Iraq
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Welcome back to Conflicted. If this is your first time listening, this is a podcast series where we explore the real story of the War on Terror and the conflicts raging throughout the Middle East. It's an extremely complex tapestry, but stick with us. We are going to do our best to unpick those threads for you to make sense of what seems to be a lot of chaos. Some of you know me already. I'm one of your guides through this exploration of the Middle East, Thomas Small.

So, in the last episode, we spoke about the War on Terror, and my co-host for the series, Eamon Dean, talked about his role within that war. I asked him whether this US-led counterterrorism campaign had been a success, and he said that it was launched with good intentions, but it was carried out in an idiotic way. And he specifically pointed to one event in particular that caused the whole thing to unravel.

Taking Saddam down was the dumbest strategic mistake that Bush and Blair ever done and that what revived the fortunes of Al-Qaeda and global jihad. We'll explore why in this episode. This is Conflicted.

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Right. Has the bomb squad left? Did they find any bombs under my chair tonight? Here I am with Eamon Dean again.

With a fat one on his head, former al-Qaeda member, author of Nine Lives, My Life as MI6. My Time as MI6, Top Spy Inside Al-Qaeda. How many times do I have to remind you? My Time as MI6 is Top Spy Inside Al-Qaeda. Well, that tells us everything we need to know about you. I'm Thomas Small, co-producer of the documentary film Path of Blood, the true story of al-Qaeda's attempts to overthrow the Saudi monarchy.

Welcome. How are you today? Well, as I always remind you, Thomas, I'm still alive. You still have one life left. Touch wood. I would rather think there are quite a few more of them. Me too. I hope, I hope. So in the last episode, we spoke about the war on terror and your role within that war.

I asked you whether it has been a success and you said, well, it was launched with good intentions, but it was carried out in an idiotic way. And you specified one event in particular that caused the whole thing to unravel, which we'll talk about today, the Iraq War.

So you say that America invaded the wrong country. It was a huge mistake. It was based on their stupidity. But was it also perhaps premeditated? Did they know it was going to result in chaos? I remember, I think it was Richard Perle or Wolfowitz, you know, the neocon security advisors in the Bush administration. One of them said what the Middle East really needs is for someone to throw a grenade into the middle of it to see what results. Creative chaos, just like the jihadists. Yeah.

You see, I do believe in creative chaos as a force for good sometime because, you know, forests need forest fires between now and then to rejuvenate. But that has to be organically grown from within. Sure, but do you think that the neocons knew they were going to create chaos in Iraq?

For the listener, the neocons being a group of geopolitical strategists around the George W. Bush administration. For many decades, they had been advocating a more muscular American approach to policing the world, especially in the Middle East.

Do you think they knew what they were doing to Iraq, Ayman? I don't think they really realized, you know, what kind of a disaster they are going to make. I mean, they were just a bunch of teenagers going into the forest, having an uncontrolled campfire, and then basically they set the entire forest on fire. It wasn't their intention. I think their intention was, oh, we are going to build this in a democracy. You know, the war, you know, as Donald Rumsfeld stupidly once said,

will pay for itself. Well, it didn't. It did not. It cost trillions and even all the oil of Iraq, if it was ever extracted and sold right now, it won't even cover 50% of the war cost. So anyone who says, oh, it was only for oil, they don't get it. But we

We now know, I think it's pretty fair to say, that the justifications they gave at the time for launching the war, the WMDs, that Saddam Hussein was in league with bin Laden, they knew that this was not true. The dossier was sexed up. They were lying to people. They had had it in their minds all along to invade Iraq. 9-11 was just the pretext they needed.

to sell it to the American people. Do you remember when we talked about how Al-Qaeda leaders read the letter that was written in 1998, five years before the Iraq invasion? The letter from the project for the new American century. Indeed.

That letter was signed by all the architects of the Iraq War when they were just only in a think tank and not in government. Yes, it's amazing. It goes to show you. So their intention was there a long time ago because they wanted to throw that grenade into the Middle East,

But it wasn't with the intention of creating this, you know, blood-soaked chaos. What they wanted basically is to rearrange the Middle East in a way that will be favorable towards America. But what happened is that they rearranged the Middle East in a way that is favorable to Iran and Russia, ironically. It was the bulldozer, the bulldozer that al-Qaeda was looking forward to from the United States to come and cause chaos in the region.

Is that right? Oh, yes, indeed. Okay, so let's discuss Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein from Tikrit in Iraq rose up through the military, joined the Ba'ath Party at an early age, and eventually, by proving himself a consummate insider, the power behind the throne of the leader of the Ba'ath Party at the time, eventually became vice president where he effectively ruled the country and then president.

from 1979 until his hanging in 2006? Yeah. We have to remember that Saddam Hussein was the pillar of secular Arab nationalism. So secular Arab nationalism is an ideology that began to emerge, you know, in the 1940s and 50s.

especially with the uprising in Egypt in 1952, which deposed the monarchy and brought about the idea of Arab nationalism. Arab nationalism was more or less invented as a way in order to

create an identity around the Arabic language as something that will rally the people behind. Why? So in order to rally the people behind a cause, you need to have a cause that is uniting, not dividing.

