Chapter 22
November 9, 2005, was supposed to be the happiest day of Nadia Alami’s life. That evening she was to marry her longtime sweetheart, Ashraf Da’as, at the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman. The young couple had met three years before while working at a local hospital, and had quickly fallen in love. Their families and friends had come from around the globe and gathered at the hotel for the wedding. At around nine o’clock, the bride and groom walked through the lobby, past the cheering and clapping guests. Nadia wore a beautiful white dress with a flowing veil, and Ashraf a dark suit and red tie.
They had been married less than an hour and were about to celebrate the beginning of their life together. But Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had other plans.
Two Iraqi suicide bombers, a husband-and-wife team wearing explosive vests packed with ball bearings under their clothing, had infiltrated the wedding party and were mingling with the guests, each in a different corner of the room. As Nadia and Ashraf approached the door, the band struck up a tune.
Then the male bomber detonated his vest. The ball bearings shot across the ballroom with deadly force, killing the father of the bride outright and mortally wounding the father of the groom. The female bomber tried to detonate her vest, but it failed to go off, and she fled.
Twenty-seven guests were killed, including sixteen of Ashraf’s relatives. Both the bride and groom lost their fathers.
At exactly the same time, suicide bombers struck at two other nearby hotels, the Grand Hyatt and the Days Inn, killing thirty-three more people. In all, sixty people lost their lives that night, thirty-six of them Jordanian. Among those killed was Moustapha Akkad, a prominent Syrian-American filmmaker who produced the movie Mohammad: Messenger of God, depicting the early days of Islam, though he is probably better known to U.S. audiences for producing some of the Halloween horror movies.
When the attack took place I was in Kazakhstan on an official visit. We had just finished dinner when a call came in for me from Amman. As soon as I heard the news, I got a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. In our battle against the takfiris I had always feared that, sooner or later, we would be attacked. But nothing could have prepared me for this.
I excused myself and immediately called for my plane. It was an agonizing trip home. We arrived in Jordan around five o’clock the next morning, and I went directly to the sites of the attacks. When I saw the chaos and devastation, my sadness turned to anger. “How could they do this to us?” I thought. I was furious. These murderers had killed innocent people at a wedding, and as the head of state it was my duty to protect them. I was determined to find those responsible. I paid my condolences to grieving family members and went to several hospitals to visit the wounded. One of the victims was the son of a close friend of mine.
To a large country like the United States, sixty people may not sound like very many, but to Jordan it was a devastating blow, the equivalent of losing three thousand people in a single attack on America. The psychological impact on average Jordanians was dramatic. It turned the population decisively against Al Qaeda and their like. In Jordan, and across much of the rest of the world, when we write a date, we write the day before the month. So the date of the attack, November 9, was 9/11. And in many ways it was as much of a watershed for Jordan as 9/11 was for the United States.
The leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, issued a statement taking responsibility for the bombings. “After studying and observing the targets,” he said, “the places of execution were chosen to be hotels which the tyrant of Jordan has turned into a backyard for the enemies of Islam, such as the Jews and Crusaders.” But far from targeting the enemies of Islam, as the terrorists claimed, they had indiscriminately murdered dozens of innocent Jordanians and other innocent people of different nationalities.
The people of Jordan did not accept Zarqawi’s hateful attack. That afternoon, a group of angry protesters gathered outside the Radisson Hotel waving Jordanian flags and chanting, “Death to Zarqawi!” For nights on end young Jordanians held vigils and said prayers.
I was extremely angry and said in an address to the nation on November 10, “Let it be clear to everyone that we will pursue these terrorists and those who aid them. We will reach them wherever they are, pull them from their lairs, and submit them to justice.” We had a policy in Jordan of not interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, but that was about to change. I resolved that from now on, if we learned about a terrorist group that was planning to target us hiding in another country, we would hit them before they hit us. I gathered together our intelligence service, the military, and the political leadership and said, “We’re going on the offensive. What Zarqawi did was reprehensible. The gloves are off, and I want you to get him.” We reached out to the Iraqi tribes to see if we could get more information. If the Iraqi government was willing to help us, fine. But if not, we were prepared to act alone.
