Nine Lives: My time as the West's top spy inside al-Qaeda

by Aimen Dean

  Our prestige was now such that we were invited to sit in First Class, and were taken to the flight deck to meet the captain. Nowadays we would both have been on Interpol’s Red Notice and US no-fly lists.

  For Khalid our upgrade had been a religious experience.

  ‘Don’t you see? This is God blessing our journey. When you are a mujahid God will make people serve you,’ he told me.

  Amid the cacophony of the arrivals hall in Manila, I found a bathroom and split up the cash, hiding it in pouches and pockets. I didn’t need to; the customs and immigration procedures were cursory and we soon emerged into the dripping heat. A slight and dapper man approached us.

  ‘I am Abdul Nassir Nooh,’ he said. ‘I am going to look after you until you go to Mindanao. I’m going to take you somewhere quiet. The ladies here think Arab men are a ticket to instant wealth,’ he grinned.

  I was shocked. I might have travelled a lot, but I was still an innocent in many ways. For most jihadis, even discussing the opposite sex was a taboo, let alone contemplating anything more intimate.

  After a couple of days in a safe house, we were back at the airport for the flight to Cotabato on the island of Mindanao, 500 miles south of Manila. Again, the lack of scrutiny of two Arabs flying into an area of Muslim rebellion would be unthinkable today, as would be the reception we received on arrival.

  Waiting for us without a hint of disguise was a senior member of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front – a short, well-dressed Filipino.

  ‘Welcome to Mindanao,’ he said, sounding more like a tour guide than a jihadi. We were stunned by his immaculate, Egyptian-accented Arabic.

  ‘My name is Ahmed Doli* and I know what you’re going to ask,’ he said as we climbed into his open jeep. He was apparently oblivious to the soldiers on guard at the airport, one of whom – in a surreal moment – offered a polite salute. ‘I spent eighteen years in Egypt, got a doctorate at al-Azhar, then I taught in Saudi Arabia. So, yes, I speak Arabic. But now it’s the home front.’

  It was a journey of many parts. After driving for an hour or so in Doli’s jeep, we transferred to motorbikes and rode pillion at breathtaking speeds along the coastal road. Then our little convoy turned onto tracks through the suffocating jungle. When the terrain became too steep for the bikes, we had to trek for hours on foot in the sweltering humidity upwards into the mountains. I frequently lagged behind; physical fitness was not my forte. I began to regret stuffing Arabian coffee, dates and Yemeni honey into my backpack. Khalid, by contrast, had a spring in his step all the way up the mountainside. Deep down he was a romantic and jihad was his life’s romance.

  The journey through the rainforest seemed to go on forever but the terrain was unforgettable. Dense jungle, every shade of green imaginable, gave way to glimpses of volcanoes; immense waterfalls brought blessed but all too passing relief from the heat. At last we reached what was known as the ‘Arab camp’, cut into a clearing in a high valley next to a waterfall. The air was clearer and the scenery spectacular.

  Farouq was waiting for us, delighted we had brought the coffee and honey, as well as the cash.

  ‘Welcome to paradise,’ he said, smiling.

  If it hadn’t been for the humidity, the deadly spiders and snakes and other venomous fauna, I might have agreed. Soon after I arrived I woke up one morning to a burning sensation in one of my eyes. A leech was having breakfast; it took hours for me to recover my eyesight.

  The novelty of jungle warfare soon wore off. The natural hazards didn’t help, nor the long and pointless foot patrols in the soaking heat. But it was the torpor that was most dispiriting; it was more like an episode of Lost than Homeland. The Arab fighters rotated to the front lines several hours away on foot, where the MILF were protecting a mountain pass. Although Filipino troops were 200 metres away at times, we could barely see them through the dense foliage. The only way to target them was using mortars, but shells were hard to come by.

  When not in action, which was most of the time, we whiled away the days in well-hidden camps. In a moment of desperation, I ordered some of the junior fighters to clear an area of grass and erect two poles. Over the following months, some twenty bearded Arabs spent hours playing ‘beach’ volleyball in the middle of the jungle.

