http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1006-02.htmPublished on Wednesday, October 6, 2004 by Knight-Ridder
Sympathy for al-Zarqawi Grows Among Iraqis Amid US Airstrikes
by Hannah Allam
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Once reviled as the man who brought beheadings to Iraq, Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is gaining support among Iraqis who are outraged over the trail of razed neighborhoods and dead civilians left by the U.S. military's anti-insurgent offensives this month.
The trademark black banner of al-Zarqawi's Monotheism and Jihad group typically hangs in the background of grainy videos that show foreign hostages in Iraq meeting grisly deaths at the hands of terrorists.
These days, the ominous flag also pops up in a Baghdad neighborhood known for daily shootouts between Islamic militants and American forces. When insurgents burned a U.S. armored vehicle there recently, locals stuffed the black banner in the vehicle's smoldering gun barrel. In an anti-American demonstration not long ago in the northwest city of Samarra, which is now the object of a joint U.S.-Iraqi military offensive, demonstrators carried the al-Zarqawi group's flag in broad daylight through public streets for the first time.
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"The banners are a reaction to what the Americans did and what they are still doing in Fallujah and Samarra, with bombings and killings," said Sheik Hassan al Niemi of the Muslim Scholars Association, a conservative Sunni Muslim group that opposes the American presence in Iraq. "Why not have foreign fighters here? When the Americans came, they didn't come alone. They brought their allies. Why is it a crime against us if other Arabs stand with Iraqis? They're our brothers."