So they thought that religion could be dividing because, don't forget, you have a lot of Christians within the Arab world. Those Christians, even though they were a minority, roughly 10%, they were the educated classes. They were really highly educated, motivated, engaged, involved. Also, to some extent, the capitalist classes. They were wealthy. Absolutely. So, you know, without them, there would be no progress. Without them, we couldn't go forward. And so, therefore...

The idea was that Arab secular nationalism. So they spoke Arabic, we spoke Arabic,

You know, so how about we use Arabic identity and Arab identity as the rallying cause, as the uniting ideology? And the Arab leaders who subscribed to this ideology wanted to unite the Arab world because, well, because they wanted power, but also because they thought only if the Arab world were truly united could it withstand the combined onslaught of America and the Soviets.

Now, I know it seems we're going off track, but let's discuss the Israel-Palestine conflict for a moment. I promise you, listeners, that this is relevant to Saddam Hussein and the work of the Ba'ath Party in the region. So, Eamon, how resonant to this day is the Israel-Palestine situation to these conflicts that are raging?

You see, the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and even in the 1990s and the early 2000s, the Palestinian cause was so ever-present in the minds and the hearts of the Arab people. Because, of course, it was reinforced by the

constant propaganda by the dictators because for the dictators, for the Arab world autocrats, the Palestinian cause was a good painkiller to give to the people. If the people basically are hungry, oh, we have to be hungry for Palestine. If the people are saying, yes, but we have no freedom, oh, yeah, because if we have freedom, then we lose the Palestinian cause and we lose Palestine. So Palestine as a cause was used and abused constantly.

by a multitude of Arab dictators. Not just the dictators, the monarchs as well. Everyone was playing that game. Everyone. If you were an Arab leader, you were a defender of Palestine. It became really part and parcel of Arab leadership. Yeah. Well, indeed, the only one who broke away from that was the wisest Arab leader to have ever existed. Anwar Sadat. Exactly. Exactly.

Anwar Sadat, president of Egypt throughout the 70s, famously signed the Camp David Peace Accords with the Israelis to put an end

or so he hoped, to conflict between Israel and the Arabs, was paid for his pains by being assassinated by jihadists at that time, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, now the leader of al-Qaeda, the grandfather of the sort of total violence we associate now with ISIS, after a time in prison, ended up joining al-Qaeda, and after a series of adventures establishing what was known as al-Qaeda in Iraq.

I remember in the mid-naughties, he was releasing videos of himself, propaganda videos, brandishing knives, brandishing Kalashnikovs, rallying the Muslims to rise up and join him in Iraq to expel the American invader. He was a harbinger for things to come.

The story goes on and on. It's an immense tapestry of events. I'm sure listeners are thinking, how do we keep this in our heads? But it's very important to realize that the war on terror, 9-11, the Gulf War, this story stretches back decades. This is a decades-long conflict between various forces in the Middle East. And this podcast is attempting to string together this very complex tapestry.

Now, what did jihadists have against Israel? Because remember, do you remember when we discussed in the first episode, when we talked about the apocalyptic and eschatological and prophetic visions of jihadists? The prophecies, the end time prophecies. They believe that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land was the trigger for the age of prophecies.

And that it will end, all of it, all of it will end in a great, huge battle around Jerusalem. So basically their version of the Christian Armageddon. Exactly. That is why attacking Israel is always going to earn you some brownie points.

So let's put the characters in place. We've got a slew of Arab leaders who wanted to strengthen and unite the Muslim world by subscribing to what is known as secular Arab nationalism. For these Arab leaders, this unity would strengthen the Arab world. For jihadists, it's a good thing because it all plays into their cause, the fulfillment of the prophecies.

We'll get to where they play a role in all of this in a bit. But first, let's bring this conversation back to Iraq. We said earlier Saddam Hussein was a pillar of Arab nationalism and he led the Ba'ath Party. So, Ayman, what's so important about the Ba'ath Party? By the way, the Ba'ath Party in Arabic means the Renaissance Party.

The founder of the Baath Party was a Christian Syrian and his name was Michel Aflaq. He was supported by many Syrian, Iraqi and Lebanese Christian intellectuals who saw in the Baath Party a mechanism to unite Muslims who were also Sunni and Shia together with Alawites and with Christians of all sorts, Christian Orthodox, Christian Catholics,

around this banner of Arab nationalism. So the Ba'ath Party was an umbrella organization that actually gathered beneath it many forces from Iraq, from Syria, and also from Egypt and Libya and Algeria. But in fact, it took hold in both Iraq and Syria. I mean, we've all been told that Saddam Hussein, leader of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, was a maniac, wasn't he? And the Ba'ath Party was utterly oppressive of the people.

Remember, the Ba'ath Party was modeled on the socialist Bolshevik model. So it was not exactly a pluralistic capitalist model. It wasn't liberal, say. No, no, no. There was nothing liberal about the Ba'ath Party. The Ba'ath Party was an organization or a party that basically sought to enforce unity from the top.

And at the same time, if you are believing that you are the only vehicle for progress, then you want to basically be the only ruling party. And that was the case in both Iraq and Syria, where the Baath Party became the ruling party. So the American invasion of Iraq and the destruction of Saddam Hussein's regime served the interests of al-Qaeda.

