by J. M. Berger
Comparing him to bin Laden is dangerous, however, because it elevates Awlaki’s status based on a fundamental misunderstanding of each man’s role and capacity.
It’s certainly possible Awlaki was working for the core al Qaeda organization before September 11, and it’s virtually certain he was working with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula before the relationship was officially announced. Yet there’s very little evidence that he held a position of significant authority in either group before 2010.
No evidence has emerged as of this writing to suggest that Awlaki has ever pointed a gun at a human being and pulled the trigger. His terrorist operations have been underwhelming at best, embarrassing at worst. They can still cause chaos, of course, especially when the West is willing to mobilize thousands of people and millions of dollars in response to every new terrorist strategy it sees. But overall, Awlaki’s successes have owed more to Western failures than operational brilliance.
Now consider Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden is far more influential than Awlaki simply as far as his preaching and ability to inspire. All of Awlaki’s jihadist adherents are also adherents of bin Laden, but the reverse does not necessarily apply, even with Awlaki’s recent gains.
Bin Laden doesn’t stop at getting people fired up. The Saudi kingpin of terror cut his teeth in combat against the Soviets during the Afghan jihad. His supporters may have wildly exaggerated his accomplishments during that conflict, but no one disputes that he is experienced in matters of war.
He’s even more experienced and proficient at managing terrorist operations. Osama bin Laden studies his enemy, looks for vulnerabilities, and uses that information to select a target. He spends years on surveillance and planning, and when that is done, he sends multiple teams of highly trained terrorists to carry out his plans. Bin Laden is detail oriented. During the East African embassy bombings, he pointed out where the truck bomb should be placed in Nairobi for maximum casualties.
In contrast, Awlaki attracts lunatics, points them at America, and pushes.
It’s absolutely appropriate to treat Awlaki as a serious threat. One 2010 intelligence report estimated that as many as three hundred Americans had trained with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.57 If the estimate is accurate, it would represent an unprecedented migration of Americans into the ranks of jihadists, and Awlaki was almost certainly driving that recruitment.
But the rush to anoint him as the next bin Laden may also be fueling his recent success. Awlaki’s writings and lectures were not heavily promoted on the most important terrorist forums until after AQAP publicly accepted him, and that didn’t happen until months after the media push began and then only after the United States announced he had been targeted for death.
There is no question that Awlaki’s status among terrorists was greatly enhanced by the media’s estimation of his importance. Even with that helpful push, however, it’s hard to imagine that Awlaki could ever fill the shoes of Osama bin Laden. But the end of Awlaki’s story has yet to be written, and the American imam has proved himself to be full of surprises.
10
A Diverse Threat
In the wake of September 11, more than one thousand Muslim Americans and Muslim immigrants were detained in the United States, often without charge. There were indisputable abuses.
In some cases people were arrested simply because their names came up during the investigation of the attack.1 In other cases, innocent employees of terrorist-linked charities were detained merely because of where they worked. In 2009 a court of appeals described the detention of Muslims after 9/11 as “repugnant to the Constitution and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history.”2
Yet some of the detentions were legitimate. Few Americans realized the extent of al Qaeda’s presence in the United States or the history of American involvement in jihadist activity, some of which was closely linked to terrorism. Neither the CIA nor the FBI had the slightest idea how many Americans had trained in al Qaeda’s camps in Afghanistan.3
It soon appeared that the most dangerous American members of al Qaeda proper had already been taken off the streets by the embassy bombings investigation. In the weeks and months that followed, the FBI’s reach would become more precise and less sweeping.
