Jihad Joe

by J. M. Berger

  The final issue of Jihad Recollections was published in September 2009. That’s when Samir Khan got the call to join the big leagues. In October he left the United States for Yemen, where he met with Awlaki. In November Nidal Hasan went on his killing spree at Fort Hood, and the backlash forced Awlaki underground.

  Khan resurfaced in July 2010, when al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula released Inspire, an English-language jihadist magazine whose design relationship to Jihad Recollections was unmistakable. Everyone who had read Recollections immediately concluded that the new magazine was the work of Samir Khan, and media reports soon confirmed it.54

  The new magazine was nearly identical in format and content to the old one, with the exception of its official imprimatur and an original article written by Awlaki especially for Inspire. A page collecting memorable quotes featured Revolution Muslim cofounder Yousef Al Khattab and a quote by a counterterrorism analyst about the effectiveness of the Islamic Thinkers Society.55

  As of this writing, Inspire had published two more issues, one very similar to the first, and a “special edition” commemorating an AQAP attempt to bomb two cargo planes bound for the United States. The special edition, which included a detailed description of the plot and its objectives, commanded notice from U.S. intelligence and terrorism analysts as conclusive evidence that Khan—and likely Awlaki—had direct access to AQAP’s operational team, and perhaps even full membership.56

  BACK IN BOSTON

  Tarek Mehanna was an American Muslim of Egyptian descent. He earned a doctorate from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy in Boston and subsequently moved to nearby Sudbury, where he attended the Islamic Center of New England mosque in Sharon, Massachusetts.57

  After September 11 Mehanna obsessively surfed the Internet looking for material related to the al Qaeda attack, referring to the hijackers as the “19 martyrs.” He shared videos and propaganda with friends, both online and in the real world. One of his childhood friends was particularly receptive. Ahmad Abousamra was the son of a local doctor and a Syrian American born and raised in Massachusetts.58

  They tried to find other Muslims in the Boston area who would support their jihadist cause, but few were interested. Despite these frustrations, they kept trying and drew potential recruits aside for one-on-one talks, slipping them CDs with copies of al Qaeda recruitment videos.59

  They had some successes amid many failures. Abousamra met a recent white convert to Islam from northern Massachusetts named Daniel Maldonado, whom he introduced to Mehanna.60

  A friend recalled later, “I met Danny the week he converted. He was cool. He dressed in T-shirts and jeans and didn’t hide any of his tattoos. His hair was in dreadlocks. He was eager, and he had a lot of questions.”

  Soon after his conversion, Maldonado became decidedly less cool. He adopted an increasingly strict view of Islam and, like many converts who become jihadist recruits, began to affect an Arab style of dress. His wife began to wear a full burka, and they covered the head of their baby daughter (which is not required in Islam).61

  Mehanna and Abousamra filled Maldonado’s head with jihadist ideology, including justifications for killing civilians and suicide bombings, and the three would get together to devour hours of jihadist video propaganda found online.

  Mehanna and Maldonado participated robustly in online jihadist communities, such as the Islamic Awakening forums, where both men were well known. Maldonado was also heavily involved with other sites, including the Islamic Network and Clear Guidance. They followed popular jihadist clerics such as Muhammad Al Maqdisi of Jordan and Anwar Awlaki.

  The three young men talked incessantly about seeking out military training in Pakistan so that they could join the jihad overseas. But unlike many online jihobbyists, they took concrete steps to translate talk into reality, contacting an associate with connections for information about how to find and enroll in a training program.62

  In 2002 Abousamra was the first to make a go of it. With a few hundred dollars given to him by a sympathetic friend, he traveled to Pakistan in 2002 and again in 2003, looking for training to join Afghan insurgents in battle against U.S. forces. He tried unsuccessfully to enlist with Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. Then he tried the Taliban, which also refused his assistance (supposedly due to his “lack of experience”).63 Rebuffed, he returned to the United States to seek more advice.