Of course, you see, the Ba'ath Party was ruling Iraq since 1968 and Syria since 1970. And in both cases, it was one single party rule completely dominated by ideologues and

And these ideologues wanted to destroy any semblance of involvement of religion in politics. But that, of course, failed at a later stage because Saddam's version of Arab nationalism in Iraq became not anti-Shia because he wasn't sectarian. I would say it became anti-Persian.

Yes, because, of course, Saddam Hussein throughout the 80s was the great lion of the Arabs, protecting the Arab world from the spread of the Iranian revolution. And at that point, his regime, secular in nature, did take on the trappings of Islamic symbology, which led him eventually into conflict with the House of Saud.

the custodians of the two holy mosques, which, you know, eventually culminated in the Gulf War, the first Gulf War of 1991. Absolutely. And, you know, and in Syria, it was a very different story altogether. President Assad, you know, the father of the current one, Hafez al-Assad, he decided to go in a different path. So he was a Ba'ath party, yes, but because of his Alawite minority background,

Yes, he was not a Sunni. The Alawites are a strange sectarian Shia branch of Islam, very small numbers within the Muslim world. Indeed, a fringe sect, you can call them. But they saw Iran as more ideologically aligned with them than Iraq. And because of the competition between the two Ba'ath Party branches, the Baghdad branch and the Damascus branch,

was so intense. It's similar to the intensity of the competition between Beijing and Moscow over who was the true communist after the breakup between the two powers. During the Cold War, that's right. Yes, that's right. So when you were growing up in Kobar, before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and potentially threatened you and your family by invading Saudi Arabia...

What image did you have of Saddam Hussein as an Arab leader? Well, we used to call him in Arabic the phrase, you know, the protector of the Eastern Gate, you know, of course, against the savage Persian hordes, you know, who were trying to bring, you know, this kind of messianic version of Islam and overwhelm our, you know, sparsely populated Arabian Peninsula.

So, of course, his image was that of a strong man. You know, he was the Stalin who defeated Hitler. You know, he knows that, you know, the Iraqi Stalin who defeated the Iranian Hitler, you know, Khomeini. So that's how he was seen. You are talking about Saddam Hussein as if he was an admirable character, but, you know, he was a real asshole.

Oh, no, no, no question about it. Not only he was a brutal, brutal dictator in modeling the style of his rule on Stalin, but he did, in fact, use chemical weapons to great effect against the Iranians, you know, in the Iran-Iraq war and also against the Kurds.

in the north of the country. But we must also remember it wasn't only Iraq and Saddam Hussein that used chemical weapons during the Iraq-Iran war. Iran used chemical weapons too. Yes, we also have to remember that I think that if you were to look at the canisters of Saddam Hussein's

chemical weapons arsenal, they would have imprinted upon them a factory probably located somewhere in the Midwest of the United States. Indeed. And you see, the use of those chemical weapons, you know, happened during the 1980s when Saddam was the darling of D.C. The darling of D.C. But so, you know, so yes, Saddam Hussein was an asshole. But perhaps what you're saying is that

Saddam Hussein used to say that Iraq is a complicated chemical formula. Only a master chemist

can understand it and he was that master chemist because he actually reigned over Iraq for 34 years. He knew basically how to rule the country and keep it together. Actually Iraq throughout the Islamic history was always stable under the rule of a tyrant. Always.

Now, I remember where I was when I heard that George W. Bush and the Americans had invaded Iraq on the 20th of March, 2003. I was still in the monastery in Greece. In fact,

I left 10 days later. I don't think there's a connection between those two events, but it just so happened I did leave 10 days later. And at the time inside the monastery, and I think this resonates with what you were talking about in the first episode, there was a genuine apocalyptic mentality going on. The monks believed that this war was the beginning salvo in the end of times war, the great war that would culminate in Armageddon.

I wouldn't say that they were excited about it. They weren't supporting the war, but they were excited about the prospect of the end of history coming imminently. And this is true as well within the ranks of the jihadists, I suppose. They thought the prophecies are coming true. The Americans have taken the bait. They've moved into Iraq. They're the bulldozer we need to create the creative chaos in which we will be able to reform the caliphate. Well,

You just summed it absolutely perfectly right. The problem here is that the preceding five years before the Iraq war between 1998 and 2003

Those last five years of Saddam Hussein's reign in Iraq were actually the best of his reign. It was a time of the least repression, I would call it this way. It was a time when he started to open up a bit as far as the population were concerned. Even though there were severe sanctions, but the effects of the sanctions started to subside.

Sanctions overseen by the UN, most famously the oil for food program, where Saddam Hussein was only able to sell oil on the global market in exchange for food for his people. It started to actually improve and it became clear that Iraq actually was on the cusp of

of breaking the sanctions, of having a rapprochement with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. And already the relationship with Jordan was excellent and with Turkey was excellent. So, you know, things started to improve considerably. Well, if that's the case, you know, put us in the mind of the neocon establishment in Washington. Why did they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein so badly then? Clearly, this is someone that perhaps...

with a little bit more time, they could have worked with to combat the rising tide of violent Islamism. The ironic thing is that they already worked with him in the 1980s. They already did. So why did they want to get rid of him so badly? In fact, as you said in the first episode, they wanted to get rid of him before 9-11. He was their main target. Why?

They saw Iraq and they saw Saddam Hussein as someone who could be a threat in the future, forgetting that at some point, basically, he was useful for their policy of containing Iran. And he managed, actually, to contain Iran all the way till the end. Iran's ambitions in the region was only unleashed after his fall in 2003. But...

