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Radical killer with mythic status

BY MOHAMAD BAZZI | Newsday Middle East Correspondent

June 9, 2006

BEIRUT, Lebanon - The man who terrorized Iraq for three years got his start the same way many of today's leading Islamic militants did: he was a foot soldier in the CIA-backed jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was further radicalized in a Jordanian prison. He rose to prominence soon after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, when he claimed responsibility for a series of suicide bombings and beheadings of Western hostages. He showed mastery at using the media, regularly sending videotapes to Arab satellite channels and posting statements on the Internet.

Until his death in a U.S. air strike, al-Zarqawi had achieved mythic status as a master of disguise and escape. And while he claimed scores of kidnappings, bombings and beheadings, many Iraqis believed that he did not exist. They insisted he was an invention of the United States to justify its raids and bombings.

Al-Zarqawi's influence on the Iraqi insurgency was more complicated than both the U.S. military and the militant leader himself made it out to be. Arab intelligence officials say the United States exaggerated al-Zarqawi's capabilities in an effort to portray him as the chief instigator of the insurgency, which in reality has many factions. The insurgents are a mix of Islamic militants from neighboring countries - such as the Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi - and Iraqi Sunnis, who formed the backbone of Saddam Hussein's regime.

"The Americans needed to put the insurgency in the context of a single person. They couldn't say that they were fighting an entire segment of Iraqi society, so they focused on an individual," said Liqqa Mekki, an Iraqi political analyst. "Originally, that individual was Saddam Hussein. When he was captured, the Americans shifted to al-Zarqawi."

Al-Zarqawi, 39, was virtually unknown outside Jordan until February 2003, when then- Secretary of State Colin Powell mentioned him prominently in a speech to the United Nations. Powell claimed that al-Zarqawi had arrived in Baghdad in May 2002 to have a leg amputated and establish a base of operations there. Powell described him as "an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden" and claimed that al-Zarqawi's presence in Baghdad proved that Hussein had formed an alliance with al-Qaida. That claim became a major part of the argument for invading Iraq.

After the March 2003 invasion, some U.S. officials backed away from the story, saying he did not lose a leg. The 9/11 Commission later concluded that there was no evidence that Hussein had allied with al-Qaida.

By June 2004, the administration also shifted its view of al-Zarqawi's relationship to al-Qaida. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld conceded that he might be more of a rival than an associate of bin Laden's. "Someone could legitimately say he's not al-Qaida," Rumsfeld said.

But the administration did not back away from describing al-Zarqawi as the main force behind the Iraqi insurgency. To some Iraqis and analysts, the U.S. focus on al-Zarqawi was part of a political strategy to portray the insurgency as something that is not homegrown and instead driven by Islamic militants and foreigners.

"The Americans used al-Zarqawi for their own political purposes," said Diaa Rashwan, a leading expert on Islamic militants at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. "They made him into a superman who was almost singlehandedly responsible for bringing chaos to Iraq."

Al-Zarqawi did his best to capitalize on the world's attention. His supporters learned to use the media better than other segments of the Iraqi insurgency. By constantly sending out audio and videotapes claiming responsibility for suicide bombings, mortar attacks and beheadings, al-Zarqawi appeared to have a larger network of supporters than he did, according to one Arab intelligence assessment. In October 2004, he swore fealty to bin Laden, and renamed his militant group al-Qaida in Iraq. But divisions persisted between al-Zarqawi and other al-Qaida leaders.

"Bin Laden and al-Zarqawi did not always agree on tactics," Rashwan said. "Bin Laden thought it was mistake to target Iraqi civilians in the brutal way that al-Zarqawi did."

There is little in al-Zarqawi's background that would foretell his fame. He was born in the hard-scrabble Jordanian city of Zarqa, one of 10 children of a modest merchant. His given name was Ahmad Fadhil Nazzal al-Khalayleh, but he abandoned it for a nom de guerre based on his hometown. He dropped out of high school and developed a reputation for drinking and brawling.

In the late 1980s, he went to fight alongside young Muslim men who drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan in 1989. Soon after he returned to Jordan in 1992, he helped start a militant group and was sent to prison. There, he fell under the influence of radical Islamic clerics. Al-Zarqawi adopted the notion of "takfir," an extremist strain of Sunni Islam that brands its enemies - even other Muslims - as infidels who can be killed in the pursuit of holy war.

In 1999, he was released in a general amnesty by Jordan's King Abdullah. Within months, Jordanian officials say, he became involved in a plot to bomb the Radisson SAS Hotel in the Jordanian capital, Amman, and several other tourist sites before New Year's Day 2000. He fled to Afghanistan, where U.S. officials say he set up a terrorist training camp with al-Qaida's help. He remained there until the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001.

In late 2001 and early 2002, officials say al-Zarqawi traveled between several countries including Syria, Iran and Jordan. He is believed to have entered Iraq in mid to late 2002.

Rashwan noted that al-Zarqawi does not have the same track record of religious declarations that would ensure his ideological place within the world of militant Islam. By contrast, bin Laden has been issuing fatwas, or religious decrees, attacking the United States and Arab regimes since the mid-1990s. "Al-Zarqawi is not going to be known as an intellectual pillar of militant Islamic ideology," he said. "He will be remembered for his brutal tactics."