A Profile of Zarqawi

Here's a very interesting profile of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. There's much more detail in the article, but here's my rough take:

He had a misspent youth in Jordan, a drop out, a gang member, a drunk, and a bully. He went to prison for drugs and sexual assault. When we got out he went to Afghanistan to be a mujahideen in 1989 but the Soviets had already left and there was no one to fight. He wandered around and returned to Jordan in '93. He was arrested in '94 for creating a jihadist group and sentenced to 15 years though got out in '99.

It was during this second imprisonment that he exercised constantly and learned the Koran. In 2000 he met bin Laden but didn't care about fighten America, only local Arab regimes. Instead of joining al Qaeda he setup his own terrorist training camp in Afghanistan with funding from the Taliban. When the Taliban fell, he fled to Iraqi Kurdistan. In the fall of 2001 US found out about Zarqawi from Kurdish secret services and then asked Jordan about him. Then joint US-Jordanian investigations charged him with being involved in various terrorist acts but presented no hard evidence.

Funny thing about not presenting evidence, it's not clear if he was actually involved or if it was convenient for all sides to merely accuse him of it. Colin Powell mentioned him in his Feb 2003 speech to the UN Security Council. "Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an associated in collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaida lieutenants." During this time, Zarqawi assumed the US would invade and take Iraq and then he would attack them. He started in Aug 2003, months after the Shiite insurgency had started.

Between Aug 2003 and Dec 2004 he corresponded with bin Laden. Zarqawi sought legitimacy since he lacked any religious authority. Zarqawi's goal was to keep the Sunnis and Shiites separated or else it would turn into a nationalistic struggle which would cut out his foreign jihadists. In Dec 2004, bin Laden called Zarqawi "brother".

It seems clear from this article, he wasn't attacking us until we attacked him. And we've been attacking a lot of people who didn't attack us first. The article ends with: "In a sense, it is the very things that make Zarqawi seem most ordinary--his humble upbringing, misspent youth, and early failures--that make him most frightening. Because, although he may have some gifts as a leader of men, it is also likely that there are many more 'Zarqawis' capable of filling his place."