by J. M. Berger
And the jihadists themselves have almost universally come to define America as the enemy. Although this war was launched by al Qaeda in almost every meaningful sense, the subsequent invasion of Iraq on the basis of unfounded claims about weapons of mass destruction has provided jihadist ideologues with all the ammunition they need to deflect and avoid the question of “who started it.” No future change in the course of U.S. policy can fully erase the impact of that mistake.
In Iraq and Afghanistan today, U.S. military forces are directly fighting jihadists on the battlefield. In Somalia and Yemen, the “hidden hand” of U.S. military and political influence is seen as manipulating events on the ground, not without some justification.
For better or worse, America is embroiled in a global war with jihadism, and there is no immediately foreseeable end to that conflict. The ultimate direction of that war is beyond the scope of this book. The goal here is evaluating the threat from the self-styled jihadists in our midst. There are three major considerations:
Quality of entry-level recruits: As noted in chapter 11, early jihadist recruits generally had relevant skills, often some kind of traditional military training. As the Internet replaced the real-world network of recruiters and personal connections, jihadist volunteers began to reflect a different demographic. The most rabid supporters of jihad today are very young converts with little practical experience in Islam, fighting, or life. They’re often not even particularly good at using the Internet securely. Abdullah Azzam, writing in 1988, complained about the immaturity and the shallow Islamic learning of his followers.4 He would likely have been horrified to see the state of jihad in 2010.
Numbers: Offsetting the low quality of many of these volunteers is the Internet’s reach. Before 9/11 you had to find and engage a real world social network in order to learn about and eventually win an invitation to jihad. Now anyone with a computer can find himself hip-deep in jihad-friendly social circles in no time flat and can e-mail someone like Anwar Awlaki for encouragement and instructions on how to proceed with mayhem. The pool of people with more than a casual interest in jihad is much larger, and it’s easier for them to find social reinforcement to go deeper. There are more traps and dead ends for aspiring jihadists online than there were for someone walking down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn in 1990, but generally anyone with enough persistence can move from talk to action with active support from serious players met online. A 2010 report claiming that three hundred Americans had trained with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula raises alarm bells.5 I’m a bit skeptical about this estimate, but if it’s true, that could be more Americans than took part in the wars in 1980s Afghanistan and 1990s Bosnia combined.
Lack of training: The devastation wrought on al Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan has paid dividends to U.S. national security. No one has ever come close to replicating the success of al Qaeda’s training network, in terms of length of training, quality of graduates, and relative ease of access. It’s not uncommon for modern-day American recruits to try several times before gaining access to any terrorist training camp, if they make it at all. Once they get there, their handlers are usually in a hurry to give them a bare minimum of instruction and send them off on an attack. As seen most memorably in the attempted Times Square bombing, inadequate training has a tendency to lead to failure.
In light of these considerations, the danger posed by American jihadists cannot be measured on a linear scale over time. During the 1990s jihadists based in the United States were relatively professional: more experienced, better trained, and likely to have a military background. Their schemes—such as the World Trade Center bombing and the “Day of Terror” plot—were carefully planned, fairly well financed, and staffed by more people.
In the years since September 11 and especially since 2008 and the rise of Anwar Awlaki, a new pattern has emerged. The attacks are more frequent and less complex. The attackers are more and more often radicalized young people, acting in small groups or alone, with minimal funds and even less training. Awlaki’s Inspire magazine has explicitly encouraged American Muslims to act alone using simple tactics, and al Qaeda Central has echoed that call in messages from Adam Gadahn and others.6
Counterterrorism officials worry about the prospect that U.S. terrorists will exploit their knowledge of American life and psychology to wreak terrible damage. It’s a valid concern, but Americans who join jihad movements often start by abandoning the trappings of their native culture, losing some of their competitive edge in the process.
At-risk converts often adopt Arab dress and customs, even though such affectations have little to do with Islam per se. Those who join jihadist organizations are often so eager to assimilate that they affect or acquire vaguely Arabic-sounding accents, as in the cases of Omar Hammami and Adam Gadahn.
From a Westerner’s perspective, this is a good thing. It makes them less effective at speaking to Americans in propaganda, and so far, it has also rendered them less effective at crafting uniquely American forms of attack. When someone is inducted into what is essentially a cult, he is likely to follow rather than lead.
There are exceptions. People who grew up with a foot in both worlds—such as Anwar Awlaki and perhaps Adnan Shukrijumah—appear more successful at adapting their messages and tactics for Westerners. Awlaki has proved his ability to speak effectively to Westerners using their own idioms. Awlaki’s student Nidal Hasan struck out in a very American manner, with guns blazing. Another of Awlaki’s students, Samir Khan, produces the West-friendly Inspire magazine.
Shukrijumah is more of a cipher. His ultimate impact on al Qaeda’s tactics is still shrouded in secrecy as of this writing, but if the volume of the FBI’s statements about him is any indication, there is cause for concern. Adam Gadahn made an impact on al Qaeda’s propaganda operations, but his more Westernized ideas, like the Voice of the Caliphate newscast, have faded away in favor of traditional talking-head communiqués.
