Agent Storm: My Life Inside al-Qaeda (10 page)

Anxious that the disturbance not be reported to the police, community leaders assured me that they would apply Sharia law to my assailant. I was given the options of breaking a bottle over his head, forgiving him or taking blood money of nearly $3,000. I wasn’t inclined to forgive him and did not want to return to prison for breaking a bottle over someone’s head. But the blood money meant that suddenly I could travel again.

I had recently taken to browsing Muslim ‘matrimonial’ sites on the internet, hopeful of finding a suitably religious but also suitably attractive partner. They would never be referred to as dating sites and were rather more prim than their American counterparts. The women who had posted their details had little to say of their personal likes and dislikes, more often promising to be good, obedient and faithful wives. Every one of them wore the hijab and a meek expression. Even so, one living in the Moroccan capital had attracted my attention. Karima spoke English, was well-educated and religiously observant, and had approached me with a simple online question: would I like to marry her?
³

Flush with cash thanks to a broken bottle, with a clean Danish passport and my debt to society paid in full, I was soon airborne.

I was met by her brother in Rabat – the vetting committee. Even before I met Karima I went to a couple of the more radical mosques in Salat, a poorer neighbourhood of Rabat. Here too Salafism was thriving: the fact that I had been to Yemen and knew Sheikh Muqbil opened doors. It also impressed Karima’s family.

Karima was petite with olive skin, almond eyes and a demure manner that complemented her deep faith. I found her both attractive and intelligent. She was already thinking about emigrating to Yemen or Afghanistan with me to seek a purer existence. Within days we were married at her family’s house. It may seem ridiculous that two people
could marry days after meeting each other, but it was the way dictated by our faith. There was no question of dating, of discreet dinners to explore each other’s thoughts and emotions. Allah would take care of everything.

And the Danish state would take care of relocating me to Yemen. Youth education grants were just one aspect of its overarching social welfare system. I applied to learn Arabic at the
CALES
language institute in Sana’a and received a grant – no questions asked. Karima remained in Morocco while I set about preparing for our new life in Yemen.

In April 2001 I flew into Sana’a again. It felt strangely like I belonged there. What had been an assault on the senses on my first visit was now pleasantly familiar. The chaos of the streets was welcoming rather than overwhelming; I was excited to catch up with my acquaintances there and spend long evenings on roof terraces talking about faith and the world. And I felt a real affinity for this poor corner of the Arabian Peninsula. This was where the struggle for the soul of my religion was being waged.

The neighbourhood of Sana’a where I settled seemed much more spontaneous than the bland, well-ordered suburbs of Denmark. I smiled to see the battered carts of fruit and vegetables being hauled through the streets by thin young men, the tiny kiosks selling gum and cigarettes, the old men gathered on corners with their prayer beads.

Yemen’s bureaucracy meant it would be several months before Karima could join me in Sana’a. That same bureaucracy was also having trouble keeping up with my former Salafist comrades, who had become even more active and radical in my absence. And it was by now beyond doubt that al-Qaeda saw Yemen as a ‘space’ in which to attack Western interests. A few months before my return, terrorists aboard a skiff had approached the visiting
USS
Cole
in Aden harbour. They saluted the sailors on board before detonating hundreds of pounds of C4 explosives against the
Cole
’s hull. Seventeen US sailors lost their lives and the ship nearly sank.

Young Abdul, a skinny teenager when I had left, was now a confident young man with a growing
jihadist network
and much-improved English. He often visited the house I had rented and we fell back into
long conversations about religion. He urged me not to read books by Salafis who did not support jihad and we devoured websites that reported on the conflicts in Indonesia and Chechnya.

One evening I went to visit him at his mother’s home – a plain breeze-block house on an unpaved street in Sana’a. Emaciated cats wandered among the piles of garbage as children played football or ran with hoops. Hussein al-Masri, the Egyptian jihadi who had previously offered to get me to bin Laden’s camps, was there when I arrived.

As we sat on the floor, drinking tea, it became clear Abdul had been busy while I’d been in London. He told me in hushed tones but with unmistakable pride that he had travelled to Afghanistan, spent time in al-Qaeda’s camps and even – he claimed – met Osama bin Laden.

