by Aimen Dean
** On 26 March 2003, the FBI issued an intelligence bulletin on the threat from chemical dispersal devices. This bulletin was updated in November 2004 and published in full by a major US news organization. It described the mubtakkar in detail and provided a photograph of its component parts. Its conclusion was consistent with other analyses: ‘Little or no training is required to assemble and deploy such a device, due to its simplicity. [. . .] One or more assembled devices could easily be brought aboard a train or subway. These gases would also be effective when released in confined spaces of buildings or other indoor facilities. It is difficult to judge the number of casualties that would result from the use of multiple devices; however, such an attack will likely generate fear and panic among the local population.’
* The fatwah defined WMD as including nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. It was the first time a leading jihadi cleric had provided explicit theological justification for all forms of CBRN weapons.41
** Al-Fahd was arrested in Saudi Arabia in May 2003. After six months in custody he appeared on Saudi television annulling his fatwah and expressing remorse for the ‘error’ of his religious interpretation. Hardline jihadis are likely to dismiss his recantation as extracted under torture. ISIS later claimed the cleric had pledged allegiance to them from prison.42
** The document posted online (file modified date: 2 November 2003) was an eight-page manual with thirty-four diagrams providing instructions on creating the device and possible targets.43
* After the US invasion of Afghanistan, Zarqawi had decamped to Iraq’s Kurdistan region to prepare for what he believed would be ‘a forthcoming battle against the Americans’.45
** That was the sum mentioned to me by jihadi contacts.
* It was indeed the jurisprudence of blood. According to database maintained by the University of Chicago between 1974 and 1997 about 2,000 people were killed in suicide attacks around the world by a variety of groups. But between 1998 (the year al-Muhajir provided theological cover for the Africa embassy bombings) and 2016, more than 50,000 were killed by suicide attacks, according to the database.47
** Copies of The Jurisprudence of Blood (also titled The Jurisprudence of Jihad) began circulating in Iraq around 2004, just as Zarqawi’s insurgency was finding its feet. Also popular among the jihadis in Iraq was another of his books, The Pioneers of the Victorious Vanguard. Al-Muhajir escaped to Iran after 9/11, where he was detained. It’s not clear what happened to him next. There were reports in the Egyptian media that he was freed in 2011 and returned to Egypt.49
* Abu Hafs al-Baluchi’s brother Jamal al-Baluchi and cousin Issa al-Baluchi were among those arrested in February 2003 after I alerted Western intelligence to the mubtakkar plot against New York. To my knowledge they had nothing to do with the plot.
* Not all the couriers made it safely. My friend from Darunta, Hassan Ghul, would be detained in early 2004 as he made his way through northern Iraq carrying correspondence between bin Laden and Zarqawi. The discovery was an early breakthrough in the long road to tracking down bin Laden. Ghul told the CIA a jihadi with the kunya Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti was an important courier close to bin Laden. The name had already been mentioned by other al-Qaeda detainees, but Ghul’s information made the CIA more interested in the name. Identifying, locating and tracking this courier eventually led to bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound.51
* The Americans had just launched a large offensive in the Sunni town near Baghdad after insurgents had strung up the charred bodies of US security contractors on a bridge.
* After I informed MI6, al-Rabia rocketed up the most wanted list. An FBI official said later that year: ‘If there is an attack on the US [then] Hamza Rabia will be responsible. He’s head of external operations for Al-Qaeda – an arrogant, nasty guy.’59
* It turned out to be the other way around. Al-Qaeda took over large parts of Yemen’s tribal areas between 2011 and 2012. Subsequently, al-Qaeda militants, as well as ISIS, established a major presence on the ground in Syria.
* Cheney had close ties with King Hamad al-Khalifa of Bahrain and had visited the country in March 2002 in one of his rare forays abroad. According to another account, the then CIA director, George Tenet, also paid the King of Bahrain a personal visit to pressure him to make arrests.63
** I learned about Cheney’s phone call from British intelligence later. A Bahraini intelligence official confirmed to me that the arrests had been ordered after Cheney’s call to the King. I was told the British had not informed the Americans that the source in Bahrain was actually a double agent inside the terror cell; to do so would have revealed my identity to the CIA. MI6, like any intelligence service, has always been very careful to protect the identity of its sources.