Iraq was a closed country under Saddam Hussein, and our intelligence services had not been able to operate easily there. After the U.S.-led invasion, when things started to fall apart, it took us a little while to get our people inside. We knew Zarqawi was in Iraq. But initially we did not have the capability to move against him. Now we began aggressively to move into Iraq. We began to attach teams of Jordanian officers to American Special Forces units. Jordanians had a better understanding of the mannerisms of takfiris and were thus able to identify suspects more efficiently. Many takfiris have a distinctive manner of dress and behavior, and we helped the Americans understand what to look for.
Zarqawi had said that this was an attack against the Jordanian regime. But it was not, and people in Jordan clearly saw that killing guests at a wedding was an act of savage barbarity, not a political gesture. What Zarqawi had done was to declare war on Jordan. Now we were coming for him.
Zarqawi was born Ahmed Fadil Nazzal Khalaylah and grew up in the town of Zarqa, seventeen miles northeast of Amman. He was a thug and petty criminal and drifted until his early twenties, when he headed to Afghanistan to join the war against the occupying Soviet troops. Arriving just as the Russians were leaving in 1989, he adopted the nom de guerre of “al-Zarqawi,” literally meaning “the one from Zarqa,” and met Osama bin Laden and other radicals. On returning to Jordan in the early 1990s he set up a local terrorist group called Bay’at al-Emam, but before he could carry out any attacks he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment.
In prison, Zarqawi met the leading thinker of the radical takfiri movement, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, who encouraged his violent desires. But Maqdisi later started to criticize Zarqawi and the two men fell out. In what would prove to be a costly mistake, Zarqawi was released from prison in 1999, as part of a general amnesty declared shortly after I became king. It was not long before he headed back to Afghanistan, where he received further funding and encouragement from bin Laden. Following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, he returned to the Middle East to continue his plotting.
Zarqawi settled into the Kurdish areas in northern Iraq, where he linked up with a local terrorist group, Ansar al-Islam, with strong ties to Al Qaeda. Working with this local group and with a gang of Al Qaeda fighters who had come with him from Afghanistan, he and his men began experimenting with poisons, including cyanide and ricin, testing them on animals to make sure they worked. He began sending terrorists from his camp on missions to attack targets throughout Europe, including Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Many were subsequently arrested and confessed to Zarqawi’s involvement. Zarqawi wanted to expand his reach and influence. Little did he know that a much larger opportunity was about to present itself.
When the Americans invaded Iraq in 2003, Al Qaeda was dancing in the streets. Osama bin Laden was delighted, because he knew that with the instability that would inevitably follow, his supporters would be able to parachute into the heartland of the Arab world and set up a base. But bin Laden was not the only one to spot the opportunities for mayhem. Seeking to step into the vacuum created by the invasion, Zarqawi expanded his own activities. He became increasingly vicious in the methods he used and began to break all boundaries, seeking political influence through extreme violence.
On May 11, 2003, a video titled “Sheikh Abu Musab Zarqawi Slaughters an American Infidel with His Hands and Promises Bush More” was posted on a militant Web site. The video showed a young American civilian contractor, Nicholas Berg, wearing an orange jumpsuit and kneeling in front of five men dressed in black, their faces covered by ski masks and head scarves. The men read a statement, and then one of them beheaded Berg with a knife, yelling, “God is great!”
That was the moment when Zarqawi and his men moved from being barbarians to animals. It was outrageously disgusting, and I could not see how they could pose as defenders of anything, let alone Islam. Zarqawi continued his atrocities, bombing Shia holy places in an attempt to stoke the flames of civil war and beheading several more unfortunate civilians.
