War On Terror: The Apostle Of Hate

• Share

(2 of 3)

Although the Bush Administration at times overstated al-Zarqawi's indispensability to a predominantly homegrown insurgency, al-Zarqawi himself was a master of self-promotion. The high school dropout learned to use the Internet to burnish his image, recruit fighters and propagate his dream of perpetual jihad against infidels everywhere. It was his name that filled collection boxes in extremist mosques across the Islamic world. The National Counterterrorism Center believes that militants linked to al-Zarqawi may be operating in as many as 40 countries. In Iraq his dark charisma turned him into a figure of myth and legend. A top commander of al-Nasser Salaheddin, an insurgent group, told TIME last month, "When children in Fallujah and Ramadi play war games, some will be mujahedin, others will be Americans, but the role everybody wants to play is Abu Mousab. The biggest, toughest boy will get that role."

Al-Zarqawi merged his jihadi group under the umbrella of al-Qaeda and pledged fealty to bin Laden. But there was reason to believe the relationship was strained. Al-Zarqawi's jihad was more rigidly uncompromising than bin Laden's: it wasn't enough to kill Westerners, it was just as important to slaughter fellow Arabs who followed a different form of Islam. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, bin Laden and al-Zawahiri had been suspicious of Shi'ites but learned to work with them. In al-Zarqawi's eyes, Iraq's Shi'ites were apostates because their practice of Islam differs from the extreme Wahhabist version he embraced. For that, they deserved even more gruesome punishment than nonbelievers. Fighters from his inner circle told TIME he lost his cool only when discussing Shi'ites. "He really hates [them], even more than the Americans," says a mid-ranking al-Qaeda operative. Although al-Zarqawi taunted and harangued the U.S. in videos and statements posted on the Internet, in recent months it was the sectarian war that consumed most of his energy. He launched scores of attacks against Shi'ites and their religious sites, culminating in the Feb. 22 bombing of the al-Askari shrine in Samarra.

The campaign has shattered the centuries-old sectarian balance in Iraq and set Shi'ites and Sunnis at one another's throats. The ensuing civil war may be al-Zarqawi's most poisonous legacy. In his last known communiqué, an audiotape released just days before he was killed, he exhorted Sunnis to "get rid of the infidel snakes ... and don't listen to those advocating an end to sectarianism and calling for national unity."

He was just as unforgiving of fellow Sunnis who refused to subscribe to his extreme vision, sending his suicide bombers to kill those who tried to join the peaceful political process. His unbending will caused splits in the Iraqi insurgency, as nationalist fighters and al-Zarqawi's jihadis fought armed skirmishes with one another. But, eventually, even those who disagreed with his methods conceded they were better off with him on their side than fighting against him: they needed the money, the materials, the men and the legitimacy that the fighter-superstar brought to the table.