Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (October 30, 1966 – June 7, 2006), born Ahmad Fadeel Nazal al-Khalayleh, was a Jordanian jihadist militant who ran a training camp in Afghanistan. He became known after going to Iraq and masterminding a series of bombings, beheadings, and other attacks during the Iraq War, reportedly turning an insurgency against U.S. troops in Iraq into a Shia–Sunni civil war. He was sometimes known by his supporters as the "Sheikh of slaughtering".
He formed Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (JTJ) in 1999, and led it until his death in 2006. al-Zarqawi took responsibility, on several audio and video recordings, for numerous acts of violence in Iraq including suicide bombings and hostage executions. Al-Zarqawi opposed the presence of Western military forces in the Islamic world, as well as Western support for Israel. In 2004, he joined al-Qaeda, and pledged allegiance to its leader Osama bin Laden. After this, JTJ became known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which al-Zarqawi was named emir of.Chehab, Zaki 2006, Iraq Ablaze: Inside the Insurgency, IB Tauris & Co, Cornwall, p. 8.
In 2005, he declared war on Shias in Iraq, after the Iraqi government offensive on insurgents in the Sunni town of Tal Afar. He dispatched numerous suicide bombers throughout Iraq to attack American soldiers and areas with large concentrations of Shia militias. He is also thought to be responsible for the 2005 bombing of three hotels in Amman, Jordan.Amman Bombings Reflect Zarqawi's Growing Reach By Craig Whitlock , The Washington Post, November 13, 2005 Al-Zarqawi died in a targeted killing by a joint U.S. force in 2006, while attending a meeting in an isolated safehouse in Hibhib, Iraq.
Early life and family Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh ( ), is believed to have been al-Zarqawi's real name. He was born to an poor Jordanian family of Palestinian descent in 1966. Raised in Zarqa, an industrial town located 27 kilometers (17 mi) north of Amman, with seven sisters and two brothers,Nimrod Raphaeli (June 30, 2005), "'The Sheikh of the Slaughterers': Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi and the Al-Qaeda Connection", Memri. Retrieved September 5, 2019. (). and of Bedouin background, his father has been described as either a retired army officer or a practitioner of traditional medicine. After his father's death, al-Zarqawi became a street criminal, known for terrorizing and fighting others, and his heavy drinking.Abdel Bari Atwan, The Secret History of Al Qaeda, University of California Press (2006), p. 192 Al-Zarqawi has been described as a high school dropout, petty criminal,Bergen, Peter. " The Osama bin Laden I Know, 2006 and a procurer of prostitutes.
Saif al-Adel claimed: "Abu Musab was a sturdy man who was not really very good at words. He expressed himself spontaneously and briefly. He would not compromise any of his beliefs."
Three of al-Zarqawi's seven sisters were married to figures connected to jihadist militancy. One was married to Abu Qudama Salih al-Hami, a Jordanian-Palestinian journalist close to the influential Palestinian militant Abdullah Yusuf Azzam.Michael Weiss, Hassan Hassan, ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, Simon and Schuster (2016), p. 7 A second married the Jordanian-Palestinian militant Khalid al-Aruri, "one of al-Zarqawi's closest lieutenants in Afghanistan", another married Afghan mujahideen veteran Haytham Mustafa Obeidat.Jean-Charles Brisard, Zarqawi: The New Face of Al-Qaeda by Jean-Charles Brisard with Damien Martinez, Polity (2005), pp. 22–23 The third married a veteran jihadist militant from Jordan, Iyad Nazmi Salih Khalil.Thomas Joscelyn (December 29, 2018), "Jihadis claim US-designated terrorist killed in Syria" , Long War Journal. Retrieved September 7, 2019.
Al-Zarqawi's first wife, Umm Mohammed, was a Jordanian woman who was around 40 years old when al-Zarqawi died in June 2006. She lived in Zarqa along with their four children, including a seven-year-old son, Musab. She had advised al-Zarqawi to leave Iraq temporarily and give orders to his deputies from outside the country. "He gave me an angry look and said, 'Me, me? I can't betray my religion and get out of Iraq. In the Name of Allah, I will not leave Iraq until victory or martyrdom'," she said of al-Zarqawi.
Al-Zarqawi's second wife, Isra, was 14 years old when he married her. She was the daughter of Yassin Jarrad, a Palestinian Islamic militant, who is blamed for the killing in 2003 of Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, the Iraqi Shia leader. Her brother, Mohammad Jarad, was also a militant, who died in his 20s in 2013 while fighting for the Al-Nusra Front in Syria.AFP (January 18, 2013), "'Zarqawi brother-in-law killed in Syria'" , Gulf News. Retrieved September 7, 2019. They had a child when she was 15, and was killed along with al-Zarqawi and their child.
Al-Zarqawi's third wife was an Iraqi who might have died in the airstrike that killed al-Zarqawi. He is also said to have married a woman from a tribe around Peshawar, Pakistan.
Militancy
1989–1998: Afghanistan War, returning to Jordan, time in prison In the late 1980s, al-Zarqawi went to Afghanistan to join the mujahideen who were fighting the invading Soviet troops. He was recruited by Abu Qutaibah al Majali to fight in Afghanistan.From Muhammad to Bin Laden: Religious and Ideological Sources of the homicide bombers phenomenon, David Bukay .Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World, Nir Rosen .middle East forum . The Search for Al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future, Bruce Riedel.the "islamic state" organization, hassan abu hanieh and mohammad abu rumman .thedailyephemera tpaoa.wordpress.com . He arrived there in 1989, as the Soviets were already leaving. Instead of fighting, he became a reporter for an Islamist newsletter called Al-Bonian al-Marsous.
