Agent Storm: My Life Inside al-Qaeda (23 page)

The group built up a network of safe houses, including in the capital, Sana’a. But its main haven was in the mountains and rugged terrain of the southern and eastern provinces of the country – Marib, Abyan and Shabwa, where Awlaki’s family was influential. These areas were still dominated by local tribes who were suspicious of the central government in Sana’a. Keen to keep their autonomy, some tribal factions provided sanctuary and support to al-Qaeda fighters.

This was the militant environment into which Awlaki emerged, even if he was not yet an active figure in al-Qaeda.

In late January 2008, Awlaki came to lunch at our home on 40th Street. A few other friends from the lecture days (those not arrested or deported) came along too.
²
Sana’a was quite the jihadist melting pot. My wife cooked a huge array of dishes – including chicken, rice and a pot of
selta
– a traditional Yemeni dish of ground beef, eggs, okra and fenugreek. The food was laid on the floor, which was protected by a large plastic sheet as the assembled company ate.

After the plates had been cleared away, I lit a
bakhoor
, an incense smoke pile which filled the room with its herbal scent. We reclined on cushions against the walls and talked about the state of jihad, including al-Qaeda’s progress in the south of Yemen and how best to topple the Saleh regime. It was treasonable talk.

The conversation then turned to Somalia, and progress made by al-Shabaab in extending its reach across the country.

I had a mischievous idea.

‘Sheikh, why don’t we call up the brothers in Somalia and ask them how it’s going?’ I asked with a provocative grin.

They were sceptical: how could I just place a call like that?

The reason was Ahmed Warsame, now rising through the ranks of al-Shabaab.

‘
Masha’Allah
, it’s Murad, how are you? I have someone here who wants to talk to you,’ I said, handing the phone to Awlaki.

When Warsame recovered from the surprise of speaking to the famous cleric, he told him how the fight was going. Awlaki seemed elated, pleased to be talking to the mujahideen in Somalia. The two exchanged email addresses and mobile-phone numbers.

I had just brokered a connection between Somali and Yemeni militants. As Awlaki gravitated towards al-Qaeda’s inner circle in Yemen, his connection to Warsame would prove useful to both sides, but even more useful to Western intelligence services, now furnished with email addresses and phone numbers.

Before Awlaki took his leave that evening, we agreed on a new mode of communication, the tested technique of writing draft emails in a shared email account. I explained to him how it worked. In the wake of his incarceration, and amid the persistent attention of Yemen’s security services, he was more cautious about his links to the outside world.

A few weeks later, he abruptly left Sana’a – perhaps under pressure from his family, as his father had pleaded with him to soft-pedal his fundamentalist views. But equally he may have felt that he could not relaunch himself as a spiritual guide under the eye of Yemen’s intelligence services.

The city of Ataq sits on the fringe of the Empty Quarter, the endless expanse of desert that straddles the Yemeni–Saudi border. Some 200 miles south-east of Sana’a, Ataq is overlooked by dun-coloured mountains on three sides. Its skyline is dominated by functional government buildings, but several medieval jewels in and around the town have survived, elaborate mud-brick buildings baked into towering rock-faces. Ataq is also the provincial capital of Shabwa, where Awlaki’s family has influence. And so it was in Ataq that Anwar resettled and was spending time with his second, very young, wife.

Awlaki’s first wife had shared his life in the United States. She was from a prominent family in the Yemeni capital, was well-educated and spoke good English. She also had a strong personality, driving herself around Sana’a and frequently putting Anwar in his place. So she had not reacted positively when he had told her in 2006 that he planned to take a second wife, especially when she found out that the new bride was a teenager.

Awlaki had been offered the girl in marriage by her two brothers (this was, after all, Yemen), who were great admirers of his. Instead of declining this generous gesture, Awlaki had accepted enthusiastically. The wedding ceremony was not a triumph. The family of the first wife were offended by this young
arriviste
and felt her social standing was inferior.

At first Anwar had installed his new teenage bride in an apartment near the Air Force Academy in Sana’a. Now she had accompanied him – apparently with little enthusiasm – to the wilds of Shabwa.

In Ataq, Awlaki spent much of his time online. The cleric’s incarceration had seen his fame in Islamist circles in the West grow. Weeks after emerging from prison, Anwar created a website –
anwar-alawlaki.com
– and a Facebook page. From the town’s internet cafés with their crawling connection speeds, he began railing against the United States and its allies, including the Saleh government, for ‘waging a war on Islam’. He started exchanging messages with dozens among his legion of followers through more than
sixty email accounts
he registered.

My wife and I made the journey from Sana’a to Ataq in February 2008 to catch up with Awlaki. It was the first time we ventured into Yemen’s deep interior to seek out the cleric, but would not be the last. The trip was on my own initiative but approved by both PET and the CIA. To begin with, the security forces blocked us from the route because of tribal fighting in Marib (no unusual occurrence) – forcing us to try again the following day. For my wife, it was a social visit; she had no idea of my real intent in seeing Anwar again.

The nine-hour road trip passed along the fringes of the Ramlat al-Saba’tayn, where the wind had corrugated the sand into immense dunes. Once in a while, an adobe house of three or four storeys would emerge from the haze, defying the ages, the winds and the swirling
sands. The edge of the desert was defined by black granite domes – like giant loaves of pumpkin bread – rising hundreds of feet above the desert.

It was important that I stayed in character, even in the privacy of the car. I played CDs of
nashid
s – Islamic songs – and my wife remained fully veiled. When we finally reached Ataq at sunset, Anwar was waiting for us in a new Toyota Land Cruiser. He was not short of cash. He wore tribal dress and the Yemeni sword, or
janbiya
, on his hip.

