The Observer
September 26, 2004
By Jason Burke

In The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad's novel of anarchists in London a century ago, a terrorist mastermind dreams of 'a band of men, absolute in their resolve to discard all scruples, strong enough to give themselves frankly the name of destroyers, and free from... pity for anything on earth'. He would no doubt have approved of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. For though the 37-year-old Jordanian-born militant's actions may seem psychotic, there is method to his madness.

To understand that method, we need first to identify Zarqawi's intended audience. Islamic militant terrorism is primarily propaganda and not usually tied to specific political objectives. Though frightening vital Western contractors out of Iraq and thus generating destabilising discontent by slowing reconstruction is useful, Zarqawi's primary goal is to communicate. His videos are clever, professional and laden with meanings that many in the West will miss entirely.

This is not surprising, for Zarqawi, like other Islamic militants, is not talking to us. Ken Bigley, Tony Blair, the British public and the 155,000 apparently impotent foreign troops in Iraq are all unwitting actors in his carefully scripted drama. The audience is the world's 1.3 billion Muslims.

Aware that hacking people's heads off live on camera disgusts the vast majority of those he is addressing, Zarqawi first sets out to convince them that his actions are legitimate. So he picks one of the single most emotive issues in the Islamic world: the supposed imprisonment, and abuse, of Muslim women by non-Muslim men. Their release is not a demand, it is a justification.

The issue takes Zarqawi immediately into the realm of the myth. American jails don't actually contain thousands of such prisoners, but after Abu Ghraib most in the Middle East think they do. The incarceration of women also taps the mother lode of resentment underlying the appeal of radical Islam: the profound sense of humiliation, disenfranchisement and emasculation felt by hundreds of millions of young Muslim men faced with the apparent military, political and, increasingly, cultural dominance of the West. This is increased by a collective memory of the past glories of Islamic civilisation.

Zarqawi, whose thuggish demeanour belies his talent for exploiting modern media, then starts to develop his themes. Again he appeals to the same basic belief: that the US is leading an aggressive attempt by the new 'Crusaders' to subordinate the Islamic world. Images of violent conflict, particularly the effects of suicide bombings and videoed last testaments of 'martyrs', stress the power of faith, the crucial commodity possessed by the 'mujahideen' and lacked by their enemy. Victims wear orange jump-suits, like prisoners at Guantanamo.

The climactic act - the execution - is a ritualised slaughter, reflecting myths about how the first warriors of Islam killed during 'raids on the path of God' more than 1,000 years ago. Militants actually kill with guns and bombs, not long knives. Zarqawi is deliberately trying to shock his audience. Moderates may be stunned by the brutality, but those with any sympathy for the radical Islamic agenda might well be impressed by how far Zarqawi is prepared to go. He is the man to whom the donations and the recruits should flow. He is Conrad's anarchist mastermind's perfect 'destroyer'. In fact, Zarqawi's brutality is so extreme one senses a half-baked hope that it will somehow provoke massive change through its sheer outrageousness.

Yet there is another key audience. Though in very broad terms committed to a similar agenda, Islamic militants, like Conrad's anarchists, are a quarrelsome bunch, riven by personal jealousies and ambition. A new generation of younger, less educated, less political operators now challenge senior leaders such as Osama bin Laden. Zarqawi, who grew up in a breezeblock house in a rough, poor city north of Jordan's capital, became involved in Islamic militancy in Afghanistan in the late 90s, at about the time that 47-year-old bin Laden started his 'al-Qaeda' project.

The younger man, far from being an 'affiliate', as the Americans say, has always resented the Saudi-born militant's pre-eminence and his wealthy upbringing. The executions, perhaps even by Zarqawi's own hand, are a strong challenge to a man who has, for 15 years, sent others out to fight and die and is confined to the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, far from the killing grounds of Falluja.

However, Zarqawi does not share bin Laden's strategic intelligence. The Saudi's aim was to radicalise and mobilise the masses of the Middle East and he has been careful not to alienate his core constituency by attacking only targets symbolic of the West's might. But, judging by the reaction of much of the Islamic world to this year's string of executions, Zarqawi has misjudged his audience. Only the most extreme seem to support his actions. Though numerous enough to do serious harm, they are vastly outnumbered by moderates. This offers hope of a sort.

Jason Burke's 'Al-Qaeda: the true story of radical Islam' is published by Penguin

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