Nir Rosen - Aftermath

Although Azzam had opposed attacking Muslim governments, other veterans of the Afghan jihad took a different view, preferring to target what they called “the close enemy” first rather than “the far enemy,” such as the Americans. Sheikh Jawad al-Faqih was one such veteran who seemed to want to target all enemies. I met him at the home of a Salafi contact called Abu Saad. Sheikh Jawad was a fearsome Brobdingnagian man with a thick beard and a clipped mustache (en vogue for Salafis); a large head; thick, fiery, protruding eyebrows; immense hands; and a raspy voice. He was a Salafi Hagrid. He wore a black salwar kameez and a white ishmag (head scarf) without an eqal (rope), which was the Salafi way. Like a good Salafi, he strictly adhered to the requirement that one’s beard be longer than what a hand’s grip can hold. A Palestinian whose uncles had fought the British occupation of Palestine, he had initially been influenced by secular nationalism. In 1982 he found “the correct way,” and abandoned his nationalist sentiments. “I looked at all Islamic groups, only praying and fasting,” he said. “I didn’t like it. To be a real Muslim you have to fight and make the wrong right and hit powers who work against the right and attack Christians, Jews, and the mukhabarat .”

When he encountered followers of Juheiman al-Utaibi, a Saudi radical who in 1979 had led the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and was later executed by Saudi authorities, Sheikh Jawad explained, “I found their ideas were what I was looking for.” Sheikh Jawad had served in the Jordanian special forces, and he applied the skills he learned when he joined a militant group called Muwahidun, which meant Unitarians, or Monotheists. But in 1985 eight of the members were arrested. Sheikh Jawad was spared arrest because he feigned mental retardation. He was disappointed with his comrades in arms upon their release. “They were afraid,” he said. “Their ideas about jihad changed in jail, so they refused to work with me.” Disgusted with his fellow Jordanians, Sheikh Jawad was determined to leave. In 1989 he went to Yemen with another Jordanian, and together with seventeen Yemenis they made the journey to Pakistan. He had previously tried to go to Afghanistan but failed. In Pakistan he stayed for two nights in Peshawar’s Beit al-Shuhada (home of the martyrs) guest house before entering Afghanistan’s Sada Camp, where he received training in Soviet bloc weapons and was sent to the Jalalabad front. “I refused to be with Afghans,” he explained. “They had beards, but they were communists or used drugs.” He added, “I don’t like Afghans except for the Taliban.” Sheikh Jawad fought in four battles before being injured and transferred to a hospital. Osama bin Laden, known to friends like Sheikh Jawad as Abu Abdallah, spotted him carrying a heavy mortar across a river. “He liked me and said, ‘Sign this guy up,’” said Sheikh Jawad. “He was impressed with my strength. Abu Abdallah was a brother, a jihadi. He was very humble. He helped the jihad with money.”

Sheikh Jawad returned to Jordan, and then “a friend of mine asked me to come back to make operations on the other side of the border,” meaning Israel, so “we smuggled weapons into Palestine.” During the Gulf War he trucked food aid from Jordan into Baghdad. At the time many Afghan veterans gathered in Jordan, preparing to enter Iraq to defend it from American occupation, which would not come for another fourteen years. Instead, together with a doctor called Samih Zeidan, Sheikh Jawad established Jeish Muhammad (Army of Muhammad), and he imposed a strict training regimen on his recruits. Sheikh Jawad admitted to carrying out operations against infidels: attacking a British target, attempting to attack U.S. marines, “killing a priest,” and “exploding a Jew.” He established cells of fighters he called “families,” each of which consisted of five fighters who did not know the identities of any other families. Sheikh Jawad claimed that Jeish Muhammad had cells around the Arab world. Most were veterans of the Afghan jihad. In 1991 a disgruntled member of Jeish Muhammad confessed the names of the organization’s members to the Jordanian intelligence. In 1992 members established a new organization called the Jordanian Afghanis, which bombed a movie theater in the city of Zarqa.

Sheikh Jawad disliked living in Jordan and viewed Jordanians as unreliable. “I was jailed thirteen times,” he said, “nine times because Jordanians named me, even when they gave their word that they wouldn’t.” Likewise, he was suspicious of fellow Palestinians in Jordan. “This generation of Palestinians,” he explained, “their fathers fled Palestine, so they can’t be trusted.” Sheikh Jawad was now a car dealer, but he missed the jihad. “I wish I was in Afghanistan now like I wish I was in paradise,” he told me. Likewise, he hoped to go to Iraq but worried that the Jordanians would turn him in. “If I reach the borders they will tell the Americans or the rafidha, [but] I wish I could go.”

“Iraq has a different taste. The water, the dates, the yogurt. It is the country of the caliphate. I am addicted to Iraq, addicted to jihad.”

Outside, the opulent western Amman homes are unpainted, the cinder blocks still showing, rebar protruding from unfinished rooftops. Hastily constructed square houses are piled one atop the other haphazardly along the hills, an architectural patchwork like in a South American barrio, with narrow alleys covered by laundry hanging between rooftops. Empty lots become trash lots. Thin metal minarets jut up from the cacophony, their mosques mere unadorned squares like all the homes but with a speaker attached to the metal tower. In a maze of narrow treeless streets in Rusaifa, south of Amman, shops cover the heads of female dummies in the windows; on the streets some women wear the burqa . Muddy cars drive through roads built in wadis (dry riverbeds) and trash collects on cliff sides. In the distance the yellow and red hills and dunes of the desert look cold against the gray winter sky. Like a Jewish settler in the West Bank, Muhamad Wasfi built his home on a deserted moonscape. It too appeared unfinished yet old, the yard covered with garbage, shrubs, a tricycle, and a toy gun.

Abu Muntasar, as he is called, wore fake Nike training pants and a matching blue sweatshirt. He had a strong thick body, with a belly that showed he was not as active as he used to be. His thick beard was unkempt, but his mustache was groomed short like a Salafi’s, and his hair was close-cropped. He had a false front tooth. Jordan’s winters are bitter, and we sat close to a gas heater in his guest room. Though Abu Muntasar was born in the West Bank in 1963, his father worked for the Jordanian Army. “I still remember the day I left Palestine,” he said, “with all the pieces of the Palestinian people. The Jews were raping and killing, so people were scared for their honor and left for Jordan.” His family moved first to Amman and then to Zarqa, northwest of the capital, where many military families were based. Abu Muntasar served for two years in the Jordanian military before earning a degree in business management and working as a civil servant. “At that time I generally began learning Islamic thought,” he explained. He admired the radical Islamic Group of Egypt and hoped to establish a similar Jordanian movement. “As Palestinian people we want to find a solution for our question,” he told me. “Although I was young, I saw no other solution for our problems other than Islam, so I wasn’t affected by secular Palestinian movements. I wanted to do something for Islam and Muslims and help establish the Muslim state and make Palestine the capital of our new caliphate.” I asked him if he thought this was possible. “I believe it without any doubt,” he said. “This has been proven by the Prophet Muhammad in his words.”