As Khan settled into life with AQAP, his main role would become “connecting and facilitating disparate groups of individuals online,” said Aaron Zelin, a scholar who has studied and written about AQAP extensively. “He was [such] an important connective tissue and node that without him it is likely recruitment would have been more difficult, especially after Awlaki’s site went down. He also understood how to connect with youth in the West without having pretension and as being a co-equal to show, ‘Look, I’m an average guy, not even a religious scholar and I made it to the fields of jihad to fight the apostates and Zionist-Crusaders: so can you.’”
As the first issue of Inspire went into production, Khan did graphic design and editing, as well as some translation. He adopted more than one nom de guerre, among them al Qaqa al Amiriki and Abu Shidah, the Father of Harshness. “He—as I understood—wanted to choose the toughest of nicknames in order to terrorize the enemies of Islam,” Abu Yazeed recalled. Khan poured himself into work on Inspire and studied the Arabic language with a passion. When colleagues tried to practice their English with him, Khan would respond in Arabic. “I cannot remember a time that we met except that he asked me something related to Arabic vocabulary,” his friend remembered. “Every time I met him, I would realize an improvement in his Arabic. Over the time he stayed, he progressed a lot in the Arabic language to the point that you couldn’t easily tell if he was an English speaking brother.”
Khan became involved with AQAP at the very moment that it was ringing massive alarm bells in Washington. AQAP intended Inspire to promote its mission to an English-speaking audience and to encourage “lone wolf” jihadists in the West to conduct attacks, but it also played into the US propaganda campaign aimed at presenting AQAP as a grave threat. In English, AQAP’s agenda was laid out for all to see. And, from the first issue, Anwar Awlaki would be a prominent commentator and religious analyst in the pages of Inspire.
There was very little published in Inspire that had not already been said much earlier in AQAP’s Arabic-language publication, Sada al-Malahim. Now personnel at US intelligence agencies, which had a limited number of analysts fluent in Arabic, could read its statements in English. “By the time the first issue of Inspire came out, AQAP had already released thirteen issues of its Arabic-language magazine, which had far richer content on AQAP,” said Zelin. Inspire’s publication, he told me, coincided “with AQAP pursuing its global ambitions more thoroughly in light of the Christmas Day plot. AQAP always wanted to hit the US. Inspire was a way to rally the Western sympathizers and to try and further bolster its roster so they can more easily plan attacks against the West.”
The first issue of the magazine was released online, but it was hardly a smashing success. The sixty-seven-page issue only contained four actual pages of the magazine. The other sixty-three contained a computer code that, when deciphered, turned out to be cupcake recipes featured on the popular US daytime talk show Ellen, hosted by gay comedian Ellen DeGeneres. It is unclear how the file was corrupted, though some reports suggested it was a cyberattack by anti-AQAP hackers, MI-6 or the CIA itself.
Regardless, issue one of Inspire eventually hit the Web in uncorrupted format in June 2010. “Allah says: ‘And inspire the believers to fight,’” read the opening line of the letter from Inspire’s unnamed editor. “It is from this verse that we derive the name of our new magazine.” Inspire, the editor wrote, was “the first magazine to be issued by the al-Qaeda Organization in the English language. In the West; in East, West and South Africa; in South and Southeast Asia and elsewhere are millions of Muslims whose first or second language is English. It is our intent for this magazine to be a platform to present the important issues facing the ummah today to the wide and dispersed English speaking Muslim readership.”
The issue of Inspire featured an “exclusive” interview with the head of AQAP, Nasir al Wuhayshi, also known as Abu Basir, as well as translated works from bin Laden and Zawahiri. It also included an essay praising Abdulmutallab, the failed underwear bomber. The magazine was well produced, with a layout that resembled a typical US teen magazine, though without fashionably dressed women and celebrities. Instead, it featured photos of children alleged to have been killed in US missile strikes and pictures of armed, masked jihadis. An article written under the byline AQ Chef and titled “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom,” provided instructions on how to manufacture explosive devices from basic household goods. Another article gave detailed directions on how to download military-grade encryption software for sending e-mails and text messages.