  So desperate was Abousamra to make the trip that he shelled out $5,000 to someone he thought could make an introduction. Abousamra and Maldonado were itching to see combat; Mehanna seemed less enthused, but he went through the motions. In 2004 Mehanna, Abousamra, and a childhood friend of Mehanna’s flew to Yemen for training, this time with the intention of continuing on to fight

  U.S. forces in Iraq.64

  They had set a high bar for themselves. For reasons that are not clear, almost no Americans had managed to enter Iraq and join the jihadists fighting U.S. forces there.65 Once again, the young hopefuls failed to find a training camp. Everyone was either in jail or in hiding.66 Discouraged, Mehanna returned to the United States after two weeks.67

  But Abousamra was committed. He went on to Fallujah and became the only American clearly documented as reaching Iraq to take part in jihad. He remained there for about fifteen days. He told a friend that he had met with insurgents during the trip but said they would not allow him to participate because he was an American.68

  Maldonado too felt the call of jihad, packing up his family and moving first to Egypt and then to Somalia in 2006. Like Zach Chesser, Maldonado described a desire to be part of a political movement. Although Maldonado had a tendency to alter his story depending on his audience, the fixation on an Islamic state is consistent in all of his accounts. In a letter posted to jihadist forums, Maldonado wrote,

  Once my wife (may Allah accept her) and I found out that an Islamic State was established in Somalia, especially after the taking of Mogadishu, we decided to go and make Hijra (migration) from Egypt.69

  Yet in a handwritten letter filled with spelling mistakes submitted in court after his arrest, he tried to recast his migration as the result of persecution in America and Egypt.

  [I] moved my family to Somalia because I wished to live as a Muslim without a problem with the way I or my family practice our religion (beard, veil, going to mosque much, wearing Islamic garb and so on). After September 11, the U.S. was a hard place to live as a Muslim, and I felt that I should not have to change my looks or way I practice ’cause some other Muslims did wrong. [ … ] It seemed that if they really made a true Islamic state that was practicing Islam as the law, it would be the perfect place for a family like mine.70

  It’s extremely difficult to credit Maldonado’s claim that practicing Islam in America was so difficult that it would be easier in an active war zone. Elsewhere in the court letter, he claimed he had heard “business was booming” in Somalia. One day after his first letter to the court, Maldonado wrote a second letter in which he admitted to “many dishonest statements.”

  In the new letter, he claimed he had been eying jihad all along. The decision to go to Somalia had emerged during discussions with a friend named Omar Hammami, who was married to a Somali woman. They “talked about possibly joining the jihad if we went. We decided that he would go first and I would go later with my family.” He also admitted that he had sought out and participated in jihadist training, including instruction on how to build improvised explosive devices.71

  There were al Qaeda members among the jihadists. When Maldonado arrived, the primary Islamic faction fighting to take control of Somalia was the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). Maldonado observed that the al Qaeda members he met received more respect than the ICU fighters. Soon after Maldonado’s departure, many of the more extreme members of the ICU—including Maldonado’s American friend Omar Hammami—would break away to join the even more militant Al Shabab militia (see chapter 10).

  Despite his stated dream of taking part in an Islamic state, Maldonado’s trip quickly turned dark. At one po
int, he took part in the interrogation of a supposed spy—a flight attendant who had the temerity to take a picture of jihadists arriving in Somalia by plane. The man was beaten. Maldonado pointed a gun at the man’s head and threatened to kill him if he didn’t talk. The flight attendant—almost certainly an innocent bystander—ended up dead.72

  Maldonado’s accounts of his trip to Somalia were telling but divergent:

  Internet Letter

  Knowing that the Ethiopians were coming and the women were about to leave, [my wife] thought that there was a great possibility I would be killed. So we had a nice, long beautiful talk as she prepared. We expressed our love and admiration for each other. She thanked me by saying: “You are the greatest teacher I have ever had! You are the only man who has stuck around in my life! [ … ] You are a real man! I love you so much!”73