If you see what the neocons were looking at, if you read their writings, they thought that Iraq was ideally situated within the Middle East, in the heart of the Middle East, bordering different civilizations and ethnic groups. It's bordering the Persians, the Kurds, the Turks, the Arabs. And the idea is that it is oil-rich and it is strategically positioned there.

at the heart of the Muslim world. So it is the ideal place to start a new experiment in bringing about democracy because they believe that only when we remove dictators and install democratic values, then these countries will forever be grateful to America and American intervention. There was one problem though.

It might seem small, but it was what undermined the whole strategy altogether. The people who were talking about this were looking at Iraq on the map. They were looking at the green, yellow and brown colors of Iraq on the map with the rivers crisscrossing the map and that's it. They were not looking at the demographics and the history of the people.

They ignore that Iraq was always, always a bastion of instability within the Middle East. The Iraq war was the great mistake, you said, as a double agent working for MI6 inside al-Qaeda. You must have felt demoralized. Well, I always felt that we were involved in one of the worst historical exercise in futility.

that we are capturing or killing terrorists only for these terrorists to be replaced 10 times because of what's happening in many parts of Iraq. And why?

I always ask myself, why am I continuing? Why am I working? What's the point? Because the Iraq war has radicalized so many young Muslims across the world. You see, if it was necessary, I would have supported it and I have supported the

the war in Afghanistan to depose the Taliban. I supported that because it was right to do so. Although maybe its later execution was not exactly perfect, but at least, you know, the initial campaign was on the right track. And if they just, if the Americans just persevered just another year or year and a half, they would have finished Al-Qaeda and Taliban for good.

On the eve of the invasion of Iraq and before that, I was advising my MI6 handlers and other officers I used to meet to read the writings of Professor Ali Alwardi. Who's Ali Alwardi? I've never heard of him. Oh, he is the most important person you never heard of, Thomas. You're the expert here, Eamon. I'm just trying to get the gold nuggets out of your head. Well...

Professor Ali Alwardi was an Iraqi professor of sociology in Baghdad University. He was a professor in the 40s and 50s. So we're talking really a while ago, but his writings...

are so accurate in its analysis of the Iraqi individual personality. What is this personality? Well, he said basically that the census tells us that there are 15 million Iraqis in Iraq, but he believed there were 30 million because each Iraqi, in his opinion, basically was, you know, two individuals within one body. Ah.

An individual that is capable of being a good husband, a good father, a good neighbor, a wonderful person, a humorous, generous, selfless. But then on the other hand, the same person is capable of being sadist, violent, psychopath, capable of murder, dismemberment, torture. Now, I mean, if this guy wasn't an Iraqi himself –

I would be inclined to dismiss this as just quack sociological racism, really. I mean, it does seem a bit extreme to say that every Iraqi has the capacity for being a brutal sadist.

But remember, he was talking about his own people. He was analyzing how Iraq throughout the ages was always basically a bastion of instability. So you then, when you realized that the Americans were going to invade Iraq, you knew it would be a disaster. Where were you when you first realized this is going to happen? The Americans are going to make this god-awful mistake.

I was in Bahrain monitoring the Al-Qaeda's movement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. And, you know, and of course, basically, Al-Qaeda was keeping an eye on the American preparations for invading Iraq. So this is when I realized that this was a mistake because

The reaction of Al-Qaeda individuals and operatives who I was meeting on regular basis at the time was that of gleeful anticipation. So excited. That's exactly the trap that we want the Americans to walk into. Amazing. Amazing. And the irony, of course, is there you are in Bahrain keeping tabs on Al-Qaeda militants inside Iran.

That's where the al-Qaeda militants were. That's who was facilitating them, not Saddam Hussein. I will tell you something. I used to have screaming sessions with my MI5 and MI6 handlers when I used to hear Colin Powell and others talking about how Iraq was a source of al-Qaeda's chemical weapons capabilities. You, of course, had...

intimate knowledge of those capabilities you had been a chemical weapons expert for Al Qaeda indeed and those actually did not come from Iraq those came from people who worked in the Egyptian and Syrian chemical weapons programs in the 1970s and 80s nothing

nothing to do with Iraq. These were people who converted to jihadism from Egypt and from Syria, came to Afghanistan and brought that capability. Not a single Iraqi came, you know, and gave that capability to Al-Qaeda. But what about Iran, though? I mean, Iran was actually facilitating Al-Qaeda at this time, was it not? I mean, it was keeping some of its top leaders, like Saif al-Adl, the military head of Al-Qaeda at that time, under house arrest, was advocating

allowing him to contact his al-Qaeda comrades across the world. Is that not right? Well, I remember when one of the envoys of Hamza Rabi'a, Hamza Rabi'a was the head of al-Qaeda's operation, external operations. So he was based in Iran, and the envoy used to tell us that the Iranians programmed the landlines and the phones that we had to dial only two international codes.

00966 and 00973, which are the international codes for Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, respectively. And why those two countries? Why did they allow al-Qaeda operatives inside Iran to contact people inside Bahrain and Saudi Arabia? Because these countries were the target.

