Zarqawi the new face of al-Qaeda
Jean-Charles Brisard
published by Polity. £14.99

The blurb on the back of this biography says, “Until now little has been known about Zarqawi.” and that doesn’t change after reading this book. I haven’t yet read Jade Goody’s biography but it couldn’t be a lot less informative than this.

Much of the best writing on political Islam has come from France. That country’s imperial history has given it a strong cadre of scholars who can follow events in the Arabic speaking world that Britain and America lack. Gilles Kepel’s Jihad – the trail of political Islam is indispensable. It’s well informed and shows a deep comprehension of the societies and the movements under discussion giving the reader a clear view of their ideological difference.

Jean-Charles Brisard does not have Kepel’s depth of understanding or, from what I can deduce his mastery of the original sources. He relies more on press cuttings, briefings from mates in the intelligence services and videos of the TV news. The book is so short of material that it re-prints a copy of a disciplinary letter that Zarqawi received when he was working for the council. His publishers describe him as “a leading international expert on terrorism” and it’s easy to imagine Brisard pontificating on TV about just how dangerous the likes of Zarqawi are in that alarmist way these people have.

To be fair Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would not be my first choice for a drinking companion. He’s adept at using twenty first century technology but he is a throwback to the middle ages and a strong working class movement in Iraq would have to crush him. But it’s because there isn’t a strong working class movement in Iraq that he has the space to function.

Brisard describes him as a petty criminal who used to drink alcohol and had tattoos, two things not approved of in Islam. This may be true but it reeks of one of those propaganda stories like Hitler being into coprophilia. He got into radical Islam in prison and got to Afghanistan too late to join in the counter-revolution. At no point in its 275 pages do you get a glimmer of insight into the motivations of Islamists like Zarqawi. It doesn’t occur to the author to locate them on an ideological spectrum or explain why they exist. He settles for giving endless lists of names and meetings which lead to Zarqawi becoming even more threatening than Bin Laden. American imperialism just does not exist in his vision of the world and no acknowledgement is made of the history of the puppet regimes in the region which give the Bin Ladens and Zarqawis an internally consistent justification and legitimacy.

Recommendations for books on this subject of a higher calibre will be gratefully received and I hope I’ve saved someone a few quid for my trouble. Next Saturday I’m in a city in North Africa. Here’s hoping Zarqawi or Brisard don’t track me down.