We have given you the victory: Fire.
He crossed his eyes and retreated: Retreat.
As the day progressed, my anticipation grew. In Lebanon, the swamp of the civil war had obscured my objective—jihad and the global advancement of Islam. Here the lines of battle were clear-cut. The Communist infidels were murdering Muslims, marauding over Muslim lands. Despite Abu Fox’s western cigar strategy, I was again ready to die. I was not alone. Near sunset, Aassun, Zeid, and our other men gathered in a corner of the cave and we submitted ourselves to Allah. Because the mujahadeen’s water supply was limited and precious, we performed the ritual cleansing for al-shaheed, the martyrs, with sand, as prescribed by Muhammad in the hadith. Then we knelt facing east and recited the salat al-akhra, the final prayer.
When I finished, I felt again the bore of eyes and glanced up to see Abu Fox atop the radar platform, looking at me and shaking his head.
Soon after, the sun slipped behind the mountains and its light bled away, leaving an indigo twilight. Loaded with five rockets and three launchers, my fedayeen and a mujahadeen support unit of five men stepped out of al-qa’idah, along with two of the Americans. This time, we were dressed in black clothing and keffiyeh, the better to melt into the night. An hour later, we had retraced our route through the grooves, emerged beyond their safety, and begun our slow descent into the valley.
Four hours later, we made camp, sleeping in the open, crowded around a mimosa tree. We lit no light or fire of any kind that might give away our position. During the long night, we rotated guard shifts, always with two men staying awake and three men sleeping. Our sleep was interrupted, however: late into the night, mujahadeen in the villages set off several explosions—bait for the Soviets to investigate the next day.
Two hours before dawn, we heard finger-tapping on the radio: Move out.
Two hours after that, the scratching came: Stop, this is your position.
The sun rose, flooding the valley with light. In the distance, beyond the pass, we heard the thudding beat of the Hinds. We lay low, eyes on the pass, until a chopper formation appeared over the peaks on our right, painted in camouflage, bristling with rockets. The Hinds over-flew us, sniffing the valley for mujahadeen.
The Americans kept absolute radio silence.
Next, a MiG fighter seared in over the mountains and took up a high racetrack pattern, circling like a hawk. Minutes later, the target appeared: a Sikhoi bomber.
The choppers had roamed to the other end of the valley. And now a fire rose inside me, the fire of victory before victory has happened. As I rose from my cover, I felt as if the whole world was watching me, even Allah, cheering me on from jannah.
The signal came: We have given you the victory.
Adrenaline charged through my veins. I felt as if I alone could cut down an entire Soviet battalion. The Sikhoi flew directly toward me, then banked slightly right, creating a wider target. I shouldered my SAM launcher, took aim, fired, and dove for cover again.
The missile locked instantly onto the Sikhoi’s heat. It streaked up through the sky and pierced the plane where its left wing joined the fuselage. The SAM exploded, severing the bomber’s wing, launching it up and back, away from the aircraft. The Sikhoi then detonated in a series of rapid booms, fire ripping forward and aft through the fuselage as the bomber continued in forward flight. As I watched, the Sikhoi’s right wing spiraled away, then the plane disintegrated, debris bursting out across the valley.
A single Hind helicopter came roaring back, but Aassun rose beside me and blew it out of the sky. From two hundred meters away, Zeid’s position, I saw another missile rocket skyward, narrowly missing the circling MiG. Now I heard triple-A fire erupt from mujahadeen ground positions, the sound echoing in the gorge like thunder.
As Abu Fox had predicted, the Soviets blazed out of the valley in a hasty retreat. At that sight, my mind and body soared to a place I had never been in my life. It was the highest point of ecstasy, as though I had entered paradise.
7
After we struck the Soviets in Afghanistan, my team withdrew through Pakistan. Sheikh Fahim connected with a powerful sheikh in Kandahar who applied pressure to General Hafiz, the Pakistani general with whom we had left the remaining SAMs, to ensure that the missiles were distributed to the Afghan mujahadeen. Sheikh Fahim also sent a private boat to pick us up in Pakistan and carry us back to Iraq, where I caught a flight to London, then to the U.A.E.
