I Was Told to Come Alone

by Souad Mekhennet

  As soon as we had passed the military checkpoint outside the gate of the refugee camp, Fakhr told me he’d been shocked and worried at the beginning when he saw the setup with the weapons and the black flag. “I swear, I thought they wanted to do something to you,” he said. “This looked very alarming.” Then he shook his head and started laughing. “You and your colleague, you are crazy, the way you talk to these guys. I will call you Team Crazy.”

  I called Michael and told him we were on our way back. When we arrived, he was waiting nervously in the hotel lobby. “Is all well? I began to feel bad, but you insisted that I shouldn’t go with you,” he said upon seeing us.

  I told him that this group must indeed have links to a bigger network. The note taker, the spokesperson, the new guns, and the discipline of the guards all suggested a high level of organization and generous funding. I suspected they were linked to Al Qaeda.

  Abssi’s spokesperson called later and said they were still thinking about the interview. He told us to be patient. He made it clear that they would be very unhappy if anything we’d discussed appeared in print.

  “We do monitor the New York Times,” the spokesman told me. “It’s your choice. If you keep your word and don’t publish anything before we agree, you might have the chance to get an interview. But if you break our agreement, we will never speak to you, and others won’t, either.”

  I understood that this was a test. We had no guarantee that he would agree to give the interview, and some journalists might still have gone ahead and printed what I’d learned from the tea meeting. But Michael and I suspected that if we broke the agreement, we would be blackballed within the global jihadist network we were trying to understand. We decided we didn’t want to risk losing all our contacts.

  I flew back to Frankfurt, and Michael returned to New York. We decided to do as much other reporting as we could, talk to our sources in the West, and gather details about Abssi’s life. I checked in with Abssi’s spokesman, Abu al-Hassan, every few days, in case the interview was granted.

  “He actually would like to do it,” Abu al-Hassan told me in one of these conversations. “But his deputy is strongly against it. You know, your future husband.” He laughed.

  I told him that we had gathered all kinds of information about Abssi from documents and Western government officials. “We will keep our promise and not publish anything of what was said during the tea meeting,” I told him. “But tell your boss that one day we will do a story, and it would be unfortunate if it were one-sided.”

  Three days later, my phone rang. I recognized Abu al-Hassan’s number.

  “As’salam alaikum,” I said.

  “Wa’alaikum as’salam, Sister Souad.” The voice was Abssi’s.

  “Sheikh?”

  “Yes. I decided to give you the interview. Regarding your security, you will have my word that there will be no harm against you from our side.”

  “What about my colleague Michael Moss? Can he come to the interview as well?”

  “The American? That’s his decision.”

  “Can you also guarantee that he won’t be harmed?”

  There was a silence on the other end of the phone, a silence I didn’t like.

  “Insha’Allah khair,” he said. The expression means, “God willing, all will be good.” It’s an optimistic-sounding phrase but not a guarantee. It wasn’t good enough.

  I called Michael and our editors. They didn’t seem too excited about my going back to Abssi’s camp alone.

  “I know these people are unpredictable, but he gave me his word and a guarantee for my security,” I told them. “I am an Arab Muslim woman. For this guy to kidnap me or worse, he would need a very good reason.”

  “I don’t trust their guarantees,” Matt Purdy, our editor, said. “What about Michael? Could he go with you?”

  “They wouldn’t give me a guarantee for Michael.”

  “So it would be you and the stringer going back alone again?”

  “Yes, that would be the plan.”

  “I’m not comfortable with this,” Matt said. “Bill will have to make the final decision.”

  Matt was the editor of the investigative unit. He was kicking the question upstairs to Bill Keller, the Times’s executive editor, the top person in the newsroom. Keller had worked as a foreign correspondent himself for years, and he understood the dangers reporters faced in war and crisis zones.

  A short time later, Keller called. I had met him only once before, in 2005, after the el-Masri story ran, and I was very nervous. He asked me to walk him through the security backup plan I had in mind. It was the same as last time: a piece of paper with phone numbers for Michael to call in case something happened to me.

