Face of the Enemy

When Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi did time in a Jordanian prison during the 1990s, he spent a lot of long days reading the Qur'an, but no one much respected him for his faith. He was a fighter, and that’s what made him a leader in the cellblock. “He became very popular by being aggressive with the police and defending his people,” says Abdullah Aburumman, a dissident journalist who was in prison with him. Zarqawi was a hoodlum who liked confrontation, combat—and killing. Over the last few years, he consciously built his fame as a terrorist leader in Iraq by cutting off the heads of his hostages in videotaped executions.

Yesterday, this monster who lived by the sword died by an airstrike north of Baghdad. The Iraqi and American governments are, clearly, gleeful, and there’s no question this is a milestone in the war. But, as U.S. and Iraqi officials were quick to say, it won’t end the insurgency, and a look at Zarqawi’s many roles in the Iraqi tragedy suggest his demise may have side effects that are very difficult to predict.

For starters, the best-known face of the enemy in Iraq is now gone. The Bush administration started making Zarqawi a poster boy for terrorism before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Eventually, Washington put a $25 million price on his head, elevating him to the status of the world’s most wanted men. He was supposed to be a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, or at least he could be made to seem one.

Yet the more we’ve learned about Zarqawi, the clearer it’s become that he was in the terrorist game for himself. Born Ahmad Fadeel Nazzar al-Khalayleh in the dead-end Jordanian town of Zarqa, he came from a poor but respected family. As a young man, in a society where honor is everything, he repeatedly shamed his parents and his tribe with his reputation as a small-time thug and a fall-down drunk. In the late 1980s, Zarqawi rediscovered his faith, mainly as a source of discipline and a credo for violence. He made his way to Afghanistan, but the holy war against the Russians had given way to sectarian, cynical fights among warlords.

From those early days in Afghanistan, Zarqawi had a distant, sometimes hostile relationship with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda ideologue Ayman al-Zawahiri. They did not send Zarqawi to Iraq. He went on his own to link up with a group of radical Islamists in the rough mountains of the Kurdish north, outside Saddam’s control. Zarqawi then developed networks to bring jihadists from Europe and Muslim countries to fight the Americans during the invasion and, more significantly, afterward.

Correspondence from Zarqawi captured over the last three years suggests he was looking for approval from Al Qaeda—or, more precisely, insisting on his appointment as “emir” or “prince” of the organization in Iraq. Bin Laden gave his benediction reluctantly. As recently as last year, bin Laden’s deputy, Zawahiri, warned Zarqawi that his gruesome killings were costing him vital support among the Iraqi people.