During that journey, I had much time to think about what Abu Fox had said. That there was a life in America for someone like me. Many of the fedayeen, as well as fighters from other factions, fantasized about going there to wage what we called “cultural jihad”: converting infidels to Islam while slowly, incrementally changing the institutions of American society—its schools, its laws, the government itself. A lot of university students were already there to begin this jihad, but they were not strong or well organized, Sheikh Fahim said. They were not jihadists. Also, they had begun to get soft, taking the Saudi money and buying Mercedeses, women, even their educations. A well-placed gift with this professor or that one, and they had an A in every class. Sheikh Fahim felt I might be able to renew their fire, put them back to work.
I was anxious for the assignment. A lot of jihadists like me, if we did not attach ourselves firmly to a Gaddafi or a Hussein or an Arafat, would likely wind up dead. Sooner or later one of the groups would turn on us like a black widow. To be assassinated was a real possibility. So with the blessing of Sheikh Fahim and other Saudis, I decided to go to America as Abu Fox had suggested—but not to work for her.
Instead, I was going to infiltrate, to poison, to destroy.
Southwestern United States
2008
In February, Zak, Walid, and I were scheduled to speak at a conference on terrorism at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. A week long, the event featured many speakers, as well as guests from universities and think tanks around the world. The conference was supposed to result in a report to Congress recommending next steps in the war on terror.
Two days before the conference, my phone rang. It was Keith, our manager. “Have you heard from Zak?” he said.
“No, not yet. Is he supposed to be back from Finland?”
“On his way. He should have called me from Heathrow, in London.”
Since our first meeting, Zak and I had become fast friends. We spoke at least once a week, with my calling him at his home in Canada. My heart had been whispering to my brain to call him, but I had been so busy. Now I called his cell. He was probably still en route from Finland. No answer. Next I called his home. No answer.
I tried each number several times. It was not like Zak not to check in.
That same day, a newspaper called The Gazette ran the following headline: “Factious choice in speakers.” The article itself began by calling us liars:
The Air Force Academy will host three “former terrorists” as speakers Wednesday to the cadet wing, despite warnings that at least one of them has fabricated portions of his past and protests that the purpose is to promote Christianity. Critics say the speakers, who have converted to Christianity, were invited to profess evangelical beliefs, inappropriate in a government academic setting.14
I was stunned. “Former terrorists”? In quotes? And who among us had fabricated our stories?
The writer went on to quote a member of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation who, very simply, lied: “‘Despite the speakers’ self-described knowledge of radical Islam, the goal of the seminar isn’t to enlighten cadets to other belief systems,’ said David Antoon, a 1970 academy graduate and a member of a group that has accused the academy of encouraging Christian proselytizing.”
In fact, we were going to the Air Force Academy specifically to “enlighten cadets to other belief systems”—the belief systems that had resulted in the bombing of the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, the World Trade Center bombing, the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, 9/11, and more recently, suici
de bombings and the daily slaughter of civilian women and children around the world.
We knew. We had fought on that side. Now this man, Antoon, sitting in his “safe” country, where since 9/11 federal agencies had halted at least fourteen domestic attacks, pretended to know better than us?
I was incensed. These people did not interview me. They did not interview Zak or Walid. I had seen fairer reporting from al-Jazeera.
The next morning, early, Keith called me again. “Have you heard from Zak?”
“No. Not a word.”
Now my heart was troubled. Could something have happened to him? I thought of his frailty, his diabetes, his heart. Could illness have struck him in Finland? Then a worse thought: What if he had encountered hostility to his message in Europe, where radical Islam is strong?
Again, I tried each number several times, then called Keith. “He could be dead in a hotel room somewhere,” Keith said, real concern lacing his voice. Then he echoed my earlier thoughts: “Or someone could have gotten to him.”
