by Matt Apuzzo
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At the end of their second day on the road, the group reached Miram Shah, the town that had become al-Qaeda’s de facto headquarters since the terrorist group fled Afghanistan. Perched high in the mountains southwest of Peshawar, it was originally built in 1905 by the British as a fort from which they could manage Waziristan. Today it is in one of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas and is a frequent target for American drone strikes.
Ahmad deposited his charges at a guesthouse in a residential area, where they stayed for two days. There were about a half-dozen rooms surrounding a brick courtyard. The friends were comfortable as they waited to see what happened next. Soon a group of al-Qaeda operatives came to inspect the Americans. The first introduced himself as Ibrahim. He had a slight build, an olive complexion, and a beard. Zazi had no idea at the time that he was talking to Rashid Rauf. A dual citizen of Britain and Pakistan, Rauf had played a role in a failed 2006 plot to bring down as many as ten airliners over the Atlantic Ocean. In the wake of its disruption, he had been arrested by the Pakistanis but escaped to Waziristan. The other man who appeared with Rauf was a tall, slender black man who wore a paramilitary vest and carried an AK-47 slung over his back. He introduced himself as Abdul Hafeez, and the three Americans could tell that he was important.
Hafeez and Rauf watched these American strangers cautiously. Were they working for the CIA? Paranoia pulsed through the terrorist group. Over the years since the American invasion of Afghanistan, al-Qaeda’s ranks had been thinned because of traitors who supplied information to the CIA. Then the drones came. These men weren’t inclined to trust strangers.
They all sat on the floor of the ramshackle guesthouse and made small talk in English. Zazi, Ahmedzay, and Medunjanin said they were from New York. Hafeez inquired why the three had come to Pakistan. Zazi explained that they wanted to fight against the Americans in Afghanistan and kill as many as possible. He was careful to describe his countrymen as “the enemy.” They had grown up hearing stories about their native land suffering under the scourge of foreign power, and they wanted to hasten the day when, once again, Afghanistan’s oppressors were vanquished. Hafeez was impressed. It wasn’t easy to make it here and find them, he said. These guys had guts and had already evaded US intelligence.
Before the meeting, Hafeez had already decided that these young men would not be wasted fighting the United States in Afghanistan. Pakistan had no lack of young men who could be served up as cannon fodder for the American howitzers and F-15 fighter jets. The men now sitting in front of Hafeez were unusual. They had American passports, they were not under suspicion by the US authorities, and they were apparently willing to die. Hafeez told the trio that he would like them to go back to America on a special mission. They had valuable assets, like their ability to speak English and blend in, Hafeez said. Zazi and the others knew what this meant. The three had been tapped to be suicide bombers.
Once Hafeez finished his pitch, Rauf recited a story about the Prophet Muhammad. “There was once a man who came to the Prophet from the opposing side and told him he wanted to help him, join his ranks. And the Prophet told him, ‘You’re just one man, and you don’t really add to our numbers. You should go back and do something on the other side.’ ”10 You should follow the words of the Prophet, Rauf concluded. Then Hafeez and Rauf asked the men if they had made their decision. Would they be suicide bombers? Startled, Zazi turned to his friends and, almost without thinking, replied, “No.”
Hafeez responded with gentle persuasion. Think about it, he told them. He then asked the three New Yorkers to hand over their passports. Hafeez and Rauf left the house, leaving their impressionable young guests to mull over the situation. Carrying out a suicide bombing was the ultimate sacrifice, and Hafeez knew that he couldn’t force them into taking on the role—not if he wanted whatever plans he’d laid for them to succeed. Hafeez had been down this path before with others. Hafeez and Rauf told the Americans they would come back.
Anxious and alone, the friends huddled at the house, unsure of what might happen next. They had told two representatives of al-Qaeda, the most feared terrorist group on earth, “No thanks.” Who lives to tell that story? Al-Qaeda could behead them and bury their bodies, and nobody would ever know. But none of the three friends thought martyrdom by suicide sounded appealing, even though they had come all the way to Southwest Asia hoping to die fighting under a Taliban banner. This wasn’t what they had signed up for when they talked big outside their mosque in Queens. So what if al-Qaeda thought they were cowards? They’d stick to their plan and go fight in Afghanistan, assuming that they made it out of there alive.