In October 2004, in a statement posted on an extremist Web site, Zarqawi proclaimed that he was merging his terror group with Al Qaeda, saying, “We announce that the One God and Jihad group, its prince and its soldiers, has pledged allegiance to the sheikh of the holy warriors, Osama bin Laden.” After that he increasingly targeted Jordan. In 2004 and 2005 our security services foiled over 150 attempted attacks by Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda group and other takfiri extremists. But we could not stop them all. In August 2005, members of Al Qaeda in Iraq crept into Jordan and from the southern port of Aqaba launched a rocket attack against an American warship. And in November Zarqawi’s suicide bombers struck the three hotels in Amman. In addition to being an atrocity, this was a major tactical blunder.
In many other capital cities in the Middle East, luxury hotels are used mainly by foreigners, Western businessmen, and visiting government officials. And so by bombing a hotel, Zarqawi probably aimed to kill Americans or Israelis. But in Jordan, five-star hotels are frequented by our own people much more than by foreigners. Even the waiters are likely to be Jordanians rather than foreign workers. So the attacks provided a wake-up call. Stung by the outpouring of rage, Zarqawi decided to change tack. In an audiotape released the following week, he threatened me personally, saying, “Your star is fading. You will not escape your fate, you descendant of traitors. We will be able to reach your head and chop it off.”
That winter and the following spring of 2006, Jordanian intelligence operatives and agents flooded into Iraq, searching for information that might lead us to Zarqawi’s hideout. They soon developed a network of sources and informants. While looking for clues, we exchanged information with a Sunni tribe with links to the insurgents. In April 2006, Zarqawi released an online propaganda video, and our analysts were able roughly to identify his location inside Iraq by analyzing the background scenery. We also recruited an informant in Zarqawi’s inner circle, who would in time reveal a crucial detail. He was in contact with three of Zarqawi’s most trusted couriers, who would meet the terrorist in person to receive and deliver secret messages.
Working closely with the Americans, we came tantalizingly close several times. On one occasion, Zarqawi was alerted by the sound of approaching Bradley armored vehicles and fled on a moped as American troops arrived. Another time, he jumped out a window and escaped. But we were getting closer.
In May 2006, we learned from the Americans that Zarqawi was planning to meet with his spiritual adviser, Sheikh Abdel-Rahman. We began to monitor the sheikh’s movements, hoping he would lead our men to Zarqawi.
On June 7, American forces tracked the sheikh to a house outside Baqubah, thirty miles northeast of Baghdad, and placed a team of Delta Force commandos in the undergrowth nearby, watching. We had asked our informant to be extra vigilant, and he sent a message that Zarqawi and one of his couriers were inside.
Dusk was approaching and, afraid that he would escape yet again, one of the commandos called in an air strike on the house. Shortly afterward, two U.S. F-16 fighter aircraft dropped two 500-pound bombs on the house. American and Iraqi troops pulled Zarqawi from the rubble, still breathing, but he died shortly after.
The families of his victims finally had justice. Zarqawi would never harm anybody again. His wife and family were caught crossing into Jordan from Syria in June 2009, and, demonstrating the difference between violent extremists and the civilized world, we allowed them to go free.
Jordan had long been cooperating with other friendly nations in the global effort to protect innocent people from terrorist organizations. But international cooperation against Al Qaeda has become stronger and more systematic in recent years, in response to the growing terrorist threat. Our intelligence service was the first to penetrate Al Qaeda, long before it was on the radar of the international community, and we had developed in-depth knowledge of its techniques. We have put this knowledge in the service of all our allies in the fight against terrorism. I am proud to say that we have played a major role in saving innocent lives in the region and beyond. We continue to cooperate and share information with other intelligence services in a partnership that is growing more effective in protecting our people and interests from terrorist organizations.
Although we had won an important victory, we cannot prevail in this struggle by just winning tactical battles, using our military and intelligence service to take down cells and disrupt plots. To comprehensively defeat terrorists, we will have to neutralize the appeal of their extremist ideology and combat the ignorance and hopelessness on which they thrive. This is not just a military battle, it is an intellectual one. And it is a battle we started a while ago.