The potential game-changer that lurks ahead is the question of whether the American jihad movement can achieve critical mass and become a force in its own right, rather than a toolbox for jihadists abroad. Until now, most Americans have only been a commodity to foreign jihadists such as al Qaeda and, in recent years, an expendable commodity. They have been thrown away on missions doomed to fail or absorbed so thoroughly into a foreign culture that their uniquely American qualities become secondary to new allegiances.
In May 2010 someone—probably Revolution Muslim blogger Zach Chesser— set up a Twitter account called “AQNorthAmerica.” Although Chesser was something of a running joke in the counterterrorism community, it didn’t take long for my e-mail to start pinging with incredulous comments from colleagues about the account (which has been silent since Chesser’s arrest).
While the Twitter account was undoubtedly nothing more than some ill-considered posing, it points to the future. If the ranks of radicalized Muslims in America continue to grow at the current pace or even faster, prodded by political events or a surge in anti-Muslim rhetoric in the United States, could they achieve enough critical mass to create a genuine al Qaeda franchise worthy of the name in North America?
Most al Qaeda franchises and close allies overseas count their membership in the hundreds or higher. Assembling such a team in the United States without being discovered by law enforcement would have been difficult in 1990. The dozens of jihadists in Brooklyn and New Jersey certainly didn’t manage it. They were discovered by law enforcement—more than once—before arrests were made. But agents and officers at street level were dealing with a Washington, D.C., culture that had little appetite for investigating religious extremism.
That culture has obviously changed. With rare exceptions, domestic terrorist cells broken up since September 11 have consisted of six or fewer members, mostly with little or no support from overseas. Mosques have become much less hospitable to extremists, and the online forums where would-be terrorists congregate have been profoundly compromised by law enforcement and in
telligence agencies.
While at least thousands of Muslims in the United States are engaged to a greater or lesser extent in jihadist chatter online and in the real world, they remain a very small percentage of the American Muslim population. Very few of these talkers are anywhere close to action. With a caveat for inadequate data, the number of American Muslims who have picked up a gun, a knife, or a bomb with the intention of using it against another human being under the heading of jihad is almost certainly less than 1 percent of the total American Muslim population.
Those most prone to act are also most likely to have attracted law enforcement scrutiny. Simply gathering a dozen aspiring amateurs in one place for a terrorist operation is tempting fate. In the short-term future, it is likely that these conditions will continue to make major coordinated terrorist activity by homegrown American terrorists extremely difficult, but something short of impossible.
Because of all these factors, the new breed of American jihadists has almost uniformly failed to execute mass-casualty terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Unfortunately, that is nearly certain to change, perhaps by the time this book reaches print, perhaps a few months or years into the future. Whether by learning from failure or by simple luck, it is highly likely that the American jihadist movement will eventually succeed in a spectacular attack and cost hundreds or more American lives in the process.
There is also a greatly heightened threat of less conceptually ambitious terrorist attacks that can be staged by individuals or very small groups with little or no preparation or training, such as Nidal Hassan’s shooting rampage. Anwar Awlaki and his followers are actively pursuing this tactic. While there are serious questions about the strategy’s long-term viability, the prospects are unfortunately strong for near-term chaos caused by such small-scale attacks.
Evolution is the greatest danger and the biggest wild card. The history of American jihadists is one of constant, dynamic change. The jihadists of today are profoundly different from those of yesterday. They are younger and wilder, less predictable, and faster to act.
The American jihadists of the future will learn from their predecessors. Some will learn patience, and others will learn the tradecraft of terrorism. Some will be trained and receive money from terrorist networks abroad. Some will become extraordinarily dangerous. They may find ways to unify their efforts. Will there ever be a viable “al Qaeda in North America”? Forming a cohesive and capable organization would be a big challenge, but it’s not impossible.
As the players change, their methods will change, and the rules will change. The most immediate risk factors include:
Countermeasures: Zach Chesser’s jihadist career was less than exemplary, but he publicly articulated a subject that is certainly being discussed in private— how to foil established counterterrorism tactics. Jihadists have not caught up with advances in law enforcement and intelligence techniques, but we can’t assume we will retain the edge, particularly as it regards online security. Al Qaeda and its allies have almost always operated on an open-source basis, especially since September 11. Jihadist forums have until recently put a premium on accessibility over security. Arrests based on online intelligence gathering may inspire jihadists to get creative about protecting themselves and the identities of the forums’ members.7 Small steps have already been taken in that direction. In 2008, for example, al Qaeda–linked militants introduced military-grade encryption software customized for terrorist use.8 A few talented terrorist hackers could conceivably change the balance of power online. For now, though, the advantage remains decisively with the West. Another concern is that as new technologies continually roll out, unforeseen innovations may appear that render surveillance more difficult.
