一本探秘ISIS邪恶起源的新书 Tracing the Birth of ISIS

In the last month, terror attacks that left 130 dead in Paris and 43 dead in Beirut and took down a Russian airliner with 224 people aboard have made the entire world horribly aware that the Islamic State not only seeks to establish a caliphate in Syria and Iraq, but also is beginning to export its monstrous savagery abroad. Although the Islamic State has been in the headlines for only two years, and its metastasis has been alarmingly swift, the seeds of the group — in its many incarnations — were planted many years ago, as Joby Warrick’s gripping new book, “Black Flags,” makes clear.

上个月，巴黎有130人在恐怖袭击中丧生，贝鲁特亦有43人因恐怖袭击丧生，俄罗斯一架航班因恐怖袭击坠落，机上224人无人生还，整个世界惊恐地意识到，伊斯兰国(Islamic State)不仅谋求在叙利亚与伊拉克建立哈里发的国土，也开始向海外输出惨无人道的暴行。尽管伊斯兰国广受媒体关注只有两年的时间，它的扩散极为迅速，令人担忧，乔比·瓦里克(Joby Warrick)引人入胜的新书《黑旗》(Black Flags)中阐明，这个组织的种子以多种多样的形式，早在多年之前便已播下。

Mr. Warrick, a reporter for The Washington Post and the author of the 2011 best seller “The Triple Agent,” has a gift for constructing narratives with a novelistic energy and detail, and in this volume, he creates the most revealing portrait yet laid out in a book of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the founding father of the organization that would become the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL).

瓦里克是《华盛顿邮报》(The Washington Post)的记者，亦是2011年最佳畅销书《三重特工》(The Triple Agent)的作者，他擅长以小说式的活力和细节组织叙事，在这本书里，他为伊斯兰国（亦称ISIS或ISIL）的前身组织的创始人阿布·穆萨布·扎卡维(Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi)做出了迄今最为发人深省的的描述。

Although this book owes some debts to Jean-Charles Brisard’s 2005 book, “Zarqawi: The New Face of Al Qaeda,” Mr. Warrick places that material in context with recent developments and uses his own copious sources within the United States and Jordanian intelligence to flesh out Mr. Zarqawi’s story and the crucial role that American missteps and misjudgments would play in fueling his rise and the advance of the Islamic State.

尽管这本书从让-查尔斯·布利萨德(Jean-Charles Brisard)2005年的著作《扎卡维：基地组织的新面孔》(Zarqawi: The New Face of Al Qaeda)中有所借鉴，瓦里克把这些素材与事态的最新发展结合起来，动用了自己在美国与约旦情报机关中的大量人脉，充实了扎卡维的故事，以及美国的错误行动与错误判断在他的崛起与伊斯兰国的发展之中，扮演了多么重要的作用。

Perhaps emulating the approach Lawrence Wright took in “The Looming Tower,” his masterly 2006 account of the road to Sept. 11, Mr. Warrick focuses parts of this book on the lives of several individuals with singular, inside takes on the overarching story. They include a doctor named Basel al-Sabha, who treated Mr. Zarqawi in prison; Abu Haytham, who ran the counterterrorism unit of Jordan’s intelligence service and fought the Islamic State in its various guises for years; and Nada Bakos, a young C.I.A. officer who became the agency’s top expert on Mr. Zarqawi. This narrative approach lends the larger story of the Islamic State an up-close-and-personal immediacy and underscores the many what-ifs that occurred along the way.

或许是模仿劳伦斯·赖特(Lawrence Wright)在2006年出版的揭示911事件成因的杰作《末日巨塔》(The Looming Tower)，瓦利斯的书中也有几部部分是关注整个故事中几个具有特殊内部视点的人物，其中包括在狱中给扎卡维看病的巴塞尔·阿里-萨布哈(Basel al-Sabha)医生；约旦情报机构反恐部门的领导人阿布·海萨姆(Abu Haytham)，多年来他与伊斯兰国的各种伪装形式进行斗争；年轻的中央情报局官员纳达·巴克斯(Nada Bakos)，他成了中情局研究扎卡维的顶级专家。这样的叙事方式为更大范围的伊斯兰国的故事带来一种贴近而且个人化的直接性，强调出它发展过程中的各种可能性。

In “Black Flags,” Mr. Zarqawi comes across as a kind of Bond villain, who repeatedly foils attempts to neutralize him. He was a hard-drinking, heavily tattooed Jordanian street thug (well versed in pimping, drug dealing and assault), and when he found religion, he fell for it hard, having a relative slice off his offending tattoos with a razor blade.