‘He is doing Allah’s work,’ Abdul said. ‘The attack on the American warship and on the embassies is just the beginning,’ he continued, referring to al-Qaeda’s bombing of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998. ‘There are good Muslims from all over the world who are now in Kandahar and Jalalabad.’ He and al-Masri told me they could get me to Afghanistan to help build the promised land. I sometimes wondered whether Abdul was embellishing his exploits and encounters, but he certainly displayed first-hand knowledge of Afghanistan and
none of the al-Qaeda members
I subsequently met contradicted his account.

I was tempted to go myself. My religious views were certainly no longer an obstacle. Once back in Yemen, encouraged by Abdul, I had devoured books by pro-jihadist Islamic scholars – even translating some into Danish. I had forsaken my Salafi purism to view preparation for jihad as a necessity.

It was not religious fervour alone that tempted me to head to Afghanistan. One of my circle in London – a half-Barbadian, half-Englishman – had told stories of training in Afghanistan, stimulating the sense of adventure that always itched within me. He spoke of roaming the majestic mountains, weapons training and an intense fellowship among the fighters.

‘I might be going back soon,’ Abdul said. ‘The Sheikh said that people like you should come,’ he added, referring to bin Laden. He showed me a video from Afghanistan with scenes of al-Qaeda recruits
training on monkey bars and firing rockets, footage which later became iconic.

‘I would like to go,’ I said. I could not restrain my excitement about being with the mujahideen in the mountains of Afghanistan. My new wife was soon to join me in Sana’a, but training for jihad was all I could think about.

‘We can arrange a plane ticket to Karachi, from where you’ll be picked up and driven over to Afghanistan,’ Abdul said.

Karima arrived in the height of summer, but I was now in a quandary. I felt I could not just leave her in Sana’a while I disappeared to the Hindu Kush – even though she accepted it was my religious duty to prepare for jihad. She knew nobody in Sana’a.

I sought an audience with Mohammed al-Hazmi, one of the radical clerics I had encountered during my previous stay in Sana’a.

‘I want to train with the mujahideen in Afghanistan,’ I told him.

‘
Masha’Allah
, this is good. According to Sharia you can’t leave your wife unless she is with a responsible family member: a father, brother or uncle. But for jihad there is an exception. Your wife can stay in your residence in Sana’a and the landlord can take her as family.’

There seemed a lot of flexibility in the rules as applied to Holy War.

Abdul, just back from Afghanistan, had different advice, telling me that if I travelled there I should take my wife with me, so that we could make
hijra
– emigrate to a Muslim land. He was relaying Osama bin Laden’s appeal for jihadis to bring their families. Many did: when al-Qaeda’s last redoubt at Tora Bora was cleared later that year,
women and children
were among those killed or put to flight.

I decided against taking Karima, a decision that seemed all the more realistic when she told me she was pregnant in August. Despite this, she still agreed to my imminent departure.

One morning after returning from prayers, I caught a glimpse of her as she struggled down the stairs. She was suffering in the heat – debilitated with morning sickness and back pain. She looked pale and tired and my instinct to protect her – and my unborn child – smothered my dream of becoming a trained warrior for Allah, at least for the time being.

‘I am staying here with you,’ I told her. ‘You can’t remain alone
here – pregnant and penniless in a strange city, supposedly under the protection of a landlord.’

She began to weep. I felt less than chivalrous for even contemplating leaving her. And the prospect of fatherhood dulled the disappointment of not being able to travel to Afghanistan.

Instead of going there I returned to Dammaj for a short visit. Sheikh Muqbil, the great Salafi religious guide, had passed away in July while receiving treatment for liver disease in Saudi Arabia. His funeral took place in Mecca, but the seminary was holding a memorial. Hundreds of his former pupils gathered from around the Arab world, many of them weeping during prayers. There seemed to be a vacuum without him. My friend the American convert Clifford Newman and his son, Abdullah, were among the mourners. Clifford showed me an Uzi machine gun he had acquired for their protection from the Shia tribes in the area.

