FRANCE: The al-Zarqawi terrorist group confirmed its intent with yesterday's bombs in Iraq. Lara Marlowe in Paris reports on how it is expanding
One unforeseen consequence of the US invasion has been the transformation of a small, fundamentalist group called Ansar Islam, led by the Jordanian extremist Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, into a ruthless network of kidnappers and suicide bombers whose influence extends beyond Iraq.
In recent months, says Jean-Charles Brisard, a French expert on radical Islamic groups, Zarqawi has come to represent The New Face of al-Qaeda - the title of Brisard's book, written with the help of Damien Martinez and published this month by Fayard.
In Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth, published in 2001, Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié were the first to reveal financial links between the Saudi establishment and the perpetrators of the September 11th atrocities. Brisard has since been hired by the families of the victims to assist them in a civil suit.
Zarqawi threatens not only US occupation forces, Brisard warns. "The 'resistance' has overflowed the frontiers of Iraq," he says. Events within the past two weeks illustrate this: appeals by Saudi imams, the Algerian GSPC (Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat) and Chechen Islamists to their militants to travel to Iraq to disrupt the elections scheduled for January 30th, and a series of arrests of remnants of the Tawhid (Unity) group, which supported Zarqawi, in Germany.
"They were working towards Iraq, but also from Iraq towards Europe, and that is new," says Brisard.
Equally alarming, he continues, was a recent declaration by the Islamic Army in Iraq, "a group which was thought to be amenable to negotiations", that after its "victories" against the US-led coalition in Iraq, "We must go further and strike America in its heart."
Until recently, the US and Saudi Arabia - not Iraq - were priorities for al-Qaeda, Brisard says. The shift became obvious last October when Zarqawi issued a statement that henceforward his group would be called al-Qaeda in Iraq. This was confirmed by Osama bin Laden himself, in an audiotape played by al-Jazeera television on December 27th.
Bin Laden called Zarqawi the emir (prince or leader) of al-Qaeda in Iraq and praised his "gallant operations" against US forces and the "apostate government" supported by Washington. The US reward for the capture of Zarqawi has risen with his status in al-Qaeda, from $10 million a year ago to $25 million - the same bounty offered for bin Laden.
"Bin Laden has accepted Zarqawi's strategy. That's the meaning of his December 27th message," says Brisard. "Zarqawi has become the symbol of Islamic resistance. That symbol was partially created by the Americans, because they're the ones who opened the Iraqi Pandora's box."
Not only has Zarqawi inherited the al-Qaeda name, Brisard continues, he benefits from the support of prominent radical clerics such as Abu Qutada, imprisoned in Britain, and Yusef al-Qardawi, an Egyptian who lives in Qatar.
"Last autumn, the CIA noticed that Islamic charities changed their focus from Pakistan and Sudan to helping the 'resistance' in Iraq," Brisard says. US officials claim al-Qaeda now spends €200,000 weekly in Iraq - three-quarters of its expenditure throughout the world.
Zarqawi's group has stepped up attacks before the January 30th elections.
On Monday, al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for murdering eight Iraqis, seven of them soldiers, at a checkpoint at Baquba, 60km north-east of Baghdad. One of the soldiers was beheaded while saying his dawn prayers.
The outgoing US Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell was the first to mention Zarqawi's name publicly, two years ago. "Powell made several factual errors," Brisard says. "Zarqawi was never of Palestinian origin, and during the period when the Americans said he was in an Iraqi hospital, he was living in a hotel in Damascus."
The US was wrong to portray Zarqawi as "the missing link" between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, Brisard says. There were sporadic contacts between Saddam's intelligence services and al-Qaeda, but not through Zarqawi.
Zarqawi received assistance from conservative factions in the Iranian intelligence services when he fled Afghanistan in 2001. With a $100,000 advance from Abu Zubayda, a fellow Jordanian in al-Qaeda, he allegedly ran a training camp for Jordanians, Kurds and North African Arabs until the Taliban were overthrown.
Brisard says he can understand why Iran wanted to keep an eye on the small Ansar Islam group across the border in Kurdistan, and Zarqawi, for its own security. Some analysts ascribe the same motive to Damascus, but Brisard is harsher.
"There is a strong will among Syrian military intelligence to destabilise Iraq," he says. "Paradoxically, to reduce this terrorism, this resistance, in Iraq, the conflict may have to be enlarged to Syria."
That point of view is popular with some of the US intelligence agents who are among Brisard's sources, along with the police, judiciary and intelligence services of European countries, Jordan and post-invasion Iraq.
When relying on such sources, there is of course ample room for disinformation. But Brisard works meticulously, often with original documents, and interviewed more than 100 people, including members of Zarqawi's family. A convincing portrait of the extremist who was born Fadel Nazzal al-Khalayieh emerges. A petty criminal in his youth, Zarqawi, now 38, was converted by a radical imam to Salafist Islam, and discovered his own powers as a leader during a five-year stay in a Jordanian prison.
Brisard shares the opinion of the Americans and the interim Iraqi government that France has been naive in its approach to Iraq. "Yes, the arguments that served as a basis for the invasion were erroneous," he says. "But Iraq is no longer what it was before the US offensive. It has been transformed by these militants into a land of jihad ... France is mistaken in attempting to remain neutral. There are real terrorists in Iraq today; they're not the invention of the Americans."