  First Court Letter

  [My wife and I] went to a house. We were told that we could rest in an empty room. We woke up the next day to be told we would not be able to go to the border together, [because] I am white and very obvious to anyone that may wish harm. They said that many things were getting out of hand. I told them that they could give me a gun, and I would go..[ … ] I wanted to be with my family. They explained it would be much harm and that no one would hurt a woman, especially seeing that my wife is black. [ … ] I finally agreed.74

  His letter to his coreligionists online described a valiant battle, followed by a powerful survival ordeal in the jungle. His letter to the court described a man trying desperately to flee Somalia. Both stories ended the same way—with Maldonado getting arrested by the Kenyan military while trying to escape in early 2007.75 While he was going through this process, his wife died of malaria. Maldonado considered her a martyr.76

  Meanwhile, Tarek Mehanna’s childhood friend—who had gone with him to Yemen—had started informing to the FBI about the circle of jihadists. At the end of 2006, the FBI showed up on Mehanna’s doorstep, asking about Maldonado. Mehanna said he had no idea where his friend was, although the two had stayed in contact over the phone.

  Maldonado had urged Mehanna to join him in Somalia, but Mehanna continued to hedge.77 He had been slower than his peers to translate his ideology into fighting, but he had not been idle. On his blog, Mehanna translated a blizzard of jihadist propaganda, from the writings of Abdullah Azzam to poems and historical Islamic texts. Nearly all of this material pertained to extremely conservative interpretations of Islam, and much of it dealt with jihad.78

  It was relatively unusual for Mehanna to contribute material he had written himself, although he posted regularly to the forums, poking here and there at examples that he felt showed the victimization of Muslims.79

  He also indulged in the occasional outburst of poetry. One of his efforts, titled “Make Martyrdom What You Seek,” invoked the traditional jihadist’s reward of seventy-two virgins:

  You turn and behold! The voices are singing

  Coming from Maidens so fair and enchanting,

  These are the [Houris] with round and firm chests

  Pure untouched virgins, they’re better than the best,

  Seventy-two in all, with large eyes of dark hue

  Each one created especially for you.

  Mehanna’s friends had surpassed him in their commitment to physically taking part in jihad, but Mehanna had an ugly, voyeuristic obsession with violence that often seemed to be a greater inspiration than his interest in Islam. He joked with a friend that New York was no longer the “Land of the Two Towers” (a play on a jihadist reference to Iraq, the “Land of the Two Rivers”). Instead, he suggested that it be called the “land of rape.” With friends in tow, Mehanna visited Ground Zero. A photo taken at the site shows him grinning and pointing at the sky.

  He circulated videos depicting the mutilation of the body of an American soldier in Iraq, referring to it as “Texas BBQ.” (The soldier was supposedly killed as retaliation for the alleged rape of a Muslim woman by a U.S. serviceman.)80 In online chat sessions with a friend, he joked about beheadings. In a chat with Abousamra, he suggested that a female Muslim leader who had spoken out against extremism “needs to be raped with a broomstick.” Referring to Mahdi Bray, a leader of the Muslim American Society, Mehanna said, “I wish I could [ … ] cut off his testicles.”81

  In short, Tarek Mehanna was a nasty piece of work. He was arrested in 2009 for lying to the FBI about Maldonado then indicted for material support of terrorism. Abousamra was also indicted, but he had already fled the country after he was interrogated by the FBI in 2006. He is today believed to be living in Syria, where he has family ties.82

  Despite the ugliness of his private rhetoric, Mehanna became a cause célèbre, both within the local community in Boston and online, particularly on the Islamic Awakening forum. Mehanna’s letters from prison, including poems and drawings, were posted online by IA members who knew him before his arrest. Campaigns were organized through the forum to write letters and provide other shows of support, including a savvy social networking effort mounted by Mehanna’s brother.83

