American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us

by Steven Emerson

  When Abdullah Azzam was killed in 1989, his two oldest sons died with him. He left behind a large surviving family and a band of dedicated followers, most of whom worked with his “Mektab e-Khidemat Lil-Mujahideen,” or “Office of Services for the Mujahideen,” a small Arab outpost that published Al-Jihad, a monthly Arabic magazine. In the late 1980s and early 1990s that outpost was usurped by Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda organization, which had formed as an offshoot of Azzam’s Peshawar-based group.

  Handsome in jeans and a leather jacket, Hudaifa looked more like a denizen of Madrid or Naples than a guerrilla warrior. Although as tall as his father, he had nothing of the late sheikh’s austerity. The family home was in a suburb of Peshawar, but Hudaifa occupied another house in Islamabad’s privileged E-6 sector, where many diplomats and high-ranking Pakistani officials live. This is not to say he lived in grand style. In 1994 the house was divided into two apartments with Hudaifa, his wife, and their newborn son in the rear, living in utter simplicity. The kitchen was a mess, and it was hard to find a clean glass. “We had many guests last night,” Hudaifa offered in man-of-the-world style. His wife was nowhere to be seen. The Azzams strictly observed purdah, and as males we would never be permitted to see her.

  At the time, Hudaifa was a student at Islamabad’s International Islamic University, which is housed in the grand National Mosque, a huge tent-like structure with four minarets at the foot of the Margalla Hills, which serve as a backdrop to Pakistan’s new capital. Created in the 1960s, Islamabad is still expanding rapidly. The mosque is a tourist attraction, and on holidays large numbers of people assemble there for prayer. On postcards, the building seems grandiose, but in person this impression evaporates quickly. Both the mosque and the university are the accomplishments of General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, the religious conservative who ruled with an iron fist from 1977 to 1988. The university was the personal brainchild of this man whom the not-so-pious Pakistanis derisively nicknamed their “priest president.”

  Incorporated into the new university was the Islamic Research Institute, created in 1962 to reform Islamic law and modernize the religion. It quickly became a target of fundamentalist wrath. The “priest president” placed it under the new university’s jurisdiction and all thoughts of reforming Islam quietly disappeared. None of this appeared to be known to Hudaifa, who walked past the Institute’s front door every day but did not know its history. In fact, most of his classes were taught by Arabs who disguised their sense of inferiority in this environment by staying aloof from Pakistani scholars. Hudaifa, although possessing a fine mind open to fresh impulses, treated the Pakistanis in almost a colonial manner. In the course of our first week, the only materials we saw Hudaifa read were our passports, which he apparently wanted to memorize.

  Our visit to the Institute was an emotional reunion for Khalid, who had taught here from 1967 to 1974. Before long almost a dozen of his former colleagues had gathered to welcome him. To our amazement, Hudaifa did not know a single one—nor was he very curious. To him they were all just Pakistanis, with nothing to differentiate a shopkeeper or night watchman from an internationally known scholar. Later he admitted his reservations. He said that most Pakistanis were hypocrites and opportunists. “Nothing remains a secret in this country,” he told us. “Everyone takes bribes, without exception.” These national and ethnic differences constantly disturbed the utopian concepts of Islamic brotherhood. “The oneness of the umma quickly founders once Muslims from one culture are set in another,” is how Khalid explained it to me. “The more Islamist they are, the more problems this creates, since the slightest deviation from their own norm is considered a deviation from the pure faith.”

  The problem that has always faced the jihad is—to use military terminology—an extreme form of “mission creep.” The fundamentalists would like the entire world to accept their version of Islam, so no matter where they start, they are always tempted to expand their targets. Hudaifa’s contempt for moderate Pakistanis, and his understanding that Muslims from different cultures were at odds, reflected this. Sizing him up, I tried to determine where the bulk of his energies would lie.