Four or five days passed without any contact from al-Qaeda, unsettling the trio. They waited and waited. They bickered and turned on Medunjanin, saying that his light skin was a burden and attracting unwanted attention. And he couldn’t speak any of the local languages, either. With no word from Ahmad, the owner of the guesthouse told them to leave. He didn’t want any trouble, and, clearly, these men were not from the area.
The three gathered their stuff and made contact with a shopkeeper in town, a man Ahmad had told them to seek out if there was trouble. The shopkeeper told them about a nearby hotel, where they spent the night. The next day, they returned to the shop. Finally, a pair of cars with tinted windows pulled up with Hafeez. They complained about his unexplained absence, about being kicked out of the house and having to find a place to stay. He brushed them off, saying that he had slept in worse places than a hotel. He took them back to the shop, where they were provided Pakistani identification cards with the names they had chosen. Ahmedzay would be Omar. Medunjanin would be Mohammed, and Zazi chose Salahuddin. Then, whatever their misgivings, they got in a car with Hafeez. Together the three young men continued their journey into the hinterlands with the mysterious man who held great sway in al-Qaeda.
Hafeez drove for hours, avoiding major highways, stopping for the night at an empty house. He told the friends not to tell anybody where they were really from. If someone asks, he said, Ahmedzay and Zazi are from Peshawar, and Medunjanin from Syria. He told them to use their fake names.
The next day, they reached their destination, a mud compound with twenty-foot-high walls. This was a terrorist training camp, one of the locations seldom seen by Americans who aren’t drone pilots.
The three friends saw no other trainees, but they met a Pakistani who would teach them martial arts and a Canadian named Ferid Imam who handled weapons training. Over two weeks, they were taught to operate small arms. The weapon of choice was the Russian AK-47. Ferid taught them to take apart and clean the assault rifle, and how to assume the correct firing positions. They also handled another Russian weapon, the PK machine gun, which is commonly used in Afghanistan and is very effective in laying down suppressive fire for an ambush. The three fired rocket-propelled grenade launchers—exactly the kind of high-powered weapons they had dreamed of using when they first embarked on their journey. They developed an easy rapport with their instructor and settled into a routine, waking up before dawn to train but spending little time outside because of the increasing drone attacks. At night, they took turns handling guard duty.11
Zazi and his friends were in Pakistan at a pivotal moment in America’s drone war. At the CIA, Director Michael Hayden persuaded President George W. Bush to increase the pace of attacks inside Pakistan. Drones became common sights above Miram Shah while Zazi was there. In early September, drones launched Hellfire missiles into a home in a village not far where Zazi was staying. The target was Jalaluddin Haqqani, a pro-Taliban insurgent leader who was once a paid CIA asset in the war against the Soviet Union.12 Haqqani survived. Nearly two dozen others were killed, including his eight grandchildren, one of his two wives, his sister, and his sister-in-law.13
There were more attacks in September 2008 than in any month since the drone assault began in 2004. It was a turning point in the war against al-Qaeda: the moment when the drone went from being America�
��s occasional weapon to its preferred method of hunting and killing. But there is a saying among the Pashtun people in Pakistan: “Kill one person, make ten enemies.” The September drone campaign was a turning point for Zazi and his friends, too.
A few days after their arrival, another man appeared. He said his name was Hamad, and he had long hair, a slight paunch, dark skin, and a large nose. He also spoke with an American accent. Hamad’s real name was Adnan el-Shukrijumah and he knew America better than almost anybody in al-Qaeda. He also spoke English better than anybody in the room, which surprised Zazi. Born in Saudi Arabia, Shukrijumah spent fifteen years in the United States, mostly in Florida, where he grew up and attended a community college in Miami. During the 1990s, he trained in al-Qaeda’s camps in Afghanistan, and he left the United States in May 2001. American intelligence had been looking for him since 2003, but Shukrijumah had avoided both capture and death, and now used his knowledge of America to advise al-Qaeda on the best way to cripple its enemy.