Perhaps most disturbing, the magazine contained a “Hit List” of people who it alleged had created “blasphemous caricatures” of the Prophet Muhammad. In late 2005, Jyllands-Posten—the Danish newspaper that would later publish Morten Storm’s story—commissioned a dozen cartoons of the Prophet, ostensibly to contribute to a debate about self-censorship within Islam. It had enraged Muslims across the world at the time, sparked massive protests and resulted in death threats and bomb threats against the newspaper. The hit list published by Inspire included magazine editors, anti-Muslim pundits who had defended the cartoons, as well as the novelist Salman Rushdie. But it also included Molly Norris, a Seattle-based cartoonist who initiated “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.” Norris said she did it in response to the US Comedy Central network’s decision to edit out a scene in its popular animated program South Park that addressed the controversy, after receiving a threat.
Inspire’s hit list was accompanied by an essay penned by Awlaki encouraging Muslims to attack those who defame the image of Muhammad. “I would like to express my thanks to my brothers at Inspire for inviting me to write the main article for the first issue of their new magazine. I would also like to commend them for having this subject, the defense of the Messenger of Allah, as the main focus of this issue,” Awlaki wrote. He then laid out a defense for assassinating those who engaged in blasphemy of Muhammad. “The large number of participants makes it easier for us because there are more targets to choose from in addition to the difficulty of the government offering all of them special protection.” He continued:
But even then our campaign should not be limited to only those who are active participants. These perpetrators are not operating in a vacuum. Instead they are operating within a system that is offering them support and protection. The government, political parties, the police, the intelligence services, blogs, social networks, the media, and the list goes on, are part of a system within which the defamation of Islam is not only protected but promoted. The main elements in this system are the laws that make this blasphemy legal. Because they are practicing a “right” that is defended by the law, they have the backing of the entire Western political system. This would make the attacking of any Western target legal from an Islamic viewpoint....Assassinations, bombings, and acts of arson are all legitimate forms of revenge against a system that relishes the sacrilege of Islam in the name of freedom.
When Inspire was published, some within the US intelligence community panicked. The first concern was protecting the people who had been identified as targets for assassination. The FBI took immediate precautions to guard the Seattle cartoonist, whom they feared could be murdered. She eventually changed her name and moved. Law enforcement agencies in other countries took similar measures.
The “Hit List” embodied the fears that Awlaki would incite young Western Muslims to commit “lone wolf” acts of terror. Inspire magazine would become one of the primary US sources of intelligence on AQAP and Awlaki, with intelligence analysts scouring each new issue for clues about his whereabouts or potential new plots. “The more the US talked about Inspire and Anwar al-Awlaki, the more the media focused on the magazine and the man, which then resulted in AQAP promoting them more and more, essentially taking advantage of free advertising,” recalled Gregory Johnsen, the Princeton University Yemen scholar. “It was a bit of a shock to see the US government’s reaction to Inspire, as AQAP had been saying many of the same things
for years—only they had been saying it in Arabic in the pages of Sada al-Malahim. When Inspire was first published, a lot of people in the US government who didn’t have the tools to read Sada al-Malahim suddenly found out what AQAP had been saying, which, coming in the months after the attempted Christmas Day bombing in 2009, led to an overreaction and a sense of panic within certain agencies.”
Awlaki and Khan seemed to take great pride in the reaction of the US government to Inspire. In subsequent issues, Inspire would highlight quotes from US officials condemning the magazine and reacting to the various threats published in its pages. Samir Khan was suddenly a star figure in the international jihadi scene. “Khan is widely believed by all serious scholars to be the editor of Inspire magazine. This is not only because of his articles being published in it, but because of the similarity between it and Khan’s previous Jihad Recollections publication, which he edited and posted online prior to his trip to Yemen,” said Zelin. In Yemen, Khan began to develop a close relationship with Awlaki, a man he had long admired from afar. “Khan is someone who clearly idolized Awlaki both for his preaching and for the stance he took with his life,” said Johnsen. Eventually, he added, Khan would become a “sort of executive aide” to Awlaki. And Anwar Awlaki was putting himself out front in a clear alliance with AQAP. His connections to previous plots had been vague. Now he was openly encouraging assassinations of specific people around the world.