Much of al Qaeda’s infrastructure in the United States remained intact on September 12, 2001. The most significant operation was the Benevolence International Foundation in Chicago, which had financed al Qaeda, as well as jihadists in Chechnya and Bosnia. The deceptive charity was shut down and its director, Enaam Arnaout, arrested. He eventually pleaded guilty to defrauding donors by spending Benevolence funds to support mujahideen fighters in Bosnia and Chechnya.4
The directors of CARE International—the former Al Kifah office in Boston— were arrested, tried, and convicted of tax fraud for redirecting charitable contributions to jihad.5 The Holy Land Foundation, a Hamas financier in Texas, was also shuttered and its directors convicted.6
A few small cells with direct links to al Qaeda were uncovered. In Lackawanna, New York, six American citizens of Yemeni descent were arrested for having trained at an al Qaeda camp prior to September 11. A seventh American member of the cell was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen. Although all were Americans, they lived in a highly insular, ethnic Yemeni community.7
Abdurrahman Alamoudi, the head of the mainstream American Muslim Council, was arrested in 2003 for helping Libya try to assassinate Saudi crown prince Abdullah.8
In Portland a group of seven Americans who had been training for jihad prior to September 11 made a series of attempts to reach Afghanistan and fight in the service of al Qaeda and the Taliban. Four were arrested in Portland, another in Dearborn, Michigan. A sixth was captured in Malaysia, and the last succeeded in reaching al Qaeda and was killed in battle.9
American-born Muslim convert James Ujaama, a Seattle resident, tried to set up a terrorist training camp in rural Bly, Oregon, under the guidance of radical London-based cleric Abu Hamza Al Masri. Ujaama was arrested as a material witness and later charged with offering material support to the Taliban. He cut a plea, skipped out on his parole, and eventually ended up back in prison.10
There were more—many more. Between September 11, 2001, and August 2010, scores of U.S. citizens were indicted for terrorism-related offenses. A relative few were arrested for assisting Hezbollah and Hamas. Most of these were financing and weapons cases; the vast majority of violent offenders—or would-be violent offenders—were connected to al Qaeda and an increasingly diffuse group of related Sunni terrorist organizations outside of Israel.
AL QAEDA
In the post–September 11 area, Adam Gadahn emerged as one of al Qaeda’s most important American recruits. He started life on a goat farm in rural Winchester, California, a little more than an hour’s drive north of San Diego. His father, a Christian convert of Jewish descent, sold halal meat (the Islamic equivalent of kosher) to the local Arab community.
Although Gadahn was raised in an informally Christian environment, he found the concept of the Christian trinity illogical (a rift cited by many Muslim converts) and turned away from the religion. He went through a typically difficult teenage phase, listening to heavy metal music and fighting with his parents. One night he was listening to a fiery, radical Christian radio preacher rant about the “Islamic threat.” The rebellious teen figured that if this guy hated Islam, there must be something to it, and he began to investigate the religion through discussions with Muslims in online chatrooms.11
I discovered that the beliefs and practices of this religion fit my personal theology and intellect as well as basic human logic. Islam presents God not as an anthropomorphic being but as an entity beyond human comprehension, transcendent of man, independant [sic] and undivided. Islam has a holy book that is comprehensible to a layman, and there is no papacy or priesthood that is considered infallible in matters of interpretation: all Muslims are free to reflect and interpret the book given a sufficient educat
ion.
This idea that understanding Islam is an individual prerogative that does not require context or schooling creates a wide-open door for radicalization. Combined with Islam’s lack of a central religious authority to decide doctrinal issues, new converts are particularly susceptible to the first person who comes along to explain the religion to them.12
For Gadahn, those people were worshippers at the Islamic Society of Orange County, where he formally converted to Islam. The imam at the mosque was Muzammil Siddiqui, a former employee of the Muslim World League. In 1992 Omar Abdel Rahman had visited to give a sermon promoting jihad. In the years since, the Islamic Society had moved more toward the mainstream, but there remained a group of vocal, highly visible militants who were constantly agitating to move the congregation to a stricter posture.13
The newly converted Gadahn was drawn to this group and particularly to two members: Hisham Diab and Khalil Deek, the heads of an organization called Charity Without Borders. Both men were believed to be mujahideen veterans of the Bosnia war.14
The older men drilled the impressionable teenager with religious ideology, pushing him to dress in Arab style and grow a beard. They warned him of the dangers of associating with kaffirs (infidels) and angrily condemned people at the mosque who took part in interfaith outreach. Their condemnations of the Islamic Society’s chairman inspired Gadahn to assault the man.15 In 1997 Gadahn left the United States for Pakistan, his trip paid for by Charity Without Borders. Except for a brief visit home in 1998, he was finished with America.