  “This man was involved in killings, and he’s now affiliated with Zarqawi’s network and Al Qaeda,” Keller said. “You have to understand, we don’t want a Danny Pearl situation.”

  I explained that it would be difficult for this man to find an excuse for beheading a Muslim woman. “He gave me his word and guarantee of protection. He would lose face if he broke this agreement.”

  Keller said he would have to think about it. I was impressed. His interest in the story and involvement in security arrangements made me feel safer. It was one of those moments when I felt grateful to be working for the Times. I wasn’t being treated as an expendable freelancer. The paper really seemed to care about my well-being.

  Matt called back two hours later. “Okay, you can go,” he said. “Michael will fly in from the United States, not to go inside with you but to be there in case anything happens.”

  “Thank you.”

  “That’s the least we can do. But Souad, if you or Michael ever think it will be too dangerous or unpredictable, you come back, okay? I don’t want you to think you have to do this. Safety first.”

  My next call was to Abssi’s spokesperson. “Tell the sheikh I’m coming for the interview,” I said.

  * * *

  IN MARCH, ABOUT a month after our first trip, Michael and I returned to Beirut. It was spring in Lebanon and warm. On the day of our interview, I put on thin khaki trousers I’d worn often in Iraq and a short-sleeved T-shirt. Leena, our Lebanese fixer, again lent me an abaya.

  The Lebanese government had changed the rules for camp visits since our last trip. Worried about kidnappings, it had forbidden foreigners from going inside. I wore no perfume or makeup and tied my head scarf in the traditional Palestinian fashion, trying to look as much as possible like one of the women who lived in Nahr al-Bared.

  My conversation with Bill Keller had comforted me, but it had also made me more conscious of the risks. I wondered if I was missing something. Like last time, I’d reached out to various jihadists to plead my case if anything happened. Again, I wrote down their names and numbers and gave copies to Michael and Leena. But I felt unsettled and apprehensive. This wasn’t just small talk over tea. I was there to ask hard questions, and I wasn’t sure how Abssi would react.

  This time Michael, Leena, Fakhr, our Beirut driver Hussein, and I drove north to Tripoli in two cars. On the way, I ran through the questions and security measures with Michael. The interview was scheduled for 3:00 p.m. We agreed that Michael would call me at five, and that whatever happened, Fakhr and I should be out of the camp before dark.

  The closer we got to Tripoli, the more anxious Michael grew. We were supposed to wait for a confirmation call from Abssi’s group before Fakhr and I went into the camp, so we stopped at one of the famous sweet shops in the center of Tripoli to kill time. Hussein ordered tea and heavy, sugary pastries.

  “Things have changed now,” Fakhr said. “There is talk that the army is cracking down on members of Fatah al-Islam when they try to enter or leave the camp, so everyone is very nervous.”

  Michael turned to me, looking stricken. He said he couldn’t sit there eating sweets while I went inside the camp alone.

  “But you can’t go with me,” I told him. “Keller and our editors said there is no way I
should allow you to come inside.”

  “I don’t care,” he responded. “I can’t let you face these people alone.”

  Fakhr looked at me. “There is no way we will make it in with him,” he said in Arabic. “The army will recognize him as a foreigner.”

  Then Fakhr’s phone rang. “Yes, we are coming now, insha’Allah,” he said. It was time for us to go.

  I called the editors in New York and told them that we’d gotten the call. Fakhr and I headed toward the camp.

  * * *

  THE SECURITY CHECKPOINT at the camp entrance was bigger than it had been the last time we visited, but the soldiers waved us through. Fakhr called Abssi’s spokesman to tell him we were inside.

  We drove to the same compound as before. More armed men stood in front of the entrance. They ushered us into the room. Abu al-Hassan was there, and we started chatting.

  He began to tell me a bit more about his life. He was twenty-four and of Palestinian descent but had been born in Lebanon. He had a keen interest in journalism and had been studying communications, but the situation in Palestine and the war in Iraq had convinced him to quit school and join Abssi’s group.