  All of these efforts together have built a mythic picture of Mehanna as a political prisoner, drowning out the sordid details that were laid out in page after page of court documents. At the time of this writing, his case had not yet gone to trial, but it seems unlikely that further revelations will make a dent in the narrative created by his defenders, especially given the absence of overt violence in the charges against him. The most serious allegation was that he had appointed himself the “media wing” of al Qaeda in Iraq, but as of this writing, no evidence had emerged to suggest he had a direct connection to the terrorist organization.84

  SERIOUS BUSINESS

  Evaluating the threat posed by jihobbyists online is a game that journalists often play to extremes. Either they ignore it, or they hype it to the skies. For example, Revolution Muslim has been around for years but garnered only sporadic coverage until the South Park incident, which inspired an explosion of stories lacking context.

  The release of Samir Khan’s Inspire in July 2010 prompted an incredible wave of hysterical and wildly inaccurate coverage from normally responsible news outlets, including stories claiming that the magazine was a website (it wasn’t), that it had been published on glossy paper (it wasn’t), and that it was the first English-language publication targeting Western recruits (it wasn’t). None of the reporters and few quoted analysts had even heard of Al Hussam or the four issues of Jihad Reflections published just months earlier. In fact almost none of the reporters had even read Inspire—the PDF was corrupted when it was first uploaded, prompting jihadists and journalists alike to panic and assume that the file contained a virus (it didn’t).85

  Given the series of setbacks and failures described in this chapter, it might be tempting to dismiss the online jihad as a comedy of errors, a gang that couldn’t shoot straight. It’s easy enough to underestimate the significance of the jihadist Web, especially when so many of its celebrities are young and inept like Zach Chesser, or when they don’t appear to be taking direct action toward violence, as in the case of Tarek Mehanna. But there are several levels on which these forums and websites are fundamentally transforming the face of American jihadists.

  It’s not simply a question of volume, at least not yet. Although the data set is sketchy, it appears the number of American jihadists and jihad sympathizers in 2010 is not exponentially higher than it was at the end of the 1980s. The perception of an increase is due, in part, to the fact that Americans are paying more attention now than they were then. And the jihadists themselves are far more visible to outsiders, thanks to the Internet.

  There are also considerably more Muslims in America today than there were in 1990. Reliable figures on the number of U.S. Muslims are hard to come by, but even the most conservative estimate (1.3 million, almost certainly too low) shows the Muslim population more than doubled from 1990 to 2008.

  That creates a bigger pool from which jihadists can recruit, but it doesn’t m
ean that the number of jihadists, as a percentage of the American Muslim population, has increased by leaps and bounds. It should be stressed that only a tiny percentage of American Muslims are drawn into violent extremism, but it should also be recognized that Muslims represent the pool in which jihadists cast their lines. Based on the admittedly incomplete data, it appears likely that the percentage of American Muslims drawn into jihadist activity has increased somewhat but is not dramatically higher than it was in 1990.

  The odds of developing credible data covering the last thirty years are slim, so the numbers game becomes something of a dead end. But we can observe, much more directly, that the Internet is creating a significant change in the patterns of radicalization and the types of people who make the decision to go from talk to action.

  During the 1980s and the 1990s, recruits for jihad overseas most often entered combat from the perspective of defending Muslims from fairly unambiguous acts of aggression by non-Muslims, and they tended to be selected by recruiters or self-selected on the basis that they would be good in a fight—for instance, if they had military training. Candidates were usually filtered through a network of recruiters who helped screen volunteers and direct them to settings where they could be most useful.

  For many, perhaps most, of these first-phase recruits, sophisticated ideological structures came only after they had decided to become combatants. When they arrived at the camps, itching for combat, they were instead subjected to days or weeks of religious indoctrination before they were allowed to take part in military training, let alone fight.