Deek moved to Pakistan soon after, and the two men lived in Peshawar.16 Reports on Gadahn’s early involvement with al Qaeda are sketchy. He worked for a while on low-level tasks, handling communications and translations for al Qaeda and other militant groups in the Pakistani city. At some point, he crossed over into Afghanistan and became a part of al Qaeda. For a few years, he labored in obscurity.17
Gadahn resurfaced in dramatic style in 2004, when he starred in an al Qaeda videotape. He appeared with his face covered, identified only as “Azzam the American.” In an interview with an unnamed questioner, Azzam answered a series of short questions with a series of lengthy diatribes, outlining al Qaeda’s case against the United States.
Although he delved into Islamic history and ideology, the core of his anger was reserved for his home country. Speaking in English with an affected or acquired Arabic accent, Azzam the American blasted both the United States and the Muslims who live there peacefully:
My country of origin, like many extinct, forgotten nations before it, is at war with the truth and wants to replace the genuine teachings of Islam, the genuine teachings of the religion, with a tame, nonthreatening version of Islam, made up somewhere in the greater Washington, D.C., area. My country of origin is making war on Muslims, killing and displacing thousands of them, occupying their homelands and holy places, and plundering and depleting their resources. My country of origin is spreading immorality, economic instability, environmental destruction, and many other afflictions throughout the Muslim world. Throughout the entire world, in fact.18
In 2005 Azzam’s role became clearer. On the anniversary of September 11, he appeared in a second video, threatening new attacks in the United States (specifically in Los Angeles, a threat that was never realized). A few days later, al Qaeda released a video filmed in the style of a Western news program and titled Voice of the Caliphate.19 Gadahn’s voice was clearly recognizable in the video, speaking in Arabic.
It became increasingly clear that Gadahn was not only the front man on these productions; he was involved in their production. al Qaeda’s video production unit during the 1990s had been truly professional, producing slick, polished propaganda such as The State of Ummah, a two-hour documentary featuring iconic images of al Qaeda’s training camps and a long critique of U.S. policies toward the Muslim world.20
After 9/11 the media operation had descended into chaos, although audio and video communiqués from top Al Qaeda leaders continued to trickle out. Starting in 2005, that changed. A stream of new productions was released by al Qaeda’s media branch, As-Sahab (meaning “the clouds”). Gadahn was believed to be heavily involved in the production of these videos, narrating an English-language Al Qaeda documentary on the September 11 attacks, among other contributions.21
He also began to issue more formal communiqués in the style of Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri. An Invitation to Islam professed to offer Americans a chance to avoid certain destruction by converting. The video was introduced by Zawahiri, firmly establishing Gadahn’s credentials. Subsequent videos warned again and again about imminent and devastating attacks that never seemed to happen.22
Over time Gadahn ceased to be a novelty, and his messages became less effective with American audiences, due to a combination of increasing U.S. and Pakistani military pressure on his position and his growing immersion in the culture of al Qaeda.
He was, in many ways, an object lesson in the limitations of American jihadists in communications and more generally. Many of al Qaeda’s American recruits become enamored of Arab and Muslim culture early in the radicalization process. They eventually stop talking like Americans and start talking like Arabs. Often, the longer they are involved with terrorism, the less effective they are at reaching U.S. audiences.