  Having heard the stories about Arabs indulging in a kind of slave trade, and forcing “unity” on Muslims from different cultures by “marrying” Afghan girls and widows, we gingerly asked Hudaifa about intermarriages. “People are very different,” he replied. “With such disparate customs and mentalities, it is not easy to live together. But the jihad has brought Arab brothers from different countries together and made them marry from each other’s families.” The practice, of course, goes back to the Prophet Muhammad. In fact, a sister of Hudaifa’s had been given in marriage to an Algerian, a loyal lieutenant of Azzam and a veteran of the Afghan war and the FIS war on Algeria, now in London. We tried to suggest to Hudaifa that the large-scale population movement among Muslim countries—the influx of hundreds of thousands of Kuwaiti Palestinians into Jordan in the outwash of the Gulf War, for example—would unsettle many of these countries. He did not see the point and was obviously unaccustomed to sociological explanations. In his Manichean vision, the world is divided into good and bad, Islam and the infidels. All Muslims are good, therefore they should get along with each other.

  We were ready now to head from Islamabad to Peshawar and the Afghan border. Hudaifa offered to drive us in his black Toyota, his only self-indulgence, and we happily accepted. Hudaifa turned out to be an aggressive driver, but he delivered us safely.

  The journey was a historical treat. The Gandhara region was originally conquered by Alexander the Great, who built the city of Taxila, leaving behind a contingent of soldiers. Maintained for three hundred years, the kingdom was eventually swallowed by the local population, which had adopted Buddhism. It is now the home of some of the oldest Buddha statues in the world—although none as large as the rock statues of Buddha in Afghanistan, which the Taliban destroyed in March 2001. We passed a memorial pillar where our highway crossed the Grand Trunk Road, which once crossed the entire Indian subcontinent. Hudaifa declared that the pillar had been built by Muhammad bin Qasim, the Arab general sent from Baghdad to conquer India in the eighth century. Khalid rolled his eyes and quietly informed me that the pillar was erected by the British in the nineteenth century.

  As we passed through Wah, Pakistan’s most important center of arms production, Khalid explained that it was a favorite hangout for bandits, who attacked travelers and disappeared into the rugged countryside. I was skeptical. But the next morning the papers reported that robbers had attacked a bus and made off with 200,000 rupees only minutes after we passed through the area.

  We arrived at Azzam’s family residence in the dark of night. We were greeted at the gate by the night watchman, a ubiquitous figure in Pakistan. From his looks, he was probably a former mujahid. The house didn’t look like a fortress or guerrilla headquarters. Inside there was virtually no furniture, just some mattresses spread over a richly embroidered Oriental rug. After being introduced to Hamza, Hudaifa’s seventeen-year-old brother, we all squatted on the floor. Hamza, who was attending high school in Peshawar, seemed to think of little else but getting married. Premarital sex is a capital sin in Muslim society, so I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. He enquired seriously about the daughters of Abu Ayman, his uncle in Chicago who had arranged the visit for us. His questions were so solemn and serious that it was hard not to laugh. We could only tell him that the two daughters we had met were both married. But there was a third daughter, Hamza insisted, who was supposed to be very pretty. (Back in the United States several months later, we actually relayed Hamza’s interest to the uncle, who expressed unmistakable approval. Our matchmaking efforts may not have been entirely in vain.)

  In Peshawar, even going to the bathroom in a sex-segregated society is difficult. When we informed our host of our needs, he sent word to the women throughout the house to stay out of sight. When I was in the bathroom, I sensed the whole household holding its breath while waiting to return to
normal. When I was through, a young man stood waiting to escort me back to the living room.

  Hudaifa showed me a photo album of his father. He had quite a few of them. We also saw expressions of grief from the media. Even Pakistan’s prime minister Benazir Bhutto had sent condolences—though Azzam had criticized her publicly. After a dinner of delicious Palestinian food, Hudaifa drove us to our hotel.

  Next morning Hudaifa took us to the Office of Services, where we met Salih, a Palestinian staff member. He spoke English fairly well and was quite communicative, trying to convert me to his cause. Like Hudaifa, Salih spoke quite favorably of the United States, especially our freedom of religion and expression. Nowhere in the Muslim world, he said, was a believer granted such freedom to live his faith and express his views. The problem, he said, was that the United States supported tyrannical regimes in the Arab world, especially in Israel. Jews, he explained, have too much power in America, controlling our media and shaping national policies.

