1989: The Architect of Al-Qaeda of
Iraq goes to Pakistan
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian thug, arrived in Pakistan in 1989, in order to receive military training and fight in Afghanistan. The 23 year old Zarqawi was one of the many violent young men who were sent to Pakistan by the Saudis and the Americans to fight the Soviets.
The year Zarqawi arrived in Pakistan is the year the Soviets are leaving Afghanistan (1989). The Soviets and the Americans agreed not to get involved in Afghanistan after the Soviets left. The Chinese did not want to get involved in a Muslim war either, because they were afraid that there would be a rise of terrorism in their Muslim Province of Xin Jiang if they did.
Thus a war broke out between the Iranians and the Pakistanis in Afghanistan. The Irnaians were supported by India and the Pakistanis were supported by the Arabs of the Persian Gulf. Zarqawi fought in this war on the side of the Arabs and the Pakistanis.
In 1993 Zarqawi went back to Jordan, and he set up his own terrorist organization. His aim was to overthrow the pro-American Jordanian King and to turn Jordan to an Islamic emirate.
The Jordanian King was pro-American, but he was also closely cooperating with Saddam Hussein who was pro-Soviet. The Iraqis gave the Jordanians free oil, and the Jordanians allowed the Iraqis to use their port at the Gulf of Aqaba, in order to avoid the Iranians and the Syrians. Remember that Saddam is an enemy of Saudi Arabia too. The Saudis and the Iraqis cooperate against the Iranians, but they are enemies. They are all competing in the oil markets, and like everybody else Saddam Hussein accuses Saudi Arabia of producing too much oil and pushing price downwards. See “The Production of Oil and the Price of Oil”.
https://iakal.wordpress.com/2016/07/24/the-production-of-oil-and-the-price-of-oil/
Map The Gulf of Aqaba
Map The Alliance between Jordan and Iraq
In the meantime, while Zarqawi was in Pakistan and Afghanistan (1989-1993), Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and took its oilfields, hoping that the Americans and the Saudis would not attack him because they would be afraid that this would enhance the Iranians. But he was wrong. The Saudis invited the Americans to come to the Gulf, and the Americans pushed Saddam out of Kuwait. But Saddam was right, and the Americans did not dare to overturn him even though they were outside Baghdad.
Therefore when Zarqawi came back to Jordan in 1993 there was already the rift between Osama bin Laden and the Saudi King, because Osama bin Laden, and many other Arabs too, did not want the American army in the Gulf. Obviously Iran did not want the American army either. Osama bin Laden is already in Sudan, where he will stay for the period 1992-1996, in order for Hezbollah and Iran to train Al-Qaeda. See “The Hezbollah – Al-Qaeda Axis”.
https://iakal.wordpress.com/2016/05/22/the-hezbollah-al-qaeda-axis/
I do not think that Osama bin Laden was randomly chosen by Iran and Hezbollah. Osama bin Laden’s mother was a Syrian Shia, even though Osama was a Sunni. Actually his mother was a Syrian Alawite, like Bashar al Assad, and Osama was very mild with the Shias. The Alawites are a sect of Shia Islam.
Therefore Osama bin Laden was an ideal candidate for the Iranians and Hezbollah, because he could cooperate with them very well. Remember that Al-Qaeda was an un-holy alliance between Sunni Arabs from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, with the Shias of Iran and Hezbollah, in order to fight the Saudi King and the Americans.
Al-Qaeda was the Sunni version of Hezbollah, and the Arabs were putting the money and Hezbollah was putting the weapons, the training and the espionage. Osama was an ideal candidate, and he was also a man who grew up in the same circles of the Saudi Royal family, and he had plenty of connections. Unfortunately people who read NAZI and Communist propaganda think that Al-Qaeda is a CIA organization.
For the mother of Osama bin Laden see “The Short, Violent Life of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi”, August 2006.
46th Paragraph
According to several different accounts of the meeting, bin Laden distrusted and disliked al-Zarqawi immediately. He suspected that the group of Jordanian prisoners with whom al-Zarqawi had been granted amnesty earlier in the year had been infiltrated by Jordanian intelligence; something similar had occurred not long before with a Jordanian jihadist cell that had come to Afghanistan. Bin Laden also disliked al-Zarqawi’s swagger and the green tattoos on his left hand, which he reportedly considered un-Islamic. Al-Zarqawi came across to bin Laden as aggressively ambitious, abrasive, and overbearing. His hatred of Shiites also seemed to bin Laden to be potentially divisive—which, of course, it was. (Bin Laden’s mother, to whom he remains close, is a Shiite, from the Alawites of Syria.)
