Agent Storm: My Life Inside al-Qaeda (15 page)

Word spread that the big European was back in Sana’a, the one with the red hair and tattoos. And one man was intrigued to meet me. He had heard that I had spent time in Taiz back in 2002 and knew that I had attended Dammaj.

His name was Anwar al-Awlaki. He taught at al-Iman University, and he too had recently returned to Yemen.

Awlaki’s father was an eminent member of Yemen’s establishment and a grandee of the Awalik tribe. He had studied in the United States, where Anwar had been born, and been Minister for Agriculture in his home country. Early in 2006 I was invited to a banquet at the Awlaki family home.

Awlaki had asked an Australian-Polish convert studying at the Sana’a Institute of Languages who called himself Abdul Malik to gather together some of the young foreign Muslims living in Sana’a and bring them to dinner. Malik’s real name was Marek Samulski. In his
mid-thirties, he was tall and well-built, and like so many Western Salafists had been radicalized by the events that followed 9/11. He had been persuaded by his South African wife to come to Yemen so their sons could be brought up as good Muslims.

Awlaki by then had developed quite a reputation as a preacher in militant circles in the West. I was only dimly aware of his English-language sermons because I had preferred listening to Arabic clerics, but I knew he was a rising star in Salafi circles.

The Awlakis’ home was an imposing three-floor building of grey stone not far from Sana’a’s old university – a house that was laid out in traditional Yemeni style, with large windows. The younger Awlaki occupied the middle floor, which he shared with his first wife, a woman from a well-connected Sana’a family, who had lived with him in the United States.

I took my son with me to the dinner. It was a cool evening in January, one of the few months of the year in Sana’a when the weather is familiar to a north European. I made sure Osama looked his best, and bought a new
thawb
for the occasion.

We were ushered into Awlaki’s apartment, which was furnished with impeccable but not ostentatious taste. Books lined the walls, most of them Islamic texts. Samulski introduced me to the preacher, and I warmed to him immediately. He was urbane and well-informed, with a scholarly air and an undeniable presence. He exuded self-assurance without coming across as arrogant. But he also had a sly sense of humour. Awlaki was well-groomed, with a neat beard and gentle brown eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. Like most Yemenis, he was slight; unlike them he was very nearly six feet tall. He conversed easily in English and Arabic and was a generous host.

‘How did you like Dammaj?’ he asked me.

‘It opened my eyes. And Sheikh Muqbil had such deep knowledge and understanding. I just wish my Arabic had been better then.’

‘And now?’

‘Oh, it’s much better. But my religious Arabic is stronger than my street Arabic.’

Awlaki was interested in finding out more about my contacts – in Sana’a and Taiz. He asked me about the other foreigners in my circle
and some of the Yemenis – like Abdul – that I had got to know. It seemed that he was looking to tap into a wider pool of radicals in the Yemeni capital and beyond.

I asked Awlaki how long he had been back in Yemen.

‘On and off about three years. Sometimes I find it a little dull, but life in the West was not easy after 9/11.’

‘It wasn’t very easy here either,’ I laughed.

Our exchanges were little more than pleasantries, but afterwards I thought he had been gently trying to get the measure of me, find out the depth of my commitment and the circles in which I moved.

At one point Awlaki’s son, Abdulrahman, came in to show him some homework. He was about ten, tall for his age, with his father’s eyes. There was clearly a close bond between them. Abdulrahman seemed to be in awe of his father, who in turn was much more affectionate and attentive than many Yemeni fathers I had met. A gentle and polite boy, Abdulrahman helped entertain Osama despite the difference in their ages.

Samulski, probably by prior arrangement with Awlaki, suggested we start a study circle to learn more about Islam – a weekly occasion for an honoured group of students to discuss the issues of the day and their implications for Islam. Awlaki agreed and I offered to host some of the meetings.

Awlaki started coming to my home to give his lectures to our small group of English-speaking militants. It was a beautiful old house with whitewashed walls and I had decked it out with dark-blue Arabic furniture and a thick Yemeni carpet. It was a privilege for me, but he clearly enjoyed our company. We were more worldly than most of his students, and he loved being our mentor, seeing his every word absorbed. Sitting cross-legged on the floor with notes in front of him, poised and eloquent, he liked to show off his intellect and learning, peering occasionally over his glasses at us.