Keith decided to call Zak’s church in Canada. “I’ll have them go to his home and check to see if he’s there. If he doesn’t show up by this afternoon, I’ll tell them to call the police and have them break down the door.”
The next day, another media attack, this one from the New York Times:
Muslim organizations objected to the fact that no other perspective about Islam was offered, saying that the three speakers—Mr. Anani, Kamal Saleem and Walid Shoebat—habitually paint Muslims as inherently violent. All were born in the Middle East, but Mr. Saleem and Mr. Shoebat are now American citizens, while Mr. Anani has
Canadian citizenship. “Their entire world view is based on the idea that Islam is evil,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on Islamic American Relations. “We want to provide a balancing perspective to their hate speech.”15
The Council on Islamic American Relations (CAIR) has been linked with terrorists—both by their own words and by federal prosecutors—for years. And the New York Times, a respected nationally read newspaper, quotes their spokesman on our credibility?
As CAIR noted in its 1996 report, “The Price of Ignorance,” the group considers it “hate” when U.S. law enforcement agencies arrest top terrorist officials. CAIR founders Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad in 1993 reportedly attended a three-day conference aimed at derailing the Olso Peace Accords because of fear the accords would isolate the Islamist Hamas movement.16 The following year, Nihad Awad declared, “I am in support of the Hamas movement.”
In 2007, CAIR was named an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a case that linked the Holy Land Foundation, an Islamic charity, with terror groups. The case ended in a mistrial. But in a federal court filing, prosecutors described CAIR as “having conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists.” To top it off, four CAIR officials have either been convicted of terrorism-related offenses or deported because of terrorist ties.
So when I read in the New York Times that CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper accused Zak, Walid, and me of “hate speech,” I did not know whether to laugh or run the newspaper through my shredder. Maybe both.
America
1981–1985
1
How can a terrorist penetrate America? What does it take? The answer is simple: it takes a rope from the outside and a rope from the inside. Money and documents are the outside rope. America’s own institutions, particularly our universities, are the rope within.
In the 1970s, a new kind of bad guy burst into view: the international terrorist. Wielding a machine gun, his face was sheathed in a black balaclava, meant both to conceal his identity and inspire fear. The radical Muslim began to show himself all over the world on a regular basis: Entebbe, Mogadishu, Germany. But in those days, no one thought radical Muslims would come to the United States. It happened while America slept. And it continues today. Muslims crossed the Canadian border, forming a network all the way through the United States. I was one of them. We became termites in the wall of the Great Satan. The wall looked sound from the outside. But inside the wall, funded by the Muslim Brotherhood, the Saudis, and the United Arab Emirates, we ate away at the foundations of this country.
I was twenty-three years old when I arrived here in 1981, bearing a temporary visa I obtained in Abu Dhabi and thirty-five thousand dollars in my bank account, given to me by an Islamist sheikh whom I had introduced to three very accommodating French girls. I remained wired into the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups wielding heavy sticks. I first set up in Wassau, Wisconsin, where I freelanced as I had in Europe, speaking in poor neighborhoods and on university campuses about the virtues of Islam. I also networked quickly with Muslim student groups already established in America, such as the Muslim Students Association (MSA) and the Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA). I attended their conferences to hear Islamist speakers exercise their first-amendment right to hate America and the rest of the evil West.
Less than a year later, I moved to a major southern city for one reason only: it was smack in the middle of the Bible belt, the center of Christianity in the United States. If I was going to target America, I thought, I might as well aim at her heart.
The city where I settled already harbored a significant group of young Muslim radicals, already hard at work in an apartment mosque. Several men concentrated on collecting information. Some specialized in “mapping.” Where do the Jews live? Put it on a map. Which city officials are Jews? Put them on a map. These brothers also mapped the Muslim community, which was much smaller then than it is today. Another brother worked for the city and was able to get us blueprints of key buildings. We made copies and mailed them to associates in Saudi Arabia and New York.
