Zarqa is a dusty, dirty city. The houses sprawl over a series of brown, sun-blasted hillsides. It has a reputation for being the home to the car trade, and for crime. It is also home to Iraq's most wanted man - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The name means, "the man from Zarqa". Zarqawi himself has been on the run for years. But his wife and four children still live in a two-storey house on the edge of town. His brother-in-law Saleh al-Hami also lives across the road. He was eager to put the record straight about his notorious relative. Zarqawi is a good man, he insisted, a good Muslim, who has gone to Iraq out of principle to fight the American-led occupation.
| Yasss, just a pious man gone wrong. |
This rough town provided inauspicious roots for a man the Americans credit with leading a large part of the Iraqi resistance.
When he was in his teens, it seemed that Zarqawi was destined for a life of petty crime. He was known as a bit of a thug, a lowlife.
But while few claim Zarqawi is a great intellectual, it appears he does have the ability to lead: the ability to persuade, or to bully, others to follow him. "He is a leader, he is strong, straight to the point, with a very strong personality," says Leith Shubeilat, an Islamic activist imprisoned with Zarqawi in the 1990s. What sounds like an obsessive personality gradually turned Zarqawi from crime to the more dangerous pursuit of radical Islam, with its fiery mix of religion and politics. He travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan, although his relationship with Osama Bin Laden is disputed. In 1993, Zarqawi was arrested in Jordan, after the authorities discovered rifles and bombs stashed in his house. In the next years in prison, he turned to learning the Koran by heart. Then in 1999, he was released by the Jordanians as part of a general amnesty.
| Big mistake, but we didn't know that then. |
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