TIME: Meet the New
Jihad
Monday, July 05, 2004
By MICHAEL WARE / FALLUJAH
The safe house lies on the outskirts of Fallujah in a
neighborhood where no Americans have ventured.
Inside, a group of Arab sheiks has gathered to
discuss the jihad they and their followers are waging
against the U.S. The men wear white robes and long
beards and greet each other solemnly. They are all
Iraqi, but their beliefs are those of the strict
Wahhabi strain of Islam repressed under Saddam
Hussein. Unlike most Iraqi sitting rooms, this one
has no pictures adorning its walls or a television or
radio nestled in a corner. Such luxuries are
forbidden, just as they were under the Taliban in
Afghanistan. At the back of the room are a few men
from Saudi Arabia, who stand silently as one of the
sheiks, the group's leader, addresses me in Arabic
and stilted English. The war in Iraq, he says, is one
of liberation, not just of a country but of Muslim
lands, Muslim people, Islam itself. There is no room
for negotiation with the enemy, no common ground.
What he and his men offer is endless, righteous
resistance. "Maybe this war will take a long time,"
he says. "Maybe this is a world war."
After the meeting, they adjourn to the garden and
drink sweet black tea in the twilight. As they
lecture me on Islam, a roar cuts across the
conversation. From the other side of the farmhouse,
less than 50 yds. away, a missile soars over us with
a thunderous screech--bound for a nearby encampment
housing U.S. Marines. "Allahu akbar," they all
mutter: God is great. Minutes later, the imam makes
the evening call to prayer. The 50 militants gathered
at the safe house form tight lines behind one of the
imams and bow reverently in prayer. Then some leave
to get ready to try to kill more Americans.
While the U.S. hopes that the fighting and dying in
Iraq will begin to dissipate after the hand-off of
power to an interim Iraqi government this week,
militants like these sheltered outside Fallujah are
just as determined to wreak more carnage. The
ruthlessness of the insurgents was evident across
Iraq last week, as guerrillas launched a wave of
attacks that were stunning in their scale and
coordination. In a single day, insurgents attacked in
six cities, blowing up police stations, seizing
government buildings, ambushing U.S. forces and
killing more than 100 people, including three
American soldiers. Though U.S. commanders continue to
say they can contain the insurgency, Iyad Allawi, the
incoming Iraqi Prime Minister, said he may impose
martial law once he takes office, a move that would
at least temporarily suspend many of the liberties
the U.S. ostensibly intended to bring to Iraq. "We
were expecting such an escalation, and we will
witness more in the next few weeks," Allawi said. "We
will deal with it, and we will crush it."
The insurgents have no intention of laying down their
arms. Indeed, the nature of the insurgency in Iraq is
fundamentally changing. TIME reported last fall that
the insurgency was being led by members of the former
Baathist regime, who were using guerrilla tactics in
an effort to drive out foreign occupiers and reclaim
power. But a TIME investigation of the insurgency
today--based on meetings with insurgents, tribal
leaders, religious clerics and U.S. intelligence
officials--reveals that the militants are turning the
resistance into an international jihadist movement.
Foreign fighters, once estranged from homegrown
guerrilla groups, are now integrated as cells or
complete units with Iraqis. Many of Saddam's former
secret police and Republican Guard officers, who two
years ago were drinking and whoring, no longer dare
even smoke cigarettes. They are fighting for Allah,
they say, and true jihadis reject such earthly
indulgences.
Their goal now, say the militants interviewed, is
broader than simply forcing the U.S. to leave. They
want to transform Iraq into what Afghanistan was in
the 1980s: a training ground for young jihadists who
will form the next wave of recruits for al-Qaeda and
like-minded groups. Nearly all the new jihadist
groups claim to be receiving inspiration, if not
commands, from Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the suspected
al-Qaeda operative who the U.S. believes has
masterminded the insurgency's embrace of terrorism.
Al-Zarqawi's group kidnapped three Turkish workers
last Saturday and threatened to behead them within 72
hours unless Turkish companies withdrew from Iraq.