* Al-Rabia would be killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan in late 2005.66
* Under the ‘Five Eyes’ agreement, the intelligence agencies of Britain, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada share a significant amount of intelligence.
** When details about the operation were later leaked, the leaker had the temerity to describe the informant as a CIA asset.67
* Kamal was released in January 2005. The terrorism charges against him were only lifted on constitutional grounds the following year.70
My Eighth Life: Nicotine
2004–2005
The fiasco of the US occupation of Iraq had become a recruiting sergeant for al-Qaeda. It was breeding a second generation of jihadis, two decades after the first Arabs had gone to Afghanistan, ten years after Bosnia. Deep networks of militancy now spanned the globe. I was beginning to find out just how deep.
When I wasn’t in Bahrain my work for MI5 took me to mosques in poorer parts of England – mainly in London and the West Midlands. I was careful not to look as if I was sniffing around. I would wait for an invitation from someone I had known in Bosnia or Afghanistan.
In late 2003, there was a buzz among militants in the English Midlands. Anwar al-Awlaki was coming to speak, and I was invited. I thought I should take stock of this rising star of the jihadi movement.* Awlaki at that time was not a priority for British intelligence, even though he had left the US complaining of harassment after 9/11.
Born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents, Awlaki had spent most of his college years in the US, and had developed a slick intellectual justification for jihad in the face of ‘Judeo-Christian hegemony’. His honeyed tones and careful reasoning made the argument even more persuasive to his doting audience.
And so I ended up one damp evening in the scruffy town of Dudley. In a large room above a shop that had closed long ago, Awlaki gave a performance that both impressed and alarmed me.
‘I want to make it very clear,’ he began, his rimless spectacles glinting in the lights, ‘that anything I say is not an exhortation nor an invitation to violence against an individual or society or state.’*
Except that it was; he’d just played his ‘Get Out of Jail Free Card’ first before whipping up his audience by selectively quoting Islamic scholars.
‘Muslims will never experience peace unless jihad is established because the harm of the enemy can only be stopped through jihad. No peaceful means will deliver that,’ he said. There were murmurs of agreement.
Awlaki talked about a medieval scholar, Ibn Nahhas, who had lived in Egypt at the time of the ‘later Crusades’ in which he had fought and died for his faith. Ibn Nahhas had essentially written the manifesto for jihad, over five centuries before Qutb refocused the Muslim world’s attention on it. I had read passages from the book before battles in Bosnia, seduced by his descriptions of heaven and eternal bliss, the virgins of paradise and rivers of honey and milk.
‘His writing is really fabulous,’ Awlaki said in his mellifluous tone. ‘As Sayyid Qutb said, “Our words are dead until we give them life by our blood.” Ibn Nahhas’ book is considered the best book on jihad because it’s written by a man who walked the talk.’
Awlaki drew parallels between Ibn Nahhas’ struggles and the invasio
ns of Iraq and Afghanistan. Several times, he pointed to his audience as if to say: ‘These are the rewards that could await you.’
Among Awlaki’s audience were three young men at the back of the room. Two were British Pakistanis and the other was of Caribbean descent. They had taken copious notes. I met them briefly as the congregation mingled after the lecture. The most confident of them had slightly plump features and a trimmed beard. He spoke in a Yorkshire accent and introduced himself as Mohammed. He said he’d driven from Leeds, at least 100 miles away, to hear the Sheikh. He was clearly enraptured.
