Read Agent Storm: My Life Inside al-Qaeda Online
Authors: Morten Storm,Paul Cruickshank,Tim Lister
‘[The Prophet Mohammed] did not customize Islam based on his location … he customized the location based on Islam,’ Awlaki said.
Efforts by moderate Muslim groups in the West to interpret jihad as a non-violent struggle were just one element of the drive to destroy Islam, he said. Muslims should reject non-Muslim practices and avoid relationships with disbelievers.
The lecture was a tour de force – widely disseminated online, expanding his following in extremist circles in the West.
I got to know Awlaki in Sana’a shortly after the lecture began to get traction online. During long, all-encompassing conversations we talked about Salafism, al-Qaeda, the legitimacy of jihad and the civilian casualties it so often caused. And we talked about bin Laden.
One evening in the late spring of 2006, after we had met about half a dozen times in the study group, he lingered after the others left.
He fixed me with those dark eyes and said simply: ‘9/11 was justified.’
To his mind, a global struggle between Muslims and disbelievers was underway, and the 9/11 attacks – despite the civilian victims – were a legitimate episode in that battle. Soon after we spoke, he recorded a lecture entitled ‘
Allah is Preparing Us for Victory
’, in which he said America had declared war on Muslims.
It is impossible to be sure whether his outlook stemmed from his treatment in the US, and was now fed by a vendetta because of the leaks about his visits to escorts, or whether like me he saw the waging of jihad as the logical and obligatory response to the Muslim predicament. It was probably both. He may also have been swayed by the fact that as his sermons became more militant and as his criticism of the US grew more strident, so his online following around the world grew.
While the cleric was openly sympathetic to al-Qaeda, I did not detect any ambition in him to join the group – nor signs that he had any influence over the rising numbers of al-Qaeda fighters in Yemen. But within days of our first meeting al-Qaeda became a much more potent force.
The prison escape breathed fresh life into al-Qaeda in Yemen. In the years after 9/11 US and Yemeni counter-terrorism operations had arrested and killed dozens of operatives, bringing the group to the brink of defeat. Wuhayshi would spend the next several years building a new and highly effective al-Qaeda franchise in Yemen.
The sessions with Awlaki soon became a weekly fixture. Anwar’s study group, as we began to call ourselves, was a diverse collection of about a dozen English-speakers from the four corners of the earth, including from as far afield as Mexico and Mauritius. I would cook huge meals, and some of the group would stay over in the several spare bedrooms I had. Most of the circle were in Sana’a to learn Arabic or study Islam, but some had other agendas. My neighbour – a Yemeni general who prayed at the same mosque I attended – saw the comings and goings and warned me about some of my visitors. I was being watched, he told me.
One of those visitors was Jehad Serwan Mostafa, a lanky, bearded young man from San Diego with distant blue eyes. His lips seemed perpetually curled into a scowl of disdain, the only exception being when he listened spellbound to Awlaki. His father was Kurdish and his mother an American convert. Once upon a time he had worked in a car repair shop on
El Cajon Boulevard
. Now he was studying at al-Iman – and applying for a Somali visa. The Somali embassy had told him to go to the US embassy to collect the right paperwork to apply to enter Somalia. I was amazed to find out that the US embassy had given him the necessary documents, no questions asked. Within three years, Mostafa would
graduate to the FBI’s Rewards
for Justice list, accused of aiding and fighting with the Somali terror group al-Shabaab.
Another regular at the study sessions was a Danish convert with
auburn hair I knew from extremist circles in Copenhagen. He came from a wealthy family and even I was unnerved by his wild-eyed radicalism. He called himself Ali.
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Through the circle I got to know many other militants in Sana’a.
4
One of them – Abdullah Misri, a dark-skinned tribesman from Marib with a neatly trimmed beard – was already al-Qaeda in Yemen’s senior money man. He would buy cars in Dubai and smuggle them into Yemen, using the proceeds to bankroll the group’s growing capabilities. It occurred to me I was probably by now under surveillance by Western counter-terrorism agencies. After all, I knew a lot of interesting people.
