Spiritual Leader Led Forces To ‘Safe House’
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON – Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may not even have heard the F-16 aircraft coming to kill him.
If he realized he was about to die, the moment probably came when the blast from the first of two laser-guided 500-pound bombs destroyed the “safe house” amid dusty date palm plantations west of Baquba.
For American special forces who led the operation, the only worry would have been to make sure that this time Iraq’s most notorious terrorist did not escape.
The operation began six weeks ago with intelligence from Iraqis passed to American forces. They then began to track a religious figure called Sheik Abdul Rahman, described as Zarqawi’s spiritual leader. He unwittingly led them to their quarry.
But once it was “100%” confirmed that the cleric was with Zarqawi and his top aides, a dilemma of how to attack the building faced the commanders of Task Force 145, the ultra-secret Anglo-American special forces unit hunting Zarqawi.
Troopers would have been close but probably would have kept their distance and watched a video feed of the building beamed to their laptop computers.
The images could have come from cameras 10,000 feet above the target aboard pilotless Predator aircraft, operated by the Anglo-American 15 Reconnaissance Squadron.
Coalition commanders had several options. They could have launched a ground assault, as they had done with Saddam Hussein’s sons Qusay and Uday in July 2003.
But in the end, the risk of Zarqawi escaping was judged too high. Two Air Force F-16s were called in to drop house-leveling 500-pound bombs.
It was the end to a two-year manhunt involving a huge allied effort. It was assigned more special forces’ assets than the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden, hiding in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
So large had the special forces operation become that one coalition officer grumbled to Army Times that it “just sucks up all the assets in Iraq.”
Task Force 145 is composed of three American groups with a mix of Delta Force troopers, Navy SEALS, and Rangers. They are supplemented by Task Force Black, an all-British unit composed of an SAS squadron and paratroopers.
