Jordanian jihadist (1966–2006)
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (; , "Father of Musab, of Zarqa"; October 30, 1966 – June 7, 2006), born Ahmad Fadeel Nazal al-Khalayleh (), was a Jordanian militant jihadist who ran a training camp in Afghanistan. He became known after going to Iraq and being responsible for a series of bombings, beheadings, and attacks during the Iraq War, reportedly "turning an insurgency against US troops" in Iraq "into a Shia–Sunni civil war". He was sometimes known by his supporters as the "Sheikh of the slaughterers".
He formed Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad in 1999, and led it until his death in June 2006. Zarqawi took responsibility, on several audio and video recordings, for numerous acts of violence in Iraq including suicide bombings and hostage executions. Zarqawi opposed the presence of U.S. and Western military forces in the Islamic world, as well as the West's support for the existence of Israel. In late 2004 he joined al-Qaeda, and pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden. After this al-Tawhid wal-Jihad became known as Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn, also known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), and al-Zarqawi was given the al-Qaeda title "Emir of Al Qaeda in the Country of Two Rivers".
In September 2005, he declared "all-out war" on Shi'ites in Iraq, after the Iraqi government offensive on insurgents in the Sunni town of Tal Afar. He dispatched numerous suicide bombers throughout Iraq to attack American soldiers and areas with large concentrations of Shia militias. He is also thought to be responsible for the 2005 bombing of three hotels in Amman, Jordan. Zarqawi was killed in a targeted killing by a joint U.S. force on June 7, 2006, while attending a meeting in an isolated safehouse in Hibhib, a small village approximately west-northwest of Baqubah. One United States Air Force F-16C jet dropped two 500-pound (230 kg) guided bombs on the safehouse.
Early life and family.
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;Abu Musab was a sturdy man who was not really very good at words. He expressed himself spontaneously and briefly. He would not compromise any of his beliefs.
Early life.
Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh ( ""), is believed to have been al-Zarqawi's real name. He was born to an impoverished Jordanian family of Palestinian descent in 1966. Raised in Zarqa, an industrial town located 27 kilometers (17 mi) north of Amman, with seven sisters and two brothers, and of Bedouin background, his father has been described as either a retired army officer or a practitioner of traditional medicine whose death precipitated the economic distress of the family, pushing Zarqawi to become a street thug, known for his fights, the terror he inspired, his heavy drinking and his nickname "the Green Man" because of his many tattoos. 
Zarqawi is thus usually described as having been a high school dropout and a petty criminal in his youth, including, allegedly, a procurer of prostitutes.
Sisters married to militants.
In Pakistan he celebrated the marriage of one of his seven sisters to Abu Qudama Salih al-Hami, a Jordanian-Palestinian journalist close to the Palestinian militant Abdullah Azzam, known for "resurrecting jihad" in modern times, because he was one-legged and he thought he couldn't find a suitable partner otherwise, while, years later, the same al-Hami would write a book entitled "Fursan al-Farida al-Gha’iba" (Knights of the Neglected Duty [of Jihad]), where he criticized Maqdisi's jihadi credentials after he parted ways with Zarqawi. 
Another sister married the Jordanian-Palestinian militant Khalid al-Aruri (alias Abu al-Qassam), "one of Zarqawi's closest lieutenants in Afghanistan", another married Haytham Mustafa Obeidat (alias Abu Hassan), "a veteran of the Afghan jihad".
Yet another sister married the Jordanian Iyad Nazmi Salih Khalil (his aliases being Abu Julaybib al-Urduni and Iyad al-Tubasi), a veteran jihadi militant, who eventually would become the "third highest-ranking official" of the Al-Nusra Front in the Syrian civil war, in 2016, before being killed in 2018.
Militancy career.
1989–1998: Afghanistan War, returning to Jordan, time in prison.