In Sana’a I was also reunited with a Danish convert called Kenneth Sorensen. He had gravitated to Sana’a partly because of what I had told him about my time in Yemen when we met in 2002 in Odense. He had read about me in the Danish newspapers and had sought me out.
Sorensen was younger than me, broad-shouldered and burly, the product of a harsh upbringing. His mother, he told me, was a drug addict, he had little education, and in Denmark he had scraped by as a part-time dustman.
Sorensen had arrived in Sana’a ostensibly to study Arabic, but craved action on the frontline. Awlaki had not invited him to his study sessions because he had a reputation as a loudmouth and loose cannon, dressing up as a jihadi and brandishing guns on the streets of Sana’a.
But I enjoyed his company. He was one of several friends who accompanied me to a rally in Tahrir Square in the centre of Sana’a early in 2006 to protest against cartoons published in Denmark and other European countries which we saw as insulting the Prophet Mohammed. The cartoons had originally been published the previous year by a Danish newspaper, setting off a firestorm across the Muslim world, because of
a taboo in Islam against the physical representation of the Prophet. One by the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard depicted the Prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban, and a Norwegian newspaper had just poured fuel on that fire by republishing them.
‘Death to Denmark!’ I shouted with the others till I was hoarse. Unlike the feeble crew that had protested in Grosvenor Square the previous year I felt those around me had the courage of their convictions, and that felt intoxicating.
The film-maker Nagieb and I had not given up on his project to make a documentary about the mujahideen, and Abdul said he would try to introduce us to one of the al-Qaeda figures who had escaped from jail in Sana’a. His name was Sheikh Adil al-Abab; Abdul said he had spent time with him in Afghanistan. He would later become the religious Emir of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and among the top half-dozen in its leadership.
Abdul drove us to a residence in a rough part of town. He stopped the car but kept the engine running. Within minutes the cleric jumped into the car. He was a young but portly figure with a handlebar moustache.
I became friendly with al-Abab and fascinated by his command of religious texts and his views on jihad. Getting to know him would pay a significant dividend in years to come.
It never ceased to amaze me that the Yemeni security services failed to arrest al-Abab. We met several times without great secrecy in Sana’a. Al-Abab was clearly on the same journey as Awlaki, moving towards a declaration of war against the US and bitterly critical of the Yemeni government for its submissive attitude towards the US.
I had no doubts about the loyalty and principles of the militants I knew. So I was disturbed by what Awlaki told me in the spring of 2006 about Abdul, by then my closest friend in Sana’a.
‘Abdul lost $25,000 while on a mission for the brothers in Djibouti,’ he said, with more than a hint of disbelief about ‘lost’. ‘He disappeared off the map for six months and the money has never been recovered, but, as you know, Abdul now has a new house here which seems to be beyond his means. Just be careful,’ Awlaki said. ‘I don’t think Abdul is trustworthy.’
I was taken aback, but also intrigued that Awlaki had spoken about ‘the brothers’. He could only mean al-Qaeda; perhaps he was closer to the group than I had imagined.
Without naming my source, I broached the subject with Abdul.
‘I swear by Allah that I did not steal the money and what they accuse me of is unjust,’ he said. He said he had been arrested in Djibouti, and the intelligence services had confiscated the cash. He showed me passport entry and exit stamps that were some six months apart.
‘That’s how long I was detained,’ he said.
‘What were you doing there?’
‘I was a courier. I was working for Abu Talha al-Sudani.’
He watched closely for my reaction.
I was taken aback. Abdul, if he was speaking the truth, was clearly moving in rarified and perilous circles.
Abu Talha was one of al-Qaeda’s leading operatives in East Africa and near the top of the US most-wanted list.
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‘
Masha’Allah
. That’s amazing,’ I blurted out. I wondered, did Awlaki know this? Or did he not believe it?
