Abu Bakr Al-Zarqawi Research Papers

The story of ISIS all begins with one action, the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, following the United States’ accusations that the President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, had weapons of mass destruction, and had connections with al-Qaeda. Both of these claims would ultimately prove to be false. Yet, despite this fact, one of the claims made by the United States would prove to be the impetus that would spur a man named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi onto a path that would ultimately lead him to create a terrorist organization called Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad. Years later, of his successors, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi would change the name of this organization to ISIS, one of the most brutal and unrestrained terrorist organizations ever seen. But before

Growing up, Zarqawi was a thug, belonged to local gangs, and was obsessed with tattoos, so much so that he was even given the nickname “The Green Man” (Founder). Of these facts, the latter portion is particularly worth mentioning. This is because while many people who would go on to become prominent figures in ISIS and other terrorist organizations were thugs, but the tattoos were a different story, few of the leaders had those. In fact, Zarqawi’s exorbitant number of tattoos ran in direct conflict with his religious creed, Islam. Anyways, in 1993 he was arrested after illegal weapons were found in his

However, bin Laden began to grow increasingly angry at Zarqawi, not because Zarqawi was acting independently, but because Zarqawi was bombing Shia Muslims, in an attempt to create a Civil War in Iraq. This, bin Laden considered to be abhorrent. In fact, in 2005 a top deputy of bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, wrote a letter to Zarqawi, letting him know that “he was far too free in his targeting of Muslim civilians and too prone to display ‘scenes of slaughter’” (Stern et al. 47). However, this did not deter Zarqawi and instead did the exact opposite. On February 22, 2006, the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra, Iraq, which is considered to be one of the holiest in Shia Islam, was bombed. The attack, which would later be attributed to AQI, left the mosque severely damaged. To make matters worse, within a weak, Iraq was hampered with sectarian violence and was in a state of complete turmoil, teetering on the verge of all-out civil war (Secret