Because Bahrain is the home of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, you know, thousands of U.S. personnel are stationed there. And of course, Saudi Arabia is the home of the Saudi monarchy, the greatest obstacle against Iran's total hegemony of the Middle East. Yes, I mean, that's very interesting because not enough people realize that two months after the invasion of Iraq...

the uprising inside Saudi Arabia of Al-Qaeda cells that had been planted there in the preceding years occurred. Osama bin Laden thought, following the invasion of Iraq, that anti-American sentiment would be so strong inside Saudi Arabia that ordinary Saudi civilians would answer his call to rise up and overthrow the government there. So he pressed go on a series of audacious bombings,

shootings, kidnappings, beheadings that ravaged the kingdom for three years. All the while, America is in Iraq and the jihadists there are causing havoc as well. You must have been aware that this was all going on. You were intimately involved in countering the al-Qaeda campaign inside Saudi Arabia? And

Indeed, that campaign actually also had considerable links with the group in Iraq that began to emerge and had strong links and ties to al-Qaeda because many Saudis were also traveling to Iraq to fight there against the Americans. Well, that's the irony that, in fact, the radicalized Saudis in general did not respond to al-Qaeda's call to attack their own government. What they did

is they went to Iraq and attacked the Americans. More than 3,000 Saudis at least went to fight in Iraq. Many of them died there. So had you still been in the organization properly, not as a double agent, but as a true believer, do you think you would have rallied to Zarqawi's cause, or do you think you would have been one of those scratching their heads thinking, this is not the right way to go?

Well, if I was still possessing the same mentality when I gave my allegiance to Osama bin Laden in the autumn of '97, I would say yes. I would have gone to fight in Iraq because it was a pure case of an aggressive war that has no just cause whatsoever. It was a pure invasion. And so I would have gone and fought against the Americans. But of course, basically, I mean, by that time, my allegiance was completely different.

Was the atmosphere within al-Qaeda during the high watermark of Zarqawi's reign of terror particularly tense? Were they on the lookout for double agents like yourself? Did you feel ever that you were being scrutinized, especially strongly at this time?

The irony was that while Al-Qaeda was less paranoid, of course, they were extremely paranoid organization, but they managed even to be less paranoid before 9-11 because they were comfortable. They had their own camps. They have their own structure in Afghanistan and they were less paranoid. But that

you know, atmosphere was far more difficult to work in because you are, you know, when you are there, you are seen by multitude of people. Seeing you, you know, you're praying next to them, you are eating next to them. So you are scrutinized by a large number of people who are together within the same tent. Let's put it this way. After 9/11,

Al-Qaeda cells became so paranoid, so paranoid. They were always worried about infiltration. But, you know, what helped me there, even though the paranoia was higher, but it was easier environment to work in because I was always dealing only with very few people because it was cells.

cells here, cells there, a cell here, a cell there. So they were separated. So I'm not scrutinized by a large number of people at the same time, but scrutinized by few people at any given time, which means that I can deploy my own charm offensive to win them over. Did you ever come close to being discovered? No, it was before rather than after 9-11 that, you know, people basically were more suspicious, even though they were less paranoid.

So it shows basically that it's not necessarily that the general paranoia could actually be, you know, positive or negative for you. It's all about the structure of the organization you are infiltrating. If it is solid structure with a center that is vibrant, it's more difficult to infiltrate it than if you infiltrate just individual cells.

Not to mention, of course, the fact, as we mentioned before, that many of al-Qaeda's talented bomb makers were either captured or killed. The lack of talent after 9-11 opened the door wide for me to be welcomed into several cells, and that enabled me basically to thwart several plots happening. So the issue here was that if the Americans...

really wanted to end the phenomenon of Al-Qaeda and to finish it

They should have stayed in Afghanistan and finished the job there and then. Al-Qaeda was really drawing the last two or three breaths. But somehow, somehow, the Americans just were fixated with Iraq and Saddam Hussein, who posed no threat whatsoever to American, British, European, or even regional interests. No WMDs, the famous WMDs, weapons of mass destruction.

Well, of course, as Scott Ritter and other UNWMD inspectors always testified that, you know, it's almost impossible to think that Iraq has retained any credible capability in terms of production or storage.

So where are they now? Where are the chemical weapons? It's been, what, almost 15 years since the invasion. You would have thought that someone would have found them by now. So really with the invasion of Iraq and everything that followed, you have a clash of two totalitarian ideologies or totalizing ideologies. And actually underneath them, there is something like a similar religiosity. Obviously, the religiosity of al-Qaeda is well known.

this is the end of times, the prophecies are coming true, the caliphate will be reborn, et cetera, et cetera. But even on the neocon side and its allies like Tony Blair in the UK, there was this undercurrent of fervent Christian piety. Tony Blair and George W. Bush praying together the evening before the launch of the war, the sense that George W. Bush certainly had, and I think that if you look into his eyes, Tony Blair clearly has, of being elected

by some kind of destiny to bring about peace, harmony, democracy, liberalism, prosperity to the whole world. There's something mad there. Yeah, at the end of a barrel of a gun. I mean, that doesn't work. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Whether you're selling a little or a lot.

