operation… there have been a lot of major terror operations broken up in the recent past.

Also the director of the Shin Bet (Israel’s rough equivalent of the FBI) warned the parliament that al Qaeda is setting up operations in Jerusalem and Nablus, which is probably a sign that things are about to heat up a lot.

Don’t forget the recent riots in Egypt, and the fact that Mubarak and Olmert recently had a summit which went fairly well; the conditions are ripe for a possible uprising in Egypt. If Mubarak can’t put it down, this likely means an Islamist regime there, which could lead to a domino effect heading east quickly – through Saudi, Kuwait and Jordan, and charging straight into Iraq, with Iran sitting on the opposite border.

Trouble ahead, but thwartable trouble. The best way to avoid it may be if Mubarak can be as ruthlessly efficient as Hafez al-Assad was at putting down popular insurrection.

(Yes, I just suggested thwarting a nascent popular uprising against a dictatorship as being a good thing. There are worse things than dictatorships, and these guys would be just the people to demonstrate that.)

I really do try not to rejoice at other people’s deaths, but sometimes it’s tricky.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of al Qaeda in Iraq, killed by US airstrike.

One of the more bloody-minded and vicious thugs of our recent past, the mastermind and chief encourager of hundreds of suicide bombings, aimed not only at Americans but at Iraqis, so that there would never be a sense of peace. He has the blood of thousands of civilians on his hands, and was actively continuing and accelerating his program of murder. He preached a variety of hard-line Islamism that made even the Taliban seem fairly moderate. In fact, he was far enough “out there” that his successors are likely to be more moderate – and less effective. Not something that happens so often in the Middle East.

Good job and congrats to all those involved on a difficult – and important – operation. This move likely just saved the lives of a few thousand civilians, and increased the chances of bringing this damned war to an end soon.