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By Root 1225 0

in Jordan of not interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, but that was about to change. I resolved that from now on, if we learned about a terrorist group that was planning to target us hiding in another country, we would hit them before they hit us. I gathered together our intelligence service, the military, and the political leadership and said, “We’re going on the offensive. What Zarqawi did was reprehensible. The gloves are off, and I want you to get him.” We reached out to the Iraqi tribes to see if we could get more information. If the Iraqi government was willing to help us, fine. But if not, we were prepared to act alone.

Iraq was a closed country under Saddam Hussein, and our intelligence services had not been able to operate easily there. After the U.S.-led invasion, when things started to fall apart, it took us a little while to get our people inside. We knew Zarqawi was in Iraq. But initially we did not have the capability to move against him. Now we began aggressively to move into Iraq. We began to attach teams of Jordanian officers to American Special Forces units. Jordanians had a better understanding of the mannerisms of takfiris and were thus able to identify suspects more efficiently. Many takfiris have a distinctive manner of dress and behavior, and we helped the Americans understand what to look for.

Zarqawi had said that this was an attack against the Jordanian regime. But it was not, and people in Jordan clearly saw that killing guests at a wedding was an act of savage barbarity, not a political gesture. What Zarqawi had done was to declare war on Jordan. Now we were coming for him.

Zarqawi was born Ahmed Fadil Nazzal Khalaylah and grew up in the town of Zarqa, seventeen miles northeast of Amman. He was a thug and petty criminal and drifted until his early twenties, when he headed to Afghanistan to join the war against the occupying Soviet troops. Arriving just as the Russians were leaving in 1989, he adopted the nom de guerre of “al-Zarqawi,” literally meaning “the one from Zarqa,” and met Osama bin Laden and other radicals. On returning to Jordan in the early 1990s he set up a local terrorist group called Bay’at al-Emam, but before he could carry out any attacks he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment.

In prison, Zarqawi met the leading thinker of the radical takfiri movement, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, who encouraged his violent desires. But Maqdisi later started to criticize Zarqawi and the two men fell out. In what would prove to be a costly mistake, Zarqawi was released from prison in 1999, as part of a general amnesty declared shortly after I became king. It was not long before he headed back to Afghanistan, where he received further funding and encouragement from bin Laden. Following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, he returned to the Middle East to continue his plotting.

Zarqawi settled into the Kurdish areas in northern Iraq, where he linked up with a local terrorist group, Ansar al-Islam, with strong ties to Al Qaeda. Working with this local group and with a gang of Al Qaeda fighters who had come with him from Afghanistan, he and his men began experimenting with poisons, including cyanide and ricin, testing them on animals to make sure they worked. He began sending terrorists from his camp on missions to attack targets throughout Europe, including Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Many were subsequently arrested and confessed to Zarqawi’s involvement. Zarqawi wanted to expand his reach and influence. Little did he know that a much larger opportunity was about to present itself.

When the Americans invaded Iraq in 2003, Al Qaeda was dancing in the streets. Osama bin Laden was delighted, because he knew that with the instability that would inevitably follow, his supporters would be able to parachute into the heartland of the Arab world and set up a base. But bin Laden was not the only one to spot the opportunities for mayhem. Seeking to step into the vacuum created by the invasion, Zarqawi expanded his own activities. He became increasingly