by J. M. Berger
And so their romantic dream failed—but they were still angry. Because every day the news brought reports of yet another massacre, and every Friday, the imam was still talking about Bosnia.
And the “far enemy” began to look like the realistic enemy. The enemy next door.
5
Rebuilding the Network
After the twin disasters of the World Trade Center bombing and the subsequent Day of Terror plot, the Al Kifah Center in New York was, for all intents and purposes, finished. But the jihad was heating up, especially in Bosnia, where Western media reporting meshed with the rhetoric of Muslim speakers to create a sense of urgent and growing outrage.
Omar Abdel Rahman had welded his Islamic Group to the Al Kifah brand, and the combined operation dwarfed the remaining handful of independent jihad recruiters. His spectacular fall left the direction of the entire American movement up in the air. As the hammer of federal law enforcement smashed down on Brooklyn, the movement dispersed to satellite centers around the country.
Al Kifah’s office in Boston, established in the early 1990s, emerged from the World Trade Center debacle relatively unscathed. Little more than two weeks after the bombing, the head of the Boston office, Emad Muntasser, changed the name of the Boston office from Al Kifah to CARE International.1
Positioning itself as a nonpolitical charity (at least as far as non-Muslims were concerned), CARE applied for and received a tax exemption from the IRS, but its operations continued as before—supporting jihad overseas with money and men.2
Al Kifah’s Boston operation was leaner and more focused than the Brooklyn office had been. Largely absent were the power struggles and the intrigues, and absent, too, were the angry young men hatching plots to kill Americans on American soil. Jihadists passing through Boston were more likely to be focused on conflicts overseas.
One example was Layth Abu Al Layth, a Moroccan who had moved to the United States in 1990. While working at a Dunkin’ Donuts in the Boston area, he met other local jihadists who inspired him to join the Afghan mujahideen in 1991. Given the timing, that likely meant training with al Qaeda. Abu Layth trained at the camps, then entered combat to “purify” Afghanistan of any lingering non-Islamic influences. In February 1993 he was killed in battle when he stepped on a land mine.3
The main recruiting tool for the Boston office was a newsletter called Al Hussam, which translated as “The Sword.” Published in both English and Arabic, the newsletter was stuffed with short, informative news items from various fronts in the global jihad. Bosnia, the most active theater, took up most of the ink, but updates also flowed in from Chechnya, Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, and elsewhere. The authors tried, with less success, to whip up support for Islamic revolts in Saudi Arabia and Libya.
The issues were filled out with short articles written by local jihad supporters and the occasional reprint of classic tracts by Abdullah Azzam and other jihadist luminaries. The articles urged Americans, in no uncertain terms, to take up the banner of jihad.
Al Hussam’s publication was the next rung in an evolution of tone from the early days of American jihadists. Although the newsletter still occasionally celebrated the “miracles” that Abdullah Azzam had leveraged so effectively, the thrust was more abstractly religious than some of its predecessors, quoting chapter and verse from the Koran and hadith (stories of the life of Mohammed) and waxing on about the need for Islamic solidarity and its attendant religious obligations.4
In part, this was a function of the end of the Soviet war, which was a clearer case of enemy aggression, where the lure of adventure often made complex ideological concepts unnecessary. The end of the Soviet occupation had not ended the need for jihad, the newsletter explained. “There are still many solutions to problems in the hands of those who are not playing the roles they should.”5 Jihad was not just a boy’s adventure anymore. It was, the newsletter trumpeted, an absolute imperative and an individual obligation for every Muslim.
It is no longer a secret to Muslims on earth that they are struck repeatedly everywhere: their scholars are crushed and dispersed, their morals are trampled. Wherever the Muslims show military force or action, the infidels move and antagonistic camps are set up against Muslims warning and threatening, promising and pledging, foaming and frothing, then striking and destroying.6
The newsletter was sometimes frighteningly reductive in its view of the primacy of jihad over any other imaginable activity. One article, citing accounts of the Prophet’s companions, argued,
[Y]ou find that the first thing mentioned is “He took part in all of the attacks.” It does not say “He gave a hundred speeches” or that “he wrote such and such a book,” or “he had a lot of money.” It says “He took part in all of the attacks.” This is the greatest virtue, excellence, or merit of the friends of the Messenger. The value of someone in Islam is measured by the “number of battles he took part in.”
