|
Zarqawi Driven by Emotion, Ex-Cellmates Say
During their years in a Jordanian prison, inmates remember Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in his Afghan dress weeping uncontrollably in the courtyard whenever he knelt to pray. "Abu Musab cried constantly. He was very emotional, almost like a child," said 35-year-old Yousef Rababaa as he recalled the young militant. Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born one-time street thug who is now the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, is remembered as a gentle man obsessed with Islam's past glory. His intense loyalty, his former cellmates say, went hand in hand with a fanatical adherence to his religion. He dreamed of an Islamic utopia where people would relive the puritanical lifestyle of the faith's early founders. The Arab Bedouin whose fanaticism condones the killing of fellow Muslims and is blamed by Washington for the beheading of foreign captives and suicide bombings that have maimed and killed hundreds, was a gentle almost stoic figure, his cellmates remember. They say his ability to mesmerize the closest people around him was another facet of a shadowy elusive character who has so far evaded capture. Rababaa who left prison with Zarqawi after an amnesty in April 1999 recollects how Zarqawi stood out among his peers for his piety. "Abu Musab would be as preoccupied with writing letter after letter to his old mother as spending long hours reciting the Koran," said Rababaa. It was piety of an extreme nature that molded Zarqawi's militancy, according to Islamists and experts who follow many of the young adherents of the Salafi brand of Islamist jihadis. "Emotions for militants like Zarqawi shape much of their behavior and mentality and drive them to wreak revenge for perceived injustices without thinking of the consequences," said Mohammed Najjar, a Jordanian scholar who follows radical Islamist political movements. Another cellmate, Khaled Abu Doma, 36, recalled the young Zarqawi's long days spent kneeling with another inmate on a mat in the prison courtyard as he patiently helped him memorize verse after verse from the Koran. Zarqawi would also wash other prisoners' clothes and scrub prison lavatories, chores which other prisoners usually shunned, Abu Doma said. APOSTATES VERSUS BELIEVERS But Zarqawi's commitment to a purist brand of Islam put both Muslim and non-believers at odds with his ideology, said Laith Shubailat, an prominent Islamist dissident who spent years in prison for his opposition to Jordan's pro-western monarchy. Shubailat, an advocate of non-violence and a parliamentary democracy to limit the Jordanian monarchy's extensive powers, recalled that the young militant's view of the world made him reject moderates like him. "Zarqawi may be more faithful to the tenets of Islam, but he and his followers have gone astray in their search for the truth," Shubailat said as he recollected a morning when Zarqawi invited him for breakfast. "I was an apostate for them. They have no gray. You have to be white completely. They put difficult conditions," said Shubailat, whose belief in reform from within the establishment made it impossible for him to find common ground with Zarqawi. SOLACE IN RELIGION Prison inmates and associates say Zarqawi found solace in an austere brand of Islam that gave him spiritual comfort from the social alienation he endured in a deprived upbringing. The childhood of Zarqawi, the son of an elder Bani Hassan tribesman, was shaped by poverty and the politics of the bleak industrial city of Zarqa, a melting pot of downtrodden Palestinian refugees and Bedouin tribes. Influenced by radical mosque preachers whom he encountered in the city, Zarqawi then in his late teens left in early 1989 for Afghanistan where his fellow Islamists were then fighting the "great infidels" -- the Soviet army. Zarqawi was among the last of the thousands of Arab volunteers who went to wage jihad (holy war) in Afghanistan, the most prominent of whom was Saudi born militant Osama Bin Laden. The alienated Muslim zealot who returned to Jordan in 1992 found a country going through rapid social change and could not come to terms with Westernizing influences. Within three years he had fallen foul of the establishment. He was arrested and charged for concealing explosives in a plot to destabilize the country. Zarqawi's four years in Jordanian prisons until his release in 1999 further distanced him from mainstream society but prepared him ideologically for his future endeavors, his prison comrades say. "Those prison years were critical in shaping Zarqawi's leadership qualities among his circle of followers that prepared him for his future role in Afghanistan and later Iraq," said Najjar. In September 1999 Zarqawi went back to Afghanistan before moving to Iraq where he is still thought to operate. Posted by: tipper 2005-04-05 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=60717 |