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In comparison to Saddam Hussein, America seemed like a pizza delivery boy, clueless, didn't know basically what they were getting into and how will they basically manage the place. And that basically opened the door for Iran to come in and, you know, sectarianize, you know, the Iraqi Shia who were mostly secular throughout Saddam Hussein's rule. So suddenly, basically, there is a new radicalized generation that

And then the Sunnis, who were secular during Saddam Hussein's rule, were radicalized by Al-Qaeda. So Al-Qaeda came, radicalized the Sunnis. Iran came, radicalized the Shia. And suddenly that miraculous sectarian harmony that existed for almost a thousand years in Iraq completely disintegrated.

Now, Iran is really playing a double game. Iran knows what it's doing. It's going to radicalize the Iraqi people, at least a minority of the Iraqi people, to make it impossible for America to achieve any of its objectives in Iraq. Well, of course. I remember on the eve of the invasion when it happened...

You know, I used to joke to many friends, I used to say, well, yeah, they invaded the wrong country. I mean, you know, if you want to establish democracy, why do you actually go after a secular Arab nationalist country? I mean, why don't you go after a radical, fanatic, theocratic country just next door, Iran? Well, I mean...

God help us if America decides to invade Iran. The Iranians don't take things like that lying down. Indeed. And, you know, in my opinion, there shouldn't be any invasion of anyone whatsoever. No, of course. You know, unless if someone threatened you directly. And for me, I'm one of those people who, again, controversially, you know, supported the war in Afghanistan. You know, I believe basically it was a just cause to remove the Taliban because they harbored someone who attacked America on a big scale. And of course, I mean, you can't.

you know, be, you know, pathetic pacifist, basically saying, oh, no, no, no, invasion will not likely solve the problem. No, of course, an invasion would have solved the problem. Again, if they stayed the course just another year with immense firepower and with good planning using special forces, they would have finished Al-Qaeda. What happened is that Al-Qaeda relocated to Iraq and that's where, call it destiny, fate, whatever, luck,

that one of the most psychopathic jihadists happened to take over the reins of leadership of the jihad cause in Iraq. Abu Musabar Zarqawi. Did you ever meet him? Indeed. Did you know him? You met Abu Musabar Zarqawi. My goodness. Bring the bomb experts back in. So...

Abu Musab Zarqawi. I would say basically that my first encounter with him was in late 1999 when he arrived to Afghanistan and specifically to Abu Khabbab camp. Abu Khabbab, of course, is the most famous master bomb maker Al-Qaeda ever had. So what kind of a man was he? I mean, Abu Musab Zarqawi, during his reign at the top of Al-Qaeda in Iraq,

he unleashed an unbelievable tidal wave of jihadist terror across the country. When you met him, what was your impression of him? Do you remember when I said in the first podcast episode

that my first impression of Osama bin Laden is very different from everyone's impression because I saw him when he was just a refugee, landing off a plane, coming from Sudan, looking disheveled, not exactly wearing these neat crease-free robes and turbans. Zarqawi?

through these neat videos who looked menacing, you know, and looked as if basically he was about to, you know, have you for breakfast, have your brother for dinner and have your grandfather for lunch. I mean, he looked different when I met him. First of all,

he just came out of prison. He left Jordan after he came out of prison and came to Afghanistan. And he just looked as someone basically who is embarking on a big plan but doesn't know yet how or what shape this plan will take. He just was on a revenge mission against the Hashemite royal family of Jordan.

and he believed that they were the biggest obstacle to jihad against the Israelis. So for him there were two very defined targets: Jordan and Israel. So I remember when he came to the camp, he stated his intention. He said to us that he is here with Abu Khabbab to train,

and then to pass that knowledge on to build a separate camp for young Jordanians and Palestinians who want to come learn to make bombs and then use that knowledge to destabilize Jordan and to possibly even cross the border and attack the Israelis. That was his plan. No Iraq, nothing.

So how did he end up in Iraq then? Well, you see, what happened is that, you know, after the two weeks he spent with us, he tried to attack Jordan as he was, you know, always saying he kept true to his word that he wanted to attack Jordan. And there was a plot that failed. But nonetheless, he managed to establish a camp in the northeast of Afghanistan. So on the Iranian border. On the Iranian border in Herat. And that camp was for Palestinians and Jordanians only.

Then the Americans invaded Afghanistan after 9/11 and he escaped. And the only route of escape was towards Iran. He went into Iran.

And there, with the help of Kurdish jihadists from Iraq, and they smuggled them into the mountains just north of Suleymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan. There was a group called Ansar al-Islam. And in fact, one of their leaders was someone who I knew quite well from my hometown also, from Al-Khubar.

and who was later killed in the cruise missiles that were the first, actually, American strike against Iraq. It wasn't against Saddam Hussein, actually. It was against that particular camp. And Zarqawi survived that attack.

And of course, the jihadists started to congregate there because they knew that the Americans were about to invade, so they need to be in a prime position. Zarqawi then made his way to Baghdad during the chaos of the American invasion. And that's basically when he set up with cells of Iraqi, Jordanian, Palestinian and Kurdish militants. They set up together the first jihadist

cell that was called Jama'at al-Tawheed wal-Jihad. A group of monotheism and jihad. Indeed. So al-Tawheed wal-Jihad was the first cell that was organized there. But their greatest coup when some Baathist intelligence officers who were having Salafist sympathies joined up with them. Now, this is one of America's biggest mistakes, that it basically sacked

any member of the Ba'ath Party from both the civil service and the military. So if you had been a member of the Ba'ath Party, you no longer had a career, you no longer had an income, you had to do something to make money. And probably you were going to do that by joining a criminal organization like Al-Qaeda. Indeed, in fact, the American administration of Iraq sacked the entire army. The whole Iraqi army was sacked, dismissed, including the Republican Guard.

