Al Qaeda crosses the Ts in 'terrorist'

Iraq is the best example. The rise of Al Qaeda in Iraq under Abu Musab Zarqawi attracted new fighters and funds. But the fiery Jordanian had kept his distance even when he ran his own Afghan training camp. As he gained the spotlight in Iraq, he feuded with the core leadership in Pakistan, who worried that his onslaught of bombings and beheadings would backfire.

Their efforts to rein in Zarqawi are documented by a letter from a Libyan chief known only as Atiyah. U.S. troops found the 13-page letter in the safe house where an airstrike killed Zarqawi in 2006. Atiyah sounds like a sage veteran alternately chiding and praising a rookie hothead as he urges Zarqawi to mend fences with Bin Laden and refrain from indiscriminate violence.

"My dear brother, today you are a man of the public," Atiyah wrote from Pakistan on July 9, 2005. "Your actions, decisions and behavior result in gains and losses that are not yours alone, but rather they are for Islam."

As predicted, Zarqawi's rampage had weakened Al Qaeda in Iraq by the time he died. In the aftermath, the leadership in Pakistan lost a chief who was captured en route to Iraq on a mission to take charge there.

Atiyah's advice describing the fall of Algerian Islamic movements a decade ago remains relevant, experts said.

"They destroyed themselves with their own hands," Atiyah wrote to Zarqawi. "Their enemy did not defeat them, but rather they defeated themselves."

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rotella@latimes.com