One of the brothers, Hamza, worked at the DMV and was able to procure names and addresses. He carefully catalogued which Muslims were peaceful and who, therefore, could not be trusted.
Another brother, Hamer, a Saudi from a high family in Riyadh, was a professional student who used his father’s money to keep himself constantly enrolled at the city’s major state university. Introducing himself around campus as Marco, he affected the image of a friendly, wide-eyed foreigner who found America charming. But behind Hamer’s smile lay a calculating mind as sharp as a razor. While I knew him, he finished two degrees, all the while using oil money to buy small grocery stores and gas stations, which we used to launder money made selling illegal cigarettes.
All over the city, then linking up with other cities around the south, we established small sleeper cells in apartment mosques. In addition to the Koran and other religious literature, we kept radical pamphlets published by the Arab student groups, books on jihad, and a series of crude VHS tapes that were like a mini video boot camp: lessons on hand-to-hand combat, mixing chemicals, and the proper use and care of the AK–47.
As in Europe, my job was recruitment. When I was not preaching Islam, I affected a Parisian accent, passing myself off as a light-skinned, blue-eyed Frenchman. But while evangelizing, I revealed my Middle Eastern background as I canvassed neighborhoods ripe for a message of power, discipline, and success. I spent my days opening the eyes of many to the glory of Allah and opening the eyes of a select few to the teaching of jihad.
It was very easy: all I had to do was knock on doors.
“Hello, I am Kamal Saleem,” I would say. “I am just in your neighborhood looking to see who is hungry or has need of financial help.”
You would not believe how many people in these Bible belt neighborhoods simply wanted something to eat. Whenever I found such a family, I went to a grocery store and bought big sacks of beans, rice, flour, and canned goods. Then I delivered the food, saying, “This is a gift from Allah. Allah sent me here as a messenger.” Most people, especially grateful mothers on welfare and food stamps, thanked me. Some raised a skeptical eyebrow, and some choked back tears. But none of them turned away the food.
I simply blessed them and went on my way. No pressure. But I would visit again.
I knew very well that a mother was the key to a house. The next week, I would show up at her front door with a paper sack brimming with more groceries. Only this time, I tucked in a package of meat. When I put meat in the grocery bags, the American poor loved me.
“A gift from Allah,” I explained. “He sent me to bless you.”
On the third visit, I would bring a half gallon of milk. Meat and milk, these are the expensive things. And the next time I came, many mothers would welcome me in. These women were not only the key to their own homes, but to whole neighborhoods. By this time, I had served them. I had shown them kindness. And now they wanted to know why.
I remember one woman, Maria. I met her on a day when her baby had had no milk or formula for three days because she had no money to buy any. I rushed to a grocery store nearby and quickly returned with a gallon of milk.
“God bless you!” she said, standing in the doorway, holding her baby girl, a tiny smudge of a child with thick lashes fringing wide, dark eyes. Maria was a tiny Hispanic woman in her twenties with dark hair she wore swept back into a loose ponytail. The baby burrowed and sniffled at her neck. “I have been praying and praying that God would send someone to help us.”
“He has sent me to help you,” I said.
Behind her I saw a bare floor and a worn sofa. A toddler played on the floor with some kind of wooden dog with wheels instead of legs. “I am a Muslim. Like you, a person of the Book, the Scriptures.”
Most of the Hispanics I visited were Catholics, and, I had learned, many of the African Americans came from the Christian denomination called Baptist. My line was, “The Jews and the Christians and the Muslims are all people of the Book. You practice Christianity. I practice Islam.”
I knew it wasn’t true. I knew Jesus Christ had been a Muslim. All the true prophets were Muslims, but the Christians and Jews, down through history, had perverted the truth on this point. Still, I was practicing al-toqiah. It was okay to lie as long as I was lying in order to serve Allah.
The Blood of Lambs: A Former Terrorist's Memoir of Death and Redemption Page 24