  “When I saw what they had done to Iraq, this unfair war, the oppression against Muslims, I just couldn’t keep silent and stand by,” he said. By “they” he meant the United States, but also the Shia militias backed by Iran.

  He told me about his latest project: an online newsmagazine aimed at attracting jihadi recruits. Al-Hassan was prescient. He and others in Abssi’s organization understood the importance of online media outreach long before the creation of Inspire and the other online jihadi magazines of today. Al-Hassan felt that the mainstream media didn’t fairly portray groups like Abssi’s. He wanted the mujahideen to have their own outlet, where they could speak directly to anyone who wanted to listen.

  An hour passed. I wondered if Abssi would cancel. There were gunmen in the room, but this time they weren’t pointing their weapons at me. Maybe because al-Hassan had spoken so openly, I’d begun to feel more at ease. Al-Hassan told me that he had argued on my behalf and that Abssi’s deputy had advised the sheikh against talking to me, but Abssi himself wanted to do the interview.

  When the sheikh finally arrived, the men in the room again stood to greet him. He agreed to speak on the record and said that I could also use whatever he’d said in our previous meeting.

  I was curious about why Abssi had left Arafat’s more secular organization and taken an Islamist approach. He thought about it for a couple of seconds. “My main aim for many years was to free Palestine, and that is still one of my main aims. But many waging that fight turned out to be corrupt and weak, like so many leaders in our region.”

  This was a fairly common complaint, even among militants and Islamist activists, but I wondered if there wasn’t something bigger going on. Had Al Qaeda and its ideology replaced secular groups in the region that had traditionally taken on the Palestinian cause? While Arafat’s group had been a local effort, albeit with broad support in the Arab world and beyond, the movement to which Abssi had hitched his wagon was truly global, in both its membership and its ambitions. By attaching a religious motivation to the Palestinian struggle, Abssi and others like him were essentially becoming franchisees of Al Qaeda, while also linking the fight for Palestinian freedom to a much broader and more threatening ideology. His deputy looked a bit annoyed by my question, but Abssi confirmed my suspicion, saying that he would do anything in his power to “free Palestine” and get back his homeland, so he could pass it on to his children and grandchildren.

  “Only the caliphate can protect Muslim interests,” he told me.

  It was a stunning statement, and it showed that the idea of a new kind of Islamic state in the Middle East long predated the arrival of ISIS. In fact, the notion had been gestating for years in the minds of militants fighting first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq and elsewhere. Men like Abssi were now carrying that torch into new communities, gathering more oxygen to feed the flame.

  “But after all these decades of war, wouldn’t the better option be peace with Israel?” I asked. “Like what Rabin and Arafat started?” I was referring to the 1993 Oslo Accord, in which Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin had agreed on a framework for peace—though one that was never fully implemented.

  I sensed a growing tension in the room. “And his own people killed Rabin for it,” Abssi answered. “They don’t want peace and we don’t want to be the victims anymore. Arab leaders and rulers are also guilty for all that happened to our nations. That’s why we need the caliphate.”

  He believed that America in particular needed to be punished for its presence in the Islamic world. “The only way to achieve our rights is by force,” he said. “This is the way America deals with us. When the Americans feel that their lives and their economy are threatened, they will know that they should leave.”

  Abssi said that he shared Al Qaeda’s fundamentalist interpretation of global politics. He believed that what America and its allies had done in Iraq was a crime and that Muslims should wage a global jihad against the Western “crusaders” who had declared war against Islam. He spoke admiringly of bin Laden, and he clearly saw Zarqawi as a role model.

  Killing American soldiers was no longer enough to convince the Americans to get out of Iraq, he believed. But what he had in mind beyond that wasn’t entirely clear. He refused to identify his targets. He would only say that his group was training militants to fight Israel and the so-called crusaders.

