Today in Manhunting History -- July 1, 2004: Zarqawi's Bounty

U.S. commanders began to focus intently on hunting Abu Musab al-Zarqawi after the March 2004 massacre of an estimated 185 Shi’a pilgrims celebrating the Ashura festival in Karbala and Baghdad. During the abortive offensive on Fallujah the next month, Task Force 121 operators (who four months earlier had pulled the fugitive Saddam Hussein from his spiderhole) approached Marine commanders for help to insert “certain devices” in a house near city hall that would aid the search for the Jordanian. The mission was scrubbed, however, for fear that inserting such a small force into the middle of hostile territory in an urban battlefield would lead to a reprise of Mogadishu.

Consequently, early attempts to apprehend Zarqawi were dependent upon a decidedly unsupportive local population. When the CIA determined the torture studio in which Zarqawi murdered Nicholas Berg was located in Fallujah’s Jolan District, Major General James Mattis proposed joint U.S.-Iraqi patrols in Jolan to pursue Zarqawi. But the ineffectual commander of the “Fallujah Brigade” declined. In June, U.S. aircraft began dropping pamphlets over Fallujah urging residents to turn in Zarqawi, who had a $10 million bounty on his head. But this effort also produced no tangible results.

U.S. forces began kinetic action against Zarqawi’s network in Fallujah through the only means available to them, killing 18 Iraqis in an airstrike against a suspected safe house on June 19.  On July 1 the reward for Zarqawi’s capture was raised to $25 million, the same amount as bin Laden.

Zarqawi's wanted poster before the bounty was raised to $25 million.