Breeding Ground for Jihad

ZARQA, Jordan — Abu Ibrahim considers his dead friends the lucky ones.

Skip to next paragraph

Multimedia

Audio & Photos

Enlarge This Image

Bryan Denton for The New York Times

Abu Ibrahim, right, and one of his mentors prepared to pray in a house in Zarqa. Abu Ibrahim, who uses this name as a nom de guerre, regrets that he has not carried out a suicide attack.

Four died in Iraq in 2005. Three more died this year, one with an explosives vest and another at the wheel of a bomb-laden truck, according to relatives and community leaders.

Abu Ibrahim, a lanky 24-year-old, was on the same mission when he left this bleak city north of Amman for Iraq last October. But he made it only as far as the border before he was arrested, and is now back home in a world he thought he had left for good — biding his time, he said, for another chance to hurl himself into martyrdom. (more ...)