Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East

by Jared Cohen

  I saw a gigantic satellite dish in the sand that was almost as large as the Bedouin tent it seemed to have wires leading into. When I was living with the Maasai, people had televisions and cell phones, but they didn’t function, they were decorative. These dishes had wires and cables.

  The head of the household next to the dish was a man named Ihab. He wore a black cloak and had a thick beard and big bushy eyebrows. He was very amiable and introduced me to his six children, the oldest of whom was seventeen. I sat with them on a gorgeous Bedouin carpet, the pattern mixing bright blue and yellow colors, with a darker red and brown. Within moments, one of the young boys in the household brought a large metal serving tray with five or six smaller plates. Each plate offered a different dip or snack. As I examined the plates I saw a creamy white sauce, which turned out to have a bitter taste. In one of the other dishes, mixed spices and oil created a rough orange dip; and in another plate was a mixture of greens, olives, and white chunks that resembled tofu, but that were in fact a bitter cheese. Just as I was wondering why they had brought dips and no food, another young boy peeked around the corner and emerged out of hiding with a bowl of pita bread, making the formula complete.

  As we ate we talked politics and about Bedouin culture, but to be honest, I was completely distracted by my curiosity for the television. Just after Ihab had explained to me how during the elections, the government provides transport for the nomads to come to the local towns and vote, I asked him, “Can I see your TV?”

  He laughed and with an obvious air of pride led me through the separation in the tent to show me his television. The TV was fully functioning and I saw another wire leading from the television out to a round generator that rested, like the satellite dish, in the sand.

  Two of the women in the household were gathered around the TV, watching what I was almost positive was Al-Jazeera or something like it. I asked Ihab how many channels they got on the television, expecting him to say three or four. He shocked me when he said nine hundred. I was bursting with questions, but the first one to come out was how they pay monthly cable charges out here in the desert. He laughed at this question and explained that they just pay a hundred dollars at the beginning for the satellite dish and the cable box. After that, they don’t pay anything. Admittedly I was a bit jealous, a hundred dollars and unlimited cable. Not a bad deal.

  Ihab did not have the only household with a satellite dish. I saw numerous dishes throughout the desert and I also heard stories about the Qashquai nomads in Iran with similar setups. While I didn’t actually see it myself, I’d also read articles and heard eyewitness accounts of some nomadic communities in Syria that had solar panels outside of their tents.

  I still had questions for him. “What do you do when you move?”

  “Do you see those mules over there?” I looked at where he was pointing and then turned my head back to listen. “We tie the satellite and the generator to the mule with rope.”

  These nomads were connected. A great deal of the hatred toward America in the Middle East is often attributed to a difficulty in reaching people. What I realized from the nomads in Syria, however, is that there is not a problem of access. Satellite television was the most prevalent technology I saw in the Middle East. It existed in the Palestinian refugee camps, in private homes, in shared facilities, and apparently even in the nomadic deserts. The cost was minimal, the access was tremendous, and especially in the slums, cable was often spliced as many as five to eight times between families.

  When nomads in the middle of the desert have upwards of nine hundred channels, lack of access cannot be said to be a problem for those outlets trying to reach Middle Eastern audiences. But those same nomads—like so many others in the Middle East—are glued to Al-Jazeera, Al-Manar, and Al-Arabia, three traditionally anti-Western networks. Changing their preferences is going to be more difficult than giving them access.

  Ihab’s children, however, are a different story. The very idea of channel-surfing excited them and even if they didn’t speak the language, they would watch non-Arabic channels. For them it was about something new, increased access to diversified perspectives. The youth embrace variety far more than the adults, because they have a better understanding of a technology that gives them choices. They were born with choices.

  After watching television with Ihab’s family, Raja and I visited a number of other Bedouin settlements. From there, we saw the other side of Bedouin culture, the nonnomads. These Sunni people were warm, hospitable, and interesting to talk to. What I didn’t realize at the time was that this would not be representative of the larger Sunni population I was about to meet. Where I would go next was a different story.

