The Zarqawi effect
Bush's Mideast policies have turned a brutal terrorist into an icon of resistance -- and made violent fundamentalism more popular.
By Juan Cole
AP Photo/Hadi Mizban
The aftermath of a roadside bomb that exploded in the predominantly Shiite area of Kazimiyah, in Baghdad, Iraq, on Friday, June 23, 2006.
June 27, 2006 | Whatever the meaning of the killing of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by a U.S. airstrike earlier this month, it has not lessened Iraq's violent nightmare, or calmed tensions in the Middle East. Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called him "the prince of martyrs" and vowed revenge on the U.S. Some reports suggest that the two U.S. soldiers captured at Yusufiyah were tortured and killed by Zarqawi's shadowy successor. The three weeks after his death have witnessed daily bombings with dozens of casualties throughout Iraq. And Zarqawi's demise has stirred up trouble throughout the region, as controversies on how to respond to it have erupted among secularists and fundamentalists, Sunnis and Shiites.
Outside Iraq, the most public dispute has raged in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Jordan has refused to accept Zarqawi's body, which will likely be unceremoniously dumped in an unmarked grave in Iraq, lest it become a shrine. I was in Amman the week after Zarqawi's death, and Jordan was abuzz with reports of the deep involvement of that country's security forces in the operation against him. Indeed, Jordanian newspapers called the campaign "Operation Hotel Martyrs," seeing the airstrike on his safe house in Hibhib as payback for the deadly explosions at the Radisson, the Hyatt and the Days Inn in Amman last November. It has now been revealed that one of those who betrayed Zarqawi was a Jordanian in his own circle, likely a double agent recruited by Amman's formidable intelligence service.
On June 10, I attended the military parade that commemorated the early 20th century Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, and found throngs of enthusiastic Jordanian nationalists cheering their military men as they passed by in tanks and armored vehicles. Children impudently clambered atop police SUVs to get a better look at the passing troops, and girls in head scarves and long embroidered black tunics shouted approval in their Bedouin-accented Arabic, all hard G's and glottal stops. King and nation clearly retain substantial popularity. But currents of dissatisfaction are moving beneath the surface, which could pose a serious challenge to the Jordanian government and America's geo-strategic plans for the region.
I was in the audience on June 12 when Prince Hassan, Jordan's former heir apparent, addressed more than 1,300 Middle East experts at the Cultural Center, condemning supporters of terrorism and urging Muslims to return to their moderate roots as a way of mediating conflicts. The urbane, mustachioed and balding royal denounced the appropriation of religious terminology by violent political movements. "Using religious names and definitions is not serving religious causes," he said. He warned that if Muslims do not moderate, "The future is either one of Balkanization, ethnic and sectarian strife, or surrendering to the extremists."
Jordan's King Abdullah II finds himself caught between the two horns of Bush administration policy in the region. On the one hand, Bush's push for a hasty and simplistic "democratization" process has led to a Hamas win in Palestine, an unprecedentedly strong showing by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egyptian parliamentary elections, a Shiite fundamentalist takeover of Iraq, and the admission for the first time of the Lebanese Hezbollah to the government in Beirut. The secular-leaning Jordanian government is deathly afraid that Hamas will gain influence in Jordan itself, and has already accused the party of attempting to smuggle arms into the kingdom.
The other outcome of Bush administration policy has been the rise of Islamist terrorism in Sunni Arab Iraq, as formerly secular Iraqis have turned to religious fundamentalism as a way of combating what they see as U.S. occupation. Both a revived political Islam in the region and a rampaging faith-based terrorism next door in Iraq represent dire threats to Jordan's government.
Zarqawi, whose real name was Ahmad Fadil al-Khalayla, hailed from the Jordanian city of Zarqa, and his radicalism must be understood in a Jordanian context. Although an overwhelmingly conservative Sunni Muslim country, Jordan has not been predominantly an Islamist one. The majority ideology has tended to be some form of Arab nationalism rather than religious fundamentalism. Palestinians displaced by the 1948 war and their descendants, who form some 60 percent of Jordan's population, have historically tended to support the secular Palestine Liberation Organization. The Jordanians of indigenous East Bank or Bedouin background value tribe and king. In both cases, though, some have started turning to political Islam -- an ominous development for Jordan and for the United States, which values the Hashemite Kingdom as an oasis of moderation in the region.
Zarqawi formed part of a minority Islamist political tendency in Jordan, but his radicalism and violence put him on the fringes even of it. He was arrested in 1994 for joining a conspiracy to overthrow King Hussein. His organization, Monotheism and Holy War, is thought to be responsible for several terrorist attacks or foiled plots in Jordan. On Nov. 9, 2005, members of his group, rebranded al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, detonated powerful bombs at the three tourist hotels in Amman, killing 60 Jordanians.
The hotel bombings stirred widespread outrage in Jordan because they targeted Jordanians, whom Zarqawi and his group had branded infidels and apostates because they did not accept his fundamentalist vision. After his death, 67 percent of Jordanians rejected the notion that Zarqawi should be considered a martyr, and nearly 60 percent branded him a terrorist. Seventy percent said that even offering condolences on his death was unacceptable. But 15 percent saw him as either a martyr or an "ordinary citizen" -- and ominously, these were mainly young people.
The narrative of the Arab Revolt is the cornerstone of Jordanian political identity and offers a powerful challenge to the Muslim revivalist or "Salafi" vision of history. From 1916, the Sharif of Mecca and his sons, scions of the Prophet Muhammad and leading notables in the city of his birth, led a nationalist rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, whose sultans had recently begun styling themselves caliphs, or a sort of Sunni "pope." Sharif Hussein and his sons Faisal and Abdullah, who possessed their own religious charisma as Meccan leaders claiming descent from the Prophet, rejected that claim. They were perfectly happy to take help from the British Empire, which was fighting the Germans and Ottoman Turks in World War I and used the Arabs as a guerrilla force to attack the Ottoman rear. One of the British agents lending the Arabs aid, T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), presented himself as the hero of the story, but Arabs know who really led the Arab revolt.
Next page: The U.S. occupation is turning ordinary Arabs into fundamentalists