On the other hand, Ahmed Hashim says that he did fight in the battles of Khost and Gardez, while the magazine, which translates as The Solid Edifice in English, was published in both Arabic and Urdu from the Hayatabad suburb of Peshawar, where he also met his future spiritual mentor, the influential Salafi jihadi ideologue Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, in 1990.Ahmed Hashim, The Caliphate at War: The Ideological, Organisational and Military Innovations of Islamic State, Oxford University Press (2018), p. 76
Ultimately, al-Zarqawi lived in Pakistan for some 10 years, mainly in and around Peshawar, and eventually became fluent in Pashto.
According to The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, "Zarqawi's criminal past and extreme views on takfir (accusing another Muslim of heresy and thereby justifying his killing) created major friction and distrust with [Osama] bin Laden when the two first met in Afghanistan in 1999."
He was arrested in Jordan after guns and explosives were found in his home and sent to prison in 1992. In prison, he attempted to draft his cellmates into joining him to overthrow the rulers of Jordan, a former prison mate told Time magazine in 2004.
According to Jordanian officials and acquaintances, al-Zarqawi developed a reputation as a cellblock enforcer and adopted more radical Islamic beliefs.'The Insurgency' . Transcript from a TV program of Frontline from February 21, 2006. Retrieved February 22, 2015.
In prison, due to his charisma and stature, he eventually became a sort of leader, issuing fatwas (religious edicts) and calling himself sheikh, while he also memorized the entire Quran.Lawrence Wright (June 11, 2006), "The terrorist" , The New Yorker. Retrieved September 8, 2019. While he showed a hardliner side to his fellow inmates, physically punishing them if they went against Islamic principles (such as watching television with "uncovered women"), and piling stones inside buckets for weightlifting in order to appear more menacing, to his mother and sisters he showed a softer side, sending them letters full of affection and containing drawings, including drawings of roses.
According the Jordanian journalist Fouad Hussein, who was in jail with al-Zarqawi, it was not the Afghan mujahideen, but his prison years (which included eight and a half months in solitary confinement) that radicalized al-Zarqawi: "The prison left a clear mark on al-Zarqawi's personality, which grew more intense. In his opinion, policemen, judges, and government members of all ranks were supporters of the regimes, which he believed were tawagheet [tyrants] who should be fought." He also worked on his physical training.Fawaz A. Gerges, ISIS: A History, Princeton University Press (2017), p. 55
1999–2000: Training of Jihadists
In 1999, al-Zarqawi was released from prison in a general amnesty by Jordan's King Abdullah. Within months after his release, according to Jordanian officials, al-Zarqawi tried to resurrect his Jund al-Sham. Then, also according to Jordanian officials, he was involved in the millennium plot—a bid to bomb the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman before New Year's Day 2000. The plot was discovered, and al-Zarqawi fled to Pakistan.
When Pakistan revoked his visa, he crossed into Afghanistan, where he met, still according to Jordanian officials and also German court testimony, with Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders in Kandahar and Kabul. He asked them for assistance and money to set up his own training camp in Herat. With some "small seed money" of $200,000 from bin Laden, the camp opened soon and attracted Jordanian militants. Al-Zarqawi selected Herat, far from al-Qaeda's established operations in Kandahar and Jalalabad, because his recruits would enter Afghanistan through Iran.
That camp was either for his group Jund al-Sham—as one, indirect, source contended—or for his newly started group Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad—as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy claimed—or he started one or two camps for both of those groups in Herat in 1999. It is also possible that al-Zarqawi set up only one camp for only one group known by those two different names in 1999. al-Zarqawi's training camp in Herat was reportedly specialized in poisons (especially ricin) and explosives.
2001-2002: Alleged plots to attack Europe
In 2001, al-Zarqawi allegedly dispatched his subordinate Abu Atiya from Herat to the Pankisi Gorge, Georgia. At the time, Pankisi was a stronghold of two intertwined groups: Chechen separatist rebels and transnational jihadist militants, both seeking respite from the Second Chechen War, and relying on the Georgian government's unwillingness to evict them by force. Atiya was publicly accused by Colin Powell during his February 5, 2003 UN Security Council presentation of having instigated, at al-Zarqawi's direction, a number of plots to conduct terrorist attacks in Europe using the nerve agent ricin, among other weapons.
Depicted on a slide used by Powell, alongside al-Zarqawi and Atiya were three Jordanians who had grown up in the same town as al-Zarqawi: Abu Ashraf, Abu Taisir, and Abu Hafs al-Urduni. Two other men depicted on the slide, Menad Benchellali and Merouane Benahmed, were arrested in December 2002 in France, and ultimately convicted of plotting terrorist attacks as part of the Chechen Network case (so called due to the men's links to the Chechen jihadism, through Pankisi). However, contrary to claims made at the time, no ricin was ever found in Europe. Atiya was also linked in press reports to the so-called Wood Green ricin plot, but no substantive link was ever proven. Atiya later denied that he had been part of planning terrorist attacks in Europe.
2001: Resistance to U.S. invasion of Afghanistan In early September 2001, al-Zarqawi was in Iran during the September 11 attacks in the U.S..