Carlos The Jackal: Terror For Hire

There are few men in history that have single handedly struck terror into the hearts of thousands. In America, we recognize names such as Ted Kazinzky and Timothy McVeigh with a cringe, as thoughts about these men also bring memories of the pain and destruction they brought to the United States. Also in these ranks you could add Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, for the terror they brought on September 11th. These are terrorists of contemporary times, however, and they all pale in comparison to the evil of one man, whose countless acts of violence over a span of two decades held an entire planet in thrall.

The story of Carlos the Jackal begins not with Carlos, but with Vladimir Ilich Lenin. Carlos was born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez on October 12th, 1949. His father, Jose, was a very Marxist businessman, who ironically began his life after his teenage years as a man of the cloth. After three years of study in a seminary, he left, proclaiming himself an atheist and becoming a devout Marxist. Jose had three sons, all of whom were named after Lenin. Ilich was the eldest of the three, and Jose saw to it that he was properly schooled in the more sophisticated points of Communism. Young Ilich joined the Venezuelan National Communist party at the young age of fourteen, after years of being schooled in leftist thought and idolizing the likes of men like Che Guevara.

Ilich’s homelife was an unstable one, as his father was not much for monogamy and often spent time with other women. His mother, who was a devout Cathloic, took Ilich and his brothers Vladimir and Lenin away from Venezuela for a time. She eventually returned, only to find another woman in her marital bed with Jose. She divorced him later.

Ilich’s life proceeded to take him to London, where his mother moved with him and his brothers after divorcing Jose. Ilich began the life of a playboy and bad student in England, where he is often recalled as being a man who loved to drink and to be with women even more. Carlos, fueled by his father’s money, mingled with some of the richest and most influential residents of London, some of which were contacts that would come back to Ilich in a very different way later in his life. He was called on by the Venezuelan Youth party to go to the Eastern Bloc and organize some teenagers into action, which would have been his first action ever politically. Before he could go, his father came and decided to usher Ilich and his brothers to Paris to study at the Sorbonne.

Upon arriving in Paris, Jose found a city in upheaval. Violent student riots were occurring, and Jose wanted his children to have no part of this. Through some contacts he had in the upper echelons of his business network, he was able to grant Ilich and his brother Lenin access to the Patrice Lumumba University of Moscow. Ilich went to study there, and quickly returned to the lavish living lifestyle that he had lived in London. His teachers were not amused by Ilich’s inattentiveness to study, and things began to grow less stable for the spoiled party boy. Ilich was offered the opportunity the be the Venezuelan Communist representative to Bucharest, but he spat on the offer and offended the party. He was expelled from the party not long after that when he began to support a rebel faction that the party was trying to quell in 1969.

While he was a student at Lumumba, he became interested in the Palestinian struggle against Israel. His curiosity was piqued by the rhetoric Palestinian students there used to describe their struggle against Israel. They spoke particularly reverently about one man, by the name of Wadi Haddad. Haddad had previously been a man who wanted to create a Palestinian state through diplomatic means, but after the humiliation the Arab states experienced after the Six Days War, he turned to terrorism. He was the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, commonly known as just the Popular Front.

Ilich arrived in the Middle East in the summer of 1970, and the head recruiting officers of the Popular Front allowed him and several of his classmates to go to Jordan to participate in a terrorist training camp. Bassam Abu-Sharif, the primary recruiting officer of the Popular Front, was impressed with the strength of Ilich’s convictions, but found it odd that a South American man had such a Russian name. It was from that point on that he was christened with the name that would be remembered: Carlos.

Carlos did well in his training in Jordan, but ached for more substantial action. This was his first experience with firearms and explosives. Though the directors of the camp kept the recruits on their toes with fake attacks, Carlos refused to take the attacks seriously. He desired real action, and he was able to participate after Israeli jets attacked one of Yasser Arafat’s compounds. One of Arafat’s guards was killed. After returning from the compound, Carlos contacted a senior official in the Popular Front and was moved to an advanced commando camp.

During this time, the Popular Front carried out many attacks, but Carlos was not part of them. Carlos’ first real battle came after the Jordanian King Hussein ordered the Palestinians to disarm, which resulted in conflict between his Bedu army and the Palestinian guerillas. The decree was abandoned, but Hussein declared marshal law and raised the Bedu army against the Palestinians to drive them out of Jordan for attacking his soldiers. This event was called Black September, and should not be confused with the terrorist group that took credit for the Munich Olympic games terrorism. Carlos became known for his ability to kill well during Black September, and he gained respect for this ability.

The Palestinians were pushed out of Jordan eventually, but Carlos escaped capture for the first of many times during this conflict. Abu Sharif, the man who gave him his name, decided he would be the Popular Front’s man in London. His primary task would be to make a list of high profile targets to kidnap or murder. He was sent to another training camp to sharpen him up, and in February of 1971, about a year after Black September, he was sent to London to be an agent. By December of that year, he had compiled more than a hundred names of Israeli or pro Israeli businessmen, and painstakingly found out as much about them as he could. He got names, addresses, phone numbers, and whatever else he could. Though he was busy with this, he enrolled in classes in London. His playboy life style also came out again, not that it had ever gone away. It is believed that his womanizing and drinking landed him in London, away from the action as he was not seen a good example of what the Popular Front wanted.

During this time, several large scale terrorist attacks occurred that Carlos was not involved in.