WHEN the tragic history of modern Iraq is finally written, the name of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi will stand out as the individual most responsible for bringing bloodshed and chaos to the adopted country he liked to call “the land of the two rivers”.

The al-Qaeda leader who was killed in a US airstrike on Wednesday night, lacked the authority of Osama bin Laden and the intellect of his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.

But in the space of three years the stocky, poorly-educated Jordanian managed to eclipse the world’s most wanted terrorist masterminds and become the undisputed leader of the global jihadist movement.

Like the junior partner in a multinational business, al-Zarqawi seized the opportunity presented by the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 to transform himself from a minor terrorist into the most feared and ruthless figure in the Middle East.

His tactics included the mass murder of civilians, mainly drawn from the ranks of Iraq’s majority Shia Muslim community, the televised beheadings of Westerners, including Kenneth Bigley, the British engineer, and the use of suicide bombers.

Many of his exploits were filmed and released on the internet, often accompanied by al-Zarqawi’s twisted religious sermons. He quickly built up a following among disaffected Muslim youths from across the Arab world, and from as far afield as Britain, France and Spain. Volunteers flocked to join his ranks.

When a video from London suicide bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan was released after his death last year, he said that he prayed to be raised alongside the prophets, the messengers, the martyrs and “today’s heroes”. Top of the list was al-Zarqawi.

Ultimately, however, his brutal methods and his nihilist ideology, which sought the destruction of about 80 per cent of Iraq’s population of Kurds, Shias and other rival communities, proved to be his undoing.

Former allies among Iraq’s Sunni Muslims openly clashed with him. Arab followers grew disaffected when he spread his mayhem across their borders. All the indications yesterday were that he had been betrayed by someone in his own circle.

That al-Zarqawi met a violent death certainly came as no surprise to anyone in Iraq. The fact that he survived more than three years, dodging his American pursuers, is testament to his cunning and ability to disguise himself. And yet when al-Zarqawi first surfaced in Iraq in the aftermath of the invasion, few had ever heard of him.

Raised in the drab, working-class Jordanian city of Zarqa, he first came to the notice of the authorities as a petty criminal and thug. It was while he was in prison that he fell under the spell of a militant Islamic preacher and was converted to fight jihad against people who he termed “the Crusaders”.

Like other men of his generation, he volunteered to fight in Afghanistan, but the war against the Russians and their proxies was largely over by the time he reached the front. After a failed attempt to join Osama bin Laden’s group, he appeared destined to become one of many young volunteers scattered across the Muslim world looking for a cause.

In 2002 he was accused of ordering the assassination of Laurence Foley, an American diplomat in Amman. He was also accused of involvement in a terrorist plot in Germany the same year. But his resources were limited and he was still relatively unknown outside the world of counter-terrorism. ()

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