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Zarqawi the terror monster does he really exist { October 26 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=9§ion=0&article=53459&d=26&m=10&y=2004http://www.arabnews.com/?page=9§ion=0&article=53459&d=26&m=10&y=2004
Zarqawi the Terror Monster: But Does He Really Exist?
Staff Writer
Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi
JEDDAH, 26 October 2004 — Hours after the gruesome murder of 49 unarmed Iraqi army recruits on Saturday, the group Tawhid wal Jihad (Monotheism and Combat) claimed responsibility for it in the name of its leader Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi.
Over the past six months Zarqawi has been built up into an almost legendary figure, a kind of hero to radical Islamists and the arch-villain to Iraqis, Americans and many others. The US has put a $25 million bounty on his head - the same sum they are offering for Bin Laden himself. The reward was increased after American authorities intercepted a letter that, they claimed, confirmed he was working with Al-Qaeda to drive the US out of Iraq.
Zarqawi is suspected of direct involvement in the kidnap and beheading of several foreigners in Iraq - even of wielding the knife himself. Washington has also accused the 37-year-old Jordanian radical of masterminding a string of spectacular suicide bombings in Iraq, and of being linked to Al-Qaeda.
But many question his very existence while others insist that, even if he is in Iraq, he is unlikely to have the central role that US intelligence claims.
“Zarqawi is a semi-literate former petty thief with a low IQ,” says Husam Ghassen, a Jordanian ex-militant who knew the fugitive in the 1990s. “Having lost a leg in an American air raid on one of the Mujahedeen camps in Afghanistan, Zarqawi is more likely to be hiding somewhere in Pakistan or Iran than leading holy war in Iraq.”
After viewing a video of the beheading of American engineer Eugene Armstrong, taken hostage in Baghdad in September 2004 along with a fellow American and a Briton, the CIA announced with a “high degree of confidence” that it was Zarqawi who read out a statement and then carried out the murder.
The video followed a pattern, which has become grimly familiar since American contractor Nick Berg was shown being beheaded last May.
A group of militants clad in black stand in front of the banner of Zarqawi’s group with their victim kneeling before them. After reading a statement, a militant leans over the bound and blindfolded prisoner and cuts off his head with a knife.
Those killed in this fashion include another American, a South Korean, a Bulgarian, a Briton, a Turk and several Iraqis.
In the run-up to the Iraq war in February 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations Zarqawi was an associate of Osama Bin Laden who had sought refuge in Iraq. Intelligence reports indicated he was in Baghdad and — according to Powell — this was a sure sign that Saddam Hussein was courting Al-Qaeda, which, in turn, justified an attack on Iraq. But some analysts contested the claim, pointing to Zarqawi’s historical rivalry with Bin Laden. Both men rose to prominence as “Afghan Arabs” - leading foreign fighters in the “jihad” against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
It was a far cry from Zarqawi’s youth as a petty criminal in Jordan, remembered by those who knew him as a simple, quick-tempered, and barely literate gangster. But after the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan, Zarqawi went back to Jordan with a radical Islamist agenda. He spent seven years in prison there, accused of conspiring to overthrow the monarchy and establish an Islamic caliphate.
Not long after his release, he fled the country. Jordan tried him in absentia and sentenced him to death for allegedly plotting attacks on American and Israeli tourists.
Western intelligence sources claim Zarqawi sought refuge in Europe. German security forces later uncovered a militant cell that claimed Zarqawi was its leader.
The cell-members also told their German interrogators their group was “especially for Jordanians who did not want to join Al-Qaeda”.
There are also reports that Zarqawi spent some time in Brussels, London and Paris where he contemplated going to Algeria to fight alongside Islamist terrorists there. What is certain is that Zarqawi ended up in Afghanistan where he underwent training in a camp near Herat, close to the Iranian border. The camp trained specialists in the manufacture and use of poison gases.
According to most sources Zarqawi established contacts with Al-Qaeda sometime in the year 2000 and spent several months training at the Badr II camp, set up in southeastern Afghanistan
It is during this period that Zarqawi is thought to have renewed his acquaintance with Al-Qaeda.
He is believed to have fled to Iraq in 2001 after losing a leg in a US missile strike on his Afghan base. US officials argue that it was at Al-Qaeda’s behest that he moved to Iraq and established links with Ansar Al-Islam — a group of Kurdish Islamists, operating under the label of Ansar Al-Islam (Companions of Islam) from the north of the country in an area close to the Iranian border. He is thought to have remained with them for a while — feeling at home in mountainous northern Iraq.
When US aid official Laurence Foley was gunned down in Amman in October 2002, the Jordanian authorities claimed he had masterminded and financed the attack.
If the intelligence agencies are to be believed, it was just the beginning of a busy year for Zarqawi. In 2003, he was named as the brains behind a series of lethal bombings - from Casablanca in Morocco to Istanbul in Turkey. Later Spanish officials were reported to be looking into allegations that he may have been behind the Madrid bombings on March 11, 2004, which killed 191 people.
It is in Iraq, though, that he appears to be most active.
The assassination of the Iraqi Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Muhammad-Baqer Al-Hakim, at a shrine in the town of Najaf, was one of the bloodiest attacks in Iraq last year - over 50 Shiite worshippers died. US authorities pinned the blame on Zarqawi.
The intercepted “Zarqawi” letter released by the Americans in February 2004 seems to support their claim.
In it, the author appeared to share his plans for igniting sectarian conflict in Iraq as a means of undermining the US presence there. And he claims to have already undertaken 25 successful attacks against the enemy.
Within days of the letter’s release, bomb attacks on recruiting centers for the Iraqi security forces had killed nearly 100 people. Attacks have continued across Iraq almost daily in recent months. Whether or not Zarqawi is behind them all, he is seen by the US as the biggest obstacle to their hopes of progress in Iraq — their most dangerous enemy in the country.
The US has justified its daily attacks against Fallujah, west of Baghdad, with the claim that it is targeting Zarqawi and his gang. On Saturday, however, Zarqawi was supposed to be near Kirkush, some 200 kilometers east of Fallujah, killing Iraqi army recruits.
The people of Fallujah, however, insist that they have never seen the man or heard about him except through the media.
So, where is Zarqawi or, indeed, does he exist? That is the $25 million question.
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