By now I had managed to get my son into a local school and he was beginning to learn Arabic. But both of us missed female company; Awlaki had told me I should find a new wife to look after Osama, and even offered – with a wry laugh – to set me up. But his matchmaking services were not required. After picking Osama up from school one afternoon, I had told him to run ahead and find me a sweet woman to marry. Never a shy boy, he ran into the offices of a driving school for women and when I caught up with him he was talking to a young Yemeni woman. Petite, very pretty and with a winning smile and infectious laugh, she won me over within minutes.
I asked her where she had gone to school and what she did – the usual introductions. Within minutes I told her that I was divorced and living in Sana’a alone with my son. I tried to sound helpless and a little lost; it must have seemed an obvious ploy.
A week later I returned to the driving school in the hope of seeing her again. I sent Osama in.
‘My dad wants to speak with you,’ he told her in Arabic.
Her co-workers looked on with a mixture of curiosity and amusement. This was not how introductions between the sexes were usually handled in Yemen. We agreed to meet at the Libyan Centre in Sana’a, a place where many foreigners gathered.
I turned up with Osama. She said her name was Fadia and she peppered me with questions, about my divorce, why I was staying in Yemen, what I wanted from a wife.
‘I want someone who doesn’t pretend to be something she isn’t,’ I said. ‘I was married to a woman who pretended to be a pious Muslim but she wasn’t.’
I followed up with an unusual question for what might be described as a first date, Yemeni-style.
‘What do you think about Sheikh Osama bin Laden?’
Fadia looked taken aback and hesitated. But then she surprised me.
‘I think he has given honour to the Muslims,’ she said. ‘But I don’t like that he killed innocent civilians. If he had attacked the military it would have been better.’
I was delighted and impressed: a Yemeni woman who was not only attractive but spoke English, and was thoughtful. But I also had the arrogance of a true Salafi and believed I could mould her to become a better Muslim. I gave her a CD, embossed with a heart. She probably expected it to be full of romantic music, but it contained nothing but jihadist chants.
I had other questions, most of them to do with religion. As a genuine Salafi, that was what mattered, not her tastes in music or family background. How much of the Koran had she memorized? (My first wife, Karima, knew the entire Koran by heart in two dialects.)
Fadia’s parents were both dead, so within a few days she asked her uncle, with whom she was very close, to meet me and to find out whether I was the genuine article or some chancer. The interview was held in Sana’a’s only Pizza Hut, which looked exactly like its US counterparts and could have been dropped into the Yemeni capital from Arizona. Apparently I performed adequately. The uncle reported back
that I was very likeable and had a sense of humour, but had some dangerous ideas.
‘He also has a temper,’ the uncle told her, ‘but I believe any woman can change her husband.’
Others in her family, a well-respected Sana’a household, were less enthusiastic. Some even checked with contacts in the intelligence services, who said that I should be avoided at all costs because I associated with militants.
That changed the uncle’s outlook.
‘You can marry him,’ he said, ‘but we want to see all his papers: residency, health, everything.’
The confident expectation was that I would be unable to trawl Yemen’s byzantine bureaucracy for the documents. Then she could be steered towards another suitor preferred by her family, a wealthy surgeon who did not have my baggage of divorce, a young son and the wrong friends.
Somehow I gathered all the papers, even one from the Ministry of the Interior that granted me residency. I could sense the animosity among some of the officials; I was an unwelcome guest.
The new love of my life chose me rather than the wealthy surgeon. One Friday in the late spring of 2006, our marriage contract was sealed at her uncle’s house. While he had grudgingly accepted the match, other family members had not. Her brother refused to attend the wedding.
I didn’t tell any of them that the paperwork for my divorce to Karima had not been completed: as far as I was concerned the man-made laws of the UK had no jurisdiction over such matters.
I went to the tailor to order a sumptuous new
thawb
for the ceremony and asked a Yemeni friend to lend me the equivalent of $2,000, as a dowry to the bride’s family. The only hitch was that my friend forgot to bring the cash – and Fadia’s uncle had to intervene and find the money, to give to himself.