Zarqawi's role in Iraq overstated, analysts say
By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff | November 1, 2004

AMMAN, Jordan -- American officials have grossly inflated the role of Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the violence in Iraq in their eagerness to blame foreign terrorists for the insurgency, according to Jordanian analysts and Western diplomats.

Convicts who spent time in a Jordanian prison remember Zarqawi as a ''prison prince" -- a hands-on block leader who commanded a few dozen followers with a nod or a glance, but who left arguments about religious ideology to more educated jihadists. They recall him as brutal and inarticulate, dependent on others for direction.

Analysts in Jordan, Zarqawi's native country and home until at least 1999, said Zarqawi joined the armed Islamist struggle in Afghanistan more than a decade ago. His group, among the most violent in Iraq, has claimed responsibility for a trail of brutal acts, culminating in videotaped beheadings by Zarqawi's own hand of two American contractors in September. He has also claimed responsibility for two separate massacres of Iraqi national guardsmen in late October, including the execution of 49 soldiers east of Baghdad and 11 more south of the capital.

But these analysts, as well as some Western diplomats, say Zarqawi's group is just one of many jihadist factions that attract fighters from Iraq and across the Arab world -- and that Zarqawi's capability and ties to Osama bin Laden have been exaggerated.

They say American counter-terrorism officials are ignoring a wide array of fundamentalist groups at work in Iraq and surrounding countries in their effort to portray all terrorist activity in Iraq as the handiwork of a single mastermind.