Aftermath

criticized Osama bin Laden for not calling Arab governments infidels and attacking them. For Zarqawi, the near enemy was the priority, while for bin Laden it was the far enemy. Hudheifa Azzam explained that bin Laden’s Front for Fighting the Jews and Crusaders, established in 1998, required its members to take an oath of allegiance and to fight rival movements, both of which Zarqawi refused to do. Al Qaeda was far more pragmatic; its members negotiated with Pakistan and Iran. Zarqawi was such a strict Salafi that he condemned the Taliban for lack of piety. He criticized them for not being Salafis, insufficiently imposing Sharia, and recognizing the United Nations, an infidel organization. And he condemned Al Qaeda for associating with the Taliban. Zarqawi established his own camp in the western Afghan city of Herat, near the border with Iran. Following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Zarqawi made his way through Iran to autonomous Kurdistan in northern Iraq—a point worth noting, since the Bush administration claimed Zarqawi’s presence in Iraq was proof of an Al Qaeda connection. But Zarqawi linked up with the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam in a region outside Saddam’s reach. With Saddam removed from power on April 9, 2003, Zarqawi had a new failed state to operate in. By the summer of 2003 he had claimed responsibility for the devastating attack against the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad’s Canal Hotel. Zarqawi allied himself with Ansar al-Sunna, the reconstituted Ansar al-Islam, which was composed mostly of Iraqis, whereas the members of Zarqawi’s Tawhid and Jihad group were mostly foreign Arabs.

In October 2004, Iraqi intelligence claimed that Zarqawi’s group consisted of 1,000 to 1,500 fighters, foreign and Iraqi. Zarqawi’s inner circle was made up of nine emirs, all of whom were non-Iraqi and close friends. The movement had stored weapons in secret depots in Iraq.

Their plan was to turn Iraq into hell for all its residents, to prevent an elected government from taking power, and to create a civil war between Sunnis and the hated Shiites. Zarqawi’s group was responsible for the gruesome videotaped beheadings of foreigners and Iraqis accused of collaborating with the occupation. Their bombs slaughtered masses of Shiites as well.

Though Zarqawi had run his own camp independently of bin Laden in Afghanistan, in October 2004 he swore an oath of allegiance to Al Qaeda, renaming his organization Al Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers and also joining the Salafiya al-Mujahedia, or Salafi Mujahideen, movement in Iraq. Bin Laden soon announced that Zarqawi was the head of Al Qaeda’s operations in Iraq. Either Bin Laden wanted to co-opt a rival jihadi group that was getting most of the attention and actually confronting the Americans, or Zarqawi needed the Saudi financier’s help, or at least the connection with the hero of international jihad, in order to attract more foreign fighters and support. On December 9, 2004, Zarqawi’s military committee issued a statement about the upcoming January elections. It addressed “all the parties participating in the elections.” It threatened Shiites around the world for supporting the crusader occupation of Iraq. It called Ayatollah Ali Sistani the greatest collaborator with the crusaders. It condemned the apostate police, national guardsmen, and army for attacking Falluja. It warned the rejectionist Shiites and their political parties, the Kurdish pesh merga, the Christians, and the hypocrites such as the Islamic Party that the Tawhid movement would increase attacks on them.

Though Al Qaeda under bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri had not made Shiites their targets and did not publicly condemn them, Zarqawi held that Shiites were the most evil of mankind. He compared them to a snake, a scorpion, and an enemy spy, like the thirteenth-century cleric Ibn Taimiya, the father of Wahhabism and Salafism. Shiites were polytheists who worshiped at graves and shrines, he argued. They were to be avoided at all costs. They could not be married, they could not bear witness, and animals they slaughtered could not be eaten. Zarqawi defended operations that caused Muslims to die. Martyrdom operations, as he called suicide bombings, were sanctified by Muslim scholars, and defending Islam was even more important than defending the lives of Muslims.