You know, people who you could have relied on to pacify the country, but because, of course, basically the Shia Iraqis were saying we will rebel if we don't do it. But then that was a mistake. The Americans could have said to the Shia Iraqis, shut up, sit down. We're on the show, not you.

And unfortunately, the Americans did not have the guts to say that. Instead, they obeyed that demand, which was not exactly a Shia Iraqi demand, it was actually a clandestine Iranian demand. So...

So what happened is those Ba'athists from the Ba'ath party, the intelligence, the Republican Guard, they went and joined Zarqawi because some of them were already having some Salafist jihadi sympathies. So they went to join him and they gave him the most important piece of intelligence that enabled him to become the monster he became. What's that? What did they tell him?

we know where to find a big pile of cash. Money. Exactly. Zarqawi needed money. Yes. And where was this big pile of cash? This big pile of cash happened to be with one of Saddam Hussein's son, Qusay Saddam Hussein. So Qusay Saddam Hussein, along with the then Iraqi vice president, Izzat al-Duri,

They went to the central bank in Iraq and they emptied north of $600 to $660 million in cash into, you know, big truck.

And they took it. This is astonishing. This is something out of a Hollywood movie. You're saying that the Americans invade immediately. One of Saddam Hussein's sons goes to the central bank and just unloads a tremendous amount of cash into a truck and drives off. Absolutely. Cash and gold bars. So they took everything into this truck and basically drove off. And that was just as the Americans were on the gates of Baghdad itself.

So it was 9th of April. That's the date when the Iraqi Central Bank was raided by Qusay Saddam Hussein and Ibrahim Azzat al-Duri, the Iraqi VP. So the idea is that this money will be distributed among Baathist cells in order to carry out the counteroffensive, a Viet Cong kind of offensive. That was Saddam Hussein's son's idea. Indeed. But Zarqawi had another idea with what he could use the money for. Indeed. And so basically, what...

With the knowledge he obtained from those Baathist intelligence and Republican Guard officers who defected to him, he located Qusay Saddam Hussein and confiscated whatever remained, which was roughly $340 million. And what would he have done with that money? Oh, then Zarqawi basically, you know, embarked on one of the...

most impressive M&A exercise in terror history. M&A? Merger and acquisition. I see. So he was a great capitalist. And what do you mean by that? He merged with whom and acquired what? Okay. So...

Imagine Iraq and the insurgency slash terrorism seen in Iraq after the American invasion. Imagine it's like the chaos of the dot-com bubble, the chaos of the Silicon Valley, 10,000 startups everywhere. So suddenly, those who have cash...

can swallow those who don't. I see. So we're in an environment now where there are lots of disparate, unconnected cells of people pissed off at the Americans and wanting to kill. Zarqawi bribes them, pays them off, brings them into his big tent. And there you have Al-Qaeda in Iraq. So it was a process that lasted more than a year and a half from May 2003 all the way until November of 2004. And if I'm not mistaken, in fact,

Iraq was rather peaceful during this time, lulling the Americans into a sense that, oh, we've got this. This is going to be fine. And then suddenly, absolutely. You see, Zarqawi should have been given the title of CEO of the year. So what was Zarqawi's aim then now? Because originally you said he wanted to rally Jordanians and Palestinians against Israel. What's his new aim? He's now in charge of a huge number of jihadists in Iraq. There are

They're attacking America, planting IEDs along roadsides, blowing up armored vehicles, popping up here and there, shooting, taking potshots at soldiers, while at the same time kidnapping other Iraqis, killing people, participating in the ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods, participating in that whole great bloodshed that was going on. What's his ultimate goal? His two ultimate goals, well, there were three ultimate goals as far as Zarqawi was concerned. The first one was to

frustrate the establishment of a Shia-dominated government in Iraq. That was one of their fears, that the Shia, the majority, would dominate the government. What was the second goal? The second goal was to expel the Americans out of Iraq. And the third?

And the third was to establish a Sunni Islamic state in Iraq. Well, that's funny because that reminds me of a certain institution that was established about 10 years later in Iraq called ISIS. Of course, we'll get there in the end. Actually, Zarqawi joined Al-Qaeda in 2005, officially, you know, and gave the bay'ah to Osama bin Laden because he wanted this institution.

legitimacy that comes with his connection to Al-Qaeda. That's the first thing and he called his group Al-Qaeda in Iraq. And then next year he established something called the Shura Council of the Mujahideen or the United Council of the Mujahideen. But in a film that was released by Zarqawi and his people six weeks before he died,

He was meeting with his Shura council. He was meeting with his... Council of advisors. Absolutely. And the commanders also. And in that meeting, he was asked, what about the project for the Islamic State? What about the project for the Islamic State? And he said, God willing, this will be concluded within a year. So actually, that film...

You can see him, his face, talking, answering that question and saying that the project for the Islamic State in Iraq is going to conclude within a year. They will have an Islamic State in Iraq. Of course, he died six weeks after that. But less than a year later, his successors announced the Islamic State of Iraq.

