Shortly before the Iraq war, when the impending American attack was only days away, Baghdad's vice-president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, took issue with the western superpower's sense of timing and political far-sightedness. "Why is it that the Americans must destroy the only secular regime in the Middle East, besides Syria?," the dictator's spokesman complained to European visitors in his pompous ministerial offices on the banks of the Tigris River, "if Saddam Hussein falls, there will be chaos here, and these crazy Islamists and terrorist will triumph in the end."

Today, the diminutive general is one of the twelve imprisoned prominent members of the deposed regime who, like the despot, are likely to face the death penalty. But on his way to the executioner, Saddam's most trusted advisor will at least be able to take along the satisfaction of seeing his gloomy predictions largely become reality. Although the "crazy Islamists" have not won the battle yet, their unrelenting violence is helping push the land of two rivers toward anarchy and civil war. The US occupiers have long since lost control, despite President George W. Bush' renewed assurances to the UN General Assembly that "the situation is improving in Iraq."

But such words are a far cry from reality. Last week, with its attacks and the beheading of foreign hostages, was one of the must brutal weeks since the official end of the war a year and a half ago. The terrorist group of former Bin Laden associate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, 37, was at the center of the week's gruesome events. The group, which goes by various names but generally calls itself "Al-Tawhid wa Al-Jihad" (Unity and Jihad Group), seems to relish celebrating its bloody orgy of hostage executions and documenting it on camera.

The videos show masked men wearing black, the prisoners sobbing at their feet, the reading of the death sentence, and then the beheading. This was the gruesome manner in which two American civil engineers working for Gulf Supplies and Commercial Services, a construction company, who had been kidnapped from their homes in Baghdad's wealthy Mansur district, lost their lives last week. The CIA believes that Zarqawi himself used a long knife to slit the throat of Eugene Armstrong, 53; Jack Hensley, shortly before his 49th birthday, suffered the same horrible fate. The terrorist leader had already committed a similar bloody act on US businessman Nicholas Berg in May. At the time, the Islamist web site proudly announced: "Abu Musab slaughters an American."

Kenneth Bigley, 62, a British engineer who was kidnapped with the two Americans, seemed likely to suffer the same fate. In an eleven-minute videotape, the kidnappers staged a theater of horrors in which their hostage appealed to British Prime Minister Tony Blair: "Please help me. I don't want to die. I haven't deserved this."

The strategy was meant to mobilize the public in England and America against the war in Iraq. It divided Baghdad's interim government and revealed the limits of its supposed sovereignty. A few ministers were prepared to meet the terrorists' demands for the release of all women imprisoned under US supervision, especially scientists Rihab Taha and Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash. The women, both biologists trained in the United States and Great Britain, and known as "Dr. Virus" and "Dr. Anthrax," are suspected of having been involved in Saddam's programs to develop weapons of mass destruction.

But then Washington torpedoed any arrangements for their release. Like the British government, the American president forcefully rejected any consideration of the Zarqawi group's claimed or actual demands. At an election rally in Pennsylvania, Bush said: "The rebels will not prevail. They can only behead people and use that to try to shake our resolve. They are doing their best to convince us Americans that we will not be successful. That is their only weapon."

Unlike the case of Nicholas Berg, the current beheadings did not trigger a public outcry in America. The major daily newspapers printed human-interest stories from Armstrong's and Hensley's home towns. But neither writers of headline articles nor well-known columnists made any effort to discuss the kidnappings from a political point of view.

Back in May, President Bush swore that "we will find out who is behind this brutal murder." This time he is keeping a low profile, and by now he is able to do this without risking a backlash. That's because Iraq, ever since sovereignty was transferred to a local government, seems to have been relegated to the sidelines.

It's as though America were only playing a secondary role there, and unfortunate incidents such as the murder of American civilians were viewed simply as transitional phenomena on the road to stabilization, as if these incidents were the business of the Iraqis under interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, and not a consequence of the ill-advised US occupation. The Bush administration had hoped that the transfer of sovereignty would result in this shift in perspective. Prime Minister Allawi's assessment of the situation was no different than that of the US president: "When governments negotiate with terrorists," said Baghdad's head of state in a speech before Congress in Washington last Thursday, "the entire free world suffers."

But most of all, Iraq suffers, because the terrorism front is expanding and, with it, the bombings, suicide attacks and kidnappings. Locals and occupying forces are not the only ones affected by the attacks. Since the beginning of the year, more than 170 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq. At least 29 have been murdered, while almost three dozen are considered missing. They include two French journalists and two Italian women who were kidnapped in early September, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both 29 year-old aid workers involved in a school project in Iraq. Their fate is unknown. Their kidnappers have supposedly "sold" them to the Zarqawi group. Reports on Islamist web sites claiming that the Italian women are dead had not been confirmed by late last week.

No one in Baghdad doubts that Zarqawi is sufficiently brutal to slaughter women. The Jordanian Bedouin, on whose head the Americans have placed a 25-million-dollar bounty, is running a terrorist group in Iraq that, according to the deputy US commander, Lieutenant General Thomas Metz, has been trained "for catastrophic events" and employs the most brutal means and bloody acts possible.

Terrorism experts disagree on whether Zarqawi can be seen as a follower of Bin Laden or has long since taken to acting as a rival in his own right. According to his Wahhabist credo, Zarqawi's goal is the establishment of a Taliban-like, pan-Islamic caliphate in the Middle East and beyond. He believes that murdering hostages is sanctioned under the Islamic law of Sharia, because, as he claims, they are "infidel spies."

According to estimates by Arab intelligence agencies, his group comprises about 1,500 men, primarily Sunni Iraqis, as well as mujahidin veterans from Afghanistan, Algerians, Syrians, Sudanese, Yemenis, and Saudis. The rebel stronghold of Faludja was Al-Tawhid wa Al-Jihad's initial base of operations. Meanwhile, however, the guerilla organization has expanded its range of activity considerably, partly by forming alliances with Saddam loyalists. Nine "emirs" head units along a strip of land from Khanaqin on the eastern border with Iran, through the Sunni triangle and Ramadi, and to Latifiya south of Baghdad. By now, cheering crowds have taken to hoisting this Islamist group's black flag over burning US tanks in the city on the Tigris.

Last week, the Iraqi intelligence service alarmed Western embassies in Baghdad with a horror warning, claiming that the Zarqawi group is preparing a major attack on the scale of September 11th, either in America or in another western country.

Jordanian security officers believe that they can prove that human slaughterer Zarqawi is considering such large-scale acts of terror. Early this year, they managed to thwart a planned attack on downtown Amman. An explosion of four car bombs filled with 20 tons of explosives and poison gas would have claimed thousands of victims. Zarqawi, as the presumed mastermind of the intended attack, was sentenced to death.