Cused around the W-C-J and the local regime (the Jordanian King), which worked with all the allies. By the year 2004, the Shia-dominated Iraqi Cyanine5 NHS ester Epigenetics government had began to fight the insurgency together with all the allied forces. Zarqawi was already producing himself infamous as Iraq’s most wanted man. Newsweek magazine described him as “The World’s Most Dangerous Terrorist” right after U.S. officials accused him of personally beheading Nicholas Berg, an American hostage (Michael and Hosenball 2007). Zarqawi certainly issued a statement following the murder of Berg in which, our analysis shows, he blamed the W-C-J, citing, amongst other individuals, the torture stories leaked from Abu Ghraib prison: “As for you personally, mothers and wives of American soldiers . . . we inform you that the honour of Muslims in Abu Ghraib prison is defended with blood and souls” a clear reference to a symbolic threat.four Certainly, the years following the Iraq War witnessed an evident dominance of Shias more than the Iraqi government, its army, and its safety forces. Case in point was that of Interior Minister Baqir Jabr al-Zubeidi: a former high-ranking commander of the Shia Badr Organization who was accused by Sunni Arab notables of turning a blind eye for the torture, kidnapping, and murder of Sunnis in the country, all crimes committed by the Iraqi Safety Forces, which have been dominated by Shia militias (Beehner 2006). Such Shia militias have been fighting the Sunni-led insurgency alongside the U.S. forces, despite the former’s function within the worsening sectarian tensions. These militias were officially banned, but the U.S. Defense Division continued to encourage them and have been seen as an Iraqi difficulty rather than an American one particular (Beehner 2006). Zarqawi, consequently, produced positive to tackle the subject with the Badr Organization’s activities: “Everybody knows the truth concerning the demonic alliance . . . Very first, Americans, the carriers with the crucifix banner, Second, Kurds in the type of Peshmerga forces . . . Third, Rawafid, the enemies on the Sunni people today represented by the Badr Brigade.”5 By that time, our evaluation shows, Shias had began to become ever more pointed out in Zarqawi’s rhetoric. Sunni Arabs were left in a hostile atmosphere in which even the government is definitely an oppressor. Such developments left Zarqawi terrific possibilities on which he could capitalize. By 2005, Shias, as our chart shows, became a continuous target inside the man’s rhetoric; this correlated with a big transition of energy from the allies to Shias by way of elections in which Shias won the vast majority although Sunnis boycotted; the latter were not helped by Zarqawi’s threats against the democratic process and those who took aspect in it (Gonzales et al. 2007). In reality, Zarqawi had began demonising Shias in 2004, if on fewer instances: within a statement in October 2004, he commented around the battle of Fallujah “It’s you I address, my nation, as your sons’ blood is spilled in Iraq all more than, and in Fallujah specially, soon after the worshippers of your crucifix and these with them of our skin, who . . . betrayed God and his Prophet, like the Peshmerga, and Rawafid.”6 Here he clearly chose to refer to realistic threat.Soc. Sci. 2021, 10,16 BPAM344 Purity ofZarqawi, then, was able to frame a narrative of realistic and symbolic threats, to which he linked the numerous factions of Iraqi society that he wanted demonized and outcasted, further adding fuel for the fire with the civil war and reverse engineering the allies’ and Iraqi government’s narratives of fighting extremism. Legitimate existi.