My drift towards full-blooded militancy was brought into focus on 11 September 2001. Late in the afternoon I went to a barber’s shop in Sana’a. The Arabic news channel, Al Jazeera, was blaring in the corner. Soon after I arrived, it began airing live footage from New York. Smoke was drifting from the upper storeys of the World Trade Center. The breathless commentary soon made clear that a terrorist attack had occurred.

I rushed home and turned on the radio as further details of the attacks came in. Until that day, the name Osama bin Laden had meant little to the average Salafi. He was respected for giving up the trappings of wealth and fighting in Afghanistan to establish an Islamic state there. But of al-Qaeda’s growing capabilities and ambitions little was known. Despite the attacks on the US embassies in East Africa and the USS
Cole
, no one I knew had expected al-Qaeda to take its war to the US homeland. Some regarded it as misguided, others as wrong because it targeted civilians. But among most of my acquaintances in Sana’a – especially those who flocked to Sheikh Mohammed al-Hazmi’s mosque that evening – euphoria drowned out any more sober perspective on the attacks.

Al-Hazmi was popular among young militant Muslims in Sana’a. Addressing an overflowing congregation in the stifling heat that evening, he was unequivocal.

‘What has happened is just retribution for American oppression of Muslims and the occupation of Muslim lands,’ he said – a reference to the continuing presence of US forces in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Gulf.

The congregation prostrated themselves in gratitude to Allah. At that point I was unsure who had committed the attacks and had heard that as many as 20,000 people might have died. I had seen few pictures and was unsure how to respond to such an act – even if it had been carried out by fellow Muslims as an act of jihad. I had so many questions. Did Islam permit a suicide attack? Was targeting civilians in a far-off country justifiable?

Many Salafis, even in Sana’a, were critical of the 9/11 attacks – saying they had no justification in Islam. But for me the theological answer came a few days later and helped cement a sense of obligation to make jihad. A Saudi cleric, Sheikh Humud bin Uqla, published
a long fatwa
in support of 9/11, saying it was permissible to kill civilians when they were ‘mixed up’ with fighters and drawing a comparison with a US military strike in 1998 on an alleged al-Qaeda facility in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.

‘
When America attacked a pharmaceutical firm in Sudan, using its planes and bombs, destroying it and killing everybody in it, staff and labourers, what was this called? Shouldn’t the action of America in the Sudanese firm be considered as an act of terrorism?’ the Sheikh asked
.

I devoured the fatwa, even as Sheikh bin Uqla was condemned by other clerics. A prominent supporter of the Taliban before 9/11, he was constantly under attack by the Saudi religious establishment. But his arguments, in those feverish days after 9/11, were what I wanted to hear.

Ultimately I accepted that in this clash of civilizations I was a Muslim. Weeks after 9/11, as the United States embarked on its invasion of Afghanistan, President George W. Bush would say, ‘You are either
with us or with the terrorists
.’ That left me no option; I could not side with the
kuffar
. Osama bin Laden was pure; he was a hero. President Bush did not believe in Allah or accept Mohammed as His messenger. His was a crusade against Islam; he had even used the word – and that pushed many doubters into the camp of the mujahideen.

In the debate over how Muslims should respond I lost a lot of friends who were Salafis. To me they were cowards; they had turned their backs on fellow Muslims. But I gained many other friends and they were jihadis. Many of them left for Afghanistan. Some militants I knew expected a US invasion of Yemen any day; I even told Karima that she would be safer back in Morocco.

Abdul and I had many discussions about the way forward.

‘I have something to tell you, Murad,’ he said one evening. ‘I have been travelling around for Sheikh Osama. I’ve been delivering messages for him. You know the training video I showed you? I myself smuggled that out of Afghanistan.’

‘
Masha’Allah!
’ I replied. It was frowned upon to praise someone directly. Everything had to come from God.

‘You can see one of the hijackers in the video – he’s the guy filmed from behind firing the anti-aircraft gun. I met him while I was over there. But nobody told me what was being planned.’

I was impressed. Abdul, scarcely out of his teens, was moving in rarefied jihadist circles.