Today when they write about our dead, what do they say? Do they mention how many attacks they took part in? No. If they are truthful they will write “This famous scientist, this matchless preacher did not shoot one bullet for Allah’s cause in all of his life.”7
The authors of Al Hussam fired back at Muslim critics in the United States who were under increasing pressure to renounce jihad, which in the minds of most Americans had now become inextricably linked to terrorism. During the mid-1990s, a movement began among more mainstream American Muslim leaders to redefine jihad, at least for non-Muslim audiences.
The greatest jihad, they argued, was resisting temptation within oneself. These gestures toward moderation were a growing problem for Al Hussam; mosques were starting to ban the newsletter because of its extremist views.8 One of Al Hussam’s leading voices, a writer using the pen name Abu Zubair, had little use for such semantics.
Some are amazed when they hear that self-jihad is less than other jihads, or that jihad for the sake of Allah is less than other jihads or obedience. Yet, if we look at those people’s lives, inquire about their history, and ask about the secret of the discrepancy we will find that the explanation of their stand is easy.
When you follow the lives of those who belittle jihad and instead of fighting and martyrdom they give university lectures, write in magazines or give speeches about fighting and martyrdom in conferences; you will find a common denominator which combines them by reason and unites them in sickness. The common denominator among the discouraging and the refusing—those who have those opinions and theories—is that they did not take part in jihad. There were no opportunities for them, and they were not as lucky to join the military camps of the mujahideen. At those camps luxuries are not available, necessities are few, and they feel the difference between a day in the camp and the day in the university, with air-conditioned classes, restaurants, and playfields.
They did not enter the battle fronts nor did they join the war arenas. One battle which the person takes part in would correct all notions. In few hours, a soldier could see what would turn him gray in bombs and shrapnel, snatching the souls of his best friends, those who traveled with him, trained with him, and went to jihad with him. Those with missiles and explosives detonate over them and they see with their own eyes from down below: hands, feet, and stomachs flying. Then those members with sound, symmetrical bodies end up one-eyed, one legged, one armed or paralyzed. This is the secret of doubt and the abode of sickness. In just few hours or days the Mujahid sees what others will not see in decades: hardship, difficulty, and pain. Those who see these hardships of jihad find it impossible to compare personal jihad to other peaceful calls. So those who enter the issue of jihad, or who want to tell others to quit fighting, should join a camp at least as a janitor, or take part in a battle at least as a cook, and then we will see if the pen is equal to the Kalashnikov for him.9
Even though it ventured into deeper intellectual waters at times, Al Hussam played all of the classic cards of jihadist incitement, including lurid tales of atrocities and rape. One mailing suggested t
hat readers tell their children tales of the slaughter of Albanian Muslims as a bedtime story—“The evil people killed many Muslim youths, and harassed many women. Even domesticated animals did not escape their savagery.” Children who were too young to fight could donate part of their allowance to jihad, the newsletter suggested.10
A favorite ploy of Al Hussam’s editors was to publish letters purportedly written by jihadists in between battles abroad. These letters combined appreciation for the meaningful nature of jihad with accounts of offenses against Muslims and repudiations of those who did not choose to fight. One letter from a mujahid to his mother (a popular subgenre of jihadist literature) was especially colorful:
Dear Mother: Remember me with every fragment which the enemies of Allah rip out of the body of this ummah. Remember me with every resounding scream uttered by a pure Muslim woman in the land of Jerusalem, or Chechnya. Remember me with every whip which cracks down on the back of a monotheist in the prisons of the oppressors and tyrants. And, remember me with every victory the Islamic revival achieves, and with every cry of “Allahu Akbar” which is given to shake the earth beneath the feet of the oppressors.11
Other articles told the tale of American jihadists in the third person:
He was seared by the horrifying pictures reaching us from all over. Sleep was driven out of his eyes by the reports of Muslim women’s chastity being violated at the hands of the Crusader criminals. His heart was rent by the sight of a Bosnian child slaughtered before his parents, while the whole world looked on apathetically. [He realized] that there could not be a life in this country, for his life could only be lived in the land of jihad. [ … ]
Thus, he packed his suitcases and left, never to return, at a time when the world was starting to turn toward him—he was receiving job offers and marriage proposals from all over. He was well-known for having great respect for his mother, but the call to jihad was stronger, and the screams of the Muslim women were louder to his ears than the words of all seeking to hold him back.12
The absolutism of the newsletter belied battles behind the scenes. As in New York, the Boston leadership—about thirty people who had a greater or lesser voice in the office’s direction—was divided about the course of jihad in the wake of the Soviet defeat. The argument continued long after the dust of the last departing Soviet tank had settled.