在《黑旗》中，扎卡维有点像007故事中的反派，他一再努力令自己中立化，却总是失败。他曾经是个酗酒、满身刺青的约旦街头流氓（精通拉皮条、贩毒和打人），后来他找到了信仰，深深沉浸其中，让一个亲戚用剃刀把他身上带有不敬内容的文身割去了。

He traveled to Afghanistan in 1989 to wage jihad; during a stint in a Jordanian prison, he emerged as a leader known and feared for his ruthlessness as an enforcer among Islamist inmates. He began thinking of himself as a man with a destiny, and in the aftermath of the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, he set up a small training camp in Iraq’s northeastern mountains, near the Iranian border.

1989年，他去往阿富汗发动圣战；在约旦监狱服刑期间，他成了一名领袖，以对同一监狱中的伊斯兰教徒冷血无情著称，并且深受畏惧。他开始认为自己负有使命，后来，2001年美国入侵阿富汗时，他在伊拉克东北部靠近伊朗边界的山脉中开设了一个小型训练营。

At this point, Mr. Zarqawi was just a small-time jihadist. But then, Mr. Warrick writes, “in the most improbable of events, America intervened,” declaring — in an effort to make the case for ousting Saddam Hussein — that “this obscure Jordanian was the link between Iraq’s dictatorship and the plotters behind the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.” As C.I.A. analysts well knew, this assertion was false; in retrospect, it would also have the perverse effect of turning Mr. Zarqawi into “an international celebrity and the toast of the Islamist movement.” Weeks later, when United States troops invaded Iraq, this newly famous terrorist “gained a battleground and a cause and soon thousands of followers.”

当时，扎卡维还只是一个三流圣战者。但在那个时候，沃里克写道，“美国介入了最荒谬的事件，”为了推翻萨达姆·侯赛因(Saddam Hussein)，美国宣布，“这个鲜为人知的约旦人与伊拉克的独裁政权有联系，是2001年911恐怖袭击事件背后的策划者。”正如中央情报局的分析员所知，这个断言是错误的；事后看来，它也产生了错误的效应，令扎卡维成了“国际名人，以及伊斯兰运动中备受赞誉的人士。”几个星期后，美国军队入侵了伊拉克，这个声誉鹊起的恐怖分子“得到了战场，以及一个理由，很快就得到了成千上万的拥趸。”

Accused by the Bush administration of being in league with Saddam Hussein, Mr. Zarqawi would use the Americans’ toppling of the dictator to empower himself. He was a diabolical strategist, and he quickly capitalized on two disastrous decisions made by the Americans (dissolving the Iraqi Army and banning Baath Party members from positions of authority), which intensified the country’s security woes and left tens of thousands of Iraqis out of work and on the street. Soon, former members of Mr. Hussein’s military were enlisting in Mr. Zarqawi’s army; others offered safe houses, intelligence, cash and weapons.

小布什政府指责扎卡维同萨达姆·侯赛因联盟，于是扎卡维就利用美国推翻这个独裁者的机会增加自己的权力。他是个恶魔般的战略家，很快就利用了美国的两个灾难性的决定（其一是解散了伊拉克陆军，其二是解除了伊拉克复兴党员们的公职），这两个决定令国家的安全问题进一步恶化，令数万伊拉克人失业，流落街头。很快，侯赛因的前军队就集结在扎卡维麾下；其他人则为他们提供安全屋、情报、现金和武器。

While the Bush White House was debating whether there even was an insurgency in Iraq, Mr. Zarqawi was helping to direct the worsening violence there, orchestrating car and suicide bombings and shocking beheadings. He also used terrorism to change the battlefield, fomenting sectarian hatred between the Shiites and the disenfranchised and increasingly bitter Sunnis, guaranteeing more chaos and discrediting the electoral process.