  I sometimes looked at my Bahraini passport and thought of throwing it in the fire and making a last stand in this tropical backwater. But then I thought of the effort required to provoke the Filipino army. There were occasional atrocities in the conflict – by both sides – but in general a stalemate. One MILF commander told me that the group had 80,000 fighters (a wild exaggeration) but only 25,000 weapons (probably also exaggerated) and so would never be able to take over the island (no exaggeration at all).

  My dream of waging a religious war in the jungle on behalf of the oppressed Muslims of Mindanao was not to be. In the course of seven months, I was at greater risk of dying from snakebite than in a kinetic encounter. And yet perversely I did get wounded in one of the rare spasms of combat. A carelessly lobbed mortar from the Philippine army sent a piece of shrapnel slicing into my leg. I will never forget the searing sensation of a fragment of hot metal embedded in my calf.

  My comrades hastily and clumsily dumped me onto an improvised stretcher and began hauling me along jungle paths. As I stared upwards at the gently swaying green canopy and listened to the sporadic chatter of gunfire in the adjacent valley, I began to think that this might after all be the moment of my martyrdom. I had no idea how bad my leg wound was, whether I was losing blood by the pint or overreacting to a flesh wound. Nor did I have much confidence in the ability of the MILF medics to patch me up. The stultifying heat lulled me into semi-consciousness.

  When I came to I was looking up at a rough thatch of palm. The sun was just rising and the jungle was coming alive with bird calls. I’m still alive, I thought, unless this is what paradise looks like. I quickly discounted that thought as a jabbing pain shot up from my knee. I hesitated to look down in case the lower half of my leg was no longer there. Instinctively, I tried to move my toes and was relieved to feel a response.

  A semi-trained medic from among my guerrilla comrades arrived at my improvised bedside to tend to my wound. Whatever he applied sent shots of searing pain straight to my brain. Within a few hours I was running a fever which only intensified in the unforgiving heat of late afternoon.

  The next day, another self-declared medic arrived to examine me. There was more prodding and the application of more hideously acidic potions to my wound. I glanced at the bloodied bandages being removed and predicted the worst. Infection, gangrene, amputation. It was not so much the prospect of intense physical pain that disturbed me, or even having my leg cut off; it was more about whether such an ignominious end would qualify me for martyrdom.

  Finally, a proper doctor arrived.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘we can’t give you general anaesthetic. The only way to treat your wounds is to apply a red-hot rod to cauterize the wound. It will hurt but it will prevent infection.’

  He was right on one count.

  ‘I will have four strong mujahideen restrain you during the procedure, which I promise won’t take more than a few seconds.’

  He smiled in an effort to reassure me.

  ‘Take this,’ the doctor said, handing me a thick piece of leather, ‘and bite down on it, otherwise you might bite your tongue or hurt your jaw.’

  The reassuring smile was suddenly a distant memory.

  A fighter suggested I wear a scarf over my eyes.

  ‘It’s better if you don’t watch,’ he said simply.

  I felt strong arms hold down my shoulders, hands and feet and clenched the leather strap between my teeth.

  I was afraid of the pain, but more afraid of screaming or writhing. One of the fighters clasped his knees against the sides of my head.

  Two seconds later, every nerve in my body was on fire and every muscle contracted in pure agony. If I had not been so heavily restrained I would have leapt in
to the air.

  Excruciating pain rushed through my nervous system like a fire trying to escape a tunnel.

  ‘It’s done,’ I heard the good doctor say, before my brain took command and rendered me unconscious.

  Had that splinter pierced another part of my body I might not have survived the well-intended but rudimentary medical care I received. I probably cashed in my second life slowly recovering from the infection that persisted for months, apparently immune to the various antibiotics that my carers tried.

  By the time I was back on my feet, I had become unreasonably scornful of this rambling front of jihad. MILF was even talking to the government about a truce. I needed to be tested on a battlefield that mattered, like Bosnia, where the survival of our faith was in jeopardy and where I could commit myself to God’s will.

  Farouq* and Khalid decided to stay on for a while, but I made the trek back down the mountain. It was August 1997 and I felt like a ridiculous Gulliver, criss-crossing the globe in search of the defining front in jihad.