Reconstitution of al Qaeda’s training camps: Al Qaeda’s training camp structure was severely disrupted by the invasion of Afghanistan, but there are troubling signs that these camps may be enjoying a renaissance on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, in Yemen under the auspices of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and in Somalia, in coordination with both Al Shabab and the core al Qaeda.9 Rank amateurism was a defining characteristic for the wave of American jihadists exposed in 2009 and 2010. Even an incremental improvement in the training and the professionalism of the current generation of American terrorists could exponentially increase their destructive power. On the plus side, it’s very difficult to travel to a region where advanced terrorist training takes place without popping up on somebody’s intelligence radar screen.
The numbers game: No one really knows how many Americans have been genuinely radicalized through online and other sources. All of our best estimates are simply guesses, but the number is almost certainly measured in thousands. Not all of those who have been radicalized would directly support an act of violence. As the stories in this book show, there’s no single factor most likely to precipitate a radical thinker into a radical actor. An event of sufficient magnitude—along the lines of the Bosnia war—could tip a large number of these talkers into actors in a very short amount of time. Even allowing for continued amateurism in the ranks of American terrorists, this has the potential to unleash chaos. Nine times out of ten, a trained sniper on the rooftop will kill more people than a lunatic with a shotgun running down the street, but the lunatic is still dangerous. And ten lunatics on the sidewalk at one time are more dangerous than the sniper.
As we move forward, we must do so with an understanding of how American jihadists are created and how they develop over time. It’s easy to reduce these men to caricatures, to demonize them without listening to them, and to ignore what they say when their words do not fit our expectations. To listen carefully and critically, to acknowledge their stories, is not to excuse their actions. Understanding why Americans take up the banner of jihad is the first step to finding solutions.
As the extremists evolve, so too must the relationship between Americans and mainstream American Muslims. America’s most valuable asset in combating extremism has been truth. Jihadist idealogues—and even some mainstream American Muslim leaders—insist the United States has declared war against Islam. That claim has proved false, even in the dark days immediately after September 11.
But ten years later, we find the nation poised at a perilous juncture. The 2010 controversy over a proposed Islamic center in New York, a few blocks from Ground Zero, put an exclamation point on a rising tide of anti-Muslim sentiment in this country that has the potential to fuel extremism and discourage reformers.
During the summer of that year, prominent mainstream politicians on the right compared the Islamic center’s organizers—and Muslims writ large—to Nazis and other historic wartime enemies of the United States in comments that too often went unchallenged by members of the media and other politicians. Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the house, was the most visible and most mainstream voice to make this comparison:
Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington,” […] We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. […] There is no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center.10
Whatever one’s views on appropriateness of the center, the fact is that such extreme and indiscriminate anti-Muslim rhetoric helps to validate the worldview of our enemies—the premise that America’s wars are indeed wars against Islam. I said earlier in this chapter that Muslims who perpetuate a victimization mentality must accept some responsibility for the result. Non-Muslims who wish to define the entire religion of Islam as America’s enemy must also carry their share of that burden. You cannot tell someone, “You are my enemy,” and then blame them for believing you.
This in no way justifies or rationalizes the actions of those who translate their anger into violence, particularly terrorist violence, which is especially reprehensible for its focus on intentionally indiscriminate killing. The responsibility for such acts lies primarily with the individuals who commit them and those who explicitly encourage them to do so. The decision to step over th
e line and commit murder is inexcusable—but that doesn’t mean it has to be incomprehensible.
It’s fair game to challenge American Muslim leaders if they enable, excuse, or try to ignore the problem of radicalization—and some do—but those challenges must be thoughtful and made with an eye toward consequences, constructive dialogue, and moving through the impasse instead of deepening it. In turn, Muslim leaders must rise to the challenge of these times by directly confronting the problem of military jihadism rather than denying it exists or seeking to silence discussion with charges of Islamophobia and bigotry.
There must be an exit strategy for this discussion. We must preserve the constitutional rights and basic human respect due to American Muslims while changing the playing field to create conditions in which extremism cannot thrive. Those goals are not mutually exclusive—they are interdependent.
If principle and pragmatism are not enough reason to change the tone of the conversation, there is one more thing to consider. It would be not only dangerous but shameful to prove that our enemies were right about us all along.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It took a lot of help to make this book possible, and this list will certainly omit people who deserve to be thanked. For that I apologize in advance. I want to thank everyone who agreed to speak with me, but especially Tom Corrigan, formerly of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, who was generous not only with his time but also with crucial documentation that allowed me to present the words of the jihadists profiled herein. Former CIA analyst Mike Scheuer and former FBI agent Chris Voss, who now runs the Black Swan Group, helped stitch often-disparate threads together into a coherent whole. Alia Rashid sat down for two interviews— which were arranged with the help of Rashid’s attorney, Ken Wasserman—as did Ray Royer. Bilal Philips persisted through days of phone tag with a fourteen-hour time difference during Ramadan so that we could speak. There were many more, and each provided unique value. A number of people consented to speak on a not-for-attribution basis who could not have spoken otherwise.