The Associated Press (via CNN.com) is reporting that Abu Musab al-Zarkawi’s first wife says he was set up by al-Qaeda in a deal with Washington:
Meanwhile, al-Zarqawi’s wife told an Italian newspaper that al Qaeda leaders sold him out to the United States in exchange for a promise to let up in the search for Osama bin Laden.
The woman, identified by La Repubblica as al-Zarqawi’s first wife, said al Qaeda’s top leadership reached a deal with U.S. intelligence because al Zarqawi had become too powerful.
She claimed Sunni tribes and Jordanian secret services mediated the deal.
“My husband has been sold to the Americans,” the woman said in an interview published Sunday. “He had become too powerful, too troublesome.”
She was identified only as “Um Mohammed,” which means “mother of Mohammed” and would be a nickname, not her full name.
The Rome-based newspaper said the interview was conducted in Geneva and described her as Jordanian and about 40 years old.
My Italian falls short of rudimentary, so I can’t read the La Repubblica piece to see how much the AP may have excised or condensed. Normally, I would take the whole thing skeptically. Even if she is who she says she is, “Um Mohammed” is disconnected from the family, and, based on the version of the AP story published in The Toronto Star, she’s only guessing:
“I think a secret pact was struck whose immediate goal was his death,” she told the newspaper. “In return, the American troops promised to ease, at least momentarily, their hunt for bin Laden.”
“Al-Qaeda is currently especially worried with protecting its charismatic leader,” she added.
From this version of the story, the widow, if she is the widow, seems to have zero direct knowledge, merely suspicions, which can only take you so far in the disinformation-saturated world of black ops.
However, reading her remarks in conjunction with Mary Anne Weaver’s outstanding piece on al-Zarkawi in The Atlantic this month, there is reason to think that perhaps “Um Mohammed” has a point.
The article (available only by subscription), which had gone to press just before al-Zarkawi was killed (but has been updated on-line), states, in part:
In December 1999, al-Zarqawi crossed the border into Afghanistan, and later that month he and bin Laden met at the Government Guest House in the southern city of Kandahar, the de facto capital of the ruling Taliban. As they sat facing each other across the receiving room, a former Israeli intelligence official told me, “it was loathing at first sight.” [My emphasis – MB]
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.)
Al-Zarqawi would not recant, even in the presence of the legendary head of al-Qaeda. “Shiites should be executed,” he reportedly declared. He also took exception to bin Laden’s providing Arab fighters to the Taliban, the fundamentalist student militia that, although now in power, was still battling the Northern Alliance, which controlled some 10 percent of Afghanistan. Muslim killing Muslim was un-Islamic, al-Zarqawi is reported to have said.
Unaccustomed to such direct criticism, the leader of al-Qaeda was aghast.
So, despite all the hype in the West about al-Zarkawi and bin Laden, it seems that not only weren’t they pals, they also had a very different view of who exactly should and should not be targeted in the jihad. Urging Sunnis to fight Sunnis was unacceptable to al-Zarkawi, but killing Shi’ites was okay because in his view these heretics weren’t truly Muslim.
At least five times, in 2000 and 2001, bin Laden called al-Zarqawi to come to Kandahar and pay bayat — take an oath of allegiance–to him. Each time, al-Zarqawi refused. Under no circumstances did he want to become involved in the battle between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban. He also did not believe that either bin Laden or the Taliban was serious enough about jihad.
Given al-Zarkawi’s pre-eminence behind bars in the 1990s when he was serving time for possessing illegal weapons (grenades) at Swaqa prison in Jordan, the whole idea of subordinating himself to the wealthy bin Laden, may well have been motivated on personal as well as political grounds.
Later that year, in October 2004, after resisting for nearly five years, al-Zarqawi finally paid bayat to Osama bin Laden–but only after eight months of often stormy negotiations. After doing so he proclaimed himself to be the “Emir of al-Qaeda’s Operations in the Land of Mesopotamia,” a title that subordinated him to bin Laden but at the same time placed him firmly on the global stage. One explanation for this coming together of these two former antagonists was simple: al-Zarqawi profited from the al-Qaeda franchise, and bin Laden needed a presence in Iraq. Another explanation is more complex: bin Laden laid claim to al-Zarqawi in the hopes of forestalling his emergence as the single most important terrorist figure in the world, and al-Zarqawi accepted bin Laden’s endorsement to augment his credibility and to strengthen his grip on the Iraqi tribes. Both explanations are true.
It was a pragmatic alliance, but tenuous from the start.
“From the beginning, Zarqawi has wanted to be independent, and he will continue to be,” Oraib Rantawi, the director of the Al-Quds Center for Political Studies in Amman, said to me. “Yes, he’s gained stature through this alliance, but he only swore bayat after all this time because of growing pressure from Iraqis who were members of al-Qaeda. And even then he signed with conditions–that he would maintain control over Jund al-Sham and al-Tawhid, and that he would exert operational autonomy. His suicide bombings of the hotels in Amman”–in which some sixty civilians died, many of them while attending a wedding celebration–“was a huge tactical mistake. My understanding is that bin Laden was furious about it.”
The attacks, which represented an expansion of al- Zarqawi’s sophistication and reach, also showed his growing independence from the al-Qaeda chief. They came only thirteen months after he had sworn bayat. The alliance had already begun to fray.
The signs were visible as early as the summer of 2005. In a letter purportedly sent to al-Zarqawi in July from Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian surgeon who is bin Laden’s designated heir, al-Zarqawi was chided about his tactics in Iraq. And although some experts have cast doubt on the letter’s authenticity (it was released by the office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence), few would dispute its message: namely, that al-Zarqawi’s hostage beheadings, his mass slaughter of Shiites, and his assaults on their mosques were all having a negative effect on Muslim opinion–both of him and, by extension, of al-Qaeda–around the world. In one admonition, al-Zawahiri allegedly advised al-Zarqawi that a captive can be killed as easily by a bullet as by a knife.
So, to believe that al-Qaeda might actually benefit from al-Zarkawi’s death, even order it, is no stretch. But in league with the United States? Surely that kind of talk puts one half-a-step away from those who think a secret demolition crew took out the twin towers. Yet, as Weaver says:
During my time in Jordan, I asked a number of officials what they considered to be the most curious aspect of the relationship between the U.S. and al-Zarqawi, other than the fact that the Bush administration had inflated him.
One of them said, “The six times you could have killed Zarqawi, and you didn’t.”
I’m in that 10% or so of Americans who believes Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone assassin and that Sirhan Sirhan did in RFK on his own. So, even when it comes to the Bush Regime, it would take a lot of convincing before I would believe that a deal was made to give up Al-Zarkawi in exchange for safe haven for bin Laden. Surely, it was as we’ve been told: angered at the al-Zarkawi-directed wedding feast slaughter, Jordan decided to make it a point to take him out. Still, 58 months after September 11, the No. 1 man on the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list remains at large. It has to make even a conspiracy skeptic wonder.
[Cross-posted at The Next Hurrah]