AQAP leader Nasir al Wuhayshi clearly saw value in the US obsession with Awlaki. So much so that he actually sent a message to Osama bin Laden proposing that he name Awlaki as the new head of AQAP. On August 27, 2010, bin Laden ordered his deputy Shaykh Mahmud, also known as Atiya Abdul Rahman, to relay a message to Wuhayshi. Bin Laden seemed to view Awlaki as an ally and a potentially valuable asset to al Qaeda’s goals. The problem, bin Laden explained, was that Awlaki was an unknown quantity to al Qaeda central, a man who had yet to prove his mettle in actual jihad. “The presence of some of the characteristics by our brother Anwar...is a good thing, in order to serve Jihad,” bin Laden wrote, adding that he wanted “a chance to be introduced to him more.” Bin Laden explained, “Over here, we are generally assured after people go to the battlefield and are tested there.” He asked Wuhayshi for “the resumé, in detail and lengthy, of the brother Anwar al-Awlaki,” as well as a written statement from Awlaki himself explaining his “vision in detail.” Wuhayshi, bin Laden asserted, should “remain in his position where he is qualified and capable of running the matter in Yemen.”
Samir Khan relished his newfound fame and penned numerous essays holding up his own experience as an example for other young Westerners to join the jihad. “I am a traitor to America because my religion requires me to be one. A traitor can either be praiseworthy or despicable. The good and bad are defined by a certain political agenda in the eyes of someone,” Khan wrote. “I am proud to be a traitor in America’s eyes just as much as I am proud to be a Muslim; and I take this opportunity to accentuate my oath of allegiance (bai’yah) and the mujahidin of the Arabian Peninsula’s bai’yah to the ferocious lion, the champion of jihad, the humble servant of God, my beloved Shaykh, Usama bin Ladin, may Allah protect him. Verily, he is the man that has shook the thrones of the tyrants of the world. We pledge to wage jihad for the rest of our lives until either we implant Islam all over the world or meet our Lord as bearers of Islam. And how reputable, adventurous and pleasurable is such a life compared to those who remain sitting, working from nine to five?”
The Persecution of Abdulelah Haider Shaye
YEMEN, SUMMER 2010 —In the months after the al Majalah bombing, the young journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye would not give up on the story. He regularly raised the issue on Al Jazeera and continued to report on other US strikes inside Yemen. He had interviewed Awlaki numerous times and had become famous inside and outside of Yemen as a major critic of the widening covert US war in Yemen. “He was focusing on how Saleh was using the al Qaeda card to gain more money and logistical support from the United States,” recalled cartoonist Kamal Sharaf, Shaye’s closest friend. “Abdulelah was the only person critical and speaking the truth about al Qaeda, so he had significance in the Arab world and in America.” Shaye was working with the Washington Post, ABC News, Al Jazeera and many other major international media outlets, often producing stories that cast US policy in Yemen in a negative light.
In July 2010, seven months after the al Majalah attack, Shaye and Sharaf were out running errands. Sharaf stepped into a supermarket while Shaye waited outside. When Sharaf came out of the store, he told me, “I saw armed men grabbing him and taking him to a car.” The men, it turned out, were Yemeni intelligence agents. They snatched Shaye, hooded him and took him to an undisclosed location. The agents, according to Sharaf, threatened Shaye and warned him against making further statements on TV. Shaye’s reports on the bombing and his criticism of the US and Yemeni governments, Sharaf said, “pushed the regime to kidnap him. One of the interrogators told him, ‘We will destroy your life if you keep on talking.’” Eventually, in the middle of the night, Shaye was dumped back onto a street and released. “Abdulelah was threatened many times over the phone by the Political Security agents and then he was kidnapped for the first time, beaten and investigated over his statements and analysis on the Majalah bombing and the US war against terrorism in Yemen,” Shaye’s Yemeni lawyer, Abdulrahman Barman, told me. “I believe he was arrested upon a request from the US.”