  He also objected to America’s immorality, specifically its sexual promiscuity. It’s a commonly heard charge; at times it appears to be the Islamists’ principal problem. Their main criterion for good and evil in this world is marital fidelity, with virginity as a precondition to marriage. Some of the “Arab Afghans” migrated to Pakistan because they saw their own societies succumbing to sinfulness. On arrival, however, they soon discovered that sinfulness exists here as well, especially in large cities such as Karachi and Lahore. Peshawar was a little more acceptable but still declining. For these pilgrims, Pakistan—which literally means the “Land of the Pure”—was not the Shangri-la they anticipated. In 1996, when the Taliban began to take power in Afghanistan, many of them moved across the border.

  Most conversation with jihadists turns sooner or later to children’s behavior. In Islam, respect for elders is essential in a way that Westerners can barely imagine. For the Islamist, it is essential in establishing proper relations between the sexes. America can hardly hope to win approval on that score.

  That afternoon Salih took us to visit Abu Suhaib, a young editor of Al-Jihad, Azzam’s monthly magazine. Suhaib was somewhat suspicious of our unanticipated arrival. He told us he had no desire to visit the United States and criticized American life as excessive in its libertinism and negative effects on children. We explained that the Catholic school Khalid’s eldest daughter attended in Chicago was hardly different from the ideal Muslim school. Suhaib registered this information without interest. He had visitors outside but dismissed them, obviously interested in us despite his aloofness.

  We were impressed with the production facilities of Al-Jihad and wondered how Suhaib did it all himself. He put us off with sincere modesty. “But what about the future?” we asked. “Aren’t you threatened with expulsion, given all the pressure the various Arab capitals are exerting on the Pakistani government?”

  “There is nothing to be afraid of,” responded Suhaib. “If we are expelled, we will return to Jordan. Each of us has his profession. Most of us had good jobs before. We are members of the educated class.”

  “But won’t you miss the life of a mujahid?” pursued Khalid. “Here you have a mission and a sense of purpose. Won’t it be boring to go back to your old life?”

  Abu Suhaib, visibly moved, admitted all this to be true. Behind his equanimity he obviously hoped the war would continue somewhere.

  The Arab Afghans we met in Peshawar seemed a milder brand. The tougher ones had all left for Sudan and Yemen, with the most active breed fighting in Kashmir, Bosnia, and Somalia. In addition, fierce fighting was now raging between rival factions in Afghanistan. A few adventurers had moved on to Tajikistan, which promised to be a new Central Asian battleground.

  Those who stayed behind were potential settlers. They already had their own infrastructure, with school and community centers. Hamza, Hudaifa’s younger brother, for example, did not attend a Pakistani school. His high school was all Arabic, a product of the Afghan war. The mosque where Azzam had preached his sermons before being blown up had also become a school for the Arab community. Before the war there were no Arab schools in Peshawar.

  Tapes show how the elder Azzam would captivate an audience, weaving his account with mesmerizing detail. Hudaifa does the same thing. Like his father, Hudaifa is a storyteller in the tradition of Arabian Nights. He told us the story of a Libyan mujahid who became one of the first Arab martyrs to die in Tajikistan, mowing down rows of his enemies even after he had been mortally wounded. Hudaifa’s English seemed to be getting better and better with each episode. He obviously enjoyed talking with us, even though he did not fully trust us. Overall, I thought he seemed far more attracted to the United States than to Pakistan.

  Hudaifa confided his problems with his Jordanian passport. It was about to expire and the Jordanian embassy seemed unwilling to renew it. They wanted him to return home. He did not fear jail, even though he would certainly end up there—moderate Islamic governments being much less tolerant of fundamentalism than we are. But he still wanted to travel abroad. We asked him if he would like to come to the United States, where so much of his family has settled. He seemed to like the idea but felt obligated to continue his father’s work. Strangely, he was much more interested in talking with me than with Khalid. While he had been around Muslim scholars like Khalid all his life, I was a curious American journalist runaway from the Great Satan.