Shukrijumah carried a laptop loaded with propaganda videos, which the three Americans watched when they weren’t on guard duty or practicing their new weapons skills. The videos highlighted the September 11 attacks, ambushes on coalition forces in Afghanistan, the 2005 London subway and bus bombings, a 2008 suicide mission on the Danish Embassy in Islamabad, and assorted video testimonies by martyrs. They had already seen some of the videos, which were produced by the media arm of al-Qaeda. Shukrijumah pushed them to think harder about what they were seeing and how it related to what they were learning at the camp. He told them that mastering the explosives needed to build a bomb was easy.
When he had exhausted the videos, Shukrijumah pounced. He asked if the friends were ready to go back to the States and follow the path that Abdul Hafeez had suggested in Miram Shah. He promised all the glory and pleasure that a shaheed, or holy martyr, would receive in heaven. In private conversations, away from the solidarity of the group, he pressed each of them individually. But still the friends resisted.
Shukrijumah engaged them another way. Let’s discuss potential targets, he said. What places should al-Qaeda attack? Shukrijumah volunteered that he thought Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, would make an attractive target because it was a vital economic engine. The Americans began to throw out ideas. So would the New York Stock Exchange, Zazi said, near where he had once operated his coffee cart. As a taxi driver, Ahmedzay liked Times Square. There were many tourists there, he offered. The friends suggested the subway, which they argued was even more important than the one in London. They agreed it was the heart of New York City.14
The answers pleased Shukrijumah. They were engaged and thinking big. Shukrijumah said they could defeat the United States in Afghanistan by striking at home. That would put pressure on the government to pull out of Afghanistan. They would avenge the drone attacks. But Shukrijumah was running up against one of the toughest obstacles al-Qaeda has faced in planning strikes against the United States. Though America has a perception of al-Qaeda as a limitless army of holy warriors, the truth is that finding people willing to kill themselves for God was hard, particularly in the United States.
Zazi asked why Shukrijumah didn’t send his own better-trained al-Qaeda operatives. Shukrijumah said it was too expensive and difficult to get past US security. “It’s easy for you guys to go back and do the mission,” Shukrijumah answered.15
Near the end of training, the three finally told Shukrijumah they would accept al-Qaeda’s mission. Part of the reason they changed their minds: the drone attacks. Everywhere they looked, unmanned warplanes patrolled the skies. News reports showed a string of missile strikes and the screaming civilians left in its wake. That was the issue that finally broke their resolve. They would become suicide bombers.
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When Abdul Hafeez reappeared and learned of their decision, he was pleased.16 He told Zazi and Ahmedzay that they would complete the explosives training, while Medunjanin would return to the United States so he didn’t violate the terms of his visa.
All three returned to Peshawar, taking a bus from Miram Shah. Ahmad met them and handed back their passports. On September 25 Medunjanin flew back to the United States. Ahmedzay then went to Afghanistan to see his wife and children. Zazi stayed in Peshawar with his family until November, when Barack Obama defeated John McCain in the 2008 US presidential election. Ahmad returned to take Zazi and Ahmedzay back for explosives training, but Ahmedzay didn’t show. Zazi covered for his friend, telling Ahmad that there must have been a family emergency. The pair drove to Miram Shah and waited for Hafeez, who took them to a compound in South Waziristan, a five-hour drive away. It was different but built along similar lines, with high walls and spartan rooms. But here there was no Ferid Imam, with his assortment of guns. Instead, there were two men whose job it was to teach Zazi how to make a bomb.
Zazi studied safety and mixing procedures. Goggles and proper ventilation were necessary, he was told. He learned the parts of the bomb. He would have to master basic chemistry and figure out the mechanics of building a virtually undetectable TATP detonator and the main charge out of easily available ingredients: acetone, hydrogen peroxide, hydrochloric acid, and baking soda. The instructors walked Zazi through the steps. He kept a notebook and wrote it all down, suddenly a responsible student. His instructor said buying the components for the detonator was simple. The acetone could be found at a beauty supply store because it is used in nail polish remover, and large hardware stores would stock hydrochloric acid, used for cleaning pools, while hydrogen peroxide and baking soda were at any grocery.
