A Season in Hell

by Robert R. Fowler

  We were instructed never to talk to him but we cheated a little whenever we could, if only with a wave and a few discreet, encouraging words. At Camp Canada, I recall Soumana, after being summoned one evening to prayer, stumbling past us muttering to himself, “Je deviens fou, … un fou” (I’m going crazy, … crazy).

  The AQIM mujahideen who held us seemed to live an enormously joyless life. They did laugh, but rarely, and when they did I was not always sure why. Now and then Louis and I would chuckle about something but tended to quickly suppress it. Bearing in mind that we had limited control over our demeanour, we disagreed over whether we should appear to our captors as bearing up (staunch, brave, and healthy) or frail and dejected (depressed and vulnerable). I thought the former would yield better results while Louis tended to believe that the latter would elicit a more sympathetic response.

  We agreed not to cut our hair as we thought they would come to believe that sawing off the head of an old, dishevelled, frail-looking person would not make a good propaganda video. They insisted during our religious indoctrination sessions that they venerated age and that Islam required them to be generous to the weak. We hoped that our wild hair and gaunt faces would stimulate that charitable instinct.

  We determined as well that we would seek to conduct ourselves with dignity at all times and in all circumstances, and that we would be respectful, open, and correct in our dealings with our guards in the hope of encouraging them to treat us in the same manner.

  Jews and Christians are considered by Muslims as believers who follow an older—but, of course, superseded—revelation from God and therefore, in the eyes of our kidnappers, are closer to Islam than any other brand of kafir. Beyond that, Omar One wasn’t at all interested in the differences between our Biblical parables and their Qur’anic parallels. He couldn’t have cared less about the evolution of the Christian Church or the sectarian distinctions and theological and liturgical points on which Louis, the Catholic, and I, the posturing Protestant, differed. His certainty was absolute. No other religion was of any import. His version was right—completely and utterly—on all particulars of faith, and we and most Muslims for that matter were at best dramatically misguided (“Seventy-three of seventy-four sects are wrong,” he would intone) and at worst screaming heretics.

  I found the lack of intellectual curiosity among the mujahideen, evidently including religious curiosity, startling but little different from the fundamentalist Christians and Jews I have encountered. The closest parallel I can conceive of (and one that would have enraged my abductors) is that of the warrior-monks of the Crusades, those good Christian knights who screamed, “Deus lo volt!” (God wills it) as they took Jerusalem in 1099 and allegedly slaughtered every man, woman, and child in the city—wading through blood up to their knees—simply because they were infidels occupying the holy land. Not so different, I’d argue, from mujahideen screaming “Allahu Akbar!” as they shred themselves and those around them in suicide attacks seeking to rid Muslim lands of occupying infidels.

  Anything we believed, especially about religion but also about most anything else, they considered to be false, corrupt, and therefore not only unworthy of discussion but also intrinsically evil. Even talking about such differences was likely to incur the wrath of their vengeful and famously jealous god.

  The issue of religious conversion dominated our relationships with every one of our captors. It was the only subtext of any relevance to Omar One and the exclusive consideration in all our dealings with Omar Two. The children, despite their limited understanding of French, were mesmerized by Omar One’s performances as he acted out his stories, so they could not understand why we were not similarly moved. They hung on his words, and revelled in his enthusiasm and his antics as he reenacted the Prophet’s battles. Omar would dance about, swinging his imaginary sabre and—assuming the persona of Khalid, “the sword of Allah” (who, we were told, won 127 consecutive battles in the name of the Prophet)—vanquish multiple enemies, invariably against odds that ought to have been overwhelming. Why was that not enough to convince us?

  Our kidnappers believed fervently that Allah was on their side and that His vengeance on their enemies would be terrible, if not necessarily swift. They could therefore not begin to comprehend why, having benefited from so much instruction from such a fervent and truthful preacher, we had not quickly signed on.