  For the next decade at least, the jungles of Mindanao would be a stuttering but never quite extinguished front in the global jihadi cause. Only the emergence of the ‘Islamic State’ thousands of miles away would eventually ignite a more bloody and serious insurgency.*

  One consequence of not being martyred in the Philippines was that I had overstayed my visa by over six months. This was of little concern to Abdul Nassir Nooh, the unflappable fixer who had greeted us in Manila months earlier.

  ‘Just give me $200 and turn up at the airport four hours early,’ he said.

  The next day, Nooh met me outside the departure hall with a policeman in tow.

  ‘This gentleman will ensure you get your flight,’ he said with mock solemnity.

  The officer silently escorted me through a side entrance and a maze of corridors before pushing open an emergency exit and ushering me into the departures area. Just two years earlier Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had devised a plot to use this very airport to smuggle bombs on board as many as a dozen American airliners over the Pacific. If my experience was any guide, it might have been very easy.33

  * I had been put in touch with the Baku branch by a Saudi go-between, Abdullah al-Wabil. He was a family friend and had fought with the Arab fighters in Afghanistan. By 1997 he was one of the biggest fundraisers for Khattab.

  ** Khattab, the Saudi jihadi leader with whom my brother Moheddin had flown to Afghanistan a decade earlier, was the only Arab of any note fighting in the Caucasus at that time.

  ** Because of its failure to monitor what its regional offices were doing in various places around the world, the Haramain Foundation was later designated for terrorism ties by the US government.1

  * Zawahiri was a doctor from a well-heeled Egyptian family who became involved in jihad in Egypt in the 1970s. After being imprisoned for three years and tortured by the Mubarak regime after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981, Zawahiri joined the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan where he befriended bin Laden. In Peshawar he built up the operations of Egyptian Islamic Jihad before decamping to Sudan in the early 1990s.

  ** Zawahiri’s group was expelled after Sudanese authorities learned that two boys accused of a plot to kill him were executed by the group on his orders.2

  * At this point in the Chechen conflict, the Russians were not monitoring traffic entering the Caucasus from former Soviet republics as intensively as they later would.3

  * In August 1996, Chechen rebels would launch a successful offensive to retake the capital Grozny. So successful was the offensive and so profound the demoralization of Russian forces that at the end of the month a ceasefire was agreed under which Russian troops would leave Chechnya. By then I was gone.

  * After the defeat of the Communists in the early 1990s, Hekmatyar was a major player in the fighting between Afghan political factions, and had laid siege to Kabul. Osama bin Laden had tried to intervene but had been rebuffed by Hekmatyar. Dispirited, he abandoned the country for Sudan.9

  * Abu Zubaydah would gain notoriety when he was captured after 9/11. The CIA ‘waterboarded’ him eighty-three times, before he was transferred to the detention centre at Guantánamo Bay.10

  * He would later be killed in a 2008 airstrike in South Waziristan.

  * When in subsequent years I attended al-Qaeda camps, I found out that bin Laden had banned all American snacks and drinks. Once, when I was caught drinking a Pepsi, I was forced to clean the primitive toilet facilities as a punishment.

  * This was his kunya (fighting name). I never found out his real name. I heard that after the Taliban captured Kabul, he moved with Hekmatyar to Iran.

  * On his arrival in Afghanistan, Abu Khabab (real name: Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar) had teamed up with Abu Burhan al-Suri, a former colonel in Syrian intelligence specializing in sabotage. Their complementary skills provided al-Qaeda and other jihadi groups with a variety of increasingly powerful explosive devices.

  ** One was Abu Hamza al-Masri, the hook-handed Egyptian cleric at Finsbury Park, who is now serving a life sentence in the Supermax facility in Florence, Colorado (more on him later). Another I will call ‘Abu Hudhaifa al-Britani’, a British Pakistani who grew up in Birmingham. A third source of funds was the American Jordanian jihadi Khalil al-Deek. I first met Abu Hudhaifa and al-Deek in 1996 while they were attending Abu Khabab’s camp. More on them later, as well.

