Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (Arabic: أَبُو مُصْعَبٍ ٱلزَّرْقَاوِيُّ, ’Abū Muṣ‘ab az-Zarqāwī, Father of Musab, from Zarqa; ; October 30, 1966[1][2][3] – June 7, 2006), born Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh (أَحْمَدُ فَضِيلِ ٱلنَّزَالِ ٱلْخَلَايْلَةَ, ’Aḥmad Faḍīl an-Nazāl al-Ḫalāyla), was a Jordanian jihadist who ran a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. He became known after going to Iraq and being responsible for a series of bombings, beheadings, and attacks during the Iraq War, reportedly "turning an insurgency against US troops" in Iraq "into a Shia–Sunni civil war".[4] He was sometimes known by his supporters as the "Sheikh of the slaughterers".[5]
He formed Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad in 1999, and led it until his death in June 2006. Zarqawi took responsibility, on several audio and video recordings, for numerous acts of violence in Iraq including suicide bombings and hostage executions. Zarqawi opposed the presence of U.S. and Western military forces in the Islamic world, as well as the West's support for the existence of Israel. In late 2004 he joined al-Qaeda, and pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden. After this al-Tawhid wal-Jihad became known as Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn, also known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), and al-Zarqawi was given the al-Qaeda title "Emir of Al Qaeda in the Country of Two Rivers".[6]
In September 2005, he declared "all-out war" on Shi'ites in Iraq, after the Iraqi government offensive on insurgents in the Sunni town of Tal Afar.[7] 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.[8] Zarqawi was killed in a targeted killing by a joint U.S. force on June 7, 2006, while attending a meeting in an isolated safehouse in Hibhib, a small village approximately 8 km (5.0 mi) west-northwest of Baqubah. One United States Air Force F-16C jet dropped two 500-pound (230 kg) guided bombs on the safehouse.[9]
1999–2000: Training of Jihadists
In 1999, Zarqawi was released from prison in a general amnesty by Jordan's King Abdullah.[17] Within months after his release, according to Jordanian officials, Zarqawi tried to resurrect his Jund al-Sham.[17] Then, also according to Jordanian officials, he was involved in the millennium plot—a bid to bomb the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman (Jordan) before New Year's Day 2000.[17]
The plot was discovered, and Zarqawi fled to Pakistan.[17]
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.[17][38] He asked them for assistance and money to set up his own training camp in Herat.[17][38] With some "small seed money"[39] of $200,000[17][40] from Osama bin Laden, the camp opened soon and attracted Jordanian militants.[17][38] Zarqawi selected Herat, far from al-Qaeda's established operations in Kandahar and Jalalabad, because his recruits would enter Afghanistan through Iran.[41]
That camp was either for his group Jund al-Sham—as one, indirect, source contended[40]—or for his newly started group Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad—as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy claimed[39]—or he started one or two camps for both of those groups in Herat in 1999. It is also possible that Zarqawi set up only one camp for only one group known by those two different names in 1999. Zarqawi's training camp in Herat was reportedly specialized in poisons (especially ricin) and explosives.[42]
2001: Resistance to U.S. invasion of Afghanistan
In early September 2001, Zarqawi was in Iran during the September 11 attacks in the United States.[38]
After the October 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, Zarqawi returned to Afghanistan to help repel the assault by western allied forces, joining with Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.[38] He either suffered cracked ribs following the collapse of a bombed house[10][43] or, according to a Jordanian intelligence source, was wounded in the chest during a firefight, in late 2001.[38]
In 2001-2002, Zarqawi activated the Abu Ali group, a Palestinian Islamist cell based in Essen, Germany, providing logistical support and later orchestrating plans to attack Jewish targets in Germany. Following the interception of phone calls between Zarqawi and the cell's leader, Mohammed Abu Dhess, German authorities arrested the group in 2002.[44][45]
He fled to Iran in December 2001[46] or January 5, 2002, and received medical treatment in Mashhad.[47] The Iranian government reportedly refused Jordanian requests to extradite Zarqawi.[48] Circumstantial evidence suggests that Iranian authorities may have restricted Zarqawi's activities to some extent.[49]
2002: Involvement in the assassination of Laurence Foley
The U.S. government contended (in 2003 in a U.N. speech) that Zarqawi received medical treatment in Baghdad, Iraq, from March until May 2002.[38] About that time, Jordanian authorities asked Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to extradite Zarqawi for his suspected role in the millennium plot of 1999 (see above).[38]
By, and during the summer of 2002, Zarqawi's location and activities appear in reports that conflict with one another. Jordanian court documents alleged that Zarqawi, during the summer of 2002, began training a band of fighters at a base in Syria,[38] which on October 28, 2002, shot and killed Laurence Foley, a U.S. senior administrator of U.S. Agency for International Development in Amman, Jordan.[38] Unidentified Arab intelligence sources in 2004 claimed that Zarqawi was still in Syria late in 2002 and when the U.S. and Jordan requested his extradition from Syria, Syria ignored the request.[38] However, the U.S. would actually claim that Zarqawi was in Baghdad from May until late November 2002 in the 2006 Senate Report on Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq,[50] until later fleeing to Iran[38][50] and northeastern Iraq.[50]
U.S. chasing Zarqawi, 2003–2006
The Bush Administration in February 2003 in the U.N. Security Council used Zarqawi's alleged presence in Iraq as a part of the justification for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.[58]
On December 17, 2004, the U.S. State Department added Zarqawi and the Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad group to its "list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations" and ordered a freeze on any assets that the group might have in the United States.[59]
By May 2005, Zarqawi was the most wanted man in Jordan and Iraq, had claimed scores of attacks in Iraq against Iraqis and foreigners, and was blamed for perhaps even more.[60] The U.S. government then offered a $25m reward for information leading to his capture, the same amount offered for the capture of bin Laden before March 2004.
On February 24, 2006, the U.S. Department of Justice's FBI also added al-Zarqawi to the "Seeking Information – War on Terrorism" list, the first time that he had ever been added to any of the FBI's three major "wanted" lists.[61]
For the U.S. eventually killing Zarqawi in 2006, see the section Death.
Reports of death, detention and injuries
Missing leg
Claims of harm to Zarqawi changed over time. Early in 2002, there were unverified reports from Afghan Northern Alliance members that Zarqawi had been killed by a missile attack in Afghanistan. Many news sources repeated the claim. Later, Kurdish groups claimed that Zarqawi had not died in the missile strike, but had been severely injured, and went to Baghdad in 2002 to have his leg amputated.[159] On October 7, 2002, the day before Congress voted to give President George W. Bush authorization to invade Iraq, Bush gave a speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, that repeated as fact the claim that he had sought medical treatment in Baghdad.[160] This was one of several of President Bush's examples of ways Saddam Hussein had aided, funded, and harbored al-Qaeda. Powell repeated this claim in his February 2003 speech to the UN, urging a resolution for war, and it soon became "common knowledge" that Zarqawi had a prosthetic leg.
In 2004, Newsweek reported that some "senior U.S. military officials in Baghdad" had come to believe that he still had his original legs.[161] Knight Ridder later reported that the leg amputation was something "officials now acknowledge was incorrect".[162]
When the video of the Berg beheading was released in 2004, credence was given to the claim that Zarqawi was alive and active. The man identified as Zarqawi in the video did not appear to have a prosthetic leg. Videos of Zarqawi aired in 2006 that clearly showed him with both legs intact. When Zarqawi's body was autopsied, X-rays revealed that his right lower leg was fractured.[163]