  As we moved farther east, Syria became stranger and stranger. I began to see scowls rather than friendly grins, and people met me with hostility rather than amiability. The dialect of Arabic also began to change, and it just didn’t seem that I was welcome anywhere. My driver and I had an amiable relationship, but our interactions were about to get awkward and uncomfortable. He still didn’t know I was American and as far as I was concerned, there was no reason to tell him. What I didn’t realize was that as we moved closer toward the Syrian-Iraqi border, there would be checkpoints. After only thirty minutes of driving, we reached the first of these checkpoints, where I was asked to present my passport. My driver reached out his window to the back of the pickup and I handed him my passport. As soon as he realized I was American, our relationship began to sour.

  I could tell that he was pissed that I hadn’t told him I was American. Rather than trying to ameliorate the situation, however, I simply asked him how long it would take to get to the Abu Kamal border with Iraq. He told me it would take two to three hours and then immediately asked with an air of suspicion why I wanted to know. I explained that I was planning to eventually go to Iraq through Turkey, but it might be interesting to enter through Syria. He looked appalled and the car actually slowed down as he turned his head to respond.

  He began making the argument that things weren’t safe in Iraq and that it was not a place to travel, but I persisted. He stopped answering me and we didn’t speak again until we got a flat tire almost an hour and a half later. Ironically, it was right next to a sign with an arrow pointing toward Iraq. I asked him to take a picture with me in front of the sign and he refused. He didn’t want to be in it. As we replaced the tire, I asked the driver if he would mind taking me to Iraq.

  His tone was almost angry. “I told you; you shouldn’t go there!” I asked if I could change his mind by offering more money, but he didn’t budge. He reiterated his same point and stood firm in his refusal to take me there. He became both defensive and neurotic, telling me that he didn’t think it was even possible to cross the border into Iraq and then asking me to promise that if I did make it into Iraq, I wouldn’t tell anybody that I knew him or that he’d driven me.

  Once the tire was fixed, I climbed into the front seat of the pickup truck. We drove in silence for a little while before he once again reminded me that he didn’t know anyone in Deir-e Zur and there was no point in mentioning his name to people. This was in stark contrast to when I’d met him and he pawned himself off as the socialite of eastern Syria. His comments were particularly odd, because he’d told me earlier that he was from Deir-e Zur. He could see I was confused and questioning his level of truthfulness. In an effort to remedy the situation, he contrived the story that the name he had been given was not what people called him. He explained that he went by his father’s name, which was Khalid, and assured me that where he was from they would not know any “Raja.” We reached another checkpoint and stopped just before the metal spikes that a guard had placed in the road. My driver had said he didn’t know if it was possible to cross into Iraq, so I figured I would ask the guard. I sounded like an inquisitive tourist, except I was just a few hours from the Sunni insurgency. Nonetheless, the guard answered that it was possible to cross from Abu Kamal, but I would need a visa to enter Iraq. Raja, or Khalid, or wha
tever my driver’s name was at this point interjected, and demanded the guard explain to me why this was a terrible idea. The checkpoint guard seemed amused and, with great delight, clenched his fist and gestured a decapitation by sliding his thumb across his throat. It sent chills down my spine but was music to my driver’s ears. He now seemed to be waiting for me to give in and give up on Iraq.

  But I didn’t say a word. We hadn’t been more than five minutes past the checkpoint when he pulled his truck to the side of the road. He was confronting me and explained that he would drop me off just before Deir-e Zur, using the excuse that there was too much traffic and he had to deal with replacing the tire. He was making excuses. Before I had mentioned Iraq, he had no problems with anything. But now he didn’t even want to be associated with me.

  Given the controversies and attention surrounding the porous border between Syria and Iraq and given how many insurgents were allegedly hiding out in Deir-e Zur, I wasn’t surprised that he had concerns. He was concerned about traveling with an American in the car. If they thought I was CIA, they might think he was helping the United States and then that could put his life in jeopardy. Or maybe he was concerned that if he proved to know anything about the border or took me there, the United States might think he was a friend of the insurgents. Either way, he felt that any association with an American going to Iraq would be bad for him.