Zarqawi reserved special hatred for the Jordanian monarchy and security forces. He sought to delegitimize the Hashemite kingdom and its claim to power based on its descent from the Prophet Muhammad. It was true that King Abdullah was a descendant of Muhammad, but through Abu Lahab, the Prophet’s uncle, who had fought against him. This claim was first made in 1995 by two Jordanian brothers from the al-Awamli family, who sent out a mass fax condemning the regime. They were shot in their homes following a confrontation with Jordanian police. Zarqawi’s confrontation with Jordan culminated in the November 9, 2005, attacks, dubbed by Jordanians “our 9/11,” in which almost all the victims were Jordanians or Palestinians. By this point his actions were proving too much even for the most radical to stomach.

Hudheifa Azzam viewed Zarqawi and his followers as “against everybody, even themselves. The followers of Abdallah Azzam opposed killing civilians and conducting operations in Muslim countries, he told me. “Our militant activities are only against the military,” he said. “No one can give the green light to kill an innocent human being. In 9/11 and 7/7, innocent people were killed.” Hudheifa also opposed targeting Shiites. “Abdallah Azzam said Shiites are Muslims,” he told me, “and even if they are not Muslims, their blood is still protected.”

Shanateh

The war in Iraq galvanized young admirers of Zarqawi and other mujahideen, who frequented jihadi websites and Internet chat rooms, where they could watch filmed encomiums to their heroes and violent depictions of their latest exploits. There were several groups of young men on trial in Jordan when I visited, all failed jihadis, but perhaps more important than succeeding in their quixotic and ill-planned schemes was the time spent in Jordanian prisons, where they could meet their heroes. Like inner-city fans of hip-hop in the United States, where time in jail could be a rite of passage that established street credibility, for these young men in Jordan, jail time proved they were tough enough and dedicated to the cause.

On January 10 I attended another hearing for the ten young men from Irbid. The only two witnesses for the prosecution were set to testify. The courtroom was heavy with blue uniformed security officers. As the judge spoke, the prisoners swaggered and laughed. The first witness was Lieutenant Saud, clad in a motorcycle jacket. He put his hand above a Koran and swore to tell the truth, then stated that he had received information about a group of dangerous terrorists near the Syrian border and was ordered to arrest them. Upon questioning by the defense he admitted that he had found no weapons in their possession. The second witness, with long hair and a long beard, was accused of selling the defendants a Kalashnikov. The prosecutor read the witness’s confession, but the witness renounced it, claiming he had never sold any weapons and explaining that the mukhabarat had threatened him and ordered him to lie. The judge ordered him rearrested for perjury. Ashen-faced, he was led away as the prisoners in the cage shouted “Allahu Akbar! The way of God is jihad! God is your master and America is their master! Bush is your master! You have the worst master!” All the accused claimed to have been tortured, and all renounced their confessions. As the session ended the prisoners shouted, “This session we just wanted to hear the testimony, but in the next session we will teach them!”

“Most people here hate and hate and hate the U.S. administration,” attorney Samih Khreis told me. “And most people, if anybody has the opportunity to explode the White House, they would.” Khreis often represented Jordanians accused of terrorism; his clients had included Azmi al-Jayusi, a close Zarqawi associate, as well as members of Bayat al-Imam and Jeish Muhammad. A high-ranking member of the Jordanian bar association, Khreis remembered seeing mujahideen recruiters on the streets of Amman in the 1980s, working with the support of the Jordanian government and inviting young Jordanians to join the jihad in Afghanistan. “Governments taught them these ideas, Salafi, takfiri, to push them to Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, and after the jihad they returned and they compared the government’s conduct with what they had taught them, so according to this thinking the governments were infidels. What happens daily motivates anybody to go to jihad. The magic turned against the magician. When they were against Soviets they were good, but against USA they are terrorists?”

Although in the past most recruits to the jihad were uneducated and poor, he said, “after the war in Iraq there was a large increase, and many educated men joined, like engineers. This was new. Most men going to Iraq now are educated and from Irbid, and most are Jordanians, they come from good families.” He added that most families of accused terrorists were proud of their sons. Most of them were beaten and tortured during their interrogations, he told me. “Electric torture, sleep deprivation, being tied by hands so you are on your toes. They do it to get confessions.” Khreis’s youngest client was an eighteen-year-old jihad hopeful. “I take these cases because the American government is against them, and I am not with the USA, and the Jordanian government wants to