A War Without Borders

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But that relationship has also made the kingdom more vulnerable. The western portion of Iraq is infused with insurgents, and the border with Jordan is relatively porous. "When al-Zarqawi sent operatives from Afghanistan, his rate of success in infiltrating them into Jordan was 10% to 15%," says a Jordanian security official. "Now it is much easier: with a fake passport, you cross the border, and the same day you are in Amman." Jordan's security officials estimate that more than 500 Jordanians have been arrested for links with al-Zarqawi's organization. A security official says al-Zarqawi's recruiters operate throughout Jordan, playing on common Islamic sentiment that Muslims should help expel U.S. "occupation" forces from Iraq. But Jordanian security officials say al-Zarqawi is also believed to be signing up Jordanians to go to Iraq for training and then to return home to mount operations against Jordan--in effect, to help grow the business so that it doesn't suffocate and die in Iraq.

Al-Zarqawi has a personal interest in sowing chaos in Jordan. He was raised in a gritty industrial town in northern Jordan, where his family still lives, and has been a sworn enemy of the Hashemite monarchy for more than a decade. After training in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, he returned to Jordan a fierce adherent to the radical Salafi school of Islam. In 1994 al-Zarqawi was arrested for and eventually convicted of forming an illegal jihadist organization and possessing explosives; he was released in a general amnesty in 1999 and almost immediately began plotting to punish the Hashemite monarchy. In 2000 he was convicted in absentia for a plot to bomb several tourist sites in Amman during the millennium celebration, including the Radisson that he finally hit last week. Intelligence officials believe his group was behind the 2002 murder of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman. And Jordanian security says that last year it broke up an al-Zarqawi plan to use 20 tons of chemical weapons in an attack in Jordan.

Signs that al-Zarqawi is widening his campaign could spur Arab governments to do more to help the U.S. find and kill the Qaeda kingpin, who already has a $25 million bounty on his head, the same as had been offered for Osama bin Laden's. Jordanian security officials tell TIME that the Amman attacks show that al-Zarqawi's organization is only getting stronger as the Iraq war goes on. The officials estimate that 80% of al-Zarqawi's force in Iraq is made up of Iraqis, including many former members of Saddam Hussein's élite Republican Guard, some of whom joined the Islamists and became jobless after the toppling of Saddam's regime. "Zarqawi still has a capability," says Lynch, the coalition spokesman in Baghdad, "and never have we said we've taken away that capability."