There was nothing especially interesting about the trio, but less than two years later they would together kill dozens of people.1
I returned to my car at the end of that evening, past the fish and chip shops and the vandalized bus stops, in a despondent mood. I was beginning to understand why second- and third-generation Muslims in dilapidated inner cities were seduced by Awlaki’s message. They felt they were neither English nor Pakistani; they were rootless and probably the victims of real discrimination that made it more difficult for them to find jobs or respect. They were a small minority, but they were an angry and impressionable minority. The mosques and meeting halls they frequented were invariably basic – above shops and warehouses in poor neighbourhoods; no gleaming domes or minarets reaching for the sky. And like Awlaki, the clerics who preached in these places were clever at navigating the line between the rhetoric of condemnation and a call to action. The intelligence services were well aware they had a growing problem – but were playing catch-up.
I told MI5 just how spellbound Awlaki had left his audience and said they’d be well served monitoring the lectures he was giving across the UK.
‘At the risk of sounding like a cracked record,’ I told Kevin, ‘people are fired up by events in Iraq and they’re all watching the flood of videos that groups like Zarqawi’s are uploading. Everybody in that room has the potential to become a suicide bomber.’*
Throughout 2004, those videos became more commonplace and more grotesque, and authorities seemed to have no way of blocking them. For Zarqawi’s group, no outrage seemed too outrageous.
On 16 September, his fighters abducted an elderly British engineer, Ken Bigley, and two American colleagues, in Baghdad. They soon posted a video of the three men. The demand for their release was impossible for the Coalition Provisional Authority to meet. They wanted Muslim women held in Iraqi jails to be freed. Amid rumours that female prisoners were being tortured and raped in prison, Zarqawi’s group could claim that it was standing up for the ‘sisters’.
Within days the terrorists killed the two Americans because the United States refused to negotiate with them. Al-Zarqawi then released another videotape in which Bigley, manacled in a cage, pleaded for Tony Blair to meet the hostage takers’ demands.
The British intelligence services launched an intensive operation to locate and rescue Bigley, but at the same time, a parallel initiative to engage the kidnappers through an intermediary began.* A unit within MI5 called G6, which was dedicated to what are known as ‘psyops’, involved me in efforts to prolong negotiations with Zarqawi’s lieutenants. One idea was to recruit Abu Qatada – by then in custody in the UK – in an effort to exploit Zarqawi’s admiration of him.
George, the MI5 psychologist, had been assigned to the unit and was liaising with the team in Baghdad leading the negotiations. We had long and often circular discussions about messages sent by al-Zarqawi’s group and how the British should reply. As George put it, ‘We need to understand their state of mind and for that we need to understand their mindset. You’ve spent time with Zarqawi so your insights here could make all the difference.’
The wording of the responses was approved by the prime minister and the foreign secretary.
It was surreal, sitting in Oxford on countless calls about how to engage the kidnappers. Did their language indicate they were serious? Were they agitated or angry? What sort of Koranic verses, George asked me, could we cite that might make them think twice about killing an unarmed hostage or an elderly civilian?
MI6 also had an informant inside Zarqawi’s group – a priceless asset. A plot was hatched to smuggle Bigley a gun so he could escape. He would be told of an extraction point where he would be picked up. I wasn’t informed about the plan till weeks later but would have strenuously argued against it. The negotiations were beginning to gain momentum, and the idea that Bigley – then sixty-two – could have evaded capture and reached a rendezvous point seemed far-fetched.
Sadly, the plan was given the go-ahead. Bigley received the gun from the informant and instructions on where to go. But he was being held in a town called Latafiya, near Baghdad, that he did not know. It must have been confusing for him; eyewitnesses later described him running along a ditch and trying to use walls for cover. But he didn't get far before he was bundled into a car by his captors. No doubt beaten, it seems Bigley told them who had given him the gun.
On 8 October, news broke that Bigley had been beheaded.4 The informant who provided the gun was also killed.5 A video showed Bigley sitting in front of his captors in an orange jumpsuit before being gruesomely murdered. It was soon all over the jihadi forums. Judging by the comments being posted, it was being viewed with almost pornographic excitement. With a shudder I was reminded of that dreadful day in Bosnia.
I was appalled; the negotiations had begun to gain momentum only to be shattered by the high-risk rescue mission. I thought a lot in the weeks that followed about the asset whose life had been sacrificed. The world would never know his name.