In the late 1980s, Zarqawi went to Afghanistan to join the Mujahideen who were fighting the invading Soviet troops. He was recruited by Abu Qutaibah al Majali to fight in Afghanistan. He arrived there in 1989, as the Soviets were already leaving. Instead of fighting, he became a reporter for an Islamist newsletter called "Al-Bonian al-Marsous". 
On the other hand, Ahmed Hashim says that he did fight in the battles of Khost and Gardez, while the magazine, which translates as "The Solid Edifice" in English, was published in both Arabic and Urdu from the Hayatabad suburb of Peshawar in Pakistan, where he also met his future spiritual mentor, the influential Salafi jihadi ideologue Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, in 1990. 
Ultimately, Zarqawi lived in Pakistan for some 10 years, mainly in and around Peshawar, and eventually became fluent in Pashto. 
According to a report by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, "Zarqawi's criminal past and extreme views on takfir (accusing another Muslim of heresy and thereby justifying his killing) created major friction and distrust with bin Laden when the two first met in Afghanistan in 1999."
He was arrested in Jordan after guns and explosives were found in his home and sent to prison in 1992. In prison, he attempted to draft his cell mates into joining him to overthrow the rulers of Jordan, a former prison mate told "Time" magazine in 2004.
According to Jordanian officials and acquaintances, Zarqawi developed a reputation as a cellblock enforcer and adopted more radical Islamic beliefs.
In prison, due to his charisma and stature, he eventually became a sort of leader, issuing fatwas (religious edicts) and calling himself "sheikh", while he also memorized the entire Qur'an. While he showed a hardliner side to his fellow inmates, physically punishing them if they went against Islamic principles (such as watching television with "uncovered women"), and piling stones inside buckets for weightlifting in order to appear more menacing, to his mother and sisters he showed a softer side, sending them letters full of affection and containing drawings, including drawings of roses.
For the Jordanian journalist Fouad Hussein, who was in jail with him, it was not the Afghan jihad, but his prison years (which included eight and a half months in solitary confinement, as well as loss of his toenails due to infection from torture) that radicalized him: "The prison left a clear mark on al-Zarqawi's personality, which grew more intense. In his opinion, policemen, judges, and government members of all ranks were supporters of the regimes, which he believed were tawagheet [tyrants] who should be fought." He also worked on his physical training.
1999–2000: Training of Jihadists.
In 1999, Zarqawi was released from prison in a general amnesty by Jordan's King Abdullah. Within months after his release, according to Jordanian officials, Zarqawi tried to resurrect his Jund al-Sham. Then, also according to Jordanian officials, he was involved in the millennium plot—a bid to bomb the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman (Jordan) before New Year's Day 2000.
The plot was discovered, and Zarqawi fled to Pakistan.
When Pakistan revoked his visa, he crossed into Afghanistan, where he met, still according to Jordanian officials and also German court testimony, with Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders in Kandahar and Kabul. He asked them for assistance and money to set up his own training camp in Herat. With some "small seed money" of $200,000 from Osama bin Laden, the camp opened soon and attracted Jordanian militants. Zarqawi selected Herat, far from al-Qaeda's established operations in Kandahar and Jalalabad, because his recruits would enter Afghanistan through Iran.
That camp was either for his group Jund al-Sham—as one, indirect, source contended—or for his newly started group Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad—as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy claimed—or he started one or two camps for both of those groups in Herat in 1999. It is also possible that Zarqawi set up only one camp for only one group known by those two different names in 1999. Zarqawi's training camp in Herat was reportedly specialized in poisons (especially ricin) and explosives.
2001: Resistance to U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
In early September 2001, Zarqawi was in Iran during the September 11 attacks in the United States.
After the October 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, Zarqawi returned to Afghanistan to help repel the assault by western allied forces, joining with Taliban and al-Qaida fighters. He either suffered cracked ribs following the collapse of a bombed house or, according to a Jordanian intelligence source, was wounded in the chest during a firefight, in late 2001.