After the TATP was ready, Zazi could start on the rest of the bomb. Buy a lightbulb, his teacher said, and break it so that the wires are visible. Then pack ground-up match heads inside. He would need batteries and wire to light the bulb. The visible wires would ignite the powder and set off the detonator. Last came the main charge. Zazi had several options, including hydrogen peroxide with flour; again, rudimentary, but effective. The final construction involved a two-liter plastic bottle, which would hold the detonator. He could carry it in a backpack, where he would place the main charge around the plastic bottle, and surround it with shrapnel, such as ball bearings. Zazi’s instructors wanted him to have field experience, not classroom theory. As they supervised, he built and tested a TATP detonator inside the yard of the compound. It was a success. To be certain that the main charge worked, the student and his teachers drove about thirty miles from the compound to the top of a hill. They set a complete bomb under a rock and detonated it. One of the al-Qaeda members videotaped the explosion that followed.
One day Shukrijumah appeared and pressed Zazi to make a suicide video, the kind commonly released online after an attack. The young man struggled to find the right words for his video, so Shukrijumah wrote him a statement. Zazi read some verses from the Koran and said that this was payback for the atrocities America had committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Shukrijumah said he’d keep the video in a safe place and release it after the mission was complete. Since 9/11, al-Qaeda had repeatedly tried and failed to carry out another attack inside America. Now these Americans were on the verge of doing just that.
By this time, Zazi was ready to leave the camp, figuring that his family probably worried about him. Abdul Hafeez said he could go but would need to teach his friends how to make the bomb. Hafeez then took him to Miram Shah and reminded him to stay in touch with Ahmad. Zazi boarded the bus to Peshawar with his bomb-making notes and pictures tucked in his bag.
Back in Peshawar, he found Ahmedzay waiting for him. Zazi asked why he had missed explosives training. There was a problem, Ahmedzay explained. He had told his wife about their first meeting with al-Qaeda, and when he told her he was going back for more training, she gave him an ultimatum: It’s either al-Qaeda or his family. She threatened to kill herself and their daughter if Ahmedzay went back.
Zazi was undeterred. He empathized with his friend about his domestic troubles but promptly set about ca
tching up Ahmedzay on what he had learned in Waziristan. Zazi copied his training notes into a new notebook and gave the old one to Ahmedzay, who was going back to Afghanistan to spend some more time with his family. Zazi then went to an internet café, scanned in his new notes, and saved them on a CD. He asked an employee to email him the contents of the CD so he could leave his notebook in Peshawar rather than risk being caught with it in his luggage on his way back to New York.
Before he left, Zazi created a new email address and gave it to Ahmad, his conduit to the al-Qaeda leaders who would guide his mission. Ahmad told Zazi not to discuss “bombs” in an email. When preparations were ready, Ahmad said, use a code word like wedding.
On January 15, 2009, Zazi flew home. Seven days later, Ahmedzay left Pakistan, too. Within days of returning to Queens, Zazi made his way through the winter cold to Abu Bakr. There he spotted his good friend Medunjanin. It has been four months since they had last seen each other, and they embraced warmly. Zazi explained what happened in Pakistan and how he trained to make bombs.
Abdul Hafeez sends you his greetings, Zazi said.
Hearing this name excited Medunjanin. While his friends remained in Southwest Asia, Medunjanin had been searching the internet for information about the mysterious al-Qaeda operatives who had recruited them.
Medunjanin eventually figured out that Hafeez was actually Saleh al-Somali, the man responsible for plotting al-Qaeda’s terror attacks outside of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The CIA called him al-Qaeda’s chief of external operations and he had a big bounty on his head. Few Americans had ever laid eyes on him. Back in New York, Don Borelli knew him only from the files the FBI kept on al-Qaeda’s most senior leaders.
Al-Somali held one of the most important jobs in all of al-Qaeda, a position once held by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. It was up to him to execute Osama bin Laden’s murderous vision. Though bin Laden was holed up in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, without access to phones or the internet, he used his network of trusted couriers to send word to his subordinates demanding more attacks.