Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has become the new face of “Islamic terror”. On February 5, 2003, when the then US Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations Security Council, he said that a deadly terrorist network existed in Iraq headed by Zarqawi who, he alleged, was a close associate of Osama bin Laden. That statement has since proven to be false, but it served to introduce Zarqawi to the world.

Who is this Zarqawi and where did he come from? Unlike Osama bin Laden and other senior leaders of Al Qaeda, this 35-year-old Jordanian comes from a poor working-class family, with little connections and no ‘pedigree’. But he has catapulted to the top ranks of the world’s deadliest terrorists, replacing Saddam’s image as the evil man of the Arab world. This high school dropout from the Jordanian slums has a US$ 25 million bounty on his head.

It was only after the 9/11 incident of 2001 that Zarqawi’s name was heard. The Kurdish secret service fed the US government with information on him. The US administration lost no time in using this to link Saddam Hussein with Al Qaeda, a much-needed trump card since they lacked the proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Zarqawi started off as a typical frustrated young Muslim radical. But he now leads an insurgency that is inciting Iraqis to civil war. In fact, Zarqawi may have lacked Al Qaeda connections in the past, but Osama bin Laden in 2004 named him the Emir of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

The beginnings

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was born as Ahmad Fadil al-Khalayeh in Zarqa, a Jordanian city north of Amman, in October 1966. The city was riddled with poverty and crime. Zarqawi’s family belonged to the Bani Hassan tribe, loyal to Jordan’s Hasemite royal family.

The neighbourhood where Zarqawi grew up was a miserable working class area. There were the tribal values as well as growing western consumerism. He was an unruly student of the local school. His and his friends would use the local graveyard as their playground.

At home, however, Zarqawi was a very respectful boy and was loved dearly. It was when his father died in 1984 and his family sank into abject poverty, that Zarqawi’s frustration became apparent. He was 18 years old then. He dropped out of his studies, joined a local gang of bullies and began drinking. He was even arrested for possessing drugs and for sexual assault. He was sent to prison.

Imprisonment brought a change to his life. It was here that he first came into close contact with radical Islam and extremist ideas on religion and jihad.

After his release, he married. His interest in extremist views remained and he bagan visiting a mosque on the outskirts of Zarqa where he would listen spellbound to the stories of mujahideen fighters. It wasn’t long before the Arab-Afghan Bureau recruited him. This organisation would supply fighters to participate in the anti-Soviet struggle. So from a ostracized drunkard, he became a respected mujahideen.

However, by the time he actually arrived in Afghanistan, the Soviets forces had already began withdrawing and he felt lost. He was more sensitive than the hardened Arab fighters who roamed the streets there. He called himself Al Gharib, “the Stranger”. 

Hamdi Murad, former spiritual leader of the mujahideen and now Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Al-Balqa, recalls: “He was a very simple person, normal, looking for truth, in his own way. You would never have thought that he would perhaps turn out to be a military leader one day.”

As a junior employee in the Afrghan-Arab Bureau, he met a radical Salafi thinker, the Palestinian Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. Maqdisi was well versed in Afghan and mujahideen politics. They two became fast friends.

Towards the end of 1993, the two of them returned to Zarqa. They began preaching revolution against the Jordanian regime. In March 1994 they were arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison for creating an underground jihadist outfit called Bayaat al Imam or “Pledge of Alliance”.

Metamorphosis

The seven years he spent in jail served to reshape Zarqawi’s personal;ity. He endured both physical and mental torture. He even had to spend over eight months in solitary confinement, in the heat of the Jordanian desert, in a cell much like a dog kennel. This led to his radical change.

In jail he would exercise zealously. His slight figure became muscular and his mental toughness grew. A cell mate recalls how he helped him learn the Holy Quran by heart.

In prison he gradually took on the role of a leader. He was tough, “a prince”, as his prison mates called him. Says a former official of the prison: “We were careful in dealing with him as he was a real leader. If he cooperated with us, only then would the other convicts follow suit.”

He and Maqdisi were released in 1999. He was not happy with life around him and eventually went to Afghanistan where the Taliban struggle for rule was in its sixth year.

It was in 2000 that he finally met Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden was rich and powerful while Zarqawi came from the opposite end of the Arab social spectrum. He was a poor misfit. But they shared a common goal: deliverance of Muslims.

Osama bin Laden had a global, anti-imperialist vision of jihad. He considered the US as the enemy. Zarqawi was a revolutionary outlaw and his idea of jihad was more embodied in localised groups like the IRA or the Tamil Tigers. Zarqawi, therefore, did not pledge allegiance to Osama bin Laden at that first meeting. He was more focused on corrupt Arab regimes, especially in his homeland Jordan, rather than seeing the global picture like Osama bin Laden.

And so he refused to join al Qaeda. Says a former associate: “He never followed the orders of others. I never heard him praise anyone part from the Prophet. This was his character. He never followed anyone.”

Zarqawi went on to the city of Herat in northwestern Afghanistan. There, in the hills, he set up a training camp with funding from the Taliban.

His aim was to prepare people to go back to Jordan on suicide missions. Many joined, but in 2002 when the Taliban regime fell, Zarqawi fled back Iraq’ Kurdistan and set up more camps there. He anticipated the US invasion of Iraq.

Around that time his name was linked to many terrorist incidents. He was accused of masterminding the creation of Al Qaeda in Spain, Germany and Turkey. He was accused of involved in terrorist acts in Casablanca, Madrid and elsewhere.

He may or may not have actually had a hand in all this, but he was preparing for battle. He was a master planner. He refrained from carrying out attacks in Iraq until the summer of 2003, months after the Shiite insurgency started. He had no intention of competing with US fighter planes, missiles and high-tech weapons. He waited until the occupation and garnered strong support among the Sunni resistance.

He then finally carried out two attacks in August 2003. There was the explosion at the UN headquarters in Baghdad, followed a few days later by the explosion at the Imam Ali mosque. It was the father of Zarqawi’s second wife who drove the car loaded with explosives into the mosque.

At first Western analysts were baffled by these attacks. So long there had been the US and its supporters on one side and, on the other side, Saddam’s loyalists and the Shiites led by Moqtada al Sadr. But Zarqawi had finally understood Osama bib Laden’s hatred for the US. So he fought against the US and its coalition forces as well as against the Shiites.

Osama bin Laden and Zarqawi

Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden kept in regular contact between August 2003 and December 2004. Their focus was on the fundamentals of jihad. Zarqawi sought Osama bin Laden’s blessings for his actions in Iraq. After all, Osama bin Laden’s support would lend him legitimacy as a jihadist in Iraq.

This simple man from a small Jordanian town had turned into a highly intelligent political analyst. He realised that if the Sunnis and Shiites joined hands, the insurgency would become a national undertaking and the jihadists would be shunned as foreigners. He strove to drive the wedge a little harder between the Sunnis and the Shiites, especially when he saw Sadr growing in popularity even among the Sunnis. And with Osama bib Laden trapped on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Zarqawi fast became the symbolic leader of the fight against the US.

In April, 2004, he caught and beheaded American citizen Nicholas Berg. Several brutal executions followed. This showed that Zarqawi was here to stay.

In a statement broadcast by Al Jazeera on December 27, 2004, Osama bin Laden expressed support for Zarqawi’s fight in Iraq. He called him the Emir of the Al Qaeda in Iraq. The “emir” had given the Iraqi jihad a new lease of life. And the battlefield is likely to grow.