The episode shook my faith in British intelligence, for which I’d developed the greatest respect over the previous five years. I had a growing sense that they just didn’t understand the nature of the ‘second-generation’ threat at home, nor just how dangerous the situation in Iraq was becoming thanks to the foolhardy invasion. Not only was Zarqawi’s insurgency lashing out in all directions, but he was moving towards a Faustian bargain with al-Qaeda central. His money was talking.
I had warned my handlers, based on Moheddin’s conversations with Abu Hafs al-Baluchi, that a deal was in the offing: Al-Qaeda would formally back Zarqawi’s leadership in Iraq in return for substantial donations to the mothership. For bin Laden, establishing al-Qaeda in Iraq was also key to his ultimate ambition of liberating Jerusalem.6 For Zarqawi it served two purposes. He was fulfilling a religious obligation to support jihad wherever it was fought, while funnelling money to al-Qaeda and the Taliban would bog down US forces in Afghanistan, distracting Washington from the insurgency in Iraq.
The deal was announced on 17 October 2004. Zarqawi pledged allegiance to bin Laden and al-Qaeda in Iraq was born.7 The announcement electrified al-Qaeda’s rank and file because of the prophecy that an Islamic army would emerge in Iraq near the end of time.
Worse was to come.
‘Do you recognize this voice?’ a man asked in Arabic.
My stomach turned. It was the last voice on earth I had expected to hear.
‘How on earth did you get hold of this number?’
Had my reply sounded anxious?
‘You gave it to me in Bahrain.’
It was Yasser Kamal. He had taken his tattered notebook of phone numbers to jail with him. The Bahrainis had apparently not seen fit to examine it, let alone share it with UK intelligence.
‘I have to keep this call short. The brothers smuggled a phone to me in jail. There’s someone I need you to meet.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Here’s his number. His name is Abu Muslim,’ he said. He was either confident that his call was not being monitored or ready to take the risk.
It transpired that Kamal’s connection with this Abu Muslim went back several years to when they had fought together in Kashmir against Indian rule of the largely Muslim region. Bonds endured among the far-flung jihadi brotherhood. Abu Muslim, who had tried and failed to join the insurgency in Iraq, had somehow managed to get a question to K
amal: did he know a good bomb-maker or a specialist in poisons and chemicals?
I did not rush to make the call. I needed to think, put together an approach. When I eventually dialled his number, Abu Muslim’s voice – alternately gravelly and squeaky – reminded me of the dog Mutley in the cartoon series Wacky Races.
‘Bruva, I’m glad you called. I want to visit you, soon as possible.’
The accent was pure West Midlands – a thick, almost mournful rendering of the English language.
The next day, two men pulled up outside my apartment building in an old BMW. Abu Muslim was very short with a thick beard and bushy eyebrows that were only magnified by his wire-rimmed spectacles. He seemed to be in his mid-twenties. He excitably embraced me as he walked into my apartment, trailed by a sullen sidekick called Javed. *
‘Bruva, before we talk, let’s sort the phones, yeah,’ Abu Muslim said. Shades of Yasser Kamal, I thought, who was equally obsessive about phones. I wondered how long it would be before I became irritated with ‘Bruva’ at the beginning of every sentence.
With our cell phones separated from their batteries and SIM cards, we sat down to a meal of lamb and Bukhari rice which I had prepared.
‘Bruva, we need your help.’ I winced. ‘We want to do something in England. It’s time to hurt the kuffar at home for what they are doing in Iraq.’
‘It’s awful,’ I replied.
And I meant it. I was disgusted by events in Iraq, and especially the US Marines’ recently launched offensive to take back Fallujah, in the heaviest urban fighting by US forces since Vietnam. Once known as the ‘city of the mosques’, many of its domes and minarets were being destroyed in the fighting.* Civilians were fleeing and dying.
I had been viewing footage posted online from Fallujah, growing increasingly angry. The Americans were doing what the Serbs had done in Bosnia, I thought bitterly.