In Jordan Zarqawi went to prison for terrorist activities. In 1999 he was reased and went back to Afghanistan, where he met for the first time Osama bin Laden. The two men did not like each other from the beginning. Zarqawi told the respected leader of Al-Qaeda that it was a sin to help the Taliban fight the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, because it was a sin for a Muslim to kill another Muslim. In essence Zarqawi was siding with Iran in Afghanistan because the Northern Alliance was the ally of Iran and India, and the Taliban were the ally of the Arabs and the Pakistanis.
Zarqawi was a lot more of an Iranian guy when compared to Osama bin Laen. Osama bin Laden cooperated with Iran and Hezbollah but he was not an Iranian guy. Zarqawi never accepted to fight the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan during his second time in Afghanistan. Obviously during his first time he did (1989-1993). Only when the Americans invaded Afghanistan in 2001 Zarqawi joined Al-Qaeda in order to fight the Americans.
That’s why the training camp that was given to Zarqawi to train his men was at the Herat province of Afghanistan, very close to the Iranian borders, in order for him to have easy access to Iran.
What is very interesting is that Zarqawi, contrary to Osama, was very anti-Shia, and he believed that the Shias in the Arab countries should be executed. And that raises the question why he was chosen by the Iranians and why he received so much support from them.
The answer is that the Iranians need Sunni anti-Shiites too. For example it is good for the Iranians when Al-Qaeda attacks the Shiites of Saudi Arabia, in order for the Saudi Shiites to feel unprotected by the Saudi King, and look somewhere else for protection.
Note that the Saudi Shiites mainly live in the rich in oil regions of Saudi Arabia near the Persian Gulf. Obviously the Iranians want unrest near the Saudi oilfields. The truth is that Iran does not give a damn about the Shiites of the Arab world. Iran and Hezbollah want to use them against their enemies.
Map Sunnis (light green) and Shia (dark green) of Saudi Arabia
http://www.brookings.edu/research/essays/2015/the-prince-of-counterterrorism
Moreover there was always the possibility that the Americans would attack Iraq, and in that case the Iranians would need a Sunni who would attack the Shiites who would dare to cooperate with the Americans. Actually that’s exactly what Zarqawi did when the Americans invaded Iraq in 2003.
Zarqawi fought the Americans in Afghanistan in 2001, and when the Americans destroyed the rebels, Zarqawi entered Iran, where he stayed for about a year. When the war in Iraq was coming, Zarqawi crossed the Iranian-Iraqi borders and entered the Iraqi Kurdistan region, and together with the people of Saddam Hussein he started fighting the Kurds who were cooperating with the Americans.
That’s the reason the Americans were saying that Saddam Hussein was cooperating with Al-Qaeda. That was true, but obviously the Americans knew that Zarqawi was an Iranian and not an Iraqi man. Saddam Hussein could not establish with Al-Qaeda the strong connections the Iranians had, because Saddam Hussein was an enemy of the Saudi King, but together they were fighting the Iranians.
A few months before the Americans attack Saddam, Zarqawi will leave Iraqi Kurdistan, and will go to Iraq with his men, in order to prepare for the coming war. It is the time Saddam Hussein is building many terrorist channels in Iraq, because he knows that he will lose the war, and he prepares the country for a guerilla war. Jihadists are coming to Iraq from all over the world to fight the Americans, and they are invited by Saddam.
After Saddam’s fall, Zarqawi carrieed out many terrorist attacks against the Americans, but also against the Shiites of Iraq who were cooperating with the Americans. The mission of Zarqawi was to cause a civil war between the Sunnis and the Shias of Iraq. This civil war would prevent the Americans from stabilizing the country.
Osama bin Laden had asked Zarqawi many times to make his group a franchise of Al-Qaeda, but Zarqawi had never accepted, maybe because he was closer to Iran than Osama. But in 2004 Zarqawi finally pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda, and his group became Al-Qaeda of Iraq. Maybe Zarqawi thought it was good for him to distance himself a bit from Iran at this point. In Iraq there were all the ex-officers of Saddam Hussein who wanted to fight the Americans, and these people were enemies of Iran. Maybe it was not good for him to look too much of an Iranian guy.
Maybe that’s why Zarqawi decided to become Al-Qaeda in 2004. Or maybe he received a lot of funding from the Saudis and the Qataris and the other Arabs of the Persian Gulf and he wanted to distance himself from Iran. I am not sure what exactly it was.
But even after becoming Al-Qaeda of Iraq Zarqawi will be quite independent from central Al-Qaeda, and he will be a lot more violent than Osama wants him to be.
In 2006 the Americans will kill Zarqaiw, but in the meantime Zarqawi had managed to establish Al-Qaeda of Iraq, which is the predecessor of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), which in turn is the predecessor of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which in turn is the predecessor of the Islamic State (IS).
For the violent career of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi see a great article by the American magazine Atlantic “The Short, Violent Life of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi”, August 2006.
Atlantic is one of the oldest Americans magazines (1857).