Death of a Terrorist

NYT Editorial

It is good news for Washington, and even better news for Iraq, that the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was finally killed on Wednesday by an American airstrike. The group that Mr. Zarqawi led, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, organized and carried out some of the most beastly bombings and beheadings of recent years.

But as Americans discovered earlier, after Saddam Hussein's two sons were killed and the Iraqi dictator himself was arrested, it will take far more than the elimination of a handful of iconic leaders to stem the tide of the Iraqi insurgency and reverse the country's alarming slide into civil war.

It will take, most of all, the consolidation of an effective Iraqi government of national unity that can win the loyalty of the overwhelming majority of Iraq's Shiites, Kurds and Sunni Arabs by respecting their religious and ethnic diversity, protecting their personal security and assuring them the essentials of modern life. These include, at a minimum, reliable electricity, decent hospitals and schools, and a functioning economy that generates adequate employment.

A modest step in that necessary direction was taken yesterday with the parliamentary confirmation of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki's remaining cabinet members. These ministers will now take on the critical and daunting job of reforming Iraq's unreliable national army and out-of-control police forces, which have been deeply penetrated by sectarian thugs and gunmen whose taste for chaos and violence has sometimes seemed to rival Mr. Zarqawi's.

Mr. Zarqawi played a substantial role in spreading terror and mayhem across Iraq. He fanned hatred among Iraq's different religious and ethnic communities, although at times Washington appeared to deliberately exaggerate his importance to create an identifiable enemy and to distract attention from the more authentically Iraqi-rooted insurgency.

Mr. Zarqawi's relationships with home-grown leaders of that insurgency and with top Al Qaeda leaders around Osama bin Laden were, in fact, often troubled. The circumstances of his death, however, could well erase all recollection of those differences in order to enshrine him as a useful martyr. In that new role, his memory could continue to haunt Iraq for some time to come.