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11/12/2005:

"The Myth of Zarqawi"

...The event, which took place on the 9th day of the 11th month, carries the signature of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the top representative of al-Qaeda in Iraq. In the warm night of early November, while the body count soared and the Middle East was confronted with its own 9/11, the world came again face to face with the myth of the new global terror leader: Zarqawi.

Of Bedouin origins, Zarqawi was born and raised in a working class section of Zarqa, Jordan's second-largest city. After a brief spell as a petty criminal, he went to Afghanistan but arrived too late to fight the Soviets. In Afghanistan, he embraced radical Salafism, a creed that calls for a total rejection of Western values and influence. Arrested in Jordan for his subversive ideas, he spent five years in prison. This experience transformed him into one of many jihadists, with a handful of followers. In 2000, in Kandahar, he met Osama bin Laden for the first time, but rejected the Saudi's offer to become part of al-Qaeda. Zarqawi was not prepared to fight against the U.S.; instead, he wanted to wage his struggle against the Jordanian government. This became the purpose of the modest training camp that he ran in Herat, near the Iranian border, where he mainly trained recruits for suicide missions.

But it was on Feb. 5, 2003, when Colin Powell described him to the UN Security Council as the fictitious link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, that Zarqawi achieved global stardom. Since then, his myth has grown exponentially in both the West and the East.
antiwar.com