April 25 (Bloomberg) -- Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist leader in Iraq, urged Iraqis not to cooperate with that country's new government in a video posted on the Internet today and whose authenticity is considered likely by U.S. officials.
Al-Zarqawi also accused the U.S. of waging a ``crusader'' offensive and said the insurgency is standing firm against it in the 25-minute video, entitled ``A Message to the People.''
``Your mujahedeen sons were able to confront the most ferocious of crusader campaigns on a Muslim state,'' he said, according to a translation by MSNBC. ``They have stood in the face of this onslaught for three years.''
The images show the 39-year-old Jordanian fugitive speaking, training recruits, firing a machine gun and appearing for the first time without a mask, according to the Search for International Terrorist Entities Institute, based in Washington. An accompanying statement by a group called the Mujahedeen Shura Council says the video is the ``first visual issue'' of the ``Emir of al-Qaeda in Iraq.'' He is clad in black and sports a mustache and a beard.
The tape was issued a day after terror bombings in the Egyptian resort of Dahab killed at least 18 people and injured as many as 87. On April 23, an audiotape attributed to the group's global leader, Osama bin Laden, was broadcast on the satellite television station al-Jazeera. In it, bin Laden called for Muslims to join his war against Western nations.
Two Videos
``I don't think the two videos are coordinated. Bin Laden was talking in his tape to the rest of the world whereas Zarqawi is talking in this video only to the people in Iraq,'' said Moqtedar Khan, author of ``Beyond Jihad and Crusade: Rethinking U.S. Policy in the Islamic World.''
``This tape is Zarqawi's way of reasserting himself, of trying to reconstruct his own importance,'' said Khan, who is also a political science professor at the University of Delaware.
Zarqawi's message comes in the wake of the nomination last week of Jawad al-Maliki as Iraq's prime minister, a step aimed at quelling the country's sectarian violence.
Earlier this month al-Zarqawi was shunted aside as the leader of a coalition of Iraqi fighters, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported, citing Huthaifa Azzam, whose father was a mentor to bin Laden. The other militants disliked Zarqawi's brutal tactics and his tendency to speak for the insurgency as a whole, Azzam told the BBC.
Intelligence Review
U.S. intelligence analysts were reviewing the Internet video today.
``The U.S. is doing a technical review'' of the videotape, said Mark Mansfield, a spokesman for the National Counter Terrorism Center. ``At this point it appears to be him.''
The video displays the logo of the Mujahedeen Shura Council and could be an attempt to show the `unity'' of the country's insurgency, Mansfield said.
Al-Zarqawi doesn't look much different than in previous photos and his statements are similar to previously released audiotapes, Mansfield said. The terrorist, who has a $25 million U.S. bounty on his head, took a ``calculated risk'' in making a video rather than just a voice-only recording, he said.
Al-Zarqawi's followers first captured international attention with videotaped beheadings of hostages in Iraq.
His group has taken responsibility for, or been accused of, attacks that include the beheading of U.S. hostage Nicholas Berg and U.K. hostage Kenneth Bigley. The group also claimed responsibility for the suicide bombings at three hotels in Amman, Jordan, last year that killed at least 57 people.
