Portrait of a Terrorist

This month's of edition of Foreign Policy presents a portrait of the terrorist leader Musab al-Zarqawi, a rough but interesting biography of the man, and his rise to the "Emir of Al Qaeda in Iraq." But what I find most interesting is an explanation of the motivation behind his early attacks in Iraq:

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.

There's no doubt at this point that Zarqawi regards the Shiites as his enemy, nearly to the degree of the Americans. But while the Iraq Shiites and Sunnis were not so bitterly divided at the beginning of the occupation, it's interesting to me that Sadr inspired some admiration among the Sunnis, at least to the degree that Zarqawi would feel the need to attack the Shiites to quickly destroy any hope of unity between them. Needless to say, Zarqawi has earned his infamy in the process.