He focused a great deal on Islamic jurisprudence related to jihad, marshalling verses from the Koran and
Hadith
to make his case. One of his most popular online tracts,
‘44 Ways of Supporting Jihad’
, grew out of these lectures on my carpet.

He reserved much of his ire for the Yemeni government for its
cooperation with the United States. A favourite phrase of his was: ‘We should clean the dirt in front of our doorsteps.’

After the study sessions he never lingered for lunch or dinner with the rest of us, perhaps because he wanted his relationship with the group to remain formal. He’d politely accept a biscuit and take his leave. If Omar Bakri was the gourmand, he was the ascetic.

But as I got to know him our relationship became more informal. He had a good sense of humour and liked a candid discussion. Some of the attendees at his lectures were deferential to the point of fawning. There was no danger of that with me, and he probably warmed to me because I could be his intellectual foil.

Awlaki had a rare ability to combine his learning with a talent to communicate and a broad understanding of the world. So many Islamic scholars I had met could talk endlessly about the nuances of the Koran but were unable to connect with a wider audience, and especially a younger audience.

I began to do some background reading on him and asked him about his time overseas, to get beyond the reputation that preceded him and to try to discover what made him tick. He was five years older than me.
He had been born in New Mexico in 1971 while his father was studying there and had returned to Yemen when he was seven. He had clearly been a brilliant student across the board and had won a full scholarship to study in the United States.

He had chosen to attend Colorado State University at Fort Collins to study civil engineering and told me he enjoyed fishing in the nearby Rockies. Then he had come home for a short period to get married, before returning to the US. A popular preacher at Denver-area mosques, he came to feel that education and propagating Islam were his vocation.
One of the reasons, he later told me, was the US-led campaign to oust Saddam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait in 1991, which had prompted him to take his religion ‘
more seriously
’.
¹

In 1996 – at the age of just twenty-five – he was appointed as an imam at the Rabat mosque in San Diego, a small bungalow squeezed among ranch homes in La Mesa. He said he liked the climate in southern California, and stayed there nearly five years. Awlaki was justifiably proud of his academic record in the US. After leaving the west coast, he began preaching at the al-Hijrah Islamic Center in north Virginia and attended graduate school at George Washington University, intending to complete a doctorate in Human Resource Development. In his first term,
he scored a 3.85
GPA (Grade Point Average).

The young cleric appeared to have a glittering future: he was bright, well-connected and very well-educated. The University of Sana’a expected him to return home and head a newly created Faculty of Education to help raise the standard of education in his poor and largely illiterate homeland.

And then, after 9/11, everything changed.

Among a large number of articles I found that featured him, I was drawn to one published the day after the 9/11 attacks. A
Washington Post
photographer, Andrea Bruce Woodall, went to the al-Hijrah Center, which had called an interfaith prayer meeting. One photograph was of Awlaki from above, showing his cap and clasped hands. ‘It shows the grief that Muslims felt but also their fear that people might think they were responsible for this tragedy,’
wrote Woodall
.

Soon after the attack Awlaki gave an
interview to
National Geographic
.

‘There is no way that the people who did this could be Muslim, and if they claim to be Muslim, then they have perverted their religion,’ he said. ‘I would also add that we have been pushed to the forefront because of these events. There has been huge media attention towards us, in addition to FBI scrutiny.’

But there was also this warning:

‘Osama bin Laden, who was considered to be an extremist, radical in his views, could end up becoming mainstream. That’s a very
frightening thing, so the US needs to be very careful and not have itself perceived as an enemy of Islam.’

Vast resources – money, agents, technical surveillance – were poured into the 9/11 investigation and thousands of leads followed. In the immediate aftermath of such an outrage, civil liberties took a back seat to the need to know. Who had helped the hijackers? Who had they met? Were other attacks planned?