As in Brooklyn and Afghanistan, the question on the table was whether to continue building an Islamic state in Afghanistan or to take jihad to the rest of the world. The top leadership of the Boston office had sworn loyalty to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan warlord who was now working closely with Osama bin Laden. The leaders had reservations about bin Laden, but more and more of them wanted to take the fight to new fronts.13
The outbreak of the war in Bosnia helped edge the undecided toward global jihad. The highly visible atrocities provided an easy hook for recruiting and fund-raising—in some ways even easier than Afghanistan, although the secular proclivities of Bosnian Muslims blunted some of the enthusiasm of the hard-core Islamists. Propaganda videos explained that the mujahideen had to “correct” the Bosnian practice of Islam before fighting could begin. E-mails from CARE’s allies complained that “large sums of money were being sent from various ‘Jihad’ funds to Bosnian, wine-drinking, womanizing, communist ‘Mujahideen.’”14
The sums were indeed large. Checks flowed into CARE International from individual donors, sometimes only $10 or $50, with the words “mujahideen of Bosnia” or “martyr’s family” scrawled in the memo line. Sometimes individual donations ran into the thousands.15
Once deposited with CARE, the money was often laundered through other fraudulent charities, including the Benevolence International Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation, both in Chicago, and to front organizations in Bosnia and Chechnya. In total, hundreds of thousands of dollars passed through CARE for distribution to jihadists and jihad-support organizations overseas.16
CARE was wired into a national network that included jihadist organizations in Texas, New Jersey, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, and Illinois. Working individually and sometimes in concert, this more diffuse conglomeration of groups continued the work of the original Al Kifah but also helped it evolve into new forms.
Most of the new breed positioned themselves as nonprofit charities, rather than political organizations, which would eventually provide the basis for prosecuting them after September 11. CARE was ultimately brought down on tax charges rather than for its promotion of jihad, as Aloke Chakravarty, the federal prosecutor who handled the case, explained to me:
It’s not the U.S. government’s role to ever persecute somebody for what they believe. Our case really has been a testament to the fact that it’s not what you believe or what you say that should ever result in some kind of culpability. This is all about freedom of expression. However, in our case, you don’t have a right to be subsidized to engage in your beliefs. And in our case, CARE International is one of many similar types of organizations that had obtained a tax exemption, so that U.S. taxpayers were actually funding them.17
One of CARE’s closest alliances was with the American Islamic Group (AIG), the official U.S. chapter of Omar Abdel Rahman’s Gamaat Islamiyyah. AIG was founded by Mohammed Zaki, the red-headed Egyptian who had saved the leg of Brooklyn mujahid Abdullah Rashid after he stepped on a land mine in Afghanistan.
