Who Was Zarqawi’s Role Model?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in The War On Terrorism
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross knows:
Zarqawi’s role model was twelfth century Arab fighting king Nur ad-Din Zanki. Zanki had two missions in life: to drive the Crusaders from Arab lands and to crush Shiite rulers. Few understood the importance that Zarqawi placed on him. In interviews with Iraq and Zarqawi specialists at the State Department, Defense Department and West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, we found no one who understood the importance that Zarqawi placed on Zanki.A survey of the available literature on Zarqawi in English shows virtually no reference to Zarqawi’s relationship to Zanki. In the Arab world, though, there has been a fair amount of discussion about the two men.
We recently acquired a new, never-before-translated Arabic-language book on Zarqawi, Al Qaeda’s Second Generation, by Jordanian journalist Fouad Hussein, who has been linked to Hezbollah’s al-Manar television network. An independent translation that we commissioned reveals that
Zanki was in fact Zarqawi’s ideological guiding star. Hussein’s book reprints a long personal communication from Saif al-Adel, who heads the military wing of al Qaeda, about Zarqawi. Hussein and al-Adel put great emphasis on the fact that Zanki is Zarqawi’s role model.
That Zarqawi wasn’t an original thinker isn’t surprising. He simply knew the tricks of the trade. Get your message out there, give people more information to report on and be consistent. But like so many who use the media to seem larger than life, what’s ultimately revealed is an unoriginal personality who will ultimately be a historical sidenote at best.
However, the fact that Zarqawi drew strength from Zanki’s story should not be ignored. Because as Zarqawi’s life demonstrated, when you’re desperate you’ll start to grab onto anything that justifies your behavior. And in Zarqawi’s case, he certainly needed to lean on somebody else’s struggles to explain his miserable excuse for a life.
LIKE ZANKI, Zarqawi was a fighter first, and became religious only after personal reversals. In his Jordanian hometown of Zarqa, Zarqawi was known as a thug, a brawler, a gang enforcer. He was frequently arrested for petty crimes. He was fired from the only job he ever had after a few weeks, leaving him destitute and unmarriageable. The post-Soviet feuds in Afghanistan drew him there in 1993, where he immersed himself in radical Islam.
Read the whole thing and share your thoughts.
This entry was posted on Friday, June 9th, 2006 and is filed under The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 12th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
No offence but the amount of depth that has been put into this ‘Zarqawi’ character amazes me. I mean do you seriously believe all of that? Where did they get all of that information from? Honestly I think it’s just another way of diverting attention away from the real issues at hand and trying to push the blame on yet another person (jihadist??) Also, all Muslims should be Jihadists but of course one wouldn’t understand that because only the most corrupt possible image of Jihad that could ever be conjured is what is shown to the west.
Basically what I’m trying to say is that these articles sound utterly ridiculous to me because frankly I’m reading it and thinking well firstly I really don’t believe any of this and secondly – so what?! Somehow this Zarqawi guy is a terrorist because you invaded his hometown probably killed half his family. And no I’m not justifying anything that has been claimed against him I’m just saying put things into perspective.
Phrases like ‘radical Islam’ and such really don’t help the bridge of understanding now do they, instead they just contribute to demonising the faith which believe me when I say only stands for peace.
June 12th, 2006 at 10:39 pm
I think one of things that defines Zarqawi as a terrorist is his willingness cut off peoples heads on video and distribute the beheading.
June 13th, 2006 at 11:36 am
I might well have mentioned that just to stop people like you from responding with that comment.
June 14th, 2006 at 11:20 am
Usayd,
I might be wrong, but it seems to me that it is the job of “regular” Muslims to condemn the fanatics as harshly and as often as possible. Plus, the use of the phrase “radical Islam” is at least a good faith attempt to separate peace-loving Muslims from the ones that murder people. I doubt that most rational people would disagree with the fact that there are many Muslims who do not practice the way that terrorists do. However, it is silly to insinuate that there are not violent Muslims out there. Listen, there are murderers all over the world who have bad childhoods, live in poverty, lack education, etc. Zarqawi was a bad guy, just like all the rest of them. Out of curiosity, what “real issue” do you think this is an attempt to divert attention away from?