Al-Zarqawi: The man who turned an insurgency into Sunni-Shia civil war
By: Salman Saeed
Tags: Iraq War, Humanity, International Relations, International Security, Terrorism

‘Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’

The new phase of terrorism in the Muslim world is mostly started after the USA’s Iraq invasion when many new nongovernmental organizations appeared on the front to fight against the US army. The most influential of them all was one name in Iraq and that was ‘Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’, the person who is believed as the founder of ‘ISIS’, the famous terrorist organization in the US list these days. Al Zarqawi was born in Jordan on October 30, 1966, and later became a jihadist after participating in the Soviet-Afghan war. In early life Zarqawi became a thug and criminal in Jordan and was wanted by the Jordan government, it was this time when he went to Afghanistan and joined mujahedeen’s. After the defeat of the Soviet Union, he came back to Jordan and in 1992 was captured in Jordan after guns and explosives found in his home In jail he gained popularity as a leader because of his radical Islamic beliefs and started giving fatwa’s to other jail members (Whitlock, 2006).

In 1999 he was released from jail and then he directly went to Afghanistan where he met Osama bin laden. He asked al-Qaeda to fund his training camps. After receiving the money he formed training camps near the afghan Iran border, this training camp attracted many jihadists coming from Jordan, it was this time when he formed his militant organization named ‘Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad ‘. After the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, he fled to Iraq, then Iraq became his base camp and he started making sleeper cells there in the response to expected US invasion of Iraq. Al Zarqawi assisted al Qaeda in Iraq, that’s why he was considered the leader of al Qaeda’s Middle East wing. He died in targeted killing by joint US forces on June 7, 2006, near Baghdad.

Influence in Iraq

He is responsible for many terrorist attacks held in and outside Iraq, including attacks on UN and US officials present in Iraq, he also planned the attack on UN headquarter present in Baghdad. One major thing he did was attacking Shia Islamic mosques and Shia scholars in Iraq which erupted and started the Sunni-Shia civil war. His actions and tactics which include the slaughter of Americans and making videos of it, kidnapping personals became popular among other extremist groups, (Gettleman, 2006). That’s also the reason al Qaeda separated his ways from Zarqawi due to ideological differences because they thought he had gone so far. Due to his act of terror against the Shia sect, an author in the New York Review of books describes al Zarqawi as been responsible for turning an insurgency in Iraq into Sunni-Shia civil war, (Anonymous, 2015). He is considered to take the acts of violence to a new level and was as important for America in Iraq as Osama bin Laden was. It was Zarqawi’s founded organization that after became and rose as ISIS the most organized terrorist organization.

A depict of Sunni-Shia conflict in an art piece

Doubts about his importance

There is no doubt that he was a big name during the US-Iraq war but several sources claimed that he was just a product of US war propaganda. He was just a leader of a terrorist organization whom the US gave so much importance to give power to their Iraq invasion instance. Many US generals who served in Iraq like Gen. Mark Kimmitt accepted that Zarqawi propaganda was most influential to date. Col. Derek Harvey who served as military intelligence in the US military said in a meeting “Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature if you will — made him more important than he really is, in some ways.” (Ricks, 2006). Not even the American army personnel but many journalists also doubt the abilities of Zarqawi to become such a famous name as On June 8, 2006, on the BBC’s Question times program, the Respect party MP George Gallway referred to al-Zarqawi as “a ‘Bo0geyman’, built up by the Americans to try and perpetrate the lie that the resistance in Iraq is by foreigners and that the mass of the Iraqis is with the American and British occupation”. Jeffrey Gettleman of The New York Times supported this saying “several people who knew Mr. Zarqawi well, including former cellmates, voiced doubts about his ability to be an insurgent leader, or the leader of anything, (Gettleman, 2006).

References

Anonymous. (2015). The Mystery of ISIS. New York Review of Books. LXII (13) .

Gettleman, J. (2006). Abu Musab al-Zarqawi Lived a Brief, Shadowy Life Replete With Contradictions. The New York Times .

Ricks, T. (2006). Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi. The Washington Post .

Whitlock, C. (2006). Al-Zarqawi’s Biography. The Washington Post , 2.