Now, let's talk about the consequences on the Arab street to Zarqawi's reign of terror. Because actually, in the end, Zarqawi alienated himself from Osama bin Laden. Even Osama bin Laden thought that Zarqawi's methods were too cruel, that he was behaving in too much violence.

indiscriminate killing and that it was turning Arabs against jihadism. They were realizing that scratch the surface and these people are just sadistic psychopaths. Was that your experience as an Arab at the time? Were you aware that maybe Arabs were thinking, were seeing the beheadings, were seeing the sheer number of their fellow Muslims being killed as collateral damage or as targets and thinking, what the hell? We don't want anything to do with this.

Now, I will tell you something even more interesting than just what the Arabs thought on the street, what Al-Qaeda members thought themselves. What did they think? Well, the Al-Qaeda members I used to mingle with, you know, in Bahrain and in Saudi Arabia and in the rest of the Gulf,

You can see within the ranks of al-Qaeda, the immediate division based on class rather than on ideology. This is back to what we were talking about in episode two, the bourgeois recruits and the working class recruits. Even worse, the criminal class recruits. The criminal class recruits. They love Zarqawi, of course. They thought, oh, my God, he's our hero. Exactly, because Zarqawi is the graduate of Jordanian prisons, first class.

In his previous life, he was a thug. He was a thug, you know, a street criminal and later became a jihadist. So he brought with him that sadism and psychopathic tendencies, you know, to the jihad he embraced.

And that is why, you know, you can see considerable brutality and you can see the gangster in him emerging in the way he behaved with his opponents, with his followers. He was a sweet, gentle, charismatic man.

You know, and easy to deal with. Like Don Corleone. If you're on his good side, he's your grandfather. If you're on his bad side, he takes you to the mattresses. Absolutely. I mean, after all, basically, how did he manage to coerce his way into being the largest leader of a largest insurgency group in Iraq?

Because he made people offers they can't refuse. So, you know, and that's exactly what happened here. So the bourgeois, your bourgeois were upset because they just thought this is this is uncivilized. I mean, they're just a bit more, more, more sensitive souls. Well, the bourgeoisie jihadists, you know, they fought.

felt that they were closer, you know, to the mentality of the average individual in the Arab world. They understand that too much brutality will put off people. You need to behave in a more magnanimous way if you want to signal to the people that you are ready to rule. The problem with the criminal classes within the jihadist movement is that they lacked

magnanimity, the phrase, the word magnanimity is not present in their dictionary. And that was their downfall. So inside al-Qaeda, the bourgeois jihadists were growing rather disillusioned with Zarqawi's methods and with the brutality that the criminal class within al-Qaeda was manifesting. Now, this is interesting because

As I said before, at the same time as all of this is going on in Iraq, inside Saudi Arabia, there's a violent jihadist campaign going on, trying to overthrow the government, increasingly resorting to more and more brutal methods, including kidnapping and killing people. And the Saudi government doing a very good job of highlighting the brutality, turning the people against jihadists.

creating within al-Qaeda this dialogue. Have we gone too far? Are we losing hearts and minds? Now, that's interesting, of course, because America, we're always being told, was losing hearts and minds in Iraq and elsewhere. At the same time, al-Qaeda is losing hearts and minds elsewhere.

So did the Iraq War and America's bungling of that, did it turn you against the American global order, what's called the Atlanticist world order, that world order underpinned by American military power, keeping markets open, advocating for global trade, for greater liberalism? Did it turn you against that as a global ideal? Ironically, my...

Faith in the nation states and the global order was only reinforced actually after the Iraq war, ironically. And the reason for this is because I saw what chaos can do to a nation state once the leadership is decapitated. And I'm talking about Iraq.

Yes, I deeply loathed American foreign policy at that time. But I did not return to being anti-American. Why? Because I always closed my eyes and I was thinking, if America disappeared today, what will happen to the world? And the reality is we will have China and Russia together.

terrorizing the rest of the world into submission while Europe is cowering in a corner because America is no more, it's not there anymore. So America became for me the necessary evil during the Iraq war. Now it is a necessary nuisance.

Yes, the importance of the nation state. I can understand how that might have been reinforced in you as an ideal during the Iraq war as you watched Iraq descend into chaos. Of course, only a few years later, the so-called Arab Spring would begin when the destabilization of nation states across the Arab world

rocked that world and the consequences of which we're still living with. And that brings us up to the next episode where we'll talk about the Arab Spring, specifically the way it has played out in Yemen, where they begin to regroup. They begin to think, what went wrong? Why have we been so thoroughly defeated? Why have we lost Arab hearts and minds?

And in Yemen, they're going to form, in a way, Al Qaeda 3.0. First you had the Al Qaeda that launched 9/11. Then you had the brutal, blood-letting Al Qaeda of Zarqawi and that era. And then

in Yemen, Al Qaeda 3.0, which would be much more sensitive to the local population's needs and their ideas, much, much more shrewd in their dealings with people and in the way they carried out terrorism. Of course, we'll talk about Yemen and its history following the Arab Spring uprisings and the

and the launch of the war that is currently ravaging that country. A conflict which has created great human suffering there, including what is being reported as the worst famine in a hundred years. This episode of Conflicted was produced by Jake Warren and Sandra Ferrari. Original music by Matt Huxley. If you want to hear more of Conflicted, make sure you search for us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you download yours.