  They were also at a loss to understand why we always rebuffed such entreaties by insisting that we needed to know more about Islam before we could contemplate such a decision. “What more needs to be said or learned?” they inquired with growing frustration. “It is really simple: accept Allah into your hearts and commit to observing the Five Pillars of Islam, and it will be done. We will be brothers. We will pray together, eat together, and do battle together, and you won’t go to hell.” Their indefatigable optimism seemed to flag, however, as they contemplated engaging fearful odds when accompanied in battle by these two frail and ancient Westerners. None of them expected to die of old age or even aspired to reach our decrepit state. They dreamed constantly of a glorious death in battle, or in “martyr operations,” and often recounted such dreams, radiant smiles splitting their faces.

  Louis and I discussed the pros and cons of conversion on any number of occasions. The issues for us were never of conscience. Louis knew that his God would understand, and for me the question was even more one of practicality. Whether or not conversion would help our plight was the only issue.

  I never believed that it would, and considered the chance at least as strong that it would make the whole thing worse. I did not relish the prospect of chummily eating and praying with them and thought that any such pantomime would add to my already heavy enough psychological burden. I accepted that it was at least theoretically possible conversion might ease the conditions in which we were held or make the all too unrealistic possibility of a humanitarian gesture more likely. But on balance, I thought that if we were to convert, it was less likely they would let us go. If we became committed jihadi fundamentalist Muslims, like them, why would we want to return home? Joining their jihad—making it ours—was the option they were presenting.

  That said, I kept an open mind and decided that were it likely to yield some specific and significant benefit, I would reconsider. For instance, might conversion permit, say, our choosing the manner of our execution? Might I bargain conversion for a bullet instead of having my head slowly sawn off? Would it prevent a Daniel Pearl–type video appearing on YouTube?

  We were never beaten or tortured. It was clear that it would have been all too easy by word or deed to bring it on, but Jack’s standing orders were evidently that unless and until we did, we were to be managed rigorously but correctly.

  In dealing with these zealots, everything was about Islam, and so was the manner of our treatment. Jack was in charge and his interpretation of what the holy texts had to say about the care of prisoners and hostages set the tone and the detail of how we were to be treated. He determined that we would eat the same food as they did, drink the same unlimited quantities of always-scarce water, and have the same access to their meagre medical and clothing resources. So yes, we were lucky from that perspective.

  In their preaching, both Omar One and Omar Two insisted that Islam was a completely ecumenical religion: that although fifteen centuries ago Allah had decided to entrust his revelations to an Arab, it could as easily have been anybody, anywhere. God had no favourites, and all races and individuals were equal in God’s eyes. The way the perfumed Omar Two explained it was, well, particular: “No matter how black they are, how ugly, how flat their noses, or how much their sweat smells, God considers them equal.” They preached equality, but did not practise it. Sub-Saharan Africans were clearly second class in the eyes of AQIM. Hassan was explicit, saying of AQIM: “It is true that racism is a problem.”

  Our abductors’ belief in the Qur’anic legitimacy of their jihad was unshakable, and their life’s purpose as soldiers of God was to do His
will by prosecuting a holy war to rid Muslim lands of the infidel’s defiling presence while also overthrowing the apostate regimes of toadying and venal Arab governments. They were fighting to restore an Islamic caliphate of uncertain—possibly worldwide—dimension, to be strictly administered by Islamic sages exclusively according to holy Islamic Shari’a law.

  Their steadfast engagement to the death in jihad would guarantee their access to paradise: no small thing as, we were repeatedly told, the Prophet said ninety-nine out of a hundred wouldn’t make the cut on the Day of Judgment. Our captors would recount the horrors of hell in a way that put to shame the fire-and-brimstone Christian preachers of the Middle Ages. However, they were comforted by the certainty of finding all their brothers in arms and loved ones beside those streams of milk and honey in paradise.