Zaki inspired fierce loyalty in those he met. One of his comrades described him as “a man whose like is rare nowadays,” telling a colleague that “you will be amazed by him.”18
After relocating from Brooklyn to San Diego, Zaki created AIG, along with a number of so-called charities that actually helped finance and supply the mujahideen in Bosnia and Chechnya, including the Islamic Information Center of the Americans and American World Wide Relief, also known as Save Bosnia Now. The first organization focused on fund-raising and propaganda; the latter helped fly mujahideen—including al Qaeda operative and naturalized American citizen Hisham Diab—from the United States to Bosnia so they could take part in fighting.19
Zaki traveled back and forth to Boston to take part in Al Kifah events and fire up crowds with his charisma and tough talk. At one point, Muntasser asked him to fly to Boston “because we are looking for a brother who knows about matters [in Bosnia] to give an inciting speech.”20
But unlike some of his peers, Zaki wasn’t only talk. In 1993 and 1994 Zaki traveled to Bosnia, where he fought alongside the mujahideen, becoming well-known as “Abu Umar the American.” He also made videotapes of the mujahideen camps, which he took back to the United States to use for fund-raising. In early 1995 he departed for Chechnya, telling a friend, “I hope that I will be granted martyrdom this time.”21
That wish was granted in May 1995. According to his comrades, Zaki was discussing the Koran with his fellow fighters when the class was shelled by the Russians. Zaki was the only casualty. Struck by shrapnel, he lingered briefly before dying. On his deathbed, he said that he had seen the virgins of paradise promised to jihadist martyrs, and “they told me I would follow them.” His supporters back in the United States took up collections for his family, a wife and four children left behind in San Diego.22
ISA AND ISMAIL: A STUDY IN CONTRASTS
Despite the best efforts of Al Hussam to drum up interest in Chechnya, relatively few Americans joined Zaki on the Russian front. Many more were attracted to Bosnia, where a significant number of Americans joined the jihad.
In many cases, details are sketchy. A Caucasian American named Abu Man-sour was sighted by a few Bosnian mujahideen, one of whom said that he hailed from the Virginia area. Two African Americans named Abu Khalid and Abu Aysha were also seen. The former was killed fighting the Serbs; the latter came late to the conflict and didn’t stay long. An American named Abu Musa had come to Bosnia as part of Bilal Philips’s recruitment program and stayed until at least 1993, taking part in raids in Serbian territory.23
One who stayed was an African American named Clevin Holt
, who became a bit of a legend in intelligence circles. In 2010 Holt was spotlighted in American Jihadist, a riveting documentary by journalists Mark Claywell and Jody Jenkins, who spent years researching Holt’s story and captured hours of interviews with the fighter himself.
Raised in a Washington, D.C., household tense with chaos and abuse, Holt joined the U.S. Army as an underage teenager to fight in Vietnam but was eventually forced out after becoming involved in a race riot on an army base; his true age was revealed during the investigation.
Full of anger and despair, Holt returned to Washington. He considered going on a killing spree, then turned his gun on himself, he told Claywell and Jenkins. Yet before he could pull the trigger, Holt said, he saw a vision of an angel, which caught him up short. Three days later he met an African American Muslim convert who introduced him to Islam. Holt converted, changing his name to Isa Abdullah Ali; he aligned himself with Shi’a Islam and joined an American Islamic group sponsored by the Iranian intelligence service. As he related the change in American Jihadist,
I was greatly influenced by the words of Ayatollah Khomeini. A lot of what he said in the past, matched everything that I ever thought, ever felt, and even some of the things I would verbalize. In my learning experience through Islam, the answers started becoming more and more clear.24
Although his angel had stopped him from embarking on a campaign of indiscriminate killing, Ali felt that his military training was all that he had in the world. He left to fight in Afghanistan for one month in 1980, making him one of the very first true American jihadists—Ali arrived on the scene before virtually any other foreign fighters, let alone Americans.25
Soon after that, he joined the Shi’ite Amal Militia in Lebanon, where he fought during the civil war, earning another rare distinction—American mujahideen have almost never fought Israelis directly. He came to Lebanon strapped for war and packing ordinance, including military-grade explosives. In Lebanon he trained Hezbollah and Amal fighters (even women) and took part in combat, killing at least nine Israelis by his own account.26