  Through my experience with Raja, I got my first glimpse of what I was about to encounter in Deir-e Zur. Raja or Khalid or whatever his name was now dropped me off at a roundabout just before the bridge leading to the city center. Before I gathered my belongings and went to find another taxi, he said to me again, “Remember not to tell anyone how you got here or that you know me. I am just a taxi driver.” But that wasn’t true. He had already told me he was from the city. He knew what kinds of people were living between Deir-e Zur and the Iraqi border. His paranoia was frightening.

  The city of Deir-e Zur rests right along the Euphrates River at the bank of the southwestern part of ancient Mesopotamia. The famous civilization was comprised of the Fertile Crescent, the arable land that rested between the Euphrates River in the south and the Tigris River in the north. Deir-e Zur has historically been an important farming city and a trading center for business between Syria and Iraq.

  The city of more than 133,000 people stirred controversy immediately after the 2003 United States intervention in Iraq. Reports began to surface that Sunni insurgents were crossing into Syria through Abu Kamal and settling in Deir-e Zur. I had heard from a number of people that there was actually a substantial number of insurgents who were either hiding out in Deir-e Zur or had assimilated in an effort at career change.

  Its contemporary significance was not the only reason I was interested in traveling to Deir-e Zur. During the Armenian Genocide in 1915, the Deir-e Zur province of Syria was the scene of horrific death marches and mass executions of Armenians. Today, there are caves filled with skulls as a reminder of what happened.

  I got into another taxi after parting ways with my driver. Within five minutes, I arrived at my hotel in Deir-e Zur. Everybody was rude to me. At the hotel they gave my blue passport a look of disgust. I really felt like I stood out. People would whisper about me and follow me around. It was not by any stretch of the imagination a comfortable place to be. I spent a few days in Deir-e Zur, exploring and trying to strike up conversations with people. Hardly anyone was interested. On my second day in the city, I hailed a taxi at one of the city roundabouts.

  I wanted to see the famous ruins of Dura Europa, which was home to Syria’s oldest synagogue, and the ancient city of Mari, which was an old Mesopotamian city. I negotiated a price with the driver that he agreed on, but by the time we left the city center and had gone halfway to Dura Europa—a ninety-minute drive away—he doubled the price. I was furious and I refused emphatically. He abruptly stopped the car, turned around, and pulled over.

  “If you will not pay, then get out of my car!” he screamed at me. I was in the middle of a long road with nothing else around me, so I didn’t have much of a choice but to give in to my driver’s extortion. The rest of the ride was hostile and uncomfortable. The glove compartment of the car had been concealed by the seat in front of me, but when I glanced over it, I saw something appalling. It was a decal of Osama bin Laden, with Arabic writing that I recognized as “Death to America.” I wanted to get out of the car and I prayed that there would not be a checkpoint; I didn’t want to think what this driver might do if he realized I was American.

  We arrived at Dura Europa. I had heard so much about it but, at first glance, was unimpressed. It just looked like two mud walls. Because I was paying my driver to wait for an hour and I was desperate to get away from him, I agreed to pay a hundred Syrian pounds for a motorcycle ride through the ruins. I was glad I did, because on the other end of the vast archaeological site was the most spectacular view of the Fertile Crescent that I saw in all of my travels. I sat on the back of this motorcycle with a Sunni man, who comfortably drove me to the old synagogue, told me the story of its history, and was extremely friendly. When we got to a lookout point of the Euphrates River I asked him why my driver had a decal of Osama bin Laden on his dashboard. He told me that my driver is one of the foreigners.