  At one point, as we were crossing a particularly challenging accumulation of huge sand dunes, each of the three vehicles had become ensablé, mired to their frames in deep, fine sand. Everyone was tense and clearly felt vulnerable. After the truck in which I was travelling had been extracted from the soft sand for the third time, the taciturn and stern-faced driver, Omar Three, backed down and pointed his vehicle at a notch in the high dune before us and gunned it, going full bore toward this opening with absolutely no idea of whether the other side was effectively a cliff. We smashed through and were flying through the air before blasting down the nearly vertical gradient on the other side. Thankfully he knew not to brake as we rocketed down the reverse slope. We came to a stop on a relatively solid patch and contemplated rank upon rank of formidable dunes marching before us toward the far horizon and looked back to see the other two vehicles, about a hundred metres away on the crest of the dune, buried up to their axels.

  It was going to be some time before we could all get underway again. The other passenger, “New Guy”—who had first appeared the previous day—and I left the cab and had a sip of water, sitting in the shade of the vehicle while Omar Three and the boys from the back of our truck hurried back with shovels and metal planking to assist the others. That left just me and New Guy, who I was eventually to learn had played a rather crucial role in our saga, acting as my guard.

  He had shown up with Jack and was a paunchy, tall, city guy in his mid-thirties, quite unlike the hardened warriors, his mujahideen brothers, who were our captors. His French was pretty basic but we had spent a fair amount of time over the previous twenty-four hours chatting mostly—inevitably—about Islam. At this point, though, he was pensive and began pacing back and forth in front of me, muttering all the while. Suddenly, with a focused stare, he grabbed his Kalash, which had been hanging off his shoulder on a sling decorated with Mali’s flag, and thrust it in my face, vertically, saying, “Shoot me! Right now! I am ready for paradise!” I did think about it, but not for long. There is no doubt in my mind that he was, literally, deadly serious.

  I have never met a more single-minded and committed set of individuals than the AQIM katiba that held us. By almost any modern standard their ideas were naïve and unsophisticated in the extreme, to say nothing of dangerous and just a little antisocial. Their version of Islam was simplistic and dramatically dated. But there must be no doubt about the depth of their faith and their absolute commitment to what they perceived to be its fundamental principles, including, of course, jihad—to which a growing number of Muslims refer as the “Sixth Pillar of Islam.” These self-styled soldiers of God demonstrated over and over again the extent to which they are prepared to use extreme brutality to achieve their ends, but their viciousness appeared to be neither arbitrary nor casual. Their every act was considered and needed to be justifiable in terms of their chosen path of jihad.

  Almost since 9/11, there has been a loud debate among securocrats over whether Al Qaeda and its franchises, like AQIM, are bandits, opportunists, thugs, psychopaths, and restless, underemployed youths flying a flag of Islamic convenience, or, conversely, deeply committed religious zealots engaging, Robin Hood–like, in banditry, kidnapping, and trafficking to finance the achievement of their Islamic vision. Many, probably most, have opted for some variation of the convenient first option, and many security services still seem to favour this interpretation, mostly, I suspect, because it makes these movements easy to belittle and should make them much easier to defeat. Whatever the reasoning, based on my own experience, I know it to be the wrong answer.

  Similarly, some anti-terrorism “experts” express doubt that the jihadi warriors of AQIM are “really Al Qaeda.” The question strikes me as startlingly moot: if they think like Al Qaeda, are motivated by and want to achieve the same things as Al Qaeda, behave like Al Qaeda, fight, kill, and die like Al Qaeda, and say they are Al Qaeda, then, quite simply, they are.

  They told me over and over again how much they despised the United Nations and all its works. Their obliteration of UN headquarters in Algiers on 11 December 2007, which killed thirty-seven, including seventeen UN staff members, makes the point rather forcefully.

  They also hated all Western development efforts undertaken both by state actors and by NGOs and were particularly exercised by Christian missionary activities, either overt or what they termed “covert,” which of course often included development work. There is no doubt in my mind that they wanted to grab me first and foremost because I was a senior officer of the United Nations, while also wishing to demonstrate that their reach was long and their cause universal. By so doing they hoped to discourage UN and NGO activity throughout the Sahel region. The fact that I was also a detested Western infidel, an invader and defiler of Muslim Afghanistan, only made the proposition more attractive.

