Nir Rosen - Aftermath

Zarqawi reserved special hatred for the Jordanian monarchy and security forces. He sought to delegitimize the Hashemite kingdom and its claim to power based on its descent from the Prophet Muhammad. It was true that King Abdullah was a descendant of Muhammad, but through Abu Lahab, the Prophet’s uncle, who had fought against him. This claim was first made in 1995 by two Jordanian brothers from the al-Awamli family, who sent out a mass fax condemning the regime. They were shot in their homes following a confrontation with Jordanian police. Zarqawi’s confrontation with Jordan culminated in the November 9, 2005, attacks, dubbed by Jordanians “our 9/11,” in which almost all the victims were Jordanians or Palestinians. By this point his actions were proving too much even for the most radical to stomach.

Hudheifa Azzam viewed Zarqawi and his followers as “against everybody, even themselves. The followers of Abdallah Azzam opposed killing civilians and conducting operations in Muslim countries, he told me. “Our militant activities are only against the military,” he said. “No one can give the green light to kill an innocent human being. In 9/11 and 7/7, innocent people were killed.” Hudheifa also opposed targeting Shiites. “Abdallah Azzam said Shiites are Muslims,” he told me, “and even if they are not Muslims, their blood is still protected.”

The war in Iraq galvanized young admirers of Zarqawi and other mujahideen, who frequented jihadi websites and Internet chat rooms, where they could watch filmed encomiums to their heroes and violent depictions of their latest exploits. There were several groups of young men on trial in Jordan when I visited, all failed jihadis, but perhaps more important than succeeding in their quixotic and ill-planned schemes was the time spent in Jordanian prisons, where they could meet their heroes. Like inner-city fans of hip-hop in the United States, where time in jail could be a rite of passage that established street credibility, for these young men in Jordan, jail time proved they were tough enough and dedicated to the cause.

On January 10 I attended another hearing for the ten young men from Irbid. The only two witnesses for the prosecution were set to testify. The courtroom was heavy with blue uniformed security officers. As the judge spoke, the prisoners swaggered and laughed. The first witness was Lieutenant Saud, clad in a motorcycle jacket. He put his hand above a Koran and swore to tell the truth, then stated that he had received information about a group of dangerous terrorists near the Syrian border and was ordered to arrest them. Upon questioning by the defense he admitted that he had found no weapons in their possession. The second witness, with long hair and a long beard, was accused of selling the defendants a Kalashnikov. The prosecutor read the witness’s confession, but the witness renounced it, claiming he had never sold any weapons and explaining that the mukhabarat had threatened him and ordered him to lie. The judge ordered him rearrested for perjury. Ashen-faced, he was led away as the prisoners in the cage shouted “ Allahu Akbar! The way of God is jihad! God is your master and America is their master! Bush is your master! You have the worst master!” All the accused claimed to have been tortured, and all renounced their confessions. As the session ended the prisoners shouted, “This session we just wanted to hear the testimony, but in the next session we will teach them!”

“Most people here hate and hate and hate the U.S. administration,” attorney Samih Khreis told me. “And most people, if anybody has the opportunity to explode the White House, they would.” Khreis often represented Jordanians accused of terrorism; his clients had included Azmi al-Jayusi, a close Zarqawi associate, as well as members of Bayat al-Imam and Jeish Muhammad. A high-ranking member of the Jordanian bar association, Khreis remembered seeing mujahideen recruiters on the streets of Amman in the 1980s, working with the support of the Jordanian government and inviting young Jordanians to join the jihad in Afghanistan. “Governments taught them these ideas, Salafi, takfiri , to push them to Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, and after the jihad they returned and they compared the government’s conduct with what they had taught them, so according to this thinking the governments were infidels. What happens daily motivates anybody to go to jihad. The magic turned against the magician. When they were against Soviets they were good, but against USA they are terrorists?”

Although in the past most recruits to the jihad were uneducated and poor, he said, “after the war in Iraq there was a large increase, and many educated men joined, like engineers. This was new. Most men going to Iraq now are educated and from Irbid, and most are Jordanians, they come from good families.” He added that most families of accused terrorists were proud of their sons. Most of them were beaten and tortured during their interrogations, he told me. “Electric torture, sleep deprivation, being tied by hands so you are on your toes. They do it to get confessions.” Khreis’s youngest client was an eighteen-year-old jihad hopeful. “I take these cases because the American government is against them, and I am not with the USA, and the Jordanian government wants to satisfy USA.” Like many Jordanians, Khreis believed Zarqawi was not responsible for the November 9, 2005, hotel bombings in Amman. “The hotel bombings were done by the Mossad, maybe the CIA is involved. There is a secret agreement between the Jordanian government and the USA to bring American forces here to attack Syria, so they want to prepare people for the attack on Syria.”

An insider in the Royal Court who studied Jordanian attitudes explained such beliefs as shanateh , or schadenfreude. “Whatever is shanateh to America, we like it.” A June 2005 Pew poll found that 60 percent of Jordanians trusted bin Laden and 50 percent supported violence to get rid of non-Muslim influence. The report stunned the Jordanian government. “We said, No way, our people are not like that,” the insider said. But when the Jordanian government conducted its own research it found similar responses. “Even if we assume the Pew poll is exaggerated, maybe 25 percent trust him very much and 35 percent trust him somewhat. The Pew poll is exaggerated, but if Zarqawi wants to recruit here, how many does he need? Even if one-half of 1 percent join, he’s okay.” Despite the support Zarqawi and bin Laden received in the polls, the insider believed it did not reflect a true radicalization; it was merely shanateh . “When it comes to Israel, we are helpless,” he said. “Hundreds of millions of Arabs, and we can’t hurt Israel or America. So we can be happy with what is happening to America in Iraq.”

This inside source also blamed the Jordanian government’s tolerance of Salafism. “This is an appeasement from the security services. The church got them to ban The Da Vinci Code, but in Abdali you can buy Salafi books. Since the ’70s they are turning a blind eye.” He added that the requirements for studying Islamic law at the University of Jordan were lower than for any other subject. “Sharia students are the ones who get the worst scores and can’t get into other schools, the ones with no critical thinking skills. The Sharia school in the university accepts the dumbest students. They tell them, ‘All other majors are closed to you. Become a preacher.’” There are more than three thousand mosques in Jordan, he told me, but one-tenth of them lack a regular imam, which means that “anyone can stand up and do the Friday sermon.” In addition, he said, “1,450 imams earn less than one hundred dinars a month, so you can buy them easily. So the quality of the preachers is low.”