And now the conditions are ripening for the
insurgents to turn their armed struggle into a
political movement that aims to exploit the upheaval
and turn parts of Iraq into Taliban-style fiefdoms. A
potential leader is Sheik Mahdi Ahmed al-Sumaidai, a
hard-line Salafi imam recently released from Abu
Ghraib prison and now based in Baghdad's radical Ibn
Taimiya Mosque. Mujahedin leaders and U.S. military
and intelligence officers in Iraq say many jihadists
are also rallying behind Harith al-Dhari, who leads
the Association of Muslim Scholars, Iraq's most
significant Sunni organization. Al-Dhari, who
operates out of the Mother of all Battles Mosque, is
said to have played a key role in mobilizing fighters
during April's uprising in Fallujah; during a
gathering of militants there on April 9, one of his
lieutenants called on Muslims outside Iraq to join
the fight. As a result, al-Dhari has built support
among both Iraqi and foreign insurgents, who believe
he may emerge as a figure akin to Taliban leader
Mullah Omar.
Insurgents also say al-Zarqawi may have intended last
week's onslaught to be even more catastrophic. As
militants attacked in cities like Fallujah and
Baqubah, a cell of an Iraqi resistance group working
with al-Zarqawi roamed Baghdad, insurgent sources
told TIME. Working in small teams in separate cars,
the insurgents cased targets and waited for their
commanders, including al-Zarqawi himself, to issue
strike orders. When the cell didn't receive the call,
it withdrew and waited for another opportunity to
attack.
U.S. intelligence officials say they now believe Iraq
is a magnet for fanatical Muslims around the world.
"It's become the proving ground," says a senior U.S.
intelligence official. The jihadists are convinced
they can continue fighting indefinitely. "Jihad is
not made by us," says a midlevel insurgent leader.
"It is made by the Prophet and will continue to
Judgment Day." With the U.S. ceding political power
to Iraqis this week, here's an inside look at how the
new jihadists operate and the threats they pose to
stability in Iraq.
THE GODFATHER
Before the U.S. invaded IRAQ last spring, al-Zarqawi
was a fringe player on the global terrorist stage.
According to U.S. intelligence officials, the
37-year-old Jordanian spent months traveling from
Afghanistan to Iran to Georgia, offering his services
as a terrorism consultant to Islamist groups. His
firmest prewar connections were with Ansar al-Islam,
a Kurdish-based militant group associated with
al-Qaeda. Intelligence officials suspect that last
spring al-Zarqawi fled to Iran and joined the
terrorist group's leadership there before slipping
back into Iraq.
Over the past six months, al-Zarqawi's profile in
jihadi circles has risen with the increase in
terrorist attacks in Iraq, including suicide
bombings. Through aggressive use of the Internet,
al-Zarqawi has promoted himself and his group,
Attawhid wal Jihad, or Unity and Holy War. A senior
U.S. military official says the U.S. believes that
al-Zarqawi played a chief role in the coordination of
last week's violence and is gearing up for more.
"This guy knows his [stuff]," says the official.
From what Iraqi members of jihadist groups closely
affiliated with al-Zarqawi's network describe, the
Jordanian operates more as a godfather-style mafioso
than a traditional military commander. Insurgent
commanders told TIME that al-Zarqawi does not direct
day-to-day operations but guides strategy and is
involved in the planning of major operations.
Al-Zarqawi possesses an unmatched ability to persuade
and indoctrinate. "Some of the emirs just have to sit
with him and listen," says a senior Fallujah-based
commander, "and they walk away committed to him."
Al-Zarqawi's role at the center of the insurgency was
cemented in April, during the standoff between
militants and U.S. Marines in Fallujah. Foreign
fighters from throughout the Middle East, including
Syria and Saudi Arabia, manned the barricades
alongside Iraqi fighters during the Marines'
offensive. This kind of on-the-ground cooperation was
rare in the past, according to Iraqi cell leaders, in
part because foreigners were viewed as terrorists
interested only in major attacks against civilian
targets. Now foreigners team up with Iraqis to employ
more traditional guerrilla tactics, such as roadside
ambushes and mortar attacks against U.S. forces.
Despite al-Zarqawi's efforts to attract Iraqi
insurgent groups into his network, his inner circle
of lieutenants and bodyguards is said to consist
entirely of foreign fighters. No one can pinpoint how
many are operating in Iraq, partly because they
remain shadowy even to those who work with them. "The
foreigners trust no one, not even their own clothes,"
says an Iraqi resistance fighter. He adds that
al-Zarqawi has become an inspirational figure, like
Osama bin Laden, for militants who espouse his
methods and religious fervor. "Most are not members
of his group in a formal sense," says the insurgent.