  “We have every legitimate right to do such acts, for isn’t it America that comes to our region and kills innocents and children?” he said. “It is our right to hit them in their homes, the same as they hit us in our homes. We are not afraid of being named terrorists. But I want to ask, is someone who detonates one kilogram of explosives [in the West] a terrorist, while someone who detonates tons in Arab and Islamic cities not a terrorist?”

  The month before, two commuter buses had been bombed in Lebanon, killing three and wounding more than twenty others. Lebanese law enforcement officials said that they’d arrested four men from Fatah al-Islam in connection with the attacks. But Abssi denied involvement. He said he had no plans to strike within Lebanon, where the Palestinian camps offered ideal locations to grow his organization.

  “Today’s youth, when they see what is happening in Palestine and Iraq, it encourages them to join the way of jihad,” he said. “These people have now started to adopt the right path.”

  “But isn’t the killing of innocents, women, children, and the elderly forbidden?” I asked.

  “Originally, the killing of innocents and children was forbidden,” he replied. “However, there are situations in which the killing of such is permissible. One of these exceptions is those [who] kill our women and children.” In democracies like the United States, he said, each citizen was responsible for the actions of his government. The people in such countries could not be said to be innocent of what was done in their name. Even American antiwar protesters bore some blame, he said. He would be sorry to see them killed, but he viewed attacks in the home territory of countries that had joined the war in Iraq as legitimate.

  “Osama bin Laden does make the fatwas,” Abssi said, using the Arabic word for Islamic legal opinions delivered by a mufti, or religious expert. “Should his fatwas follow the Sunnah,” the second Islamic legal source after the Koran, “we will carry them out.”

  Abssi acknowledged having worked with Zarqawi, but said he’d had nothing to do with the death of Laurence Foley, the American official shot in Jordan. “I don’t know what Foley’s role was, but I can say that any person [who] comes to our region with a military, security, or political aim … is a legitimate target,” he said.

  “Do you think you will get enough followers for your idea to establish a caliphate here?” I asked him.

  “This is not my idea,” Abssi answered. “This is about the new awakening among Muslims here in the regio
n. America has shown that this is a war against Sunni Islam. The idea [of the caliphate] will live and grow, even if I die today or tomorrow.”

  When we were done talking, I asked for a tour of the camp. Abssi told his military commander to show me a few things. This was the same man who’d pointed a gun at me during our first conversation. I followed him outside, where twelve men, their faces shrouded in scarves, turned their Kalashnikovs on us.

  “Oh, shit,” I blurted out, ducking behind Fakhr.

  “That won’t help you much,” Fakhr answered. He and the commander laughed. “I’m so thin that every bullet would go through me and hit you.”

  “Don’t worry, this is just training,” the commander said. “They don’t have bullets in their AKs.” Somebody gave an order, and all twelve men turned and lunged in another direction. “Allah hu-Akbar!” they shouted, firing their assault rifles into a wall.

  “No bullets?” I asked the commander.

  “This must be the advanced class,” he said, laughing.

  The commander told me they had an arsenal of explosives, rockets, even an antiaircraft gun. Fakhr and I were escorted to the gateway we’d come in. A group of fighters, including a handful who’d attended the interview, stood outside. I heard the voices of children.

  Four boys with plastic pistols ran toward the men. They must have been about five or six years old. The man who had taken notes through both my meetings with Abssi scooped up one of the boys.

  “How was it?” he asked.

  “We were at the camp, Baba, and they showed me a real gun,” the boy answered. “And then I played jihad and killed the kuffar,” he added, using the Arabic word for “unbelievers.”

  The man started laughing. “You killed the kuffar?”

  “Yes, Baba, with the pistol.”

  The man kissed his forehead. “I am very proud of you, my son.”

  It hit me like a knife. In Fakhr’s car I put on my sunglasses and didn’t speak much the whole way back to Beirut. This didn’t end with Zarqawi, I told Michael later, and it won’t end with Abssi.

  After Michael and I went over my notes and transcribed the interview, I went up to my room. I took off my clothes and got into the shower to wash away the dust. But when I thought of what I’d heard the boy say to his father, I broke down and cried.