Shaye responded to his abduction by going back on Al Jazeera and describing his own arrest. Mohamed Abdel Dayem, who headed the Committee to Protect Journalists’s Middle East and North Africa program, happened to be in Yemen the night Shaye was arrested. Dayem was in the country to research a special tribunal that had been established by the Yemeni regime to prosecute journalists who were critical of the government. Two days before Shaye was arrested, Dayem had met the Yemeni journalist. “Immediately I could tell this was a very smart journalist and a journalist who really was willing to put a lot on the line to get the tough stories, because everybody can get the easy stories,” he recalled. The night Shaye was arrested, Dayem was in the Sana’a studios of Al Jazeera preparing to do an interview when his phone rang. It was Shaye. “I’m on my way out of prison,” Shaye told him. “I’m going to go home. I’m putting on a different jacket. This one has blood on it. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” Dayem said that Shaye arrived at the studio and “spilled the beans on the air,” describing his abduction and why he believed he was being targeted.
Around this time, the US government began privately telling major US media outlets that were working with Shaye that they should discontinue their relationships with him. One source inside a prominent US media organization told me that the government had warned the outlet that Shaye was using his paychecks to support al Qaeda. A US intelligence official told another journalist for a prominent US magazine that “classified evidence” indicated that Shaye was “cooperating” with al Qaeda. “I was persuaded that he was an agent,” said the official. Just as it wanted Awlaki silenced, the US government wanted anyone who was putting out Awlaki’s perspective or interviewing leaders of AQAP shut down.
When I met him at a café in Sana’a in 2011, Sharaf shook his head in disbelief at the notion that Shaye was pro–al Qaeda. “Abdulelah continued to report facts, not for the sake of the Americans or al Qaeda, but because he believed that what he was reporting was the truth and that it is a journalist’s role to uncover the truth,” Sharaf told me. “He is a very professional journalist,” he added. “He is rare in the journalistic environment in Yemen where 90 percent of journalists write extempore and lack credibility.” Shaye, he explained, is “very open-minded and rejects extremism. He was against violence and the killing of innocents in the name of Islam. He was also against killing innocent Muslims with the pretext of fighting terrorism. In his opinion, the war on terror should have been fought culturally, not militarily. He believes using violence will create more violence and encoura
ge the spread of more extremist currents in the region.”
In the meantime, Sharaf was encountering his own troubles with the Yemeni regime over his drawings of President Saleh and his criticism of the Yemeni government’s war against the minority Houthi population in the north of Yemen. He had also criticized conservative Salafis. And his close friendship with Shaye put him at risk.
On August 16, 2010, Sharaf and his family had just broken the Ramadan fast when he heard shouting from outside his home: “Come out, the house is surrounded.” Sharaf walked outside. “I saw soldiers I had never seen before. They were tall and heavy—they reminded me of American marines. Then, I knew that they were from the counterterrorism unit. They had modern laser guns. They were wearing American marine–type uniforms,” he told me. They told Sharaf he was coming with them. “What is the accusation?” he asked. “They said, ‘You’ll find out.’”
As Sharaf was being arrested, Yemeni forces had surrounded Shaye’s home as well. “Abdulelah refused to come out, so they raided his house, took him by force, beat him and broke his tooth,” Sharaf said. “We were both taken blindfolded and handcuffed to the national security prison, which is supported by the Americans.” They were separated and thrown in dark, underground cells, said Sharaf. “We were kept for about thirty days during Ramadan in the national security prison where we were continuously interrogated.”
For that first month, Sharaf and Shaye did not see each other. Eventually, they were taken from the national security prison to Yemen’s political security prison, where they were put in a cell together. Sharaf was eventually released, after he pledged to the authorities that he would not draw any more cartoons of President Saleh. Shaye would make no such deal.
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