"But everyone, especially the foreigners in Iraq who
share his ideals of jihad, considers himself part of
Attawhid wal Jihad."
THE LIEUTENANTS
Among those who have thrown their support behind the
jihad is insurgent leader Abu Ali. A
ballistic-missile specialist in Saddam's Fedayeen
militia, he fought U.S. troops during the invasion
and has served as a resistance commander ever since,
organizing rocket attacks on the green zone, the
headquarters of the U.S. administration in Baghdad.
When interviewed by TIME last fall, he spoke of a
vain hope that Saddam would return and re-establish a
Baathist regime. But at a recent meeting near a rural
mosque, he said he is fighting to rid all Muslim
lands of infidels and to set up an Islamic state in
Iraq. "The jihad in Iraq is more potent than it was
in Afghanistan in the 1980s because the insurgents
today have better weapons and are developing new
ones," he says.
The insurgency's shift toward a religious outlook is
in part driven by financial necessity: the capture of
Saddam and his henchmen drained the insurgency of its
former sources of funding. That forced Iraqi groups
to turn to foreign financiers in places like the
gulf, and they have demanded that the insurgents
adopt a more radical religious identity. "After we
rolled up Saddam, we hit them pretty hard, and this
is what they turned to," says a senior U.S. military
official. "It would appear there are not only some
marriages of convenience but also some groups that
have crossed over to the jihadi side."
One such group, whose leaders met with TIME, is the
Kata'ib al-Jihad al-Islamiyah, or Battalions of
Islamic Holy War. Founded by frontline officers from
Saddam's intelligence services and the Republican
Guard who once shunned terrorist attacks that killed
innocent Iraqis, the group represents a significant
Iraqi wing of al-Zarqawi's network. The group's
leaders say they now accept mass-casualty attacks as
legitimate; they claim that innocents killed in such
strikes go straight to paradise. A fund-raising video
made by the group and given to TIME shows its members
citing exhortations by bin Laden and referring to
fundamentalist interpretations of the Koran. Kata'ib
has incorporated foreign fighters into its cells. One
member says the group has formed an entirely foreign
unit, dubbed the Green Brigade. The group's
commanders say their fighters joined last week's
attacks against U.S. Marines in Fallujah and helped
lead the uprising in Baqubah.
Kata'ib has drawn new members from the ranks of
former detainees at Abu Ghraib. Scores of men like
Abu Mustafa, a former military officer, say they
spent their time in jail studying Salafi Islam and
receiving lessons in jihad from bearded Iraqis and
detainees who came from places like Syria and Saudi
Arabia. Abu Mustafa claims that cellblocks have
secretly become mini-madrasahs, or religious schools.
"We studied hard every day and often into the night,"
he says. The U.S. has released hundreds of detainees
in recent weeks, supplying the insurgency with a
fresh crop of jihadists. "There was one man who
didn't even know how to pray," says Abu Mustafa.
"When he got out, he was like an imam and is one of
our most ferocious fighters on the front line."
THE FUTURE OF JIHAD
The U.S. does not believe that the insurgency has an
organized command structure; even al-Zarqawi's
network seems to be less a military unit than a
decentralized terrorist operation. Iraqi commanders
say the shape of the network shifts constantly, with
no formal membership of any one group. The amorphous
nature of the resistance also means it has the
potential to spread more easily into the Sunni
heartland, where U.S. forces are still struggling to
maintain order. Fallujah is already a terrorist
sanctuary; insurgent sources say the safe haven is
set to expand into Baqubah and Samarra.
With U.S. forces stretched thin and Iraqi security
forces still months away from being able to assert
authority, the fear is that the al-Zarqawi-led
jihadists may carve out their own fiefdoms across the
country from which they can recruit and train zealots
to join their struggle--a version of the northwest
province in Pakistan, which al-Qaeda has turned into
a safe haven. The insurgents' aspirations are
growing. Abdullah, a midlevel leader of Kata'ib, says
he's happy U.S. troops are staying in Iraq: it means
he can be part of the jihad. Asked what the jihadists
will do if U.S. forces finally pull out, one of
Abdullah's comrades offers this answer: "We will
follow them to the U.S."
With
reporting by Massimo Calabresi/Washington and
Aparisim Ghosh and Vivienne Walt/Baghdad