We found a curious domestic arrangement for the emerging star of Islamic fundamentalism. Awlaki and his young wife had rented a modest third-floor apartment in the middle of the town. I was struck by the simple furnishings – a far cry from the grand living quarters of clerics like Sheikh Abdul Majid al-Zindani. Awlaki lived almost ascetically, his only luxury being the best honey available, which he insisted on every morning.
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A ceiling fan whirred above – it was already warm outside, even in February. The street below sent up the muffled sound of cars and the shouts of traders.

I never interacted with his new wife because of strict segregation of the sexes in conservative Yemeni circles. But my wife spent a lot of time with her, and soon found out she was hardly the obvious partner for a scholar of Anwar’s standing. By this time, she was nineteen – petite, very pretty and still with the bubby personality of a teenager. Anwar had been out of prison just three months but she was already pregnant – and prone to bouts of morning sickness.

She found Ataq tedious and hot, a remote and conservative corner of a remote and conservative country. She told my wife that the early days with Anwar had been tough. The wedding had felt like a funeral because of the first wife’s hostility. The two did not speak for months, but eventually they reached an accommodation. Now they took turns spending time with their husband in Ataq.

The younger wife could not wait to escape the stifling apartment and return to Sana’a to see her family. She seemed to love Anwar but told my wife that all he did was read. His study was crammed with books from floor to ceiling, on Koranic law and Islamic jurisprudence.

He studied Islamic teachings compulsively. But he was selective about how he applied them at home. He had installed a TV in the bedroom so that his wife could watch Turkish soaps dubbed into Arabic – to which she was addicted. It was a surprising concession: many militants within al-Qaeda considered television
haram
– strictly forbidden by Islamic law. Her viewing schedule also appeared to have taken priority over housework. The maids had taken care of that in Sana’a, but not in this backwater. More than once Anwar indulged her and went into the kitchen to prepare a meal for the two of us.

The teenage wife had little education and not much to say – it seemed to my wife that she was little more than a plaything for Anwar. But even as she carried his child, Anwar broached with me the possibility of finding him yet another wife – a convert from the West.

Most of the time we talked about Islam. He was an ocean of knowledge and a tower of authority. But he also talked about his days in America and told me more about his fishing trips in Colorado.

Then he paused and went back to 9/11. ‘The Americans had it coming. We need to drive them out of Muslim lands!’ His rhetoric was sharper than before.

Word had reached him that he should not return to Sana’a if he wanted to avoid another spell in detention. The message from Yemen’s intelligence services was blunt: ‘Don’t call for jihad and don’t meet with foreigners, or you’ll be in more trouble.’ At this I felt a pang of anxiety. If he was being watched constantly, I might find myself back on the authorities’ radar, and that would be awkward for both me and my handlers.

I was careful not to probe too far with Anwar. His words were deliberate; I had the sense he was being more cautious than before and was not ready to trust me with his plans. But I suspected those plans would be fed by the visceral hostility he now felt towards America and its client in the Presidential Palace in Sana’a.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Cocaine and Allah

Early 2008

The traffic thundered down London’s Euston Road. It was a sunny afternoon in March 2008 – one of those days that dare hint spring is not too far away. Carpets of purple-blue and golden crocus illuminated the city’s squares and parks. Overhead the airliners drifted towards Heathrow. I had just flown in after four months in Yemen.

As I crossed the road, I glanced towards King’s Cross, the station that had been at the heart of the carnage in 2005 when suicide bombers struck London. Nearly three years later the British security services were still under pressure over intelligence failures in the run-up to the attacks. They did not want to be caught out again and were keen to exploit my familiarity with the jihadis of Luton, Birmingham and Manchester. But the CIA wanted to use my knowledge of the militant fraternity in Yemen and Somalia.

At an anonymous hotel near Euston station, the three agencies had gathered to debrief me and I gave them a detailed account of my recent stay with Awlaki in Ataq.

The CIA team was now headed by an officer in his late thirties whom I guessed to be the Agency’s number two in Copenhagen. Jed was balding with ginger stubble on his chin, a man whose plain looks were at odds with his iceberg-blue eyes. And he used them to great effect, impaling me with an intense stare. He spoke with precision and took detailed notes. Jed was all business, with the occasional flair of
laconic humour. He was ambitious and wanted results. On the rare occasions that he lost his temper, his left eye would begin to twitch as if sending Morse code.

Jed clearly had the authority to make a pitch for my services, once he was persuaded that I had a direct path to Awlaki.

The rest of the meeting focused on gathering more intelligence on al-Shabaab in Somalia. PET was interested in developing a line to Shabaab by sending equipment to them: water purifiers, tents, sleeping mats, but nothing combat-related. Curiously the British drew the line at hammocks, perhaps on the grounds that no terrorist should get a good night’s sleep. I witnessed the strange spectacle of three intelligence services arguing about hammocks – the first obvious dissent among them.

Matt from MI6 was at the Euston meeting, and it was clear that Her Majesty’s Government was worried that a valuable source who had made his home in England was about to be coaxed away by all the Americans’ baubles. So the British met and raised the Americans’ offer with a series of team-building exercises which were smartly calculated to appeal to my love of the outdoors but were also a serious bid for my services.

The first card they played was a day of fly-fishing in north Wales. As always there was also a Danish presence. I was first and foremost their man, and they weren’t about to let me spend time alone with MI6, to be dispatched to far-flung corners of the world.

Klang, my Danish handler, turned up looking like a mail-order catalogue model in a Barbour jacket, hunting trousers and a tartan cap. He was in love with the idea of playing the country gentleman for a day, even if he was in the wrong part of Britain for tartan. It took all Matt’s self-restraint not to laugh.