  The next day Hudaifa showed us the entire jihad organization, including a fairly large compound with ten printing presses. The laborers were all Afghans, the headmen Palestinians. There were no educated Afghanis or Pakistanis around. More and more I realized that he was living in a vacuum with only a few devoted natives, without the rallying support that his father enjoyed before his death.

  Hudaifa was not the boss of the show, however. The headman was Muhammad Yusuf Abbas, commonly known as Abu l-Qasim, who was suspicious and angry to find us in his office. He gave a scolding to Hudaifa, who remained remarkably calm, holding his ground without perplexity or embarrassment. Abbas was finally reassured of our purpose and, in the end, he even agreed to be tape-recorded.

  “Why has jihad become necessary?” I asked him. “Is it an obligation to Muslims everywhere?”

  “After Afghanistan it has spread to many places,” he replied. “It has spread to Kashmir, the Philippines, Algeria, and Bosnia and has grown stronger in Somalia since the U.N. intervention.”

  Why is jihad necessary in Muslim countries like Egypt and Algeria? Does it make sense for Muslims to be killing Muslims?

  “In the countries that used to follow Islam, the so-called Muslim countries, the jihad movement has arisen because they have been deprived of Islam. Western colonialism ruled those countries without Islam and the liberation movements were unable to restore Islam to its rightful place. Muslims have finally become aware of this point. Now everywhere they want Islam.”

  What are the teachings of jihad? Should it go west? Is it the role of Muslims to carry out jihad everywhere?

  “The Islamic teaching about jihad says that it is to clear the way for those calling to God’s religion. Wherever the missionaries of Islam are fought against, it becomes necessary for the Muslim power to protect them.”

  In so many words, the answer was that America and the West were new arrivals on the target list, as legitimate a target as Israel or the secular regimes of the Muslim world. Jihad would follow wherever the warriors went.

  *

  The next day, Hudaifa suggested we take a trip to the Khyber Pass. Once again we piled into the Toyota. As it turned out, Hudaifa meant a trip to the Peshawar exit to the Khyber Gate, which is on the border of the tribal areas, only loosely associated with Pakistan. Foreigners needed a special permit to enter there.

  At the checkpoint, Hudaifa, at our behest, tried to rush through over the protests of the militia guards. Using all his broken Pashtu, he played strongman, trying to impress them with his invisible authority. The guards were polite and apologetic but firm. They we
re only doing their duty and might get in trouble with their superiors. Finally, realizing there was no point in having a confrontation, Khalid pulled their officer aside and explained in Urdu—the government language—that we just wanted to go a few hundred yards to take some photos. He immediately agreed.

  One of the militia accompanied us. Upon learning Hudaifa is Palestinian, he immediately said, “PLO,” to which Hudaifa replied, “No, Hamas!” Surprisingly, the militiaman didn’t seem to recognize Hamas.

  Unable to go as far as Dara, the region’s famous arms bazaar, or Landi Kotal, a smugglers’ paradise where Pakistanis go to buy electrical appliances and other goods, we settled for a small outdoor market near the Khyber Gate. Here it was all in miniature—small shops filled with smuggled clothing and TV sets plus weapons from all of the world, some duplicated by Afghan tribesmen in primitive workshops. Seeing a local manufactured Kalashnikov knock-off, Hudaifa could hardly contain himself. He rented it for a half-hour for the pleasure of firing a few rounds in the air. “I haven’t done that in more than a year,” he exulted. I took photos of this trigger-happy international revolutionary. Then Khalid almost burned himself handling the gun. Hudaifa explained that that was the difference between the local varieties and the real thing; the Russian guns generated much less heat.

  We returned to Peshawar just in time for Friday prayer services at the mosque. The sermon was over but we did catch the prayer. The majority of the faithful at this overcrowded mosque were Pakistani but there were about forty Arabs among them. Most were members of Azzam’s organization. As we left the mosque, two Sudanese passed us, then turned back and shook hands, greeting us in Arabic with special friendliness.