In 2001-2002, Zarqawi activated the Abu Ali group, a Palestinian Islamist cell based in Essen, Germany, providing logistical support and later orchestrating plans to attack Jewish targets in Germany. Following the interception of phone calls between Zarqawi and the cell's leader, Mohammed Abu Dhess, German authorities arrested the group in 2002.
He fled to Iran in December 2001 or January 5, 2002, and received medical treatment in Mashhad. The Iranian government reportedly refused Jordanian requests to extradite Zarqawi. Circumstantial evidence suggests that Iranian authorities may have restricted Zarqawi's activities to some extent.
2002: Involvement in the assassination of Laurence Foley.
The U.S. government contended (in 2003 in a U.N. speech) that Zarqawi received medical treatment in Baghdad, Iraq, from March until May 2002. About that time, Jordanian authorities asked Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to extradite Zarqawi for his suspected role in the millennium plot of 1999 (see above).
By, and during the summer of 2002, Zarqawi's location and activities appear in reports that conflict with one another. Jordanian court documents alleged that Zarqawi, during the summer of 2002, began training a band of fighters at a base in Syria, which on October 28, 2002, shot and killed Laurence Foley, a U.S. senior administrator of U.S. Agency for International Development in Amman, Jordan. Unidentified Arab intelligence sources in 2004 claimed that Zarqawi was still in Syria late in 2002 and when the U.S. and Jordan requested his extradition from Syria, Syria ignored the request. However, the U.S. would actually claim that Zarqawi was in Baghdad from May until late November 2002 in the 2006 Senate Report on Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq, until later fleeing to Iran and northeastern Iraq.
2003–2006: Terrorist activities in and around Iraq.
In February 2003, according to Arab intelligence sources, Zarqawi in eastern Iran planned military resistance to the expected U.S. invasion of Iraq. And, by March 2003, according to British intelligence, Zarqawi's network had set up sleeper cells in Baghdad to resist an expected U.S. occupation.
Prior to the US 2003 invasion of Iraq, Special Activities Division (SAD) and the Army's 10th Special Forces Group entered Iraq and cooperated with Patriotic Union of Kurdistan Peshmerga to attack Ansar al-Islam. Together they launched Operation Viking Hammer in March 2003 which dealt a huge blow to the terrorist group which resulted in the deaths of a substantial number of terrorists and the uncovering of a chemical weapons facility at Sargat. Sargat was the only facility of its type discovered in Iraq.
Over 2003–2006, Zarqawi and his group Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (1999–2004) later called Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn ('al-Qaeda in Iraq') (2004–2006) are accused of dozens of violent and deadly attacks in Iraq, which had, after the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, fallen into chaos and anarchy. Some of these attacks Zarqawi indeed claimed responsibility for, as well as for some attacks in Morocco, Turkey and Jordan, and some foiled attacks in Turkey and Jordan, all listed in the section 'Attacks' below.
Zarqawi targeted Shia Islamic mosques as well as civilians, U.N. representatives, Iraqi government institutions, Egypt's ambassador, Russian diplomats and foreign civilians in Iraq and hotel visitors in Jordan, possibly also Christian churches, the Jordanian embassy, and the U.S.-led Multi-National Force in Iraq, most of whom he professedly hated either as apostates of Islam, or as "infidels" "giving Palestine to the Jews", or as individuals oppressing and "humiliating our [Islamic] people" or "nation". Al-Zarqawi was part of the leadership of Ansar al-Islam and was believed to have fled into Iran during the assault.
U.S. chasing Zarqawi, 2003–2006.
The Bush Administration in February 2003 in the U.N. Security Council used Zarqawi's alleged presence in Iraq as a part of the justification for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
On December 17, 2004, the U.S. State Department added Zarqawi and the Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad group to its "list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations" and ordered a freeze on any assets that the group might have in the United States.
By May 2005, Zarqawi was the most wanted man in Jordan and Iraq,