当小布什政府还在讨论伊拉克境内是否有叛变之际，扎卡维已经开始在那里制造日益恶化的暴力事件，他精心安排车辆炸弹与自杀炸弹，以及骇人的斩首事件。他还利用恐怖主义改变战场，在什叶派与丧失选举权，日益布满的逊尼派之间煽动宗派仇恨，在选举过程中不断制造混乱与怀疑。

Mr. Zarqawi’s penchant for ultraviolence had won him his favorite moniker, “the sheikh of the slaughterers,” but by mid-2005, his bloodthirstiness and killing of Shiite innocents worried Al Qaeda’s leadership, which warned him that “the mujahed movement must avoid any action that the masses do not understand or approve.”

扎卡维对大型暴力的热爱为他赢得了一个绰号，他自己也非常喜欢——“屠夫酋长”，但到2005年年中，他的嗜血与杀害什叶派无辜者的行为令基地组织的领导人也为之担忧，他们警告他，“圣战运动应当避免任何民众不能理解或不赞同的行为。”

After many narrow escapes, Mr. Zarqawi was finally killed by a United States airstrike in June 2006, and over the next few years, the United States managed to decimate much of his organization. Still, dangerous embers remained, and they would burst into flames under the group’s new leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who shared Mr. Zarqawi’s taste for gruesome violence, and who had built up a valuable network of supporters while serving time in Camp Bucca, a United States-controlled prison known as a “jihadi university” for its role in radicalizing inmates. The sectarianism of the Iraqi prime minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki drove increasingly marginalized Sunnis into the embrace of the Islamic State — a dynamic hastened by the withdrawal of American troops in 2011. Meanwhile, in Syria, the chaos of civil war created perfect conditions for the Islamic State’s explosive growth and a home base for its self-proclaimed caliphate.

经历了多次死里逃生，扎卡维终于在2006年6月死于美国空袭之中，在接下来的数年里，美国消灭了他的大部分组织。但是危险的星星之火仍然存在，终于在组织的新领袖阿布·贝克尔·巴格达迪(Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi)领导下成为燎原之势，他和扎卡维一样热衷残酷暴力，布卡营地(Camp Bucca)服刑期间，更是建立起了支持者的宝贵网络，这座监狱由美国控制，服刑者在这里往往变得更加激进，因此素有“圣战者的大学”之称。伊拉克总理努里·卡迈勒·马利基(Nuri Kamal al-Maliki)的宗派主义令日益边缘化的逊尼派教徒开始接受伊斯兰国——这个势头随着2011年美国撤军而加快。与此同时，在叙利亚，内战的混乱为伊斯兰国的迅速崛起创造了完美的条件，也为它所自称的哈里发提供了家园。

The final chapters of this volume have a somewhat hurried feel. In fact, more detailed examinations of the rise of Mr. Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s sophisticated use of social media, and its efforts to displace Al Qaeda as the leader of global jihad can be found in two illuminating recent books: “ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror,” by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan, and “ISIS: The State of Terror,” by Jessica Stern and J. M. Berger. But for readers interested in the roots of the Islamic State and the evil genius of its godfather, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, there is no better book to begin with than “Black Flags.”

本书的最后一章有点像赶出来的。事实上，关于巴格达迪的崛起、伊斯兰国对社交媒体精心设计的运用，以及它谋求取代基地组织，成为全球圣战领袖的努力可以在另外两本颇具启发性的新书中找到：迈克尔·韦斯(Michael Weiss)和哈桑·哈桑(Hassan Hassan)的《ISIS: 走进恐怖军团》(ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror)，以及杰西卡·斯特恩(Jessica Stern)与J·M·伯格的《ISIS: 恐怖之国》(ISIS: The State of Terror)。但是对伊斯兰国的起源，以及它的邪恶教父阿布·穆萨布·扎卡维感兴趣的读者们来说，《黑旗》是个最好的开始。