EDITORIAL — The slaughtering sheik

He was Osama bin Laden’s chief lieutenant in Iraq, proudly taking responsibility for kidnappings, gruesome beheadings and bombings that claimed hundreds of innocent lives. Last Wednesday night the end finally came for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Two 500-pound precision-guided bombs dropped by US troops on a remote area northeast of Baghdad ended the reign of terror of the man called by his followers "the slaughtering sheik."

Rejoicing over his death was tempered by the acknowledgment that the terrorist threat remains and Bin Laden has not been neutralized. Still, al-Zarqawi’s death brought down crude oil prices, if only briefly, as the prospect of stability appeared brighter in Iraq, which sits on the world’s second largest oil reserves. And while al-Qaeda has soldiers around the globe, the loss of al-Zarqawi is undoubtedly a major blow to his terror network. Even among those for whom violence is a way of life, Al-Zarqawi was notorious for ruthlessness and lack of compunction in targeting civilians to deliver his message of hate. He was said to have found even Afghanistan’s fundamentalist Taliban regime too soft. At the time of his death he had become Iraq’s most wanted man, with the United States dangling a bounty of $25 million on his head.

There was general agreement that al-Zarqawi’s death would not end the violence in Iraq. It is not certain how the Jordanian native, reportedly an alcoholic and a rape suspect in his younger years, was transformed into a brutal religious extremist. Many of the factors behind his transformation surely remain, continuing to lure others into the fold of al-Qaeda. Addressing those factors will be more difficult than hunting down one terrorist and taking him out in a military airstrike.

Al-Qaeda was dispersed by the US attack on Afghanistan. In his years as a terrorist, al-Zarqawi made his presence felt around the world. Britain’s Tony Blair described it as al-Zarqawi’s "outreach of evil." Now it has been decapitated, but someone else is sure to take al-Zarqawi’s place. For the moment the world is allowing itself to breathe a sigh of relief. "This violent man will never murder again," said an exultant US President George W. Bush, whose policy in Iraq has pulled down his popularity ratings to abysmal levels. Those leading the global fight against terror are reportedly already focusing on al-Zarqawi’s likely replacement. For now his death means one less murderous extremist to worry about.