Awlaki was just one of those caught in the dragnet and was interviewed four times in the weeks after the attacks.
²
By early 2002 he felt intimidated and harassed. He always insisted he had nothing to hide, and in conversations we had in Sana’a he made no attempt to conceal his feeling that the Muslim community in America had been targeted by a deeply intrusive investigation.

Awlaki decided to quit his doctoral programme and return to Yemen, and by March 2002 he was gone, his wife and child following a month later. He returned only briefly in October to settle his affairs in the US. He was detained when he arrived at New York’s JFK because a
warrant for his arrest
on suspicion of passport fraud had been signed by a Denver judge. But the US attorney in Denver had cancelled it the day before he arrived.

The manner of his departure from the US, the premature end to his studies, the aura of suspicion, still rankled with him when we got to know each other four years later. And the sense of grievance had been deepened by the publication of the 9/11 Commission’s report in 2004.

I found the Commission’s report online and devoured it, reading great chunks late into the night.

Tracing the hijackers’ movements in the United States, the Commission had noted that two of them had known Awlaki while staying in San Diego, and one of them had visited his mosque after he had moved to Virginia early in 2001, which the Commission said ‘may have not been coincidental
’.

One of the Commission’s staff reports had said:
‘There is reporting that [Awlaki] has extremist ties, and the circumstances surrounding his relationship with the hijackers remain suspicious. However, we have not uncovered evidence that he associated with the hijackers knowing that they were terrorists.’

To Awlaki, this was accusation by innuendo. The Commission noted several times it had been unable to interview the cleric, suggesting he was on the run.

There was more in the footnotes of the report. ‘The FBI investigated Aulaqi in 1999 and 2000 after learning that he may have been contacted by a possible procurement agent for Osama bin Laden. During this investigation, the FBI learned that Aulaqi knew individuals from the Holy Land Foundation and others involved in raising money for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas
.’

Worse still for a Muslim preacher were leaks to the media about his arrests in San Diego in 1996 and 1997 for soliciting prostitutes – and allegations of similar misconduct after he moved to the Washington DC area.
One article written
around the same time as the 9/11
Commission report was published said: ‘FBI sources say agents observed the imam allegedly taking Washington-area prostitutes into Virginia and contemplated using a federal statute usually reserved for nabbing pimps who transport prostitutes across state lines.’

It was all, in Awlaki’s view, the dark art of
character assassination
.

‘They did everything they could to humiliate me, to make me a laughing stock among Muslims,’ he told me.

I also began to watch some of his online sermons, which had been viewed by tens of thousands on YouTube. Awlaki had begun recording video sermons in English after leaving the US, refining and sharpening a narrative that depicted the West as hostile to Islam. His gift was breaking down the complexity of the Koran into language readily understood by young English-speaking Muslims. His eloquent and authoritative tone was pitch-perfect; and he made the radical sound reasonable.

He made several visits to the UK between 2002 and 2004, staying for the most part in East London. His celebrity meant that when he gave sermons, the rooms were packed. Sales of box sets of his CDs and later DVDs did brisk business.
Among the avid consumers
were some of the suicide bombers who attacked London in July 2005.

While he whipped up anger against the oppression of Muslims, Awlaki was careful not to be too specific lest he attract the attention of British security services. Even so, Muslim community leaders became concerned that he was luring at least some of his audience towards what they called ‘rejectionism’. As one East London imam later put it,
‘he left the congregations all revved up with nowhere to go.’

Behind closed doors, as with Omar Bakri, it was a different story. In small study circles Awlaki spoke out in
favour of suicide bombings
in the West. One such meeting was attended by undercover MI5 informants, prompting the British authorities to ban him from travelling to the UK.

In 2005 Awlaki recorded ‘
Constants on the Path of Jihad
’, a six-hour online audio lecture series. Building on the work of a Saudi al-Qaeda ideologue, Awlaki argued that Muslims needed to fight continually against their enemies until the Day of Judgement. It was an intricate yet eloquent exposition that drew on Islamic texts, history and current
events. Gently, without hectoring, he dwelt on the plight of Muslims in the West, identifying their situation with that of the Prophet and his followers.