  * Although bin Laden refrained from ordering a campaign of terrorism inside Saudi Arabia until after 9/11, his relationship with its rulers had broken down by the time he left Sudan. Saudi Arabia revoked bin Laden’s citizenship and he accused the Saudis of waging ‘a war against Islam’ after they jailed clerics opposing the presence of US troops such as Safar al-Hawali.14

  * It later emerged that al-Qaeda had a hand in the downing of a US helicopter in Somalia, an episode made famous by the film Black Hawk Down.18

  ** Bin Laden and Zawahiri had built up relations through Osama bin Laden’s closest aides, the Egyptians Abu Ubaidah al-Banshiri and Abu Hafs al-Masri.20

  * A remotely detonated truck bomb exploded outside the American military base in Khobar on 25 June 1996, killing nineteen US Air Force personnel.21

  ** They also included Mustafa Abu Yazid, al-Qaeda’s chief commander in Afghanistan after 9/11, and Abu Khayr al-Masri, who rose to become al-Qaeda’s number two and was killed in a US air strike in Syria in 2017.

  * The fact that the Prophet Mohammed even mentions Khurasan as part of the Muslim world is seen by many Muslims as a prophecy in itself. When Mohammed was telling his followers all these prophecies about Khurasan and its importance, it was then an impossibly distant place, 2,000 miles away.

  ** There was much speculation in the years after the Khobar attack that al-Qaeda may have had a role, but in 2006 a US court found that Iran, through a Saudi militant group affiliated with Hezbollah, had carried out the attack.23

  * Belief in the eventual arrival of a Mahdi is very common among Sunni Muslims, but some Sunni Muslim scholars reject the notion, arguing the Prophet Mohammed himself was the Mahdi.

  * The salwar kameez consists of a long flowing tunic and baggy trousers. It is worn by many in south Asia.

  * Hekmatyar fled to Iran after being ousted from power by the Taliban. Always unpredictable, he occasionally offered support to the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the years that followed but signed a peace deal with the Afghan government in 2016, paving the way for his return to Afghanistan.

  * Then, as now, fundraisers for jihad in Kuwait went house to house to visit the diwaniyyah of wealthy Kuwaitis, an annex to large residences where extended family, neighbours and clients are welcomed. The diwaniyyah is essential to any fundraising venture in Kuwait. It allows women to be involved; because they cannot fight jihad themselves they are often more generous than their husbands. In more recent years large sums have been raised in this way for jihadi groups in Syria.

  * All Kuwaiti Airways flights had air marshals after a hijacking in t
he 1980s.

  * Doli was a very senior figure in the MILF, on its Shura Council, the supreme decision-making body of the group.

  * Farouq al-Kuwaiti (also known as Omar al-Farouq) would later become al-Qaeda's senior representative in Southeast Asia and its key point person to the Indonesian terrorist group Jemma Islamiya. He was arrested in Indonesia in June 2002 and transferred to the US air base in Bagram, Afghanistan, where he reportedly confessed he had been tasked with planning coordinated truck bombings on US embassies in Southeast Asia on the first anniversary of 9/11. That was not the end of his story. Together with three other al-Qaeda prisoners, including the future Mufti of al-Qaeda, Sheikh Abu Yahya al-Libi, he escaped from the Bagram detention facility in 2005. He then went to Iraq where he was killed in Basra during a gun battle involving UK forces in September 2006.31

  * Two decades later Mindanao again became an active front for jihad when in 2017 an ISIS-aligned group called Maute, led by two sons of a former MILF fighter, occupied parts of the town of Marawi for months. Parts of another group – Abu Sayyaf – also pledged allegiance to ISIS and raised millions of dollars from kidnapping in the southern Philippines. They beheaded several Western hostages.32

  My Third Life: The Pledge

  1997–1998

  I woke with a start as the ageing Pakistani Boeing 727 began its descent into Peshawar. To the west loomed the White Mountains, a forbidding silhouette with the approach of dusk, the peaks glittering with fresh snow. The vista gave me a thrill. I felt somehow that I was coming home after a ludicrous outing.

  When I landed, the haggard immigration officer, a man with red-rimmed eyes and a girth barely contained by his thick black belt, leafed through my passport.

  ‘Croatia, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, the Philippines,’ he said. ‘Now back here. Why is a young Bahraini doing so much travelling?’