  Their most immediate operational priority remained the “near enemy”: the so-called apostate regimes of the secular, nominally Islamic states of North Africa and the Sahel region, declared takfir by these zealots. This meant that our captors rejected the credibility of the Muslim allegiance of all these governments, thereby, in the eyes of AQIM, setting them apart from the ummah and effectively excommunicating their members from Islam. As deemed non-believers, the political leaders, and the security forces that kept them in place, became, in the eyes of AQIM’s mujahideen, legitimate targets.

  AQIM’s larger, and ever less secondary target, particularly following the acquisition of their Al Qaeda franchise in January 2007, was what they considered to be the decadent and debauched West: the “far enemy.”

  Many Muslims insist that no more than 1 percent of their number hold radical fundamentalist beliefs and profess a commitment to jihad. But 1 percent of 1.4 billion is still 14 million. Such number games are not quite meaningless, even if they don’t really get us beyond the stark premise that jihadism poses a real and seemingly growing threat to Western interests and values.

  I have hung around soldiers a fair bit. At least in the West, the men seem to favour talk of women, sports, and cars (not necessarily in that order or, indeed, separately). My Al Qaeda abductors wouldn’t have understood a word of such conversations. We in the West seem to get a big kick out of the seventy-two virgins bit but my captors didn’t seem to care much about women. In fact, they were absolutely uninterested in anything other than praising the Lord while passing the ammunition in a fight that they deeply believed to be His fight.

  Never have I seen people less interested in material stuff. Most of them were under twenty-five, all under forty-eight. They neither expected nor wanted to grow old and considered me to be extravagantly time expired. They did not covet cool sneakers or sports paraphernalia; they did not ape the latest fashion, or seek to emulate the antics and ethics of rock or film stars, or even dream of nickel-plating their AKs.

  Similarly, I have never met a less horny group of young men. There was no skulking out of the desert for a little R&R or even for chaste reunions with family and friends. Admittedly, this would have been risky for them as I suspect that the Algerian intelligence apparatus watches such people very carefully. Normal familial attachments and pleasures of the flesh seemed to hold little at
traction. The mujahideen seemed perfectly content to talk and chant about Allah and their servitude to Him … endlessly.

  As Louis often pointed out, in day after day of religious discourse we never heard any suggestion that theirs was a god of love, or that He had any particular affection for his creations. That they were His servants who were required to submit to His will was oft repeated. That He was a fierce and jealous god was proudly recalled, but never was there any suggestion of His being kindly, compassionate, loving, or generous. “Jihad is our path and death in the service of Allah is our noblest desire!” they would intone, over and over again. Islamic context, or at least their version of it, was the template against which all things were judged, even if it might seem to us that they were stretching that fabric well beyond the maker’s recommended stress tolerance in order to make their fierce acts fit within an acceptable theological perspective.

  To Louis and me they loved to insist, “Everyone is our enemy and everyone is out to destroy us but we will prevail because we alone are true servants of Allah.” And they would maintain, “We fight to die, while you fight to go home to your families. How can we lose?”

  They will not, in my opinion, soon be defeated. They seemed to have no trouble recruiting. The youngest among them was seven—even if he was more of a mascot and spent only a few days with us—and the voices of three of the others had yet to break. Parents, we were proudly informed, brought them their sons as “gifts to God.” I know of no argument that would convince them to abandon their chosen path.

  Perhaps the most telling and to me the most unsettling aspect of our captors’ beliefs was their attitude to time. It highlighted the gulf between them and us and offered me the strongest proof that Sam Huntington may have got it a lot more right than most analysts seemed to credit in his seminal article “The Clash of Civilizations?” in Foreign Affairs in 1993. I’d had dinner with Professor Huntington in 1999 at a Security Council retreat organized by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and recalled that I had found his thesis—in which he posited that future conflict would be based on religious and cultural differences rather than on economic and strategic interests—alarmist, simplistic, and a little xenophobic. As I pursued my discussions with our Al Qaeda kidnappers, however, and learned more about their beliefs and the intensity with which they were held, I began to develop more sympathy for Huntington’s vision of inevitably clashing civilizations, or at least the certainty of a growing confrontation between fundamental Islam and Western values and interests. I was living it.