  When I asked the Sunni man what he meant by that, he explained that “he came from Iraq.” He left it at that and wouldn’t give me any more information, but I inferred that this guy had been an insurgent. As our travels continued, I saw that everywhere we went, people treated my driver like a foreigner. Despite my being an outsider as well, people seemed to take my side. When I really wanted to stir up hatred for him, I would tell people about his decal of bin Laden. This was a great way to get people on my side, because nobody wanted to be associated with bin Laden or Al-Qaeda. Even their fellow Sunnis viewed the Iraqis who had come into Deir-e Zur as harmful to the community. To begin with, Syria and Iraq had been historical enemies. More important, the Syrians had come to resent the lack of security and the international scrutiny that had resulted from Iraqi Sunni infiltrating Deir-e Zur.

  From the hostile province of Deir-e Zur, I went by taxi to the northeastern Syrian town of Qamishli, which was my last stop before heading to Turkey and on to Iraq. Qamishli had been a historically peaceful town. The city of two hundred thousand people is a remarkable mix of Shi’a, Sunni, Christians, and Jews. It also has a substantial Kurdish population that has been harshly suppressed by the Syrian regime; there is a long history of Kurdish oppression in Syria, which has continued into the present. After repeated hostility in Deir-e Zur, this quiet village was a great place to relax for a few days before I put my life to the test again.

  For sixty dollars, I was able to catch a ride from the Syrian-Turkish border all the way to Ibrahim Khalil in northern Iraq. The whole trip took five hours and I spent most of the time wondering what would happen once I got to Iraq. I will never forget when I first saw those large gates at Ibrahim Khalil after crossing from Habur, Turkey, into no-man’s-land. This was it. The border area was chaotic, as lines of people waited in a gathering area in the middle of several hideous cement buildings. The place was swarming with children lugging large coolers on their backs trying to sell cold drinks. Given that the place felt like a sauna, I’d imagine business was good for them.

  I had been told by experts that going through Habur, Turkey, was the safest way to enter Iraq, but the extent of that safety was debated. Some said I was walking into a death sentence, while others suggested that I would be fine. But nobody denied the existence of a risk.

  By the time I got to the Iraqi border, I was sweating bullets, both from the unbearable heat and my nerves.

  I prepared myself to enter what I thought would be a war zone. As I stood before the Ibrahim Khalil border post in the gateway to the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, it did not look like the Iraq I had seen on television. The border was peaceful, surrounded by gorgeous green hills in the distance. Just in front of me I saw a small blue sign that s
aid, “Welcome to the Iraqi Kurdistan Region.” I took a photo with my Turkish driver and then he left me.

  Before I arrived, I had been promised escort by the Kurdistan Democratic Party. I really hoped this would work out, as I was now all alone and without a car on the border between Turkey and Iraq.

  I could hardly breathe, partially because of the excruciating heat but mostly because I was sandwiched between two rather large Kurdish men on a short wooden bench. Surprisingly, the Iraqi border was less chaotic than others I had been to, and despite the fact that it was in truth the entrance to a war zone, it was a pleasant calm. One of the men beside me had defined and cartoonlike features. His head was covered in a tightly wrapped cloth and he wore baggy gray pants held up by a stylish Kurdish cummerbund. We were both curious to speak with each another. I wanted to ask him about Iraq, and he just wanted to know what I was doing there. I noticed him glancing at my American passport.

  Just as I began to zone out, he asked me if it was my first time in Iraqi Kurdistan, to which I replied that it was. The fact that he could offer me one of my first perspectives of the region animated him. He adjusted his turban and looked right at me. I don’t think I have ever had someone stare at me with such a direct, focused gaze. If he hadn’t been so friendly and well-intentioned, I might have found it somewhat abrasive. He told me I would love Iraqi Kurdistan and then asked me what had brought me to Iraq.

  I explained that I had come to Iraq to meet Kurdish youth and get their perspective on how they felt about politics, democracy, the war in Iraq, and the United States occupation. Before I could finish, he interrupted. His eyebrows wrinkled as he looked at me sternly and told me, “It is not an occupation. It is liberation.” Wow, I thought, FOX News must really be popular in this part of the country.