he gained experience,” he said. Zarqawi was placed in charge of Jordanians arriving in Afghanistan and later led a group called Jund al-Sham (Soldiers of Sham).
In Pakistan Zarqawi met Isam Taher al-Oteibi al-Burqawi, known as Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. Maqdisi was a self-taught Palestinian cleric living in Kuwait. Like many Palestinians who relocated to Jordan from Kuwait, he had belonged to an important Kuwaiti Salafi organization called Jamiyat al-Turath al-Islami (The Society of Islamic Heritage), led by the Egyptian cleric Sheikh Abdel Rahman al-Khaleq. Khaleq had come to Kuwait from Egypt in the 1960s, a period when many Egyptian Islamists moved to the Gulf to teach in order to escape government persecution. This persecution persisted until Egyptian clerics like Omar Abdel Rahman, who led the Islamic Group, declared the state itself to be the enemy. This sort of radical Islam was a product of Egyptian prisons, and when these Egyptians were encouraged to take their struggle to Afghanistan they clashed with Abdallah Azzam, who emphasized the importance of fighting defensive jihads. Egyptians such as Abdel Rahman and his followers sought to fight Arab regimes first. Their followers were the
Hudheifa Azzam met Maqdisi in Pakistan and was similarly unimpressed. Like Zarqawi, he said, “Maqdisi is also an ordinary person,” adding that at first Maqdisi had condemned his father as an infidel, but after Azzam was assassinated he apologized and said he had been mistaken. Upon arriving in Jordan in 1991, Maqdisi led Jordan’s Salafi movement, composed of Jordanian and Palestinian Salafis who had fought or trained in Afghanistan. Maqdisi called his organization Tawhid (Monotheism), but he later changed the name to Bayat al-Imam (Oath of Loyalty to the Leader). He traveled around Jordan with his book
According to Maqdisi, democracy was a heretical religion constituting the rejection of Allah, monotheism, and Islam. It was a
When Zarqawi returned to Jordan, he sought out former mujahideen he had met in Afghanistan, including Maqdisi. In the summer of 1993 Zarqawi visited Muhamad Abu Muntasar Wasfi. “He sat there, where you are,” Wasfi said, pointing to the pillow I was resting on. We sat in his cold guest room as his sons brought in sweet tea and came in to replenish our glasses. Wasfi stroked a cat that wandered in. His children screamed and fought in the next room. His youngest boy, Mudhafer, came in to ask him for some money. “I like to call him Abu Musab al- Khalaylah,” Wasfi told me about Zarqawi. “Abu Musab had heard of me. He was a simple Muslim who wanted to serve Islam. He didn’t stay long here, and the next day he came with another guy. We sat and we spoke about our hopes and dreams and ambitions to establish the caliphate and raise the flag of jihad against the enemies of Islam everywhere. I disagreed with him on some strategic issues, like his view of Israel and Palestine. He didn’t have an idea of making jihad against Jews and Israel. Abu Musab wanted to change Arab regimes.”
Zarqawi invited Wasfi to join Bayat al-Imam and offered him the position of emir, or commander, from the Arabic word
The Jordanian authorities placed all the Islamist prisoners together and in isolation from other prisoners. They formed relationships, exchanged ideas and knowledge, and established trust in one another. They continued organizing jihadists, especially former criminals like Zarqawi, until their release from the Sawaqa prison in a 1999 amnesty. Wasfi was the movement’s spokesman. He explained that even while in prison Zarqawi and Maqdisi reached an outside audience, influencing people in the various cities where they were imprisoned. By then, the awkward and solemn Zarqawi had begun to bloom in his own jihadi way, while Maqdisi, despite the anger and violence of his ideas, avoided conflict. “Zarqawi was very charismatic,” said Wasfi. “Maqdisi was calm and passive. We were dealing with prison authorities in a very aggressive way, and Zarqawi was tribal, so his tribal position gave him more power than a Palestinian. If your root is pure Jordanian and you have a big tribe, then you have more power. Prisoners liked a strong representative like Zarqawi, and he fought with the guards. He was very harsh and strong when dealing with members of the organization. He prevented them from mixing with other organizations so they would not be influenced by other ideas, and he prevented them from moving around freely in the prison, even me, but I rebelled against him.” Few other jihadis dared to defy Zarqawi save Abdallah Hashaika, who was the emir of the Jordanian Afghans. Zarqawi organized a coup, forcing Maqdisi to hand over control of the movement. When Wasfi told me this, Abu Saad, who was present for the meeting, grew anxious—he didn’t want me to learn of tensions within the movement.
Zarqawi’s aggressive personality attracted the tough young men imprisoned with him, and Maqdisi was relegated to a theological position, issuing
The men’s time in prison was as important for the movement as their experiences in Afghanistan were, bonding together those who suffered and giving them time to formulate their ideas. For some it was educational as well. Hudheifa Azzam was impressed with the changes prison wrought in the men. “Maqdisi returned to Jordan from Afghanistan and educated himself,” he told me. “He had a lot of time to read in jail. When I heard Zarqawi speak, I didn’t believe this is the same Zarqawi. Six years in jail gave him a good chance to educate himself.”
Shortly after his release in 1999, Zarqawi left for Pakistan, where he was temporarily arrested before making it to Afghanistan along with his key followers. Zarqawi was influenced by Egyptian jihadist groups such as Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Group, which held that the leader should be based outside the country in order to avoid harassment by the
In Afghanistan Zarqawi found both Al Qaeda and the Taliban insufficiently extreme for him. Zarqawi also