Nevertheless, “Azzam the American” continued to be a significant figure in al Qaeda’s stream of propaganda communication. In 2009 he appeared in a video titled The Mujahideen Don’t Target Muslims, which tried to refute the growing (and accurate) perception that al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks were killing far more Muslims than “Crusaders,” particularly in Pakistan. Gadahn argued that the media had wrongly attributed recent attacks to al Qaeda, part of a frame-up by the governments of Pakistan and the United States.23
As of this writing, Gadahn is believed to be in hiding, somewhere along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Al Qaeda has often exploited its Western members for communications and publicity, but the original goal of recruiting Americans was always to use their passports and their ability to blend in while preparing terrorist attacks. That strategy became front-page headlines when jihadist Jose Padilla returned at long last to U.S. soil.
Padilla had spent September 2001 at the house of al Qaeda’s military commander, Mohammed Atef. When an American air strike killed Atef in November, it narrowly missed taking out Padilla as well. The Latino American had been training in explosives when the strike took place. He returned to find the house in ruins and helped dig Atef’s body out of the wreckage.24
Padilla and Adnan Shukrijumah, his compatriot from Florida, had been ordered to blow up apartment buildings back in the United States, but the two could not get along. Shukrijumah, ruthlessly competent and pragmatic, was intellectually a cut above Padilla, whose ambitions outstripped his ability by a wide margin. Shukrijumah bailed out of the apartments plot, and Padilla was assigned another partner, an Ethiopian named Binyamin Mohamed.
The two men went to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed—al Qaeda’s chief of terrorist operations and the mastermind of 9/11—to discuss the plan. Padilla continued to lobby for some kind of nuclear attack, but Mohammed was skeptical. Exasperated, he finally sent the two men to America with money in their pockets and a promise that instructions would follow.
Padilla was arrested the moment he stepped off the plane in Chicago. Binyamin didn’t even make it out of Pakistan before getting nabbed by authorities there.25
Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Padilla’s arrest in dramatic fashion, hyping the dirty bomb threat and labeling him an enemy combatant, which led to the al Qaeda member being incarcerated in a military prison without due process for more than three years. Finally, Padilla was moved back into the legal system, amid questions about whether he was ever all that dangerous and whether an American detained on U.S. soil could be denied his right to a lawyer and a trial.
The surviving leaders of the American Islamic Group—including Adham Hass
oun and Kifah Al Jayyousi—had also been arrested and were facing indictment in Florida. Because Padilla had first been radicalized and sent overseas by Hassoun, they were tried together. All were convicted of conspiracy to murder, maim, and kidnap people abroad and sentenced to life in prison.26
Things were going better for al Qaeda’s other Floridian. Far from being cannon fodder, Adnan Shukrijumah was rising through the ranks.
Starting in 2003 U.S. authorities began to issue a series of increasingly frantic-sounding alerts about Shukrijumah but offered few details about why he was so important. Sightings poured in from around the world: Guyana, Canada, Trinidad, and Tampa, Florida. He had even purportedly cased the Panama Canal for a possible al Qaeda attack.27
Some of the leads were solid, but most were sketchy, and the intelligence never included a clear explanation of what Shukrijumah was doing.28 Rumor had it that his nickname was “Jaffar the Pilot” and that he was training to be the next Mohammed Atta, but no conclusive evidence ever surfaced suggesting that Shukrijumah knew how to fly.29
But more credible traces of his activities eventually emerged. In 2009 the FBI broke up a small cell of U.S. citizens and immigrants led by Najibullah Zazi, a naturalized American citizen born in Afghanistan who had moved to Queens as a teenager. Zazi was, as one relative put it, “a dumb kid.” He worked a coffee stand in Manhattan before moving to Denver and driving a shuttle bus. In 2006 Zazi flew to Pakistan to find a wife. He married a nineteen-year-old cousin who stayed in Pakistan while he returned to the United States. During his time away, Zazi had become more religious. He grew